The 5-Stage Consulting Sales Funnel | Coaching Corner #035

Hey, hey, hey, what's going on, guys?

Hey, I'm back again. We're back.

This week, we— well, I'm not gonna say it. Maybe Rob will say it. What do we normally say?

It's gonna be a good one.

It's gonna be a good one.

It's gonna be a good one. Uh, today, how you been, Tyson? How you been?

Life has been, you know, getting better. I had strep throat last week, so, uh, you know, this week I'm fine.

I do have to say, hats off to Tyson. He had swords in his throat last week, but he still pushed through and still delivered on office hours. If you haven't joined our office hours, you have to show up. It's— people love it. We, we have people come just to hang out. We really do. If you're looking for a community to, to just have conversations with, no pressure, no judgment, no nothing, you just want to learn and hang out, come hang out with us.

Uh, on that note, on for office hours, okay, the other— it's probably a couple weeks ago now at this point— we were just hanging out, someone was asking questions around, uh, a lead funnel at one point, and they just couldn't get theirs to convert or like figure out what was happening.. And there's one of the participants, or someone that is a frequent flyer that comes, uh, almost every day or maybe every other day or so. And he like unveiled a lead funnel he's done for a client, or he's in the process of actually doing right now. And they had leads coming in. He had like a 70% conversion rate on this thing. And he shared a screen. He showed us exactly what he was doing. He showed us the ad. He showed us the, the copy for the ad, the creative. It was a beautiful moment. Everyone loved it.

Uh, so how cool is that? It's not like we're competing against each other. Everybody here is to support the other person, right? Like, he found success in his niche and what he's doing, and he's like, yeah, sure, I'll show you guys. I want everybody to be successful, everybody to win that 1 comma, maybe 2 comma club award. Like, it's so nice.

We've had that back a few times now at this point. Someone was showing their membership area on— yeah, yesterday actually, just taking us through like deep dive on what they're doing because someone else had a question on something similar and they just like decided that they would show us underneath the hood. Like, anyways, come to hang out with us, open office hours. I don't know, you don't know what you're missing until you go there, I guess. Uh, here's a— where's the link for that? This guy right here. Boom.

Tyson's gonna drop a link, but if you just log into your ClickFunnels account Monday, Wednesday, Friday between 11 AM and 1 PM Eastern time. There will be a banner at the top that says join live office hours now. Just click on that and bring it right to office hours.

Yeah, 100%. So, um, well, with that said, what are we talking about today? Today, this one goes out to the consultants, uh, inside of the group, I guess. People that are in the consultant space to some degree, some way, some fashion. Um, we're kind of helping to diagnose or lay out a system, more or less, uh, that you can follow for your own business. If you're finding that you're just— you're not really figuring out how to scale, maybe you got one client, it's word of mouth, and that, you know, I don't know, it's hard to find the next one and the next one and understand like the overall pipeline that is in place. Or maybe you don't have one at all, and that's perfectly fine too. This is, this is for you. This is for you out there, wherever my camera is. All right, uh, so with that said, I'm gonna go and share my screen here, and basically we're going to be walking through the 5 stages, 5-stage system for consultants' funnels, basically, uh, from transforming people that are cold— it could be a cold outreach to a warm and, and lucrative partner that you, uh, bring into your world, right? Um, each one, each thing that you design, or each step in this, this process is more or less setting up yourself for success for the next stage and next stage and next client that you work with. And we're just kind of like creating this self-fulfilling cycle that you can replicate without having to, I don't know, sit there and I, I don't know, cold outreach, you know, you're smiling and dialing. I don't even know if that's a thing for consulting.

I, that's probably not, but you're dialing but you're not smiling.

You're sitting there nervous, you're, yeah, you got the jitters, you know, you're trying to avoid all that. But we'll talk about how to build trust and filter leads before you ever get in a call with them, uh, why the first two stages run without you, and The last 3 need you to show up, right? Which we'll walk through each of those. Um, before we kind of like break into the different stages, is there like any, any big takeaways that, uh, you've come across, Rob, like when talking to consultants in general that, uh, I don't know, might be, might be worth touching on today? We don't have to like have an answer for it, just like things that you notice. You're a consultant by trade.

Yeah, you know what I noticed when Talking to consultants, it depends what stage they are in their consultancy.

Hmm.

Right. And I think honestly, I think this funnel that we're gonna talk about is good in each stage. And you just have to be mindful of where you are as a consultant, because I know there's, there's people who are just getting started, right? There's people who are getting started that just want people to answer them. They just want someone to say, sure, I'll like build a free funnel for me. Go ahead. Right? And that's one stage. And then you get to this next stage of, I've done the work, I've built free funnels for people, I've shown that I am worth it. Like my service generates value. I am a rainmaker and this is the proof. And then it's updating this sales funnel to that next step of your consultancy, right? And then you get to the next stage where you start, okay, I can't do this all myself. I need people with me. Like, yeah, then you start building it out as a team. So that, that is one thing that I've seen when talking to a lot of people is it's interesting which, like where they are in their consultancy. And I think this funnel is useful for everybody. Yeah. No matter where they are.

Absolutely. Well, without further ado, let's talk, talk about the stages, shall we?

Let's jump in. Come on.

Uh, so 5 different stages. One is gonna be the authority asset, your point to get into your world. But the thing with this stage is that it can't just be a PDF. It can't just be like something that you throw at somebody that means nothing to them. Because I don't know, working with clients as a consultant, like, you, you gotta first build up trust. You gotta, you gotta make it clear that you are the expert, you are the person that they wanna work with. Like, they gotta dedicate, dedicate time to work with you. Throughout the week. They got to meet up with you. Like, it's something that they have to invest in. And so we want to start building that initial thought, I guess, for them, uh, or with them before they ever even hop on a call with you. So thought for that—

I can tell a quick story on, on this, on this note. A consultant doing my own thing, uh, building funnels for businesses. My lead magnet was steal my, my $1,000 website for free, right? And all that— my whole, uh, the back end of it was I wanted to be their affiliate for ClickFunnels. So they can steal their website, and it was a, it was a beautiful template that it was for any type of home service, right? So it's a beautiful template that people can add to their ClickFunnels account. It was Alfredo Share Funnel as the link, and then I became the affiliate. But what that extra step I did was is when they downloaded that funnel and they imported the funnel into their ClickFunnels account, I had an automation that sent a message to them through MessageHub. Through MessageHub, I sent them a text saying, hey, this is Rob. Thank you so much for importing my funnel. Um, do you want to personalize for free? Send me the name of your business and the industry you're in, and I'll get it done for you. What? And this little extra step—

oh yeah. As a lead magnet? Oh man, I love them.

But I'll tell you, I had the email sequence. The email sequence was okay. I was getting maybe like 5 to 10% response rates. When I started sending texts, guess, guess what my response rate was?

Oh, at least I'm gonna guess 30%. I don't know.

65%. Oh, it was insane.

Wow.

It was insane. The amount of people that were responding that said, oh, absolutely, you're gonna build me a, like, a website for free? Like, I see your template and you're gonna customize it for free? That was the value I was adding. The value was, here's my free $1,000 website that you can just take and you can run with it, but if you want that little bit of extra, I'll customize it for you for free, and then let's jump on a call and I'll show it to you.

Okay, that's over the top. I love that though. That's, that's a way— like, I don't know, at that point they love you. Like they—

Well, I'll let you, I'll, here, guess how long it took me to build that customized template?

What type of funnel? It was just—

Simple lead, simple opt-in funnel, simple like get a free quote.

Okay, I'm gonna guess like a day or two maybe.

10 minutes.

10 minutes? What? Did you take a template or something?

I had a template and what I would do is with the AI within ClickFunnels.

Oh, okay.

I would just go to the— I would chat with the AI in ClickFunnels and say, update this template with this name, this location, like they serve this location, uh, update the images and all the icons. And it, and it did it wonderfully. Wow. So it took me 10 minutes from front to back, from lead in to personalized website out. And I shared it with them and it would blow their minds and Well, I had them jump on a call for me to share it with them and they absolutely loved it.

And see that, and that naturally just turns into something else afterwards, that, that conversation beyond that point. Huh. Okay. Um, and plus you get the affiliate, I guess, on top of that, that initial sale.

Yes. Or whatever. Yeah, I got it to a good amount of affiliates that were signing up. Uh, I don't know why I ever turned that off.

It's too much work. It's too much work to deliver all this value. You got too many customers and you didn't know what to do with them all.

Yeah, that was it. I was just— I have 5 Two Pounder Club awards now, so.

Oh, okay. All right. I'm joking, man. No, send one my way. Um, I, I guess embracing what you— that point, that point right there is that in the first stage here, I guess when we're talking about consultants, you could technically take that and I like repurpose like a, I don't know, some form of a plan for them, like that's customized to their business and where they're currently at. Like they could give you an email, uh, or not, you know, but a website if they already have one, and you could use AI to some degree to like scan it. Like Manus for sure can do that. I've seen people do that a lot with that. Um, Marketing Secrets AI has that ability as well, I'm pretty sure. And, uh, you could, you could personalize the output. You could, you could like deliver this as, as the actual lead magnet. Like they enter this, they submit it, and you go and have AI do it for you.

Absolutely possible. And I just showed them, I showed them a preview of what their website would look like, and then I said, if you want it, just click the link below and boom, it's yours.

That's it, it's yours. Make it simple. If you can find a way to make that seamless too where it doesn't even involve your, your time as much. Because you could technically go out and you could have like— you could have cloned this by yourself and you could have, you know, updated it all in your workspace and then shared a link. But there's a bunch of time up front that you'd have to like give before they take you up on it. In the case of the— we'll say like, um, a plan or some sort of, some sort of plan that's based off of information they submit. So maybe like you're an online traffic consultant or something, I don't know, for a business, and you're trying to figure out how— you help people figure out how to generate more traffic and get more eyeballs on the things that they have and all this fun stuff, right? And you create a plan with them. What if you created that initial stage or the initial layout using Manus? So submit— you have a submit or, uh, go to Manus, then send out an email from them, and then Now we have something that didn't really directly relate or have your time involved. Super cool, super cool. Uh, second stage is gonna be the application. So how do we filter out bad, bad fits, bad, bad apples from the— from what it is that you do? Um, let, let the process do it for you. You know, you're not going to do it one at a time. Hopefully you're going to create an application funnel, and I'll show you where to do that inside the platform. It's really easy to do. There's templates that you can use to start with. And, uh, really all an application funnel is, is it's a page with a form on it where people are filling in more information around their business, why they want to work with you, that type of stuff, right? Just to understand more about them. And then on the next page inside the funnel, we have a, like, a confirmation page, usually with homework or something to like prep for whatever's about to come. I don't know, like, get ahead of line, call here. Fast actors are probably a good, good positive signal for a lot of things, um, right? We have next steps from the follow, pretty simple. Uh, if they don't call, then you can go through and you can filter based off their answers. Who you want to work with? Who do I actually want to reach out to and have set up a discovery call with? Which happens to be stage number 3, where we actually— these portions right here, stage 3, 4, 5, these are all like your hands-on. This is what you do best anyways. You're talking to people. If you're consultants, you're great at talking to people. That is, that is the job here.

Um, is this, is this just for consultants, or could it be for coaches?

Coaches?

I'm running— yeah, you know, I mean, sometimes even in-person event and putting together a community. Like, who is this for?

You can replicate that for anybody that talks to people and does some form of coaching and, and walkthroughs, or you're there as like a mentor or guide, however you want to position it. Consulting is really just all of those things. You're like, you are the expert that they're going to, but you're also walking them through based off of your own knowledge or what you've come to understand in the world, what works, uh, towards like a, the actual path or towards the end goal they're looking for. So either way, like, yeah, you could put this into a huge category. Consulting is probably just like a nice little tagline that we're putting on top of this.

But yeah, I just wanted to put that out there. It's not only if you don't call yourself a consultant, that doesn't mean it's not for you.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely. You can— there's ways to modify this as well, but like, this is the simplest way to keep your, keep your life simple. Um, discovery call, cool. You're just selling them on discovery call.

Right?

Or at least making a pitch. After that, we're following up. If they don't make the decision, they are still deciding, we're trying to keep that conversation alive, keep the lead warm and make sure that they know that you're still there. Like when they think about what their next week looks like, we want them to think about you. So maybe even a text, you know, we have like follow up. And in my mind, I think email, but Text message is a really great thing to put on the table here as well. You're seeing 60% conversion rate or open rate. Like, that's, that's pretty significant.

It was, it was insane. Um, yeah, well, what, what do you think about these stages 4 and 5? I know we're gonna get to them, but I, I see potentially stage 3 being the, the top of the ladder here, right? Like, if you could get them on a discovery call and it's going really well, can't you just sell them on that call?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I would definitely— you, but you base it off of where they're at, right? If they, um, if it is very clear that it's just not a good fit, just because one, either there's— they just don't know what they need, what they need, or like, I don't know, something— there's a disconnect, you feel something's off, and so you have to disqualify. Um, regardless, you can filter out everything there and you can sell them on the call at the very end if if they're a good fit. But yeah, if they're not a good fit at that moment in time, it's not that you don't want to present something. Like, you can always take them towards like something else that could still help them get to the other, other steps. Maybe you have like a course where you do it like it's— they do at their own pace, you know, type of situation. And, uh, just another way for you to still keep them in your ecosystem, but maybe not the price point that they— that you have right now. Or that the Consulting 101 might do.

Absolutely. And that's something we do at ClickFunnels also, right? Like just, oh, you know, pulling the curtains aside and looking behind the scenes. Like we do that, we offer free webinars for people, right? And then we also offer onboarding sessions for people to just help them get started, see where they're at in their business, meet them where they are. But then we also offer one-on-one coaching. There's people that need that and are really appreciative that we offer that because they, they sometimes they have everything in their mind. They have their offers, they have their values, they have their funnels, like everything built out and they just get stuck. They don't push play and they need, they don't push play. They just need someone to help them push that button. And that's, and that's what it is. You were meeting them where they are. And helping them move forward. So that's exactly what you guys should be doing. You, you should see where your customer is on that discovery call. Once you get them on there, just meet them where they are, and eventually people will go through the system enough, through your nurturing sequence enough, and eventually they'll get to that, that step of the, the offer ladder that you want them at.

Yeah, absolutely, totally agree. Yeah, I, I feel like that's something that doesn't get talked about too much, actually. Like, people say they they hop on calls and they just instantly disqualify. Like, if they disqualify somebody, it means that they're done. Like, they're not even in the system anymore. They don't follow up. They don't, like, take them any direction. It just ends right there in the call. But, like, that's a missed opportunity unless it's like you guys are, like, bumping fists or something, or, like, bumping heads together or something. That's not a good idea. But regardless, like, outside of that, you know, you're missing opportunity to just still keep adding value. Sometimes people need some extra time. I— what is the There's, there's a couple stats. Like, I feel like I've heard different stats over the years, but, uh, at this point it's like 7 hours of, of touch points and contents, or like of watching you or seeing what you're doing before somebody feels comfortable enough to move forward. Like, if we haven't gotten to that point yet and you are going for the sale and there's friction, maybe we just need to go back and continue adding value. Maybe we're just missing that portion there. Um, maybe you have another lead magnet that makes sense for them. I don't know, or like a mini course, you know. I would try to get them to ascend to some degree in your value ladder if you have anything else that's outside of the one-on-one. But, um, yeah, okay, final stage. Stage number 5 here is going to be client to case study. All right, so basically we're working with the client, and then as we're working with them, we're making a documented approach or taking a documented approach here. Where we are trying to reproduce or create something that we can reproduce for other people, and we're documenting what— where people started to where they've gone and how we've got there. Um, that's what— how we get these case studies. Case studies are a beautiful thing when we're trying to get new clients. So when we get to stage number 5 here, we're working with the client, we see some results, cool, we want to showcase that. Now when we're in stage number 1, what stage number 2, or even stage number 3. Like, those things are going to come back up later on because people are going to be like, well, who are you working with? Like, what, what have you seen happen? Well, let me just tell you, I have like 5 case studies ready to go right now, and you can view them as, as you need. They're thorough. You can see what I— what, what happened, the transition, transformation. Like, it's a self-fulfilling cycle at this point. You get warm doing it too?

Yes. There were times when I was on a call with someone and they were asking, well, how do I know that you're going to generate leads for me? And my response was, well, we're talking right now, aren't we?

Okay. Oh man.

But the point is, sometimes people need to, like don't discount the experience that you have yourself, especially in the beginning. Tyson, you can disagree with me.

No, I agree.

But I know it was a little snotty answer, but it worked. He's like, oh, you're right. But don't discount the experience that you have yourself. Like if you're putting the work in, you can share that data, right? You can share that data of putting an ad together, looking at the analytics of it, looking at the numbers of, You know, if you're running ads, cost per click, cost per view, all the things, your, you know, how you optimize a funnel from, you know, whatever conversions to an up number of conversions. But absolutely, when you're working with a client that's happy, get that testimonial because it will be, it'll be such an easier sale to the next person if you can say, hey, I helped, you know, John Smith, increase sales by 30% in 2 months.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now let's talk about like another part of the component, but I don't know if we have, we have time to dive into it today necessarily completely, but the traffic side of things, right? Like the next part is you've seen people using eyeballs, you need eyeballs in the system, and then at that point they're just going to walk through this, this ladder, this, uh, curated process that that you created for your end user or for that customer, and they're gonna go through, they're gonna self-qualify. Is what you're providing for the lead magnet awesome? Probably. Cool. Now they're going to fill an application, they're going to go through this process, and now you're going to qualify, and you're going to see if they are meant to be in your world or not. Or do they need to go at a different step or a different point in the ladder, uh, before you ever hop on a call?

I don't know.

Right? But, uh, the eyeballs side of things, maybe we talk about that in another episode. I feel like we can go down a whole different rabbit hole with content.

Traffic is a long conversation.

Traffic is a long— yeah, there's so much you can cover within that area. Uh, paid versus free, which platform, how do you create a system? I don't know, there's so much.

But how do you use other people's audiences? How do you use, you know, how to partner with people and then get things moving? Um, it's, it's a long conversation. I'd be interested to see what you guys are doing for traffic. If you want to throw a comment in the chat or comments down below this video, let us know what you're doing for traffic that's working. Again, we're a community that shares, we're a community that supports each other. So if you see something working, let us know. And hey, maybe we'll bring you on Coaching Corner so you can talk about it.

Oh, okay.

All right, maybe, maybe a little segment.

Whoa, whoa, maybe. Now if, uh, you're trying to get these items, these things into your world that we kind of discussed today for the different stages, we have a lead funnel and we have an application funnel, right? Um, both of which are already in the platform for you. You can just use them, they're just there. You can go in and use them as needed. Um, I like to go to Funnels over here in the top left side of the screen. And from there we'll go to Create Funnel, just like so. And from there, uh, there's two different things. One, lead funnels are actually a checklist item here that you can select from. Just check that off and it should segment and show you different examples here. All we're doing with the lead funnel, and we've covered this in earlier episodes as well, is we're just trying to collect their information. We're exchanging value for value, uh, some form of, uh, you know, email to get in contact with them, a phone number if you're trying to embrace SMS here like Rob, and we are, um, just make it so we can follow up with them anyways regardless. It's very simple funnel, 2 steps, it's a good time. If, uh, for the second step we need something else as well. We need something called an application funnel, which is going to be just like so. Just type in application at the top and just like that Boom, we have application funnel templates. How cool is that? I might even maybe put together a framework like this that has these two combined for you guys.

No, we make it too easy for them.

Oh yeah, I don't know, that might make it too easy and make it too easy.

I don't know if we want to make it too easy for people.

Well, now that I'm saying out loud, like, I feel like this is just a natural progression. I'm gonna have to think about that. All right, perhaps we can put something together.

Um, perhaps.

After that, you can go and edit things. And if you need help with the editing process or laying anything out, we alluded to it in the very beginning of this episode, you can head over to something called our Open Office Hours call every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And, um, here's what that looks like. Boom. All right, it's just like this, and the link will be in the chat as well. Have fun, enjoy. That's it. That's what we're covering today. I know we, um, we talked about a lot. We kind of just droned on about how to organize your offers and your customer cycle, um, or customer experience cycle here. But I don't know, what a good time. I mean, you can go even nerdier if you want. I don't know.

Well, I was gonna say, and, um, come to office hours for sure because it's just a good time. Um, it's a growing community of people that just show up and hang out. But if you did need that extra We would love to work with you one-on-one. If you need a little bit more help to push that play button, we're here to be accountability partners. And you can sign up with the link that I just dropped. You can go ahead and grab some strategy sessions and happy to move forward. We do one, we do three, we do six. We even do year-long coaching. For those that are interested, let me know. Outreach@clickfunnels.com. If you're interested, we can help you out.

Very cool. We look forward to seeing you guys.

Want people to be successful.

Yeah, I mean, this is all we talk about. I feel like if we didn't have anybody to talk to it about with, then we'd just be in a room over here jabbering. So come chat with us.

I will. I'm gonna drop one more link. I know there's a lot to hang on to.

Okay.

All right, well, if anyone is interested in just recapping this episode. Uh, it is also mentioned in our blog, and if you're not following our blog, definitely check it out. Really good information there, some good things to, to just follow along. Um, it's a good read, it's, it's pretty quick, it's good quick hits.

Yeah, I would say so. A lot of them are like 5 minutes long. I just, I turn on Speechify, it's my, my go-to, uh, choice here. Speechify, turn up to 3.5. And just crank through it.

Wow.

It's a beautiful time.

At 3.5, you really have to pay attention.

I, you know, that, um, the only one I can't go 3.5 on is probably like, like Dotcom Secrets or like Russell if I'm listening to an audiobook or something.

Russell speaks at 2x.

Yeah, so I gotta break it down to 3 at that point.

And so, right, um, oh man, but it's funny when you listen to people on 2x or 1.5, whatever it is, and then you meet them in real life and you're like, oh, you talk much slower than I remember.

I forget. You know what? You're right too.

That's—

I have to remind myself of that constantly, actually, because everything's fast forward for me.

The first time I met Dante, I was like, oh, you have a nice Southern drawl. What? Dante's great. But yeah, it was really funny just meeting people in person. Okay, and with, as always, we would love to hear from the community. Everyone knows this, but I love community-driven content development discussions. Let us know what you want us to talk about and we'll be happy to dive into it. Again, send us an email, outreach@clickfunnels.com, and we'll cover whatever you guys wanna know about.

Heck yeah. It'd be a good time too. If you wanna see something specific, just gotta make sure to reach out. We're happy to oblige. What's up, Danny Walsh?

The great Danny Walsh is into the chat.

All right, all right, well, we covered a lot in a little bit of time. Have a fantastic rest of your Tuesday afternoon, and— or whenever you're watching us, and we will see you next week. That's it. All right, ciao for now. See you guys later.

We're out.