Psychotactics Blog

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Which product should you pre-sell?

Should it be the $20 product or the $2000 one? And why do silos matter so much? In this episode we not only learn why the $20 product might matter more, but also how you can promote a product almost endlessly without ever promoting it all.

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How do you introduce the concept of roundabouts to motorists?

The concept of the roundabout was a French idea, but it was the British who made the most use of it. But the roundabout was still a bit klutzy until 1969. In the year, traffic engineer, Frank Blackmore, who invented the modern roundabout, helped introduce the new idea to motorists. He would park himself on a traffic island and shout out instructions through a megaphone-like-device. 

It was because of Blackmore's simple plan that made the roundabout work

His idea was that entering vehicles had to give way to traffic that was already moving on the roundabout. And if you've ever been on a roundabout, you know that it's such a delightful invention. Unless, of course, it's a huge roundabout and there's loads of traffic. That's when it becomes a bit of a nightmare. 

Similarly, when you've got just one or two products or services to pre-sell, it's not hard to get a sequence together and get the sequence going. But when you've got three or four, or like us almost 17 different products and services, it seems like a logistical nightmare. And yet you can pre-sell your product or services, and yes, there is a bit of complexity involved. Let's find out what's involved and how you can systematically manage the pre-sell. 

Stage 1: Which products are the most important? Which are not?

Stage 2: Have we created a “separate section” for each of the vital products/services?

Stage 3: How can we create urgency and scarcity?

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Stage 1: Which products are the most important? Which are not?

The term “important” is probably too vague. The importance of a product or service is dependent solely on your strategy. Let's say you have a product that's priced at just $20. Is it more important than a product that's priced at $2000? The answer depends on your strategy. Let's say I have a book that you're writing at this point.

It might be personally relevant for you to get the book into the hands of as many clients as possible. In such a case, the $20 would outweigh the $2000. In which case, you'd start with the book pre-sell right now, and then work out a sequence that would head directly to the launch. Later in the year, you might have a $2000 product that, if sold to 40 people, would generate $80k, then that's the most important. 

In the case of Psychotactics, you'll notice that not all the products or services are in a pre-sell sequence

Take the example of products like “Outlining” or “Chaos Planning”. And it may seem like their lower price point is what relegates them to this non-pre-sell bracket. But even higher priced products like the “Copywriting Course” aren't in any pre-sell sequence, because we've only wanted a few products to have on pre-sell. And in time, things may change. For instance, as this is written in June 2019, the ‘Black Belt Presentations' is not on pre-sell. And neither is the “Dartboard Pricing” series. In time, they may go on pre-sell (and we'll talk about how to do that in Point 3). 

Some don't even have a sequence, e.g. Psychotactics workshops

Many of the workshops in the past few years have filled up without needing to go to a list at all. Is there a pre-sell of sorts? Yes, there is. But it's not done through e-mail or any reminder system. We have other groups that we run separately in WhatsApp. When the workshop is ready to roll, we merely let those groups know, and it's not unusual to have 70% or more of the workshop filled through that backchannel. The remaining 30% fills up without too much of a bother. 

Which, of course, means that the first stage would be to figure out what's important, and why it's important to you at this very moment. And as that situation changes, why the next product is essential, and so on. The importance will determine why you're pre-selling one series of product or services and not the other.

Be aware that you can put every product in a pre-sell sequence 

But it's a heck of a lot of work to set it up and then to monitor the sequence. Sanity calls for fewer, more strategic moves to be made so that you achieve the goals you need to meet.

Which takes us to the second bit. Stage 2: Have we created a “separate section” for each of the important products/services?

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Stage 2: Have we created a “separate section” for each of the important products/services?

Having determined what we're going to promote and pre-sell, we have to create silos. It's June right now, and I'm keen on launching a book called “Suddenly Talented” in April next year. If we make announcements, create snippets and give out samples, it's already a good strategy. However, it's far better to create a separate area. 

Which is why we created a silo: www.psychotactics.com/suddenly

What is that separation creating?

It's getting clients to opt-in to a specific channel. They're interested in the information that is likely to follow both next April, as well in the run-up to April. And if I were to do this task correctly, I'd have to find myself a good barista, order a coffee and work out what goodies I'm going to send that list and how often.

Because it's an explicit opt-in, they're likely to be more eager to receive goodies. And to be clear, information and announcements are fine, but goodies are the best. What we'd need to do, is create enough excitement, enough enticement, so that the final launch isn't this last minute “buy my book” scenario. 

We have silos for the Article Writing Course, the info-product course and others

Yet, there's still a problem in place, isn't there? Just because someone has signed up for the book on talent, doesn't mean she won't sign up for the Article Writing Course. And if this client is super-eager, she might sign up to quite a few others. As you can tell, it feels a bit like an asteroid belt where one e-mail could clash with the other at any point. It seems like there's a good chance that the client could wake up one morning and find five different sets of goodies all from Psychotactics. 

And yet that situation never occurs

It's because the goodies go out with a higher frequency in the run-up to an event. Which means that through most of this year, from June to December, you're likely to get a few e-mails or podcast announcements. Nothing over the top, just a few to keep you abreast of what's happening.

A set of goodies may be slipped under your door too, but just enough to keep thing moving along. The only time you're going to see a step up in activity is between 8-16 weeks before the actual launch date. At which point, all the other pre-sell volume gets turned to low. The focus becomes one product or one service. 

And yet, you may never need to turn down the volume if you use editorial well

Do you see what's happening right now in this very article? You were told about the “Suddenly Talented” book. You were given an approximate release date. You even have a nudge with the link above which allows you to opt-in. Those are three sets of pushes in one article. Now think of all the articles, all the presentations, every webinar, seminar, audio, video—every single piece of editorial that is being put out from now until the launch. If you include your product or service as an example, you are already pre-selling.

There's an added advantage too

Because it's editorial, I don't have to scamper through the information, and neither do you. In one presentation on pricing which we call the “Yes-Yes” presentation, we spend over fifteen minutes going over every point of the Article Writing Course. Is the audience offended? Are they mad at us for taking up their time?

They would be if it were merely a pitch. But if you watch the video, you'll notice that it's helping the audience structure their price sequences. It's helping them get an additional 10-15% per year if they put the advice in place. They know you're pre-selling some other product, but as long as you're helping, they're happy to listen, watch or read. 

There is a caveat, though

If you're going to make three passing comments, you may not need to have other examples in your editorial. However, the moment you're taking up a sizeable amount of the editorial content, you'll need other examples as well. While the video does talk about the Article Writing Course, it also has other examples, like the IceBreaker t-shirt, a real estate company and other examples.

It's a bit of a balancing act, and if you're going to drone on about your own product or products, it's irritating. There's no formula for how much of the other examples are needed, but slipping even one or two removes the lopsidedness.

You can create separate sections for pre-sell, but you also don't want to miss out on the almost limitless editorial opportunity. If you play it right and increase the volume of pre-sell closer to the date of launch, you're unlikely to get too much of an asteroid-like-clash. 

However, if you want to achieve a consistent, almost recurring levels of sales, you'll also need one very obvious set of tools. They're called: scarcity and urgency.

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Stage 3: How can we create urgency and scarcity?

“Why don't you have the Article Writing Course every more frequently?” said a client to me.

“Good question. Because the course is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire,” I said. And then I went on about how intense the course can be both for the clients—but also for the teacher. And yet, that wasn't the complete answer to her question. The more significant reason for not having the course every year was, scarcity.

“If the course were held more often,” I said, “doesn't create scarcity”. 

At the back of my mind, I was holding firm to the story of the late Gary Halbert. Halbert was considered to be one of the most in-demand copywriters on the planet at one point in time. And he decided to cash into his fame by hosting a series of workshops. Almost instantly, the workshop was filled, so he announced a second and a third. And then yet another.

Do you see where this story is going?

Of course, you do. You and I depend on a lack of scarcity when we go shopping for just about anything. If we head to the supermarket, we expect to find beans, chocolate, ice cream, and bread. The moment we realise that an item is scarce, we want it more than ever before. This scarcity mentality applies not just to the “essentials” like chocolate, but also to something pretty random like a special fountain pen you've wanted to buy. Or even the seat at the restaurant that looks out onto the harbour. 

Halbert's fourth workshop, as the story goes, was a bit of a dud

Which is precisely the reason why we make products and services scarce on Psychotactics. Making products rare are a superior form of marketing, provided certain conditions exist. We'll get into the conditions shortly, but let's look at how scarcity works in our favour. 

1: It created urgency. 

Most courses, products, workshops etc. on the Internet have primarily depended on affiliates at one level, but there's almost a stampede towards advertising. How do you tone down or even eliminate the need for any external source? If you've tried to sign for most Psychotactics courses, even 24 hours later, you're likely to have realised that it's every seat has gone. 

It's essential to have the course fill up, or the product sold out

It's a clear cut case of revenue, but there's also the other, more serious side to creating this scarcity and urgency. Because you sell out quickly, you don't need to waste weeks, and possibly months, in trying to sell your product or service. If you're a diligent teacher, you now have time to celebrate, as well as create valuable resources for your clients.

The energy that would have needlessly gone into writing more promotions, two dozen e-mails, and motivating all your affiliates is slightly unnecessary. The products that have a lesser priority in our schedule require more promotion and ironically, the more important ones, require less. 

Interesting, isn't it? 

It means that you don't have to be like a maniac, trying to push everything to your audience, year round. You selectively pick the product or services that work for you, either from a revenue point of view or from a client acquisition/retention. When courses or products sell quickly, we can get on with the job of making it even better for the client.

Not surprisingly, this act of making the experience richer and more in-depth for the client brings them back repeatedly. Which then creates a vortex of scarcity in your favour. The first advantage of scarcity is additional time and lots more energy.

The second reason is a spike in revenue

It makes perfect sense to a client when 16 seats sell out at a workshop. Or if 25 seats sell out for the cartooning course. It's a training scenario and to ensure a high standard, you have to have a fixed availability. What seems to perplex clients a lot, is when digital courses like the article writing course or the info-products course have a fixed number of copies. 

This change boosted our revenue by around 500% 

In our case, it went from approximately $30,000 per annum in 2016 to about $130,000 per annum by 2018. Notice that they were the same products, and had an identical sales page and even e-mail sequence. Just the factor of scarcity changed. The limit of 25 or 16, or 35 is what causes clients to avoid procrastination and to make their decision immediately. It's not uncommon for Psychotactics clients to put a real alarm on their phones. 

The revenue figures for 2016 were based on pre-sell but not on scarcity

A client could come in any time during three days and buy the product. It's still the same pre-sell sequence. The results are dramatically different. The smaller window of opportunity has worked a lot better for us and consistently continues to do so. The additional revenue we earn isn't necessarily padding our bank accounts.

We make approximately the same sum every year and have tried to keep the revenue to about 3x of our expenses. The scarcity boosts the revenue, and as a result, we can spend more time answering questions in detail in 5000bc or spending more time helping clients. There's no need to have to rush out and start yet another promotion because the additional revenue acts as a wonderful buffer. 

Pre-sell itself can work. Creating silos also works. 

But it's scarcity that creates urgency. And that is easy to overlook. There are many ways to create scarcity, of course, but just for the sake of simplicity, reduce the number of seats. 

Which takes us to an important point: How do you design scarcity?

It's not uncommon to wildly be off base when predicting how well your promotion will do. Some of us are too modest, and some expect a lot. However, pre-sell works on the simple, yet frustrating game of “musical chairs”. If there are many people in the room, you put out just a few chairs.

The greater the number of chairs, the less likely the results will work in your favour. Notice that at Psychotactics, we have several tens of thousands of clients on our list. How many seats do we offer at our workshops? The answer is 16. How many are allowed to come to a meetup? Just 15. Even online courses are restricted to a tiny figure of between 20-30, depending on the course itself. 

It's an extreme version of musical chairs, and it works. And with a little luck and lots of planning, will continue to work. When you're designing your set of musical chairs, err on the side of scarcity. Scarcity creates urgency, and if the chairs fill up, you can add another chair, but slowly, and one at a time. Until of course, you reach a limit. 

Gary Halbert must have learned from his experience of trying to sell too many workshops and not creating enough scarcity, which is likely how we know the story. It's an excellent story to keep in mind alongside these three points.

Stage 1: Which products are the most important? Which are not?

Stage 2: Have we created a “separate section” for each of the important products/services?

Stage 3: How can we create urgency and scarcity?

And even if your product launches seem a bit chaotic, like on a big roundabout, you can manage them and still keep every launch rolling as smoothly as possible.

Next Step: #82: How Pre-sell Plays A Crucial Role In Risk-Reduction-Part 2