Transcription
There's one single hire that generates me over a million a month recurring in my business, and it's probably not what you think.
So we all know there's typical revenue-generating hires in our business, like our marketing personnel, our setters, obviously your closers or account executives. But the one everybody sleeps on that's very, very underrated is actually our CSMs or our client success team. So in this video, I'm going to talk about how to create a revenue-driving CSM team.
So for instance, our company does about 2.5 million a month. We've been there for about, you know, two or three years now at that level of revenue. And half of that comes from the backend revenue driven by our client success team. So this video is going to cover exactly our process for how we do that. So DM me for this SOP that I have on the screen here. DM me CSM on Instagram if you want it at Cole Thomas Gordon, and you can get the SOP. Just make sure it's CSM so the automation actually works.
But with that being said, what we're going to cover is what's a CSM and what are the responsibilities, how to actually structure a client journey that maximizes upsells and LTDs, how to structure back-end offers, and also how to sell those backend offers, as well as a lot of the common mistakes that I see with clients when they're trying to do those two things.
Okay, so first of all, what's a CSM and what are the responsibilities? So, we're going to start with the one-on-one basic stuff. Obviously, this is short for client success manager. What they're helping your clients do is obviously get more results, get from where they are now to where they want to be much faster.
Now, a good way to think about this is they're there to help your clients experience the benefits or really fully experience all the benefits of your product. So, the best example I can give is let's say you bought Infusionsoft or Salesforce, both really complicated B2B softwares. They just don't give it to you and say good luck, okay? Because nobody will be able to install it, use it effectively, customize it for their business, so on and so forth. What they do is they assign you a client success manager or an account executive or what have you to help you customize it and install it and realize all those benefits of the product successfully.
So, similar to my business, we don't just give somebody a salesperson. What we do is we assign them coaching, ramp-up processes, management processes, and really roll up our sleeves and get in the trenches with them to help ramp that salesperson in the KPI so that they can fully realize the benefits of that salesperson. Right? So it's not just giving them the thing. It's giving them all the support around that and helping them fully realize the main thing that they bought for in the first place. Like that's really what the CSM is there for.
Like if you have a course, obviously if you go through the course, inevitably if you just go through a course though, you have questions, and a lot of it's like, okay, that sounds great, but how do I apply this to my specific situation? Because of this, I have this question of this applies to me. The CSM can help mitigate all of those things and push the clients further through activation points.
So what are the responsibilities at a high level? Okay, this isn't like a full scorecard, but the main things they really need to nail are onboarding is number one. So, as you probably know, the client decides if they're going to work with the company long term, usually within the first seven days of onboarding. So, that first experience really sets the initial conditions of everything that's going to happen after that. So, we really want to make that experience good.
So, how do we do it? Well, obviously, we want to make sure there's a really great smooth professional handoff between sales and client success. So a lot of times that falls through the cracks. Like you want the client to feel like that's very smooth. That also helps limit buyer's remorse. But that's another thing that the the CSM really needs to cement in that sale and the reasons why they did it where they also need to set and reset expectations because a lot of times a salesperson trying to get the conversion may let something slip or kind of vaguely state something or at worst maybe overpromise something. So the CSM really needs to make sure that there was no overpromising and that we're on the same page of what the expectations actually are. So 30, 60, 90 days down the road, we don't have this huge misalignment because we were thinking two different things from the very beginning.
The other thing, like I already mentioned, is setting good initial conditions, which in other words, aside from having like a great onboarding call, is making sure that the onboarding call they've done a ton of prep before it so that the client is not reexplaining to client success everything they already explained to sales. And also thinking about, and a lot of this comes with program structure as well, but what are things you can do within the first 48 hours or 72 hours or what have you to make the client feel like, number one, a lot of stuff is getting done and number two, maybe even just get them results right away.
So like in fitness, a lot of people have people go on kind of like a protein-sparing modified fast, which is essentially kind of like a controlled high-protein crash diet only for like four to six days because of the water weight and also the weight loss and the calorie deficit. It can get people in tons of momentum, and then when they're adding their more healthy foods back in, like it's it's much easier to do it afterwards, but it feels like it's tons of momentum. It's like a jump start, right? But you could do the same thing with business by, let's say if you have a really good reactivation campaign that clients can use for their lists or their pipelines to get people back into the fold, and boom, within 7 days they've ROI. If you can get somebody like that and within seven days they've ROI or 14 days they've ROI, almost like probably above 50%, 60%, 70% chance they're going to continue on later on with whatever you have to offer.
Okay. So that's a big thing as well. And even if you don't have something like that, even the feeling of like we're getting a lot of stuff done, like boom, hey, we got this done, we got this done, we got this done, and and like the Slack communication with the client, it just feels like there's a lot of stuff coming at them and there's a lot of progress being made. That first initial impression that's made from that is going to dramatically increase upsell rate later, which is why we're making this video and why we're talking about this.
So, another responsibility of the CSMs is pushing their clients through activation points. So, we're going to cover this in a second, but this is very, very key. And then, of course, increasing LTV. We do that by reducing refunds, cancellations, and churn, and increasing upsells, cross-sales, retention in LTV.
So, before we get any further, a key question I always get is how many clients can one CSM handle? And the question you really have to answer to know is how self-service is your product. So, for instance, if you have a B2B software that's very self-service and needs limited support, it could be like 70 to 200 clients or even more, right? And maybe it's a course that's pretty much DIY with some light support, it could be around that same number. As you get into more like done-with-you B to solarreneur, B2B type services, it's generally like 40 to 70 clients. Or if it's a one-on-one based like certification program, 40 to 70 clients is a good benchmark. That's what my company does. If it's like a full done-for-you service, so like recruiting or agency services, etc., it's somewhere between 8 to 20 clients. It could even be less if you're working with, let's say, like enterprise or something like that.
Real quick, and then we'll get back to the video. If you need help with any of these three things, either installing a lead acquisition internally in your business, you need new sales reps and you want sales reps recruited done for you and also get the sales consulting and sales management help that comes with that, or if you just want overall business strategies of how you can scale to eight figures or beyond, go to the link in the description, click that link, check out the video, and then book a call with our team. We'd love to help you with any of those three things.
Now, back to the video. So, how do we actually structure the client journey to maximize upsells? So, let's just kind of overview what a sample client journey would look like, right? So, they purchase, then immediately there's the admin onboarding, which is essentially their contract forms, intake access, the boring stuff. Then there's the onboarding call. We've already covered that. And then quickly after the onboarding call, what we want to do is move them ASAP to that first activation point. Okay? So an activation point is an event that when occurs makes the client exponentially more likely to either number one get to the next activation point or number two stick. Okay?
So like the classic example a lot of people talk about is Shopify. So Shopify, their churn is not very good because they're in a proumer audience. It's like they lose, you know, I I don't know if it's like 70% or uh of or 50% or something of all new customers they take on um each year uh within 12 months, right? But once somebody makes their first sale as a merchant on Shopify, then their churn goes down dramatically. And actually, I think publicly that's how they actually report and measure their churn is it's based on that activation point. So, if they had CSMs, which they don't, but if they did, and you know, I'm sure they do this with their content and their community and all sorts of other stuff, but all the support around the software really needs to be about getting that person to that first sale, which is that activation point, right? So, you have to think about what is this for you? And now, an activation point, again, your first activation point might not be the be-all end-all. If they meet this, then they always, you know, or or like they're exponentially more likely to stick. It could be the milestone that leads up to that point, right? So like your be-all end-all really great activation point might be number three, but activation points number one and number two are really required to get to that point. So you still want to map them out, and you want to think about it as like deal stages in a pipeline. This is actually how we track it in the CRM with our CSMs to where like what they're doing is they're really KPI on pushing their pipeline through those activation points as much as possible. Okay. And then obviously the last part of the client journey is retention and upsells.
So let's give an example. So if you uh ran a program that helped, I had a client that did this that helped beauty salons get more clients. Your journey might look like something like this. You might have a purchase. Then there's the administrative onboarding. We already covered that. One-on-one onboarding. We already covered that. Then activation point one might be where you take the beauty salon and you repackage their offer. So maybe it's a more high-value, high-ticket. It's bundled, and it's much, much easier to sell, and it also really helps their business economics because it's higher priced, right? So, right there, that gives them that nice dopamine type win because they're like, "Bam, I have a new way of running my business." Then activation point two might be getting their ads launched because, you know, obviously as soon as they get their ads launched, they're way more likely to make a sale, which is activation point three, which is most likely if they make a first sale and kind of validate this whole new system that you're doing, they're probably going to continue on to continue making sales. So, hopefully that makes sense. That's a pretty good example. And then that moves on to upsell and retention. So obviously where does the CSM already fit into this process? We already talked about this. It's moving. It's like forcing their pipeline down those activation points. Okay.
So now before we go any further, we have to cover what something that's called linear nonlinear markets. All right. So this is a term I just made up, but it is very, very important. You'll see the distinction in just a second. So um you really have to know this to kind of know how you're going to build out your client journeys. So a linear market in terms of client journey or a linear client journey is basically what we just covered, right? That means that every single client enrolled starts off at the same point every single time with the same goal every single time. So I'll give an example like we used to have a BTOC program called RCA. It was a certification program that took somebody that wasn't in sales, certified them on our sales methodology through active role plays and actual real activity, not just going through a course, and then eventually help them self-source and land a position. Okay? So, in that example, every single person's coming on in the same situation. They're not in sales. They have the same goal. They want to get into sales, and they're going through the same pathway. They need to get certified. They need to go through all this training. They need to work with their coach. Then they need to reach out to a certain number of people. They need to land a certain amount of interviews. And then from a certain amount of interviews, they need to get get their position. From their position, they need to ramp up in the KPI. And then our final activation point was getting that first sale for them. Right? So you see how no matter pretty much for the most part, anybody coming into that program is coming in from the same direction with the same goal with the same problem going through the same client journey no matter what.
Now a nonlinear is actually in like our B2B company, we have like a nonlinear client journey. Okay? So what that means is is there's clients coming in with different goals, different points, different situations, needing different things. Okay? So for, you know, for our company, I'll just give you an easy example. Uh we have clients who are, you know, just starting off 30K a month. We have clients doing like our top client ever was doing 1.5 billion a year. Okay? So these folks need help with a variety of issues. All right? That they need some mark like they could like some people could come in and need marketing help. Some people could come in and need setters. Some people could come in and they need to increase their close rate. Some people might need a sales manager. Some people uh might need to hire their very first rep or a mix-and-match of anything of those or anything in between. So, as you can imagine, I can't sit here and be like, "Yeah, like here's going to be our client journey. Step one, step two, step three, step four, because everybody is radically different." So, if you have a nonlinear market, which is much more common when you're working in higher sophistication markets. So like I'll give you a se like a business like my business example is very clear but you might work with very high net worth people in telemedicine to where you do blood work and diagnostics and then based on that you create a customized pathway for them based on what they need to optimize based on their goals and what you find out from those diagnostics. Well, obviously because everybody has different health, different situations, different age, you're going to have all sorts of different pathways depending on what you find out with those diagnostics opposed to, let's say, a weight loss offer. Everybody's coming in and they're wanting to lose weight, especially if you're targeting, let's say, women that are 40 to 60. So, if you have a nonlinear market, what you want to do is over time you're going to realize, okay, there's about three to five core buckets that each person falls into. And then what you're doing is creating a client journey for each of those buckets. Okay? And then that way your CSMs know how to push people through based on that. Okay?
So in terms of structuring back-end offers and increasing LTV. So with pricing and then we're going to get back so we're going to talk about backend offers then kind of come back to how CSM really fit into this process. So, as a general rule of thumb, what we want to do with our pricing, and I'm going to give you some examples to drive this home, is what we want to do is extend the contract time and increase the contract value, but lower the monthly rate. Okay? So, extend the time, extend the value, lower the monthly rate. Okay? So, another way to put this is you kind of downell the upsell, right? So, like you downell on the monthly rate, but you upsell on the terms. So, a couple examples. If your front end is 5K for 90 days, you might upsell 20 to 25K for 12 months. If your front end is 9800 for 90 days, you might upsell 30K for 12 months. Uh, in all of these examples, you see I'm increasing the contract value. I'm extending the overall time, but I'm lowering the monthly rate, right? And so, I'm not saying, and now, generally, just keep in mind, if I'm doing 30K for 12 months, I'm not necessarily doing $2,500 a month for everybody. Like in an ideal scenario, I want actually people to six-pay or below, right? Pay in full or like six-pay or below. I don't want to stretch it out to monthly payments. Just not necessary. But um I mean it is possible if that's the only way you could do it. I just prefer to accelerate that cash forward. And most people will be able to do it. But still, they're kind of thinking in terms of monthly rate of your service, it is cheaper, if that makes sense.
Okay. Now, some of you are probably thinking, well, what do I do if my clients are super broke? Like, okay. like, "Yeah, my program's 5K for 90 days, but man, my people are so broke. There's just no way that they could do 20 to 25K for 12 months." So, my first thing I would say before I get into my actual tactical advice is my first thing I would say is you'd be surprised like in RCA when we did our BTOC certification offer, uh, yes, like a lot of people just weren't in a financial position to upsell to our 25K, but instead of getting, let's say, a 40% plus upsell rate, which is what we get for our B2B, we only got a 10% upsell rate. But still, that 10% upsell rate when you're doing a high volume of transactions can add several hundred thousand a month of almost pure profit to your bottom line. Okay? So, you just might have to lower your expectation of how many people can upsell, which in a lot of times is actually better than what I'm going to recommend. It almost always is actually better than what I'm going to recommend in a second. But let's say you can't even do that. Like you can't like no matter what, you tried to do the 25k thing. you tried 20 30 pitches of it, you can't sell anything. Okay, so in this case, you may do the same or similar price a longer term and then remove deliverables. Okay, so classic example, you might do weight loss coaching for 4,800. The first 90 days uh is where they get most of the results, right? Like that's where they lose most of the weight obviously. After that, their goal is kind of like maintenance. So after that, they could do 6,000 for the next 6 months or maybe 9,000 for the next year. Again, this is not ideal, but what you do have to make sure is that your deliverables are getting reduced. Because if you don't, and let's say it's 9,000 for the next year, and you're going to continue doing one-on-ones at the same cadence as your 90-day thing, then what's going to happen is you're basically shifting a lower value of revenue. Like, you're filling your CSM's roster up with people who are paying a lower monthly rate for the same deliverables. And what that's going to do is force you to hire way more CSMs and ultimately bloat your P&L. So I see that with fitness offers all the time. That's why if you do this model, you need to reduce the deliverables thereafter so that you do have that continuity and you do get people to stick, but maybe instead of meeting with their coach every two weeks, it's a once every other month check-in or once a month check-in or maybe it's only group or very high higher leverage things. So hopefully that makes sense. Again, if it's possible, I would much rather take a really like a way smaller upsell rate, like 10% on a
Much more higher value, high-end thing. Because when you when you kind of measure out the income that you're going to make versus the operational complexity that's going to be that's going to require to make it, it'd be much better to do that at 10%. That's what we did with our B2C when people didn't have as much money. Obviously, B2B, it's obvious you're just kind of going for the back end.
All right. Now, what deliverables are you going to include? So, obviously, continuity is is number one. So, more access to whatever they're getting. So, I mean, this could be every everything and anything from if you have an agency or some sort of done for you service, well, you're going to continue obviously offering that service. Or if it's like a community plus group calls, whatever, you're obviously going to offer the community plus group calls, whatever. If you offer Slack one-on-one support or one-on-one calls, they're going to get more Slack one-on-one support or one-on-one calls. Okay? So um now continuity alone like this alone can be your upsell offer.
All right. Uh and generally when it is used alone as the upsell we're kind of using it as a downsell like they didn't take our upsell but we can offer them continuity as a downsell. And then also it's used as like bridge offer. So, for instance, like you might have a client that in two months probably is going to be a good fit to move up to like your 30 or 50k backend, but right now they're not in a position to do it. So, opposed to either downselling them into some long contract, what we do is a bridge offer, which is after their 90 days, we do two more months at like a, you know, certain rate or the same rate as the front end. And then we like I you know so maybe it's 10k for two extra months and then we upsell later so it's a bridge offer that's what we do the most times with all of our continuity. I I really hesitate to give whoever's selling it the option for a downsell because as we know and we've talked about on this channel sales people don't sell the thing that makes you the most money or them the most money they sell the easiest thing there is to sell. So what you really want to push is really getting people into that upsell and the continuation should be people who physically no matter what could not do it or if there's a qualification to get into that upsell it's like a bridge offer so that they can get in later.
Okay so that's deliverable number one pretty obvious deliverable number two is increase proximity and access. So if you have an educational model which is like coaching courses even like uh you know if you're a done for you agency or what have you. I mean there's a lot of different things you could do here. Um, like even like if you had a SaaS, like I'm sure uh I know Hyros for instance doesn't do this, but I'm sure Hyros because Alex Becker is such a figure and people know who he is in the industry. If they had like a higher tier where you could have some like events with him or some something like that, I'm sure people would pay for it, right? So this is something that you can obviously offer to where um you get some more higher proximity or access to whoever is like an industry expert etc. um for that offer, right? Um, so you get more support. You could have a higher frequency of that support or more one-on-one calls. You could have special group calls. So like let's say your frontend has a couple group calls a week, but they have more people on them. There could be another group call that's less people, more intimate, and it's all higher level people in the back end. So there could be that as well. You could do monthly expert intenses with different industry Q&A experts, etc.
Another deliverable, and this is one is especially for anything coaching, information, course related. This is the number one thing I recommend that's super important is events and community. Okay? So, even for offers, it's very hard to figure out what your backend's going to be. Like, let's say you teach people how to do guitar. Uh, what I would recommend is a backend where you get together three times a year and you bring in different like famous guitarists or whatever and essentially you do all sorts of jam sessions and and you essentially go on like musical retreats. So, like you see how that is like so unique. It's cool. like they get to learn on their journey a little bit more and it's also kind of like this experience and kind of like a vacation that they're paying for. So, and they're building community, right? And they're building a friend group through that of people who are more interested in the stuff that they're interested in. So, in doing that, you're to get longer LTV and retention. Anyways, uh almost always you could add events and community or retreats to anything and it is super super key to drive LTV. It's probably one of the most important things that you can do especially in this industry.
Uh you can also add more consumables. Okay. So for instance, these are things that you know when they come on they're going to consume any course content etc all at once, right? So the value of that drops almost immediately but then longer term you could have like ongoing consumables they can get. So like let's say um you know in gym launch for instance I know what they did is each season or each like kind of quarter they would give all of their clients like a new marketing promotion with like templated creatives that everybody was expected to run. So, so you had to be kind of on the hook ongoing to make sure you got that because if you were dependent on them for your marketing or the next big thing, you kind of always need like the newest and the best thing for when your ads fatigue. So, like you can get that right away. You boom, plug and play. That alone can keep a lot of people sticking. Uh you could do copy support or copy reviews for people who do marketing and do ongoing obviously for us like we can do sales call reviews or sales team trainings for our clients. Like that's an ongoing consumable. You can do the same thing with CSMs. You could do quarterly business audits for instance. So those are all great examples.
So a few things to think about in terms of how to how to actually create more stickiness in your backend offer. And some of these ideas I got from this video with Horoszi um a long long time ago and I've implemented some of this to uh our company. But there's a couple things that increase stickiness. So one is collateral. So for instance like the easiest way to think about collateral is like you don't switch off your CRM because they have all your data, right? Right? And it just beca becomes a huge pain in the ass to be able to do that because of their next thing which is cost of switching, right? Like if you've ever installed a CRM and you're doing a significant amount of revenue, you know the switch and the migration once you do one, you never want to do one ever again. It takes way longer than you think and it's way more expensive than you think and then it doesn't work as well as you want to for the first six months. So cost of switching is a big thing that increases stickiness, but also that's because a lot of times they have collateral. So let me give you another example of collateral. So, uh, one division of our company is like more enterprise RPO based services. And so, that's where essentially we're doing all of the sales recruiting for a company that might have big sales recruiting needs, like 10 to 20 reps a month. And so, um, as we get more sophisticated with that, what we could do, and we don't do this, but what we could do is have an actual, uh, custom ATS that our company owns that that client has login to to where all their recruits and so on and so forth, and all their recruiting pipeline is within our kind of like CRM. So, we own their entire recruiting pipeline and data. And then that means if they leave, they're going to leave all of that data and there's not that data transfer. and they're used to using that tech on an ongoing basis. So, it increases the stickiness that way as well.
Um, there's control of the money flow. So, if you do anything with payment processing, like payroll companies are tremendously sticky for that reason. Consumption, we already covered that. How to increase consumption. Community, we already covered that. Uh, contracts, we actually already covered this as well. I'm not saying put somebody in like a super enforcable contract and you're going to sue them if they leave. But what I mean by this is you're if you sell your deal in a clear distinct this is a 12-month contract versus this is monthly. Even if it's the same price, you're going to get exponentially higher stickiness on the former. You're going to exponentially higher stickiness on being like this is a 30 30k contract that I'm allowing you to 12pay versus this is $2,500 a month. Okay? Always more stickiness on the other thing. And that's really just how you frame it, how you sell it, and then just where they sign the dotted line on the contract. It's not like where you're you're, you know, enforcing this and suing people.
Now, another one that is super super big and uh very very underestimated is this concept of leadership. Okay. So, the number one thing people are going to buy, especially with expert-based offers or any sort of business consulting, business services based offers is when people feel like you can not only solve their current problem, but you can see around the corner of all their future anticipated problems. Okay? So this is why like for instance in our business, you know, we're positioned to where we, you know, help somebody with marketing or give somebody a salesperson, but after fixing that initial problem, we always make sure the client knows that we know the next two, three, four, five things that they need to do to be able to scale. And what we try to do is really convert them to our playbook of running a business. So that they're kind of running and modeling the playbook of what we teach. And then that way as they're going through the levels of scale, they always know that they can go to us for that next step. Okay? So that's what I mean by establishing leadership. And you can do that in a variety of different offers. Like if it's a B2C thing, it can be something along the lines of like um you know kind of indoctrinating somebody in a new and different way of looking in looking and leading their life, right? So for instance, let's say like I have clients who really help men be take the lead in their relationships. Okay? So maybe their wife stopped having sex with them or something and that's kind of the core initial problem that guys come on to solve. But then after that it's like okay how do you be a leader and your marriage or your relationships etc. And then what happens is is now that they're in this kind of new way of like leadership and thinking as they go on through their their you know challenges in their marriage over the next course of the year they kind of always want to have that person to go to to run something by. Does that make sense? Okay. So establishing that leadership is very very important.
So now we're going to cover some big common mistakes. This is like I get some of this is stuff I get questions about more than anything else when it comes to back-end offers. So, a big one is is there's a common belief and it's not necessarily wrong. I'm not going to say it's a wrong belief, but it's limiting in a lot of ways. And the common belief is is that your back-end offer should solve future problems created by um your front and put it differently, your back-end offer should solve the future problem created uh by your first offer. So for instance, they come into your business, your first offer solves their lead generation problem. A big school of thought is that your back-end offer should solve the problem that is created by solving the lead generation problem, which is a lot of times a fulfillment problem or like a sales staffing problem or something like that. Okay. So it's like yeah, you know, our front end helps people with lead generation, our backend helps them with like systems and scaling. And so it's like this linear thinking of like our back end helps with the problem created by our front end. Okay, hopefully that makes sense. So this is, you know, it's not necessarily wrong. You can do it this way. It's just flawed and very limiting. I'm going to explain why.
Okay, so in this diagram, let's say your front-end promise is to go from zero to 10K a month, right? Like I don't care what the business is. Let's say you work with business owners and I don't, you know, you work with e-commerce business owners and it's like, hey, we're going to help you start and get to 10K a month. Okay? So, um, obviously your front end, like if you're doing the model that I think is flawed, your front end is going to be, okay, start at zero and get to 10. Your back end is like, hey, let's go from 10 to get to 50K a month with scaling and systems and whatever. But here's what actually happens, all right? Is let's say you take on, you know, out of the 100% subset of your clients that you take on on the front end, you know, 15% of them are or, you know, let's say this is a client business, right? So, they're trying to get to 10K a month by taking on clients. Zero of them um or 15% of them get zero clients. Maybe they just don't do anything. 35% of them get one client. they so they went from zero to one two to uh 30 another 35% of them get two to four clients and then the final 15% gets 10k a month so when you're under this paradigm and I see clients do this all the time what happens is is because of their messaging of their back-end offer and their mindset they only try to sell this 15% segment here and then on top of that they only consider that that type of person is successful and then their backend messaging is actually communicating to all their front-end clients it unless you're this 15% you're not qualified. So they greatly limit the amount of people they can upsell into their back end. Whereas like you see this blue segment here, keep in mind like you took somebody from zero clients to like their first four clients ever, they're probably super happy. They didn't get to 10, but they're probably pretty freaking happy. You'd be even surprised. People who only get one client, they're probably actually happy. I've had people who, this isn't my business, but in a business that I used to sell for, there'd be people who would go through the 90 days, get zero clients, and still upsell to the back end because even from the progress that they can't, like even though they didn't get a client, they made a lot of progress around the way. We'll actually go into this example now.
So, this is the best way I know to illustrate this and really drive this home is let's say your promise is get your first client through organic social media. Okay? So again, let's say you have 20% of clients that take no action. Let's say you have another 20% that don't make that much of progress, but they have a huge mindset shift and like they break down a lot of limiting beliefs. Then you have another 20% that has the mindset shift and starts to get really good social media engagement, but they don't get clients. Then you have another 20% that still doesn't get any clients, but they had the mindset shift, they made the progress on social media, and they're actually generating sales calls. And then you have the final 20% that actually gets their first client. So again, with the kind of old way of thinking, you only end up selling this this uh top 20% here because number one, that's what your backend messages towards. And number two is that's the only person you think is successful. Okay. So the reality is you're you're ignoring the fact that all of these people like from zero to one, there's tons of progress in between that. It's not binary. So you're real, you're ignoring all of these people who've made tons of progress and have gotten tons of results. And in other words, you're leaving a ton of money and opportunity volume for upsells on the table. So the best way to think about it is really just yes, you have your front-end promise is whatever 0 to 10k a month. Your backend is more about continuing on the work and the journey that they're already on. And then sure, for people that are already at 10K a month, giving them a little bit more extra support in those individual conversations you're having with them on how to get to 20, 30, 50 and more. Hopefully that makes sense. And you're going to do that through all the stuff we already talked to, events, community, more support, more access, so on and so forth. Okay? So hopefully that makes sense. It's not a um, you know, of course you're going to obviously offer more in-depth training, etc. for the people who need it, but that's usually the minority of people that are coming through your program. A lot of these people have still made progress, but they just need more hands-on and more proximity and more support to just get to the finish line. Okay? So, you want to make sure the messaging is structured that way. That's why I leave it intentionally kind of vague. And then when you're on the one-on-one call, that's the upsell call, you kind of tailor it to the person.
So, finally, we're going to move on to actually selling your backend offer. So, the first step of this is obviously deliver on the promise. Duh. Okay. The second thing is is you have to think about timing. So, um, there's kind of two, you know, generally, I'll just kind of skip to here. Two to three weeks out is when we're going to actually time the sale, generally. Now, however, we could do it early or we could do it late. So, sometimes you have people who make progress super fast or they hit all the key activation points way ahead of time. Those are great opportunities to try to incentivize them in some way, shape, or form to upsell early. There's a lot of different ways you can do that. You just have to be creative. Uh there's other times where somebody just gets off to a bad start for some reason or they have to restart over a couple of times, but you know, man, if you just give this person an extra month or 45 days, they're going to be in the perfect position for an upsell. And so, you want to make sure you have the flexibility uh with that. Now, as a general rule of thumb, two to three weeks before the contract ends, we want to book a one-on-one with whoever our dedicated back-end salesperson is. We're going to cover that in a second. So, do not, this is pro tip, okay? Another common mistake. Do not call this the next steps call or for God's sakes the upsell call, okay? Or the uh, you know, hit your next level call. I've seen so much dumb stuff. Just reach out to them and be like, "Hey, like book in your next coaching call, right? Like they should already be on a regular cadence with you or your coaches. So essentially like they just need to think it's the next coaching call." Okay? So to be clear, they're not going to know it's an upsell call. they're just going to think it's part of the deliverables and what you're essentially providing within the program. Okay. So, who's going to take this backend upsell call? So, at first it should be you. Okay. So, think about your CSMs as setters and you're like the dedicated backend closer. Now, later on, what's going to happen is is once you get above about 30 upsell calls a month, I would pass it off to a dedicated backend per uh person. For instance, I think if you're below 30, you should just take it. So, for instance, if you're a 30 and you're closing 30%, that's 10 clients a month. If your product is 30 30 grand, you spending, you know, you could basically bash these and do these upsell calls like seven days of the month, right? Like, it's not that much work. And essentially, you could just take them yourself. If you close 30%, you're generating yourself an extra 300 grand in revenue for the business. It's pretty high leverage. And you're generating recordings and SOPs. So this dedicated backup cell person has plenty of training to come in later and do it. But once you exceed 30, you want to have somebody dedicated on your team who does this. So generally the most ideal person is like
Your client success director. Hopefully, they're good at sales, is the big caveat. Like your CSM team lead or client success, uh, client success director. It could also be, let's say, your sales director or a different executive in your company. Just make sure whoever that person is, number one, they're a bit of sales obviously. Number two, is that they have some sort of authority within the program, right? Like they, they, they like they have, like sales director opt-in works because if you have a business program, the sales director can do the training and the coaching for sales within the program. And so, so when they're actually on the upsell call, people have already interfaced with them. They kind of know them a little bit, and there's that authority and relationship there. That's kind of what you're looking for.
I wouldn't have your front-end sales people do it. It's just kind of weird. It's like they sell them on the front end; they don't talk to them at all, and then all of a sudden they see them again on the back end—just kind of strange. And then also, I have my CSMs do it, but I would not recommend that for anybody else simply because my CSMs are salespeople because we train on sales, so it works for me because of that reason. I look out, but for almost everybody else, you want to act as your CSMs as setters and then essentially, um, you know, there's some dedicated back-end salesperson. Ideally, it's your client success director. Okay, uh, it could even just be the best closing CSM on your team, and then they're that person. That's kind of a special position.
So, this is really, really key. When you have one single person, it consolidates all your quality control, which makes it really easy. It also makes it easier to fast and ramp that person or to diagnose any conversion problems that are happening.
Okay. So, finally, last thing we're going to cover: what is the actual script in the backend upsell process? So, I'm going to go through this pretty lightly, but um, the process is essentially basic rapport. We're going to go through all these steps, but basic rapport. We're going to go through their challenges and constraints. We're going to list them out and not dive into them. Okay? So, we're not going to solve anything because remember they're coming on and thinking this is a coaching call. All right? So, it's like we started like it's any coaching call, see what's up with them, what's the challenges, constraints. We don't start fixing anything. We just kind of list it out in a Google doc.
Then what we do is we do a what's called a data overview. Okay? And what we want to do is if we have any before data during this phase, we want to also acknowledge anything that is like some amazing progress that they've made, right? If they lost 30 pounds or they grew their business by 100 grand a month or whatever it is. But what we're going to do is we're going to go over all their data and we're going to identify what the biggest things they need to work on are, what their constraints are based on their data. And then we're going to clarify their goal. This is like a quick question. You'll see how it works. Then what we do and is the most important part is we create the pathway and get buy-in to this pathway. Then we transition to the pitch. Okay, so this is when they're going to finally realize, oh, okay, this is an upsell call. And then we pitch to the liberals real fast and we close.
So, let me walk you through this. So, uh, rapport, very simple, you know, one minute. Um, biggest challenges. So, remember, they're under the assumption this is a coaching call. So, this is like a normal place to start. You're going to be like, "Hey, so like, you know, kind of what's going on with you? What are the biggest challenges that you're working on? What do you feel like are the biggest constraints in your business?" Just list them out in bullets on a Google doc. Don't dive into them and start fixing anything. You can ask some clarifying questions, but it's just good to kind of see where they're at because also, you know, you might ask this question and if like you're working with businesses, you, you might ask this question. They're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so glad we're having a call. Our ad account just got shut down." See, right away now, what we're going to do is extend their time and not pitch. Does that make sense? So, it's good to ask this just to kind of see where they're at. And because you're about to go into their data and constraints, this will help you understand kind of like what they think the problem is versus what actually the problem is going to be later and if there's misalignment there.
So then we go through what's called data overview. All right. So you kind of can't do this as well on the front-end sales process, but on the back end you can because you have a relationship with the person. So ideally what you want to do is have the data already ready. So like for us like we, you know, keep track of data with our clients. So, like we have all what we call our marketing and sales constraints data ahead of time, right? So, I already have this and if I if I'm the one doing the upselling, my CSM gives me this and I have this on the call, right? So, I'm like, I'm ready for it. So, um, or if like you had a done for you agency offer, you obviously have all of their tracking sheets and their data and all that stuff. So, you would want everything from like ad spend to profit, every metric in between. And then what you're going to do here is basically go through that data and highlight every constraint that if approved, if improved would add um tremendously more revenue to their business very quickly. Okay. So, um, you, you, you know, really if you obviously are knowledgeable and you know what you're doing, which you should, uh, you should be able to go through their metrics and be able to quickly identify this that the other. I'm going to give you an example in a second. um, if they're like more of a beginner business owner.
So, let's say they're like doing some organic social media, but they don't have like ads and CPCs and you know, uh, opt-in conversion rates and show rates and sales call conversion rates. Uh, what you want to do is still quantify their data somehow. Okay? So, like I'll give you an example with RCA, which is more of like a bisop certification. You know, it's they're obviously not businesses. What we would do is um, you know, we would look at where they're at in terms of okay, how many um, like did you complete your certification? How many role plays did you do? What progress did you make with that? And then in terms of landing their first position, we'd be like, okay, how many reachouts did you do to business owners? How many jobs did you apply for? How many interviews did you get? How quickly did you get hired? What was your closing percentage? Etc. Like we, we're going to know all this data beforehand because we're in like Slack communication or what have you with the client, right? Okay. And we're constantly tracking this with every client. So, we're going to know that and be able to review. And obviously, if I'm doing RCA and I'm helping sales reps get jobs, I can essentially see, okay, here's like maybe their big constraint is they're landing interviews, but they're not getting hired. You know, it's like the same thing as analyzing a marketing funnel. Okay? So, you could do this with almost anything. Like, if it's like a non-ROI BTOC fitness offer, I mean, you could be looking at their journal logs, their food logs, uh, like their weight trend over time on a spreadsheet and kind of how that's been looking. Is it tracking? Is it not tracking? And you can kind of identify the constraints that way using the data.
Okay. So once we know what these constraints are and we list these out, which I'll give you an example in a little bit. Okay. Um, what we'll do is just clarify the goal real fast. So it's like, hey, your goal is still XYZ, right? Assuming they haven't hit the goal. Or we'll say, okay, now you know, now that you hit your first initial goal of 100 grand a month, what's the goal now? Or now that you lost the first 15 pounds, what's the goal now? Okay, just because we want to make sure we can tie our pathway, which is the next step, to the goal. And so then we can now we're going to create the pathway, which is essentially the most important part. So here we're using the challenges they told us in the beginning as well as the constraints that we've identified with data, and we're going to map out the next three to five steps that they, they need to work on to get to their goal. So for the advanced business owner, like you know, this is like maybe an example of somebody we would work with is we're going to say, hey, okay, so step number one, we need to meet, we, we need you to meet with our CMO to implement our advanced creative testing system to get your creative production up to 50 creatives a month so we can drive your cost per MQL down because right now that's too high and that's choking your profitability. Then what we need to do is implement the show rate system, uh, and you're going to do that with your AM to get your SH rates from 50% to 60%. We also need to do ongoing sales call reviews and sales meeting trainings with your AM to get your closing ratio to 20% because it's only 20 right now. If we can't get it there in 45 days, we need to cut your bottom two people and replace you with two high-performing reps without recruiting. Okay? Then just a few small things. We need to hire an ops manager, get them through our training because you're doing too much administrative stuff. And then also your finances are a mess. You need to fire your bookkeeper, get another bookkeeper, and have them use the templates that we provide financially to model your business. Okay? And then finally, we need to implement the back-end upsell process and get, get your back-end program ready, um, you know, upcoming soon because we have a lot of clients coming in. We need to upsell those clients, right? They need to go through this training. So the ultimately, if we do all those things, we can get to four closers at a 25% close rate. If we do that, we'd be at 80 units a month, right? 20 units per closer. And at your price point, that's going to be about 10 million a year, which would be a nice 3x or 2x or whatever it is for their business. And then if we implement the back end and get that to KPI, that should add an additional 30 to 50% over time to your revenue, getting you to 13 to 15 million a year. So this is kind of, so this kind of brings it all together. You see how essentially what I would do is I understand through the data and kind of what they've told me what these steps need to be, and then I'm basically just being like, here's what you need to do. Like it's kind of mapping out like a high-level—it's almost doing the onboarding call again. Like if you set an implementation pathway on an onboarding call, you're almost doing that again. Okay? And just setting out the pathway of what they need to do to get to where they want to go. Okay?
So then you check for alignment. Uh, this is where you want to try out. Okay? So obviously this is the biggest thing. If they don't think this is what they need to do, they're not going to buy the back end. Okay? But they still don't know it's a sales call. So this is where you're like, "Does this make sense?" And you want to be very direct. Do you agree with what I'm saying 100% here? Is there anywhere at all you feel this is off or you feel this is 100% your next steps? Okay. Now, once you have clear alignment and they're like, "No, this is 100% what I need. Thank you." You know, blah blah blah blah blah. Then you're like, "Okay, great." Because as you know, like we're coming up to the end of our engagement time. So, this is exactly what insert backend program name would be for you. We would do this, we would do this, we would do this, we would do this, we would do this. And our ultimate goal will be to get you here in terms of revenue. So, I can cover everything else that's included into the back. Like this is the main pathway we want to work on in the next 90 days. The engagement for the back end is a year. I can cover everything that's included in when that uh, if you would like, but where do you want to go from here? They're going to be like, "Yeah, I'd love to hear about the back end," is what they're going to say. Okay, so then we're going to get to the basic part. I mean, this is where you kind of just really mapped out like this was the pitch. Okay, so when I go into deliverables, the main thing I'm going to re-emphasize is, hey, so for the next 90 days, these are the main things we really need to focus on to get you to this level. Okay. Then we're going to re-evaluate in the next 90 days and we're going to do that quarterly. Okay. Now, in between that, here's all the stuff you have access to in the back end. Deliverable, deliverable, deliverable, deliverable, deliverable. You're going to go through everything. And then at the end, I'm going to be again, but if all we did was this, the investment would pay, pay itself off more than in just 90 days. And we're going to do this kind of format where we have this good implementation path for you quarterly. Okay, does that make sense? Then you price drop and then you get into the close. Okay? And obviously closing, I'm not going to go into all of that.