Russell Brunson

Thanks for having me, man. Glad to be here to talk about sales funnel stages.

Russell Brunson

I am ready.

Russell Brunson

Yeah, so sales funnel stages have been my life for the last decade and I love it. When I first got started, nobody cared about them.

Russel Brunson

Over the last two or three years, everyone else is geeking out with me about sales funnels stages, and it’s been fun.

So I’m excited to talk about this and this book that I’m writing now is like a mini-book. It’s not like a real big book but we came out with it last year. It’s my first real book and in there, we talked about all these different kinds of sales funnel stages and all these things and it’s been fun. I love launching it and putting it out there.

Russell Brunson

Over the last year, I’ve seen a lot of people who were coming out with different types of sales funnel stages. In fact, one of my friends put out this cool product. I got it holding here in my hand now. It’s like 10 or 20 different types of sales funnels. It’s exciting and I was like, “Oh! totally geeking out on it.”

And I started thinking like for the average person even me there are many different options and things. Like what should I be focusing on? Knowing how to use a funnel and the stages is important. Because the worse thing is to have 10 things you’re chasing or 20 different ways you’re going because then nothing ever gets done so we start looking at our stats, our numbers. I was trying to figure out like where does my revenue come from?

Russell Brunson

We’ve done a lot of different types of sales funnel stages but where’s the majority of it come from? We start looking at it and it was interesting that 85% of all of our profit came from 1 of 3 funnels.

I realize that these 3 sales funnel stages, not only is where the money is coming from but they each lead into each other and that’s what we talk about today which is exciting.

It’s funny. In the intro of this book, I talk about how typically, when we’re talking about funnels, sales funnel stages and marketing online, we’re always talking about the big shiny objects and all these amazing things.

Russell Brunson

I was like, “This book is kind of like the opposite.” It might not sell very well because it’s not that sexy but it’s the core fundamentals. If you wanna look at it like “What are the things you have to do and should focus on to be successful? And if you focus on just those things and not all the other fluff, it’s way easier to get where you want to go. That’s kind of the premise of what it is that I’m putting together here that we’re going into.

Russell Brunson

Cool.

Russell Brunson

Before we share what the three sales funnel stages are, in my book I talked about a constant called the Value Ladder. It’s where we’re taking someone through a process because usually, all of us we have something that we would love to sell that’s like the best thing we could possibly deliver for our end clients.

For me for example, if you gave me a $100,000, I just build your sales funnel stages for you. That’s like the best thing I could do. The problem is it’s a hundred grand. It’s expensive and if I was to walk down the street and find some business owners, I’m like, “Hey, man. If you give me a $100,000 I’m gonna build the sales funnel stages for you that is going to  be amazing.”

Russell Brunson

9 out of 10 are going to laugh at me and they’re not going to give me a hundred grand. I ask “Why? Why wouldn’t they give me a hundred grand?” The reason is because I haven’t provided any value. They have no context if what I’m doing is going help them or not.

I look like I’m 12 years old. “You look like a little kid, Russell. There’s no way we’re gonna give you a big check, right?” It doesn’t make any sense.

Russell Brunson

Oh, yeah. I get that every once in awhile.

And so what I started thinking a few years ago, I was like, “I need to figure out a way to give them value so that they trust, like, and know me.”

Russell Brunson

When we start bringing somebody into our world, the first thing we do is provide something not that expensive but that gives them just immense amount of value. When they get that, they’ll be like, “Wow, I got so much value from this,” that you want to get more.  This is the first part of all sales funnel stages. This is how things work in the real world too.

Let’s say I wanted to meet a girl. Like the first time to meet a girl and if I like her, I might take her on a date. She is going to give value from that.  If she likes me back and gets value back, then maybe she’s gonna kiss me. And so if I do that, then that might be the first date.

Russell Brunson

The second date is “Okay, what’s the next thing?” And we keep trying to ascend this relationship and get closer and closer. Eventually, we try to get married. There’s the process in the real world.

The same thing is happening with the client. People are scared of you. They don’t know if they trust you. They’re going to try something out and so they might buy a book from you or something low ticket.

07:07 What we found is that buyers in motion will continue to stay in motion until you do something to offend them or just to piss them off. And so if I sell something to somebody and they have a good experience, then they’re naturally going to want more.

Then, if they get a good experience, they’re going to want more and eventually they’ll ascend up. Hopefully, someday they’ll keep buying all of your products and services, eventually maybe ascend up to your highest level of things.

Russell Brunson

And in a perfect world, everyone did and obviously not everyone does. And that’s why we call it the sales funnel stages. It’s bigger at the bottom and then it gets smaller and smaller, but a percentage eventually will buy your most expensive thing. That’s the concept of a value ladder and the sales funnel stages.

Russell Brunson

As I was kind of mapping out this whole concept, I was looking at The 3 Core Funnels. The whole goal of this is to bring somebody through that value ladder. The ladder is essential to your sales funnel stages.

I’ll tell you what the 3 sales funnel stages are and then if you guys want, we can dig deeper into each one.

Russell Brunson So the first funnel stage, the front of my value ladder is what we call a Tripwire Funnel. Perry Belcher is the one that nicknamed it a tripwire funnel but it’s a low-ticket thing that’s just awesome.

In our business some of our low ticket, tripwire offers are like free books, free mp3 players. It’s something free but they have to cover shipping and handling. They have to pay a little bit of money but they get this thing for free, and that’s like a tripwire funnel, and then there’s a whole process to that.

Russell Brunson

Typically, for us about 10 days after they’ve gone through tripwire funnel, then we introduce them to the second funnel, which is our Webinar Funnel.

They just bought something, hopefully they got value. Ten days later like, “Hey, we’re doing this cool webinar. Come on in our webinar.” They come on this webinar funnel and they go through the sales funnel stages, and hopefully, they receive a bunch of value.

Typically, in a webinar funnel we’re selling something from a $300 price point to $2,000-$3,000 price point. If they get value there, then we send them up to the third funnel, which is our high ticket funnel which.

Russell Brunson

High – Ticket Funner is where we’re selling anything from $3,000 to $100,000 and beyond. Move people through the sales funnel stages in the right way and some people will ascend and buy your bigger packages.

Those are kinds of three sales funnel stages that ascend people through this relationship.

First is the trip write, second is the webinar funnel, and then third is the high-ticket back end funnel.

Russell Brunson

We’re geeking out too much.

Russell Brunson

The answer is that we do both and it just depends on the situation. Ideally for me, I like going directly before I can free push shipping offer, and there’s a couple of reasons why.

Russell Brunson

One is the thing with most advertising source is the better the offer, the better the ads can work. So me saying, “Hey, here’s a free report about whatever. Go download it,” vs. “Hey, here’s a free book! I’m gonna go ship it to you.” It sounds better.

If I was going to be on Oprah show or Ellen or some big huge show, what would be my call to action at the end where I’d be like, “Hey, go get a free report.” No, because that’s not that sexy.

However, if I’m like, “This is my book. Typically if you go to a bookstore, it’s going to cost you as much. You get it for free if you go Traffic Secrets.” The perceived value is so much higher and so it makes an ad just work better. So if you have that, like that’s ideal. That’s my favorite.

Sometimes, there’s a point where lead magnet might be a better to use for your sales funnel stages and we do use lead magnets often, but I’ve been using them less and less as we’ve been doing more tripwires.

Russell Brunson

If you look at how we structure our tripwire offers and sales funnel stages, it’s simple to do inside of ClickFunnels. If you go to my book funnels, you go to DotComsecretsbook.com, you can see on the page, it says “Step number 1. Where do you want me to ship this to you?” Then, you put in there the full address information. Then, step 2, asks for their credit card.

What’s interesting is just on that step 1 order form, we get anywhere from 30% on the low end up to 60% that people fill the entire step 1 which is higher than most squeeze pages or landing pages. Getting the sale and this great conversion that quickly in your sales funnel stages is awesome!

Russell Brunson

The leads we’re getting there, we get almost as many or sometimes more leads from that than we do from just a lead magnet, so a lot of times we just bypass and go directly to that.

Russell Brunson

Oh, cool!

Russell Brunson

He’s awesome, huh! Yeah, he is so cool! I geek out on the story stuff.

Russell Brunson

There are so much stuff you go into but we’re weaving storylines throughout every single piece of what we’re doing and it’s part of all our funnel stages because that’s what gets people to respond.

When I’m buying an ad or I’m sending something to people, I try to be where they’re at right now. Because people are different spots in our life and if I can figure out where they’re at right now and I can look back in my life like when was I there, because there’s some point where I was at where they’re at.

If people are paying me for something like they’re trying to learn something that I’ve learned, so I go to figure out like where they’re at right now. That’s where I start the conversation. Daegan Smith is another one. I don’t know if you had Daegan on the show but he’d be an amazing one for you guys on story.

Russell Brunson

Yeah, he’s amazing.

Daegan taught me that was powerful. He said that you know, most people start telling stories and they just jump right in like, “Okay, so–” and he starts right at the beginning. “So there I was. I was walking down the street–blah blah blah–then all of a sudden, the piano dropped on my head!” But you’re like 5 minutes in the story and then the big climax happens.

Russell Brunson

And what Daegan talked about and it has been huge for me is that you have to start your story at the peak emotional state or the scariest part. It’s like the story starts, “The piano smashed out of my head and all these things were happening!” Then you stop and go back to its back story.

Russell Brunson

The emotional impact is what grabs them. And so you start there like, “Here’s the crazy part of the story.”

You don’t start with, “I woke up that morning. I started going down the street.” You start with, “Boom! Here’s this crazy thing that happens.” And then you step back to the backstory and I’m trying to meet that person right where they’re at. This is great for your funnel stages.

If they relate to me saying, “Wow, Russell, I was a college kid and was struggling in school,” and we meet at that same spot and we have a connection where they’re like, “Wow! That relates to me,” then they’re going to follow me forever.

Russell Brunson

The reason why I do so many podcasts and I do a periscope showing all these things is I’m trying to meet people where they’re at. I did one the other day. It was called “Why I Hate School” and it was just like a rant because I was doing my kids’ homework with them and I was just frustrated and I posted that.

What’s interesting is all the people that are my followers felt that same way like they hated school, too. I’m getting all the people who are like, “Yes, you get me. You relate to that. That’s how I feel.” And it starts that story for them. It starts that relationship right there.

Russell Brunson

Yes, it does start at the very beginning of the sales funnel stages but then it’s happening all throughout.

Some people enter my world at different spots. Some people enter at a tripwire funnel. Some people enter at a webinar funnel. Some people enter from a podcast. And so I look at each of those as like a front end to the next thing. Every one of those has a story.

If you have a DoTComSecrets book and just look at that, just that video is a story. If you come there, there’s a cool video and all that stuff and I start telling the story. I talk about this guy Drew I worked with and I’m telling the stories from day number 1, but then after the end of my whirl, I’m still telling stories through the email sequence, the upsells, and all these different pieces. The story’s been weaved throughout it.

Russell Brunson

Yeah, that’s a great question.

The answer is if you look at each of these sales funnel stages, the tripwire funnel is primarily sold through copy. There’s text or video. Webinar is sold through someone sitting on a webinar for 90 minutes where you’re  you’re selling him. A high-ticket thing, is typically sold offline on a phone or something like that.

Russell Brunson

However, the sales process changes in needs for me. The tripwire is good because you don’t have to be a super good salesperson. You’re just like, “Hey, there’s this cool offer. This is what it is.” And so we push a lot of people there.

But the webinar, some registrants of a webinar, instead of buy a tripwire offer and then warming them up to the next sell, they’re coming on a webinar and I’m spending 90 minutes with them. So that 90 minutes is me warming them up to the sales funnel stages. I’m taking them through that process as well.

So while ideally someone’s going go tripwire or webinar or high ticket, we do push people just directly to webinar which then sends them to high ticket. And someone we even push people directly to high ticket. It just depends on where they’re at but whatever they hit into, then they start ascending up from there.

Russell Brunson

The application is actually the high-ticket funnel.

Russell Brunson

If you look at the psychology behind the high-ticket funnel, it’s all about positioning and posturing. And so I’m trying to position and posture myself in a way where they’re trying to stand up to me.

High-ticket stuff is hard to sell unlike on a webinar because there, I’m trying to pitch and convince them to buy. Whereas, the high ticket, you say, “There’s this amazing thing we have and I have no idea if you’re going to be a good fit, and so we better take you through a process to find out if you’re good.“ It changes that whole whole positioning and then they’re going through a sales funnel stages and process where they’re trying to convince you like, “Hey, this is why you’re a good fit.”

Russel Brunson

We don’t work with a lot of people that go through that because a lot of people aren’t a good fit, but the ones who are have gone through a process and they’re committed. When they do start working with us, their success rates are almost 100% because we picked just the right people and they’ve worked hard just to have the right to give us the money. And so because of that, they’re just by default the better person.

Russell Brunson

One of the core things that I talk about in the DOTCOM Secrets book and I learned this initially from Dan Kennedy was that whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins. That’s why these funnels are crucial in understanding and focusing on that.

When I first got started online, I just would sell a product and that was it. It was easy back then because there wasn’t a lot of competition and nobody else was selling stuff. But then more competition came in, which add costs so it got harder.

Russell Brunson

Let’s say I’m selling a $20 book, I might spend $3 in ads and I make $17 which is awesome. But that was 10 years ago. Today, to sell a $20 book, it might cost me $50 to sell a $20 book. So it’s harder.

So you have to build your sales funnel stages in a way that’s different. Just for example, go to Traffic Secrets. If you go through that process slowly, there are insane amounts of hours in my time that I put in there to make that sales funnel stages work.

Right now for every free book we give away, we average $32 immediately. If you get the free book, as soon as you put in your credit card, the next thing it’ll say, “Hey, do you want the audiobook for an extra $37?” Right now, 28% of people say “Yes” to that.

Then, the next page is going to say, “Hey, you just bought the book, the next thing you need is you need to learn how to get traffic to your website. So here’s our traffic course for $197.” Right now 8.5% of people say “Yes” to that one. Now after that, it’ll say, “Okay, you got traffic. Now, next thing you need is learn how to sell. There’s our sales and webinar course for $297.” Right now I think 6.3% of people buy that one. When all’s said and done and when people go through for every book we give away, so we make $32.

Russell Brunson

What that means is I can go to Facebook and I can spend up to $32 to give away a free book or I can go to affiliates and pay them $20 or $30 to give away a free book. Even if I lose all that $32, I just break even. Now I’ve got a customer and now I can ascend them up to the next sales funnel stages, which are the webinar funnel. If they buy from that and ascend the sales funnel stages, it’s 100% pure profit. So that’s the real goal.

Russell Brunson

Yeah, I think the biggest shortcut I can give everybody and this is how I do it at my business, and I talk a lot about this with my people is we call it funnel hacking. It’s basically copying sales funnel stages that work.

Russell Brunson

Let’s say you wanted to make a tripwire funnel like mine. I would say go to mine and when you buy it, again buy it really slow, take snapshots of each page and look at what I did. Then, using a tool like Click Funnels, you can go in and you can rebuild those sales funnel stages in a very short period of time. That’s how I get mine.

I try to buy at least one product a day just to see how people are doing things, and I funnel hack them and the ones that I like, I model those concepts to my own funnels.

Russell Brunson

The biggest thing is don’t try to just reinvent the wheel. Look at the offers out there that are successful, the funnels that are working that I might have and or you might have or other people might have. Look at those and model it.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel to say, “Hey, he had a $200 upsell that sold this kind of product. I’m gonna make a $200 upsell something for my market.”

Just look at what other people are doing and modeling it because most people have figured what works so you got to reinvent it. Just figure out how to plug in your products and services into that framework.

Russell Brunson

If people are saying it’s not working for them, it’s because they’re not very good at it. You know, the biggest thing I think is it still works.

Russell Brunson

I remember 6 years ago, I spoke at a Tony Robbins’ event on Internet Marketing. At first Tony got up saying “Well, I heard, some of my friends told me that squeeze pages are dead.” And I just kind of smiled and said, “The only people that squeeze pages are dead for are people that aren’t good at writing copy.”

If you write good curiosity-based headline on squeeze pages, it still works. In our sales funnel stages with a webinar registration page now, they get 70% opt-in rate, a cold traffic.

The only people that squeeze pages are dead or are people that aren’t good at writing copy.

Russell Brunson

It works. You have to think about this world like it’s all about patterns and pattern interrupts. And so what happens is somebody will come out with a new thing and then it’ll work and then everybody copies

Russell Brunson

I remember we had a webinar five or six years ago. One of my friends in the weight loss space, he’d done through a hand sketched doodle video and no one had ever seen that before. I found out the guy who did it. I called him on the phone. I hired him. He did a doodle sketch video for my webinar registration page. We launched it and because it was the pattern interrupt, it just crushed it.

Then within a month, there was like 50 people who had doodle sketched videos, but we were the first ones in the Internet Marketing world that ever have that. The first person again was Mike Geary, Truth About Abs, and we were number two. And it just crushed it, then everyone else did it and then that pattern interrupt became the pattern.

People will say “Oh, well, doodle videos are dead.” It’s like, “Well, no.” It’s just that everyone else started doing them so they’re less effective, so what’s the next thing? And so what’s a better headliner? What’s a better image? Or what’s the next thing?

Russell Brunson

I started 12 years ago, everyone back then said “Oh, banner ads are dead. Never use banner ads again.” Now, look at my supplement company. Before we sold the company, we were doing $500,000 a month, 100% from banner ads.

It just makes me smile that it’s not that the media dies. It’s that people get worse and worse at advertising. You just gotta learn how to change it up, how to get it better hooked, how to break people’s pattern. If you do that, it will still work. It’s just understanding the psychology.

Russell Brunson

He’s too good.

Russell Brunson

That’s awesome.

Russell Brunson

Sure, the webinar sales funnel stages are fun because they’re a lot faster to build. There’s less steps in it, but again it comes down to the same things like a very curiosity-based headline to get somebody in. And then the key is the webinar like how do you the webinar.

I think of everything that I’ve ever created, this is probably the most valuable thing and instead of selling, we’ve giving it away. I give you free plus shipping. It’s $4.95 and we’ll ship it out to you.

I’ve spent 10 years trying to learn how to sell from stage and on webinars. I remember I went to my very first Internet Marketing event and saw that the first speaker get up and he sold. All these people ran to the back and I was doing the Math counting the people buying. I was like, “2,004. I made $60,000!”

Next speaker gets up. He does his little 90-minute presentation and he sold a $5,000 thing and counting the heads in the back, and he’d made over 100 grand. I was like, “I gotta learn how to do this.” And so I started to try and learn how to sell  from a stage back then, and now it’s on webinars.

Russell Brunson

It was funny like I assumed like, “Oh, this is easy. It doesn’t look that hard,” so I go on stage. The very first time I got invited, there was like 300 people in the room. I got on stage. I did my whole thing and then I tried to sell like the way that I thought it was supposed to work and nobody moved. It was like the most embarrassing, humiliating experience of my life.

I remember walking off stage, walking to the back of the room, I shook a couple people’s hands and I went to the elevator, went to my room, and I just hid there for the next 2 days because I was so embarrassed. I didn’t wanna come back out. And I was like, “I will never sell again. This was horrible.”

Then a couple of months later, I was like, “I gotta figure this out.” So I started this crusade to learn how to sell from stage and then later from webinars, and I went through probably about 15 different stage selling courses and training and seminars trying to master it.

Russell Brunson

Then, I went out and started selling from stage and I spent 2 years on the road, two or three times a month speaking, trying to learn how to pitch the right way and tweaking it, and eventually came up with what we call the perfect webinar and every time I do a webinar now I just plug it into this template. It just works. I’ve got tons of my students we’ve given it to.

One good example name is Liz Benny, she took the script, plugged in her webinar, and launched and within a year, got a million bucks.

A guy named Jason O’Neill took his product and plugged it in the webinar script. I believe this month they’re going to pass the million dollars in sales, and it just works.

It’s called the perfect webinar and you can get the script for free at Funnel Scripts. 

Russell Brunson

That’s the key. It’s having the webinar pitched the right way. If you do it the right way, you can sell pretty much anything. If you screw it up, it’s hard.

What we and a lot of our audience do is we do a live webinar every Thursday. Then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning, you’re driving people into that webinar. Then do the webinar live and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you’re closing all the people who showed up or who didn’t buy or whatever, and Sunday it closes down and we start the webinar funnel back over again on Monday. Just every week, we’re focusing on one live event through that webinar funnel.