Behind the Scenes: Secrets to Stage Selling - Dave Woodward - FHR #259

A few months ago, Russell sold over $3 million from stage at Grant Cardone's 10X Event. This was not just dumb luck. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes to get events choreographed just perfectly. Timing is everything when it comes to things running smoothly and optimizing sales. Hear some of Dave's tips on how to increase your ROI at events.

Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:

• Tips And Tricks For Event Hosting/Speaking (3:00)
• Allowing Enough Time To Close Sales (11:07)
• The Greatest Stage Closer Ever: 13 Steps (David Fry) (13:09)

Quotable Moments:

"You want to have that person typically speaking on the second day prior to lunch. That seems to be the day that we get the most sales."

"Understand that when you are the presenter, you've got to allow time for sales and the transactions to take place."

"You have to know the audience and you have to know how it's going to work."

Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar

---Transcript---

Speaker 1: 00:00 Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. All right, but this is kind of a wild experience I had just recently, and that is a little background here. Most of you guys are probably familiar. The fact that the Russell ended up doing over 3 million from stage at tedx event back in February. Uh, this is the second year we've actually spoken at grant's event and I just got a phone call or a text from them saying they literally just found out the place where they want to have next year's event. So we're looking at 2019 here on the calendar and this is, you know what Dave wanted to make sure that Russell's able to speak.

Speaker 1: 00:45 We haven't booked the time yet, but we do have the location. I'm like, fantastic. Where's it going to be? We have to understand that like the first time a grants team basically said, you know what? They contact me two months before the event, so they did. We're going to have an almost 3000 people at an event in two months. Ken Russell speaking. I'm like, dude, there's no way in the world you're going to get that many people. I don't need that that fast. He said, oh, we totally will. Sure enough they did and the first event was was crazy. Well, last year we ended up at Mandalay Bay at the boxing arena with 9,000 people and I was shocked they were able to pull that off. Well, this time when he called it, they said, all right, Dave, you're never going to guess where this is. He says, in fact, since you're not going to guess I'm going to send you a video, so he sends me a video of grant on the pitching mound at Marlin's stadium in Florida and I'm like, what?

Speaker 1: 01:36 He got to be kidding me because no one totally serious. We've contracted with the stadium, a major league baseball stadium to have grant basically have our next tedx event. There he goes. We'll plan it all around making sure that it's not, doesn't conflict with what, 10 x or I'm sorry, with funnel hacking live, but we want to make sure that Russell's able to speak. I'm like, how many people you're going to have? It goes, well, you know, we went from 3000 to 9,000. I think this time what we'd like to do is we'd like to get somewhere in neighborhood of 15 to 20,000 people at the video says maybe 25. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. I said, do you have any idea how many people that she was? Absolutely. In fact, the only problem is we need to make sure that Russell sells a ton to help us cover this.

Speaker 1: 02:22 Like, oh my gosh, and so now my mind's racing, how do you choreograph a major league baseball stadium event to have a back of the room type of event and type of sale. So what I want to talk to you guys about today is realizing all that goes in to the choreography and the behind the scenes to make the amazing selling machine that takes place on stage. Actually happened behind the scenes, so a couple of things, uh, anytime I get asked by people as far as Deb Russel speak, my right now, he won't. He typically doesn't speak to audiences of less than three to 5,000 people, but even at that case when we do have that many people, there's a lot that goes behind the scenes. First of all is the actual time slot. Now realize if you're hosting your own events or you're speaking, these are some things you need to pay attention to.

Speaker 1: 03:18 One of the most important things we found over all these years is the best time for Russell to speak and this would also go for any of whoever your best closer is. You want to have that person typically speaking on the second day prior to lunch. That seems to be the day that we get the most sales and I'll talk to you a little bit about how it has to be set up to make sure that happens. So understand the. There's a couple things about making that all take place. That really works. The first thing is on day one of any event, there has to have been some sort of a sale. You never want your number one keynote closer to be the first sale. You have to warm up the audience, so warming up the audience. A typically like at grant's Tedx event, he is the one on the first day who will usually pitch something and what you're doing is you're.

Speaker 1: 04:07 You're warming the audience up for two things. One is that there are going to be additional sales and offers are going to be made, so they're not caught off guard by that. But the other thing is you're warming up on how to actually make the transaction. So the key to this is we've done this at funnel hacking live for years and you'll find on our first day of any event, the very first thing that takes place or one of the things that takes place on that first day is we always have a charity donation. Now realize the reason we're doing is we actually care about the charity and want to make sure that the charity receives money, but their strategy as far as why we don't put the charity event at the very last part of the event. And the key to this is we want to make sure that people understand and feel confident in getting out their credit cards with their wallets.

Speaker 1: 04:55 They actually spend money. So what you'll find is you have to convince, not convince, you have to condition people on where to go. So for us last year at funnel hacking live, if you were looking at the stage, it was in the back, it was behind you in the back left hand corner, that's where are our sales booth was. If you were at the TEDX event again at grant's event, you had the stage and the floor and then you had all the floor seats, then you had a section of seats, and then there was the main walking, the kind of the first level. And then there was a second level above that. So on that first main level, um, through portal 109 is where grant had 10 x HQ and Tedx HQ is where all of the transactions were made. If you've got questions, if that's where you went.

Speaker 1: 05:44 And so he'd conditioned people, they taught people and train people that that's where you're going to go to actually purchase things. And this is super critical when you have your own events that you let people understand how this is going to take place. Um, with that said, at funnel hacking live, we ended up usually in years past, we've done world teacher aid this year we added a world teacher aid is now village impact, but I'm with this year we ended up doing a operation underground railroad. And again, the same thing. All the, everybody was conditioned to that is the area where this is actually going to take place. Now, with that said, some of the things that have to happen is you've got to make sure that's a very easy, pleasant experience for people. And what I mean by that is you want to make sure that that is a very, very well staffed area, that people get their questions answered, that they're able to go through the process quickly, that there's enough clipboards, there's enough or reforms, what APP, whatever you're going to do, you got to make sure that you train people, that it's smooth, easy transition.

Speaker 1: 06:47 Uh, the next thing is when you're taking a look at the sale, typically I can tell you the best, if you're going to give people time, the best amount of time for most stage presenters is 90 minutes. They're going to take about an hour to go through whatever content they have in about 30 minutes for the close. I've done it less than that, but every time that anybody asks for, you know, said, you know what, we've got to go 45 minutes or an hour for Russell. I'm like, it just won't happen. I'll pass on that anytime. So if you're a stage presenting, realize, uh, find out what your, what your most comfortable closing time is. And if you have an event hosted, realize you're best at right around the 90 minute mark. Um, some of the other things to pay attention to is to really understand that people need to know how to buy.

Speaker 1: 07:34 And the concept behind this is whenever taper example of is on stage, or if it's you and you're selling, you typically are want, you're going to want to meet people in the back of the room by the sales table. You're not going to want to stay up at the front. And I've seen a lot of stage presenters make this mistake too where all of a sudden you have got all of the people who have questions or up in the front and it's taken away from what you're wanting to create it as this whole idea as far as back of the room table rush. So you need to make sure you get to the very back as soon as possible. It's, I can tell you, I've had this happen twice in the last year with Russell to where he, I was in the back and I literally couldn't prevent people from swarming Russell and I couldn't get him back there and it, there's just a disconnect.

Speaker 1: 08:20 So realize if you are hosting the event, you want to make sure that you've got security or anything else that you can actually help get that person to the back of the room so that all the questions are being asked and are being handled. And so as people are looking at it for social proof, they see that everybody's in the back making transactions and that they should be a part of that. Otherwise you've got a divided room and it's super confusing to the people who are on the fence whether or not they should buy. Where do they go? Um, the other thing is you want to make sure that you have enough time afterwards, and this is why I always look at, I typically want it right before lunch because those people are not going to be action takers. They're going to leave and go to lunch.

Speaker 1: 08:58 I don't, I don't want them around because they're typically the naysayers. Um, I had a situation happened with Tony robins group, uh, just two weeks ago, three weeks ago when we got an answer down where I told them, listen, it needs an hour and a half to sell and I need at least 30, ideally 45 minutes afterwards to close the sales. And they're like, well, you know what, we typically get 15 minutes dave, and that's it. I said, well, you know, it doesn't work that way. And the other thing is they, what they wanted to do was to have, have the transactions take place outside, in the hallway by all the other vendor booths. And I said, no, that's not going to work either. I need the table brought in right at the back of the room. I was like, well, we got fire code issues and everything else that you don't have to have the table there until the very too.

Speaker 1: 09:44 We're just about ready to go. So it's not blocking one path or anything, but when we get close I want that table back there. So we negotiated to make sure there was a table in this case for Tony's group and it was literally right in front of the ab table and the risers and everything else directly in the back. I told him, listen, I need to make sure we have at least 35 minutes to 45 minutes afterwards. And they said, ah, you know what, we can only give you 15. I negotiated when we settled on 30. And what happened was they saw such a massive table so they gave me 45, but then all of a sudden they got nervous and started panicking and said, you know what Dave, you got to close it down. And I'm like, listen, I'm not going to close this down because it's not fair to the other speakers.

Speaker 1: 10:23 I'm like, you asked us to sell. We're here to sell and we're going to close the table. And so I got about two another seven, eight, 10 minutes. So we're almost pushing like 45 minutes to an hour. And they said, listen, I will literally come and move those tables myself. You have to get out. It's not fair to the next speaker, so realize you have to know the audience and you got to know how it's gonna work. I can tell you when we closed at grant cardone's, you meant it was most of the people didn't even hear the next two speakers because they're too busy filling out order forms and also be in the back taking pictures with Russell. So understand that when you're, if you are the presenter, basically if you're a coordinated an event, you've got to allow time for this sale and the transactions to take place.

Speaker 1: 11:07 If the salesperson, you've got to make sure that you've set yourself up to allow enough time to close those sales. One of the things that we've done extremely well in the last, uh, two major sales that Russell's done one at 10 x and one at funnel hacking live. And that is, we've actually, we added in a scarcity and urgency aspect to it, which I highly recommend to anybody who's doing this. And that is as, as you are the closer the person onstage, we, you're basically saying, you know what, what I love more than anything is I love to be able to get pictures with people who are action takers. And so anybody who takes, he takes action right now. We're going to be at a booth in the back here and you can actually come and get a picture with me. And what that'll do is you can keep that picture.

Speaker 1: 11:49 It'll be, uh, it'll be symbolic for you as far as your time where took action. It'll be a reminder for you to continue to follow through. And so all of those things kind of came into place. So now you've got urgency because Russ is only gonna. Be here for a certain period of time. You've got scarcity due to the fact that the time, the timing literally is just going to be about two hours. And then the other thing is you've got to commitment that's been reinforced and will continue to be reinforced as the picture that you sent back to them. And it's a way of continuing reminded them to stick to the program. And

Speaker 1: 12:23 what I've seen happen a lot of times people say, yeah, I'll just do a picture with you afterwards. You want to make sure that, uh, that people see that that picture has value. That picture now all of a sudden has a ticket price of a thousand dollars, 2000, 3000, $500, 18th at whatever price point. That picture now has an immense amount of value people and it's gonna help them not only stick the product, but more importantly reinforced their buying decision. A couple of the things to understand is when you are, and again I'll talk to you probably on a different podcast about this whole concept of understanding the importance of, of really setting the stage so that you can close effectively over time.

Speaker 1: 13:09 But right now what I want to do is I want to kind of go through. I had a dear friend of mine, David Fry, because I've known for years, his wife actually roomed with my sister at Byu and Ingrid is just the sweetest woman in the world. And David's just got a heart of gold. It was really neat. He actually a facebook post and I just found that this more a Zapier as I cleaned out my office said this is the greatest stage closer ever and it's, it's his notes about what he saw take place at funnel hacking live 2018. And so I want to kind of go through and show basically the 13 steps of what he saw from his perspective. Know, add some other stuff here. So I basically have just a great stage clothes ever. I've been going to the market center since early 2001 and on Friday and funnel hacking live or what is the greatest stage clothes I think I ever seen for marketer.

Speaker 1: 13:55 It was like watching an Oscar worthy moment. It was truly a marketer's poetry in motion. It was amazing to behold. Here's how it went down from my perspective. Again, this is David fry speaking here. So step one, have all the two comma club winters and deck him million funnel winters walk across the stage, massive social proof. So realize if this is your event and you're gonna, be selling something later, make sure that you, again, the one main reasons we give out these awards at the event and do the recognition is it provides social proof before the offer is actually made. Later.

Speaker 1: 14:27 Step two, we said was hold a presentation given by five super coaches talking about how they would create a million dollar funnel each coach teachers in their respective areas of expertise. Here again, his whole thing was this was massive authority. We're now Russell's basically not selling himself. He's selling his other coaches and he's allowing them the opportunity of establishing their authority, their credibility, all of front during the event. A step three said, was creative vision out people's lives will be different if they could create their own million dollar funnel step for introduced a coaching program with the promise that'll help the average person create a million dollar funnel within the next 12 to 18 months. Explaining to prospects how each supercoach will be. We'll specifically be helping them to achieve the goal. Step six, introduced the discount of today price and how much it actually costs will be if they wait for a couple months when they launched the program again.

Speaker 1: 15:16 So this is one of the things that, uh, we had a lot of success with and we've done this before. Anytime we roll out, we did the same thing with our certified partners program and did the same thing with, uh, any large coaching program where anytime it's the first time will tell people, listen, this is the first time going through it. There may be some bumps in everything. We've tried to work it out. We've tried to make it the very best possible, but you are going through this as kind of our Beta Guinea pig type of stuff. You'll get the results, but because you're willing to trust us right now, we're going to give this to you at a discounted price. So here all of a sudden they realized that there's some urgency to it because of the fact that this price isn't going to stay down.

Speaker 1: 15:55 Uh, the next thing then was a step seventy cent, explain how their potential income could dwarf their required investment and again, how their life will be different if they invest in the program, achieve the same results that all the previous winners have. Step eight, make it non money back downpayment offer that allows them to attend a luncheon that big, uh, that will explain in detail how the coaching program will work and let them decide if they want to make a monthly discounted annual payment. Now, let me kind of talk to you about this. This is one of the things we worked with a company called sage and Barium blue are both just amazing, amazing individuals and I highly, highly recommend that to anybody who's hosting events. A barry and blue have this

Speaker 1: 16:35 amazing ability as kind of a behind the scenes look, they've been event planners for years, but the best part is they are also marketers. And it's very rare that you get a marketer who's an event planner and assets they've actually seen and have experienced and have the opportunity of, of testing a lot of different, uh, stage presentations. And so one of the things that they've seen happen and which we kind of implemented was this idea as far as listen to. The only thing you have to decide today is whether or not this is something eventually that you're going to want to do. If you're all in on this thing and you just gotta decide whether or not you're on a payment plan or annual or an annual onetime pig. All we're asking is that you put down a one time nonrefundable deposit of 800 bucks.

Speaker 1: 17:21 And what that does is it all of a sudden it lowers the barrier of entry. In our case it was $18,000. Now this is only an $800 purchase requirement that they're up against. And it makes it much easier for a person to say, you know, I'm willing to. I'll spend $800 bucks to then make the decision to decide whether or not I don't want to do an 1800 bucks a month or $18,000 one time pink. But it gets. It gets people who are buyers to become buyers right then and there. And it gets those people who are sitting on the fence think, you know what, I don't have to come with 18,000 now. In fact, I've got the next 45 days to actually make $18,000 payment if I want to do it that way. Or I'll just go on a monthly. Uh, we ended up doing a luncheon and the luncheon was there was them plus a guest in the future.

Speaker 1: 18:03 We probably, I don't think we'll do the luncheon. Um, it actually, for us, it actually distracted. I've Seen Jeff Walker, Stu McLaren, Erica roped and some of these other guys do the same type of thing where the luncheon was, was beneficial for them for us. Do the amount of people who came into the program. We oversold it. And so I don't think for us, we'll probably, you'll see us do that again. But again, for a smaller group, it probably, it might work really well for you. A step number nine was make the cutoff with their final decision the next morning after the first presentation to allow people to think it over. This takes away all the pressure. And we actually saw this happened extremely well where, uh, people who wanted to make the decision made the decision, but others who were on the fence too often at an event, it's like, listen, this event, this offer expires in an hour or this offer expires the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 18:55 And it's hard for people to swallow that the dollar, the price amount where there aren't to be able to do it. And so it allowed them basically we've got, we gave them an extra day to kind of figure this thing out and see if it made sense to them. The last thing we wanted was people refunding for feeling like it just didn't make sense. We want to make sure these were serious buyers to step 10 was delivered and overcoming false beliefs presentation the next morning to help increase the persuasion factor and get people to take a leap of faith for themselves and their families. So this week was done with uh, Brian Bowman. Brian is the most amazing man in the world, actually the podcasts with them. Gosh, one of the very first podcast I did, he's just got a heart of gold and he got up and spoke about some of the things that he's gone through in his life and right now as far as with his wife and some of the things that she's been dealing with as far as lyme disease and it was.

Speaker 1: 19:47 I can't, gosh, I can't say enough about Brian. He's just the most amazing guy in the world and adjust just care so much about people and so this presentation wasn't a a hard pitch. It was Louis just as Brian just talking about overcoming false beliefs and the things he's had to do and it. I would highly recommend that if you're going to follow a pattern like this, that you do something where you have someone else besides. You talked about overcoming false beliefs and the things they've done in their own life. Step Eleven, David said here was let a second speaker who has nothing financially. The gain from people purchasing who is already signed up for the program itself. Give more reasons why they should take the leap of faith and make the investment. Well, we had so much fun with Myron. Golden Myron is just.

Speaker 1: 20:32 Mine is a good old boy from the south and I just love Myron at East is so much fun. Seriously, aside from being an amazing Golfer and having dealt with polio and being from basically trash man, the cash man, some of his. He's just got this awesome religious background, super based in the Bible and it gives a ton of of just very, very strong abilities to help people understand why they need to basically take the steps necessary for them to to really move forward. And so the first one is overcoming false beliefs and Myron is actually was just overcoming any believer for any issues you might have. A step 12 is that was caused by telling the prospect exactly what to do next and give them 20 minutes during a break to do that next step and that next step again was signing up for us.

Speaker 1: 21:22 What we ended up telling them is listening. This is closing down in the next 20 minutes because we have to let the chefs know how many planes to have prepared for the luncheon that is learning can take place in about an hour. And that was, again, that was not a false sense of urgency and scarcity. It was totally true. There's only limited amount of space in the, in the ballroom. There's only so much food that's there. And we had to make sure we had enough. The irony to, for, for us is we actually had planned on a really, our goal is right on 250 people. We ended up doing double that in fact just over almost 600 people and so we aren't having to move it to a separate ballroom. And so the hotel staff is moving things around like crazy. But again, it's uh, it was uh, a real issue where we had basically 20 minutes to kind of scramble and make it all happen.

Speaker 1: 22:12 A step 13, he said it was allow some for. Those were to funnel hacking live. You'll get this if you weren't there. This will make absolutely no sense to. You said a step 13, allow some random dude to come onstage, take hold of the mic and start spouting off some religious. You can do it Mumbo jumbo and then watch them get escorted off by Dave Woodward. Lol. Yes. That actually happened and that was. It was kind of a weird situation, but so really the, the 12 steps as I went through it, he then David went on to say, you know, I probably missed a few steps and there's probably a lot more to it, but it was masterful. It was the most masculine clothes I've ever seen and the results speak for themselves. There was a line of people wrapped halfway around the massive conference hall waiting with money in hand.

Speaker 1: 22:50 $18,000 to be exact. Great job to Russell Brunson and screws. We're putting on a marketing spectacle to behold, it was amazing. He has. I honestly believe from the bottom. My heart. Russell wants every single person who signed up to be in the two comma club winners circle next year. I hope this team can deliver on a great coaching experience this year and everyone does end up in the two comma club. So David Fry, thank you so much for that. That facebook post. Um, most importantly, I hope you guys understand how much you really have. There's so much choreography and I didn't go into all the detail this time as far as how the bags were placed in 10 x and all the different pieces to it. But I'll probably end up doing that on a later one. Russell did an amazing job at a, on one of his market secrets podcast going through this as well.

Speaker 1: 23:34 I highly recommend if you're doing an event or if you're speaking at an event, spend the time, do the research, immerse yourself in this kind of stuff. It literally makes the difference if it's at least a 10 x multiple. And what I mean by that is, uh, I had two friends who also spoke at Tedx with rustling a guys I've known for years, both great stage presenters. And they basically got on. They saw what we were doing the night before as far as where you literally put bags on every single seat, 9,000 seats with an order form and and a ton of other social proof and things in there, kind of on a sneak attack. And they're like, holy cow, you guys are going through a lot of work. Why are you doing all this? And you guys don't understand you're sitting in front of 9,000 people.

Speaker 1: 24:16 You got the opportunity of literally having over a million dollar pay day. And they're like, well, we're just going to have our bid. His go to the APP like grant told us to do. And I'm like, listen, I've, I've specialized in understanding sales, psychology and choreography of an event and that will literally backfire on you guys. And sure enough they made sales but nothing, no close. In fact, we ended up, as far as all the sales, uh, I think all the other speakers combined did about a million. And Russell ended up with over 3 million. So realize that if you spend the time, you actually, and you choreograph this thing correctly, every single one of these can be a huge cash cow for you, but more importantly and that the whole reason you're really doing this is it allows you the opportunity of serving people at the very highest and best level possible.

Speaker 1: 25:07 So always make sense to you guys. Have Amazing Day and again, I appreciate so much taking the time to listen to these podcasts. If you don't mind, do me a favor, a rate and review this on itunes and let me know if there's things that you're liking about the podcast or things that you don't like. It just pm me on facebook or send me an email, David clickfunnels. I really do appreciate your feedback. I read every pm. I look at every single email, especially those that are focused on things I can do to, to better enhance this. Uh, as I mentioned, most of these podcasts, I ended up interviewing other people. I've done a couple of my own in here recently and I'm just trying to kind of find out if you guys like the ones I'm throwing in and do it myself or if you prefer the interview content, the interview format, uh, just let me know. I'd appreciate it a ton. So she's got a Dave Woodward and pme on facebook or Dave at clickfunnels. You can send me an email and please go to itunes rate and review this and let me know what you think. Thanks.

Speaker 2: 26:04 Hi everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the podcast. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me. We're trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get the next few $100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and, and get this out to more people. At the same time, if there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'm more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if you'd like me to interview. I'm more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.