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You host a list build event, like a summit, to generate leads. Of course. BUT that doesn’t mean you don’t want to generate revenue from the event, too!

There are 3 things to consider when creating a VIP or all-access upgrade for your event. These 3 things will greatly increase your take-rate on the offer… and we should know. Between us, we’ve produced 302+ summits (admittedly, just 2 of those are Alyson’s – the rest is all Jennie!) and we’ve gotten some great results.

We’re breaking it all down in this episode.

Episode 37 – How to Successfully Use Upsells to Monetize a Free Event
Episode 50 – Which List Build Is Right For Me?
Episode 8 – The Bonus Sandwich: How To EASILY Create Bonuses that Increase Sales and Value
Episode 70 – Our Formula for a High Converting Landing Page

Alyson Lex 0:03
If this is the very first episode of this podcast that you've ever listened to, you might feel a little bit lost when we start talking about summits. So really quick, let's explain what a summit is 90 seconds or less. A summit is a large style list built, you get a whole bunch of experts together around a centralized theme, you put on essentially a conference virtually over the course of three to five days. And you get people to sign up. It's great for organic promotion, because every single one of those experts is promoting as well. You can also and should also include a VIP upsell, which gives people recordings of the event and a bunch of other goodies. In fact, we broke down exactly what to include, I believe that was Episode 37. How to successfully use upsells to monetize a free event, we broke down what can go in it there. And in today's episode, we are going to talk about how to sell that VIP or all access pass to the event from your free registrants. So if you're not quite sure what a summit is, keep tuned, we're gonna really break down summit one on one in a future episode. But you can also head back to Episode 37. To hear more about what these upsells are as part of a summit or Episode 50, where we're going to break down which list builder is right for you. And you'll hear more about your options there. So we're gonna dive right in. How do we get people to upgrade to our VIP journey?

Jennie Wright 1:48
How do we get people to upgrade for VIP Allison, because of the time we're recording this, you're in it, sister, Allison's actually doing a summit right now as we're recording this happening, and she's getting people to upgrade into a VIP, there's a couple ways to get people to do the VIP, it has to be, as I call it stupid, simple, has to make complete and utter sense. It has to be an organic extension of the event itself. It cannot be a garage sale of things, it has to organically make sense. So there's some thought that gets put into this. And this happens in the planning stages of your event, right? So we got to figure this out. So let's talk about the stupid simple stuff. This is the no brainer pricing, okay, making it a no brainer. So the person goes, wow, I get this. And this, and this too. And all this value for this. Like, seriously, it's almost like a shamwow commercial like, and you get this and all you know, it's amazing. And the value just seems to be there. There's two camps on this pricing thing. And you can be a naysayer or a naysayer. And the naysayers are like, you know, putting together these bundles, and it doesn't make sense and everything. And the naysayers are like Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 2:58
man, I

Jennie Wright 2:58
get so much frickin value. This is awesome. I want it. This is everything I need to do the thing. So there's another episode that we did, actually, it's the bonus sandwich. And I think this plays into this very, very well, where the VIP is the extension. And what I mean by extension is is that it makes sense for the offer, right? So something to take a look at. I know Allison's popping up that episode, the bonus sandwich episode, because that makes really good sense for that one. So we want to ask the following questions for the no brainer person. And that is what is the pricing that your market will hold? What is that line where they're like, this is this doesn't make sense to me. So look at that. And then what is the pricing level where your people will be like, Oh my god, this is such a good deal. This is a no brainer for me. I'd rather have this than order pizza. Like that's kind of the thinking we want, right? It's just like, Oh my gosh, yes. Where is my credit card, like, you know, like you just get them all into it. And then the third thing is, what is the pricing that will make them like make you feel good, actually, about selling the quantity. So if you're putting together an incredible package, and you've put five or six wonderful things into this, this bundle that we're creating, and then you're like, Oh my God, this hurts me, this pains, my heart to sell it at this price is actually like makes me feel ill to my stomach, then it's too low. Right? So you got to look at that as well. So it has to feel good to you. It has to feel good to your ideal client. And it also has to be within what the market will bear in your niche. So there's a couple factors to look at there.

Alyson Lex 4:38
So for my summit, I did a VIP of $47 which is as Jenny says, super stupid, simple, stupid low. I call it the no brainer price. It really is just what Okay, yeah, no problem. It's just it's almost an impulse buy. And I've included stuff. And we'll talk about this next. But I've included stuff that it goes far beyond that price in value. So I feel good about it, because I know that I can sell a ton of them. And I also know that I have the opportunity now to convert the people that purchase that VIP into something higher priced. So if you are at all familiar with Grocery or retail, you've heard of a loss leader. This is my loss leader. I'm using it to get people into my ecosystem into my world. And then I will work to sell them stuff later. And I'm cool with that. That's a personal decision that I've made, and you may not make the same one. I know Jenny, actually had two levels. For her summit, I thought this was a really cool pricing strategy, I did something different. So I want to let Jennie talk about her two levels for her most recent summit.

Jennie Wright 6:04
I chose to go at a lower auto higher price. So my entry level VIP or aap all access pass was $97. And then if you upgraded to the full like to the full thing. So there was two levels. And you got a really good deal with the 97. But you got like an ultra good deal with the larger package, which ended up being $147. So with the 97, you've got the recordings and a call with me. And a couple other things that were in there that made a lot of sense. And then with the 147, you got all the everything that was in the 97. But you also got bonus gifts provided by my experts. So these were courses and ebooks and calls and different things that had a really great value to them, that were bundled up and put into this, this extra level of VIP. And I'll say quite honestly that a lot of people bought the upgrade. And it seemed to make sense to them. Because they were getting a lot of value. All of the experts were happy to contribute. I think I had a three quart, you know, three and a half, three, sorry, three quarters of my experts agreed to participate in this, which was fantastic. And the value was really, really good. And we ended up with I think it was Allison correct me if I'm wrong, was a 22 or 24% total conversion rate, but it was an over 50% upgrade rate to that second level VIP.

Alyson Lex 7:38
I don't know the numbers exactly offhand. But that sounds right. So we'll go anecdotal rather than hard, hard numbers on that one. And so for mine, my experts are not contributing to the VIP package, which is okay, I didn't ask them to that was not part of what I wanted to do for this model. I created some stuff. Obviously the transcriptions the recordings, a call with me. Like the values insane, I actually, I pulled it up while while Jody was talking, I got an email from someone, my list replies to me, I love that, I got an email and it says Alison, I just want to thank you for such an appealing and reasonably priced VIP offer. It's the best I've seen. And she lists out everything we get just wow, I'm really impressed and excited, especially since this is happening when I already have commitments. So the package will enable me to get the info that I would otherwise Miss. That is the reaction I was going for. That's why I priced it where I did was a personal decision. I also, though have what's called an order bump, which basically is a checkbox on the order form that says yes, I want this extra thing for this extra amount of money. And in it, I'm doubling the cart value. I'm offering early bird access to a workshop that I'm hosting. And it's $47. I've done that for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted them to very easily and quickly increase the order value. And I think as of the time of this recording, all but one or two people have taken that. So it's like a huge percentage. It's

Unknown Speaker 9:16
very successful pump.

Alyson Lex 9:17
It's very successful. But also, when I finished my my summit finishes, I will then promote that workshop at a higher price already having X number of people registered. So it's incredible social proof for me for the next thing I'm doing, I'm trying to think ahead. I'm hoping that that is a look of pride on Jenny's face for planning Alison thinking ahead on stuff. So pricing, making it a no brainer pricing is also very closely related to the second thing that you need to make sure that you do which is create a no brainer value. Charging $47 for a 10 page paper PDF as a VIP, that might be the same pricing I'm doing but it's not the same value. Really, you need to make sure that what you're adding to the VIP package makes it truly irresistible with Jenny's summit. And I know this because I wrote all the copy. So I know exactly what was included in that VIP. I think the value was, it was either eight, or 12, or something $1,000 of if I went and bought everything separately. So these things were really truly on sale by these experts are available. And I found those sale prices, or they told me what the price was, I added it up on my handy dandy calculator app. And it came to 80 $500, a value for 147 or 167, or whatever dollars. That takes it back to that no brainer price. Back to that no brainer value. But pricing and value are a little different. Okay. $47 feels different when you're paying for two different things. A $47 cup of coffee is not a no brainer value. A $47 Ferrari is a no brainer situation. So those are very extreme examples. But I want you to think along those lines. When you choose your price, make it a no brainer level for the amount that your market typically spends on stuff. But make it a fraction of a fraction of the value that you're giving them.

Jennie Wright 11:46
I've worked on a few summits. And I just want to say this as an aside. Because I've done a lot of summits. And one of my clients, their entry level VIP was $297. And it was way too much. And we sold six. But this particular and that was a list build of I think, gosh, like 5000 people. So it was way too much. And what it was it was it was ego, the client perceived that what they were putting into this VIP package had such extreme value. And that they were such an extreme expert, that their ego said they had to charge a large amount, because they're they who they are who they are. And that should come with a price tag attached to it. And we can debate about pricing on everybody wants, we can get into huge debate about it. However, when it comes to something like this, that's just not how it works. So that person was very adamant that that would be the price that they did. That was their second summit, we did one more summit together. And I said if you charge 297 is not going to work. And I don't want to see this happen again. So then we brought it down to the 97. And wow, shocker, which got like 50 of them, like right off the bat, right, and then another 25 like oh my gosh, like, yeah, you can make good money with a VIP. And I will tell you that with VIPs. If it's your first summit, chances are you're not going to make 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars off of it. However, as you do more summit, and people understand and you get better at this, you know this all three of these like the no brainer value, the no brainer pricing, and what we're about to talk about with a no brainer process, the amount of sales that you can create can increase. But don't let your ego get in the way of what's going to work and what your market can bear.

Alyson Lex 13:44
I am including a call with me at $47. And typically, I charge for copy reviews for 50. And so like think about that, it's a fraction of what I usually charge. So I had to put my ego away. If I want to include this call with me. Otherwise, I never would have gotten a reasonable price. But I changed my mindset from I'm giving away calls to people are paying for the opportunity to get on the phone with me. I'm creating opportunities for sales calls, where I can learn about them find out about their problems, show them my value, and ask them if they want my help. that's priceless.

Jennie Wright 14:38
I'll show up for that all day long. needs this is the best honestly, and a lot of people go like oh, but I don't want to get phone calls. Well, if you're a coach or consultant and you're trying to sell your time and you're doing one on one coaching or group coaching, then yes you do and I will get right back into it and I will use my favorite phrase suck it up and just Put your ego aside my friend and book the calls and use the calls as sales calls. I have closed 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars 10s of 1000s of dollars from summits and coaching contracts and implementation work, and you name it just for the fact that I opened up my calendar, I just opened up my calendar. So take that with however you want to. But I really hope that it means that you'll, you'll look at including that. So let's talk about the no brainer process. The no brainer process is where we take my stupid symbol, and we put it to the actual upgrade. And I'm gonna, I'm going to talk about Allison's because hers is stupid, simple. You register for the event. So you enter your name and email in the box on the page, you go to a welcome page where Allison greets you with her Sunny, smiling face and welcomes you back into the summit, and says, hey, you're here, and you're going to get all the good stuff. But if you want to take this experience to the next level and get everything you need, take a look at what's in this VIP package. And she talks about it on the video. And then right below the video, guess what's there, listed exactly what's in the package and the upgrade form. Okay, so we're the link to the upgrade form, I should say is right there, right close to it, you go to the upgrade form. And this is where it gets stupid, simple. It's only the information that they that we need to gather, okay, we don't need to know, every single detail, we don't need to know their mailing address necessarily, because we're not mailing anything to them. We need their credit card information, we add their first name, their email, you know, sometimes a phone number if needed to get in touch if we have to. But we're not asking for their, you know, practically their social insurance number or anything like that. We're only asking what we need. Okay. And then in then it gets even better. Do you want this thing? Yes, great. If you do, click the button process, before you go, if you just toggle this little button on, you get this extra thing. And it adds even more value and explains it very simply. It's really, really simple. There's no complicated sales page. There's no complicated process. There's no numbers that say step one, do this. Step two, sign over your the title to your house, like there's none of this crap, right? It's just really, really simple. Want this get value, you'll get some of this stuff, immediately click the button, and off you go. I really liked that. I made mine a little bit more complicated. And in retrospect, I didn't actually like that process as much. Because in retrospect, I had to Vi like I had two offers, right? So it was my regular VIP. And then there was my so there was the grow pass and the profit pass on my stomach was called grow and profit online. And they could choose either one. And yes, I did sell quite a few of them. And 90% of them did get the profit pass, which is the more expensive one. But I realized that the way that I was setting it up in the beginning, caused some confusion. And I also noticed that when she was writing the copy as well, we both found it a little difficult, right?

Alyson Lex 18:16
We did. And that's part of the planning, just and that's really the nice thing about having someone else on your team. It's about the stuff back and forth with. And so I've been able to do that with Jenny, as you know, on the copy side, and Jenny's done that with me in an even larger role, planning it with me, and telling me, Alison, do it this way, trust me, 300 of these do it this way. But what you want to avoid doing is getting people requiring them to spend more mental energy on you than they have or want to spend. And what I mean by that is, if you hide the button to get to the upgrade form, if you require a ton of steps to upgrade if you require a bunch of information, if it's confusing what they get, if they're not sure. Or if the way you've stated it is using language that they may not understand. Or they can't see how they would use it. They're not going to buy. Exactly. So at the beginning of this episode, I even said if you're new to this, here's a really super fast overview of what we're talking about. I made it easy for you to understand. Because now that we're in it, you're not like well wait, what do you mean they sign up? Where do they start, right? You're like, Okay, I have a general idea of what this is. I know where to go if I need more information. And now I'm ready to consume the rest of this information that The same kind of thing you want to do in your sales process. And this actually works for everything, not just summit's. But it's especially important here because they are committing to investing a lot of time and attention with you. And what you do not want to do is make them feel like you're they're going to be confused or overwhelmed the entire time.

Jennie Wright 20:21
That's a really easy trap to fall into really easy trap. So the next thing you want to make sure that you do is provide enough opportunities for people to upgrade, you might think that having at once on that welcome page, when they first register for the event is enough.

Unknown Speaker 20:38
Not even close,

Jennie Wright 20:40
with over 75 or even 85% of your registrants for anything that you do, be it a webinar, a download, or a summit, like we're talking about 85% of those people are going to be on mobile. And they're going to scroll fast. And they may not even like they may just register, and then close their browser and move on. So the important thing that you do is you must send an like a sorry, a confirmation email. And in that confirmation email, you're again repeating the step. So glad you're here. Here's the thing, have you taken advantage of the thing. So making sure that you use that confirmation email, making sure that you use reminder emails, and using your segmentation and automations and things like Active Campaign, so that people who have purchased don't get the reminders. And go, dude, already bought it. Why bother me. So using those automation processes are really good. And I also knows I'm feeling I'm feeling a little punchy today. So she's feeling sassy, folks. I'm all sassy

Alyson Lex 21:52
when you so I've created some like engagement emails that are like, Hey, I'm super excited for this, blah, blah, blah. Just to let you know, this is a little piece of information I may not have told you about the VIP. If you haven't already upgraded, you can do that here. So you can send full list emails out that go to everyone as long as your copy is you don't want to send direct Hey, upgrade now emails out to people who have who have already upgraded. But if it's in the context of a larger update, or engagement or reconnection email, you can do that. Also, when you put together your pages themselves to deliver the summit, put buttons there. Upgrade to VIP. Lots of buttons, lots of buttons on daily emails where you say good morning, everyone, welcome to day two. Today, we're going to have XYZ today, if you think you're gonna miss anything, upgrade to VIP, in the Facebook group that you're driving them to buy buttons in all the places because like Jenny said, Not everybody's going to see every promotion. And if they do, and it makes them mad, okay?

Jennie Wright 23:13
Chances are, they will get mad everybody don't even think that

Alyson Lex 23:16
they will not get they're not gonna get mad, you might have one person. Yeah,

Jennie Wright 23:21
you might get one person out of the hundreds or even 1000s that register, you might get exam person. Everybody else is quite happy, trust me,

Alyson Lex 23:30
they're over it right? Do not let the possibility of one person stop you from making the money and the impact because remember, these people signed up for this. They want at least one piece of this information that you're offering. And you and I Jenny both know how easy it is to miss stuff, because life and business and the more likely than shower and eating gets in the way. So you're giving them an opportunity to not only get the information they've already said they want. But you're giving them an opportunity to get even more at that no brainer price with a no brainer value. Because you've put it together the right way.

Jennie Wright 24:20
And then no brainer process, which means it's really simple for them to make it happen. Even on mobile, you want it to be so simple that somebody on mobile can do it in a touch with one finger. Right? So make it really, really simple. Just make just go through the process. And this is part of the planning. And this is also in the expectation side. So we want to talk about building up some expectations or setting some expectations. So when we're doing this if you want to increase your sales, tell people when this offer is going away. If you don't tell them when it's going away, then in our brains, we think not a priority right now. We don't have to create fake FOMO. Right fear of missing out, we really don't need to do this, we can say the summit is on the seventh, eighth and ninth. And when it's done, it's done. And this VIP will go away on the 10th. And that's happening, right? So create that expectation as to when they'll have access and when it'll go away. And then that is going to be, that's going to make sense to everybody, right? So then they they know, they actually understand and remind them and it's okay to remind them and say, grab your VIP now, before it goes away on the 10th. Make sure you upgrade to VIP before the summit ends on the ninth, and the VIP closes on the 10th. So you can really make it simple. You can use countdown clocks and stuff like that, just to really make it an interesting thing for people to do. So this is our three step process, right? No brainer pricing, no brainer value, no brainer process.

Alyson Lex 26:00
It's It is simple. It's not always easy. I'm just going to separate those two, simple and easy are not always the same. But this is a simple thing. If you do the things that Jenny and I have outlined, you will sell more VIP than if you don't.

Jennie Wright 26:18
Yes, 100%. And then you can go find the episode, because I just thought of the other episode for creating high converting pages. That'll help you solidify how to make the page actually more high converting. Right. So there's, there's, we have so many episodes with so many resources that actually can help you in this. And I think it would be really good if they if they sort of check that out. There's a couple takeaways that we can talk about from today. The takeaways are actually there's only two, one, keep it simple. That's it, make sure it's a simple process. Make sure that it's easy for people to understand, make sure it makes sense to them to their lives to the problems to the things. Just keep it simple. Number two planet. If you plan this out, you'll not run into the problems of oh crap I should have done. Oh, crap, I wish I had, oh, gosh, I wish I had figured this out. Now, that's not to say that you won't make mistakes because we all make mistakes. I made a mistake. I learned from my mistakes. I've made tons of them in the summits that I do that each one I learned something from and and then I go Hey, listen, guess what, don't make the same mistake. I did do this. Right. And we learned from that?

Alyson Lex 27:34
Well, the fun thing is, is that you and I get to test a lot of stuff out and then use it with your clients and my clients. Because we know from experience, what's working and what's not. And so we get ideas. And we're like, Alright, I'll test this. And then we know whether to move forward with it or not

Jennie Wright 27:51
100%. So take what you've been learning today about the VIP seats. And just so you are aware, we're talking about summits today. But you can utilize this VIP, as part of a challenge. As part of a panel as part of a giveaway. There's a different, there's a different slightly different methodology. But the same sort of process applies. So you can use these in all these different types of lists builds to facilitate a VIP or all access pass and make that happen. So just want to take a moment and say thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. And if you haven't already, go and grab our 128 content topic generators, to System to thrive.com the System to thrive.com forward slash content, where you can get this free resource, it's going to help you create content on the fly. Make sure it's really accessible for you to be able to create some great topics and create the consistency that we absolutely know and love and you need in your business so you can get more leads and convert those into paying clients. So go to System to thrive.com forward slash content, grab the content topic generator, apply it in your business and start creating some great content. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. We'll be back again soon answering another big question.