Dotcom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online with Sales Funnels

by Russell Brunson

If you have price resistance when trying to sell your offer, the problem is not that your customers don’t have money, it’s that you haven’t increased the value to a point ...

For example, if I’m trying to sell you a pair of shoes for $10,000, you will probably tell me that it’s too expensive and that you don’t have the money, right? Because it “seems” expensive. But if I told you that I had a brand-new Ferrari outside for sale and it only cost $10,000, you would find the money quickly, because you...

What are the things you could create to include inside of your offer? The first step to creating your offer is to look at the product or service that you are currently selling and to try to figure out what the other things are that you could include in an offer that would help y...

Write down all the products and services that you can add to increase the value of your core offer.

Instead of offering just babysitting, Kiana was able to increase the value of her offer so that parents would be more likely to choose her over (and pay her more than) her competition.

Get good at making offers. The first key to having success with funnels is learning how to make offers. Each ad you post will be making an offer such as: “Click here to see a video that will show you how to ___________.” Each step in your funnels will also have an offer such as: “Give me your email address and I’ll send you a free ___________.” Each level of your value ladder will have a new offer, and every email you send your list will contain some type of offer. Creating offers will not be a one-time exercise, but something that you do over and over again. It’s one, if not the most important, role you have as a business owner.

You’ll put out offers everywhere in the marketplace, including in your ads, emails, and funnels.

In 1907, Claude was paid $52,000 per year (the equivalent of $1,396,471 in today’s dollars) to come up with offers that would sell. That’s how valuable it is to become a master at creating offers for your company.

Your first assignment right now is to figure out what elements you could add to your current product to increase its value by turning it into an offer. Step #1: Brainstorm as many different ideas that you can come up with for other things that you could give your dream customer to help guarantee their success. Step #2: From those ideas, what elements could you take to create an irresistible offer?

The more you can increase the value of the offer, the easier it will be to get them to say yes to the price you are asking.

You see, just offering someone a list of stuff isn’t necessarily going to move the needle. It’s you telling them the story behind the offer that increases the perceived value of each element that makes the offer truly irresistible.

This story of Drew’s journey from being fit, to becoming fat, to getting fit again is the story that Drew tells in his ads, as well as on the landing page before he makes them the offer. After they hear his story, they build a relationship with Drew, trust him, and feel he is uniquely qualified to help them with their problems. His story is what increases the perceived value of what he has to offer.

A great offer is usually not enough on its own to produce a sale. You also need a story that helps your dream customers trust you enough to buy from you.

The hook doesn’t provide any value by itself, but it grabs attention for the story, and each story could have dozens of different hooks.

The last step, after identifying your dream customers, finding where they’re congregating, and putting out bait to attract them, is defining the result you can create for them.

Hook, Story, Offer. After we know who our dream customer is, and we’ve identified where they are congregating, this is the bait that will get them to come into your world so you can serve them and change their lives with the business that you’ve built.

As customers ascend your value ladder, your offers will increase in value and price.

First, he had created bait (free teeth cleaning) that would attract his dream client (me). Second, he provided value to me by cleaning my teeth, and while he was helping me, he noticed that my teeth had become yellow. Because I had received value from him at this point, I naturally wanted to move forward and get additional value from him. He then found another way that he could provide value to me—the retainers—and again, I naturally took him up on that offer as well.

Dentists put out free offers for teeth cleaning in the hopes they will ascend those customers up their value ladder and get them on a regular teeth cleaning continuity program.

Whenever I start a new company or start working with someone on their business, the first thing I always do is map out the customer’s value ladder. It helps to give you a vision of how you plan on serving your dream customers and where you want to take them. It helps you figure out the real purpose for your company: the main goal or result that you are trying to help them achieve.

But it starts with defining the result (or Oz) that your dream customers will be coming to you to achieve. I call this your “value ladder mission statement,” or VLMS, and I break it down like this: We help (insert who) to (insert result they want to achieve) through (insert your new opportunity).

Who is the person you want to serve? We have talked a lot about your dream customers so far in this section. We build everything inside of this value ladder to attract and serve them. What is the result that you can provide for your dream customers? What is it that they have been unsuccessfully trying to accomplish before entering your world that you know you can solve when you have a chance to serve them? What is your new opportunity that you want to offer them? What is the offer that you are providing them that is different from the things they have tried in the past when attempting to achieve this same result?

If I was a dentist, my value ladder mission statement would read something like this: We help families in our community to increase their confidence through creati...

that is how we sell our million-dollar packages. We provide insane amounts of value at each step of our value ladder, so our clients naturally want to ascend, get more value, and pay us more money. It’s how we’re wired as humans: to seek more value from the places that we’ve already received it from.

If someone doesn’t have an actual value ladder, they don’t really have a business; they are just selling a product.

As you provide value at each step of your value ladder, your customers will naturally want to receive more value from the person they received it from: you!

I continued, “I’m curious, while you were going to school, did you learn anything else besides adjustments?” Defensively, he started to tell me about all sorts of other things he had learned and knew how to do. He said, “I spent years learning nutrition and natural healing. I can help stop fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome, and—” And that’s where I stopped him. “Have you ever provided any of these services to your clients, or do you stop giving them value after the fifty-dollar adjustments?” I asked. Now I want to pause here, because most companies I work with, even if they think they have a value ladder, really only have part of one. Almost always, I spend my time working on adding products and services to the front of their value ladders, as well as to the back.

he decided to create an offer where he gave away a free massage, some supplements, and a meditation CD when people booked their first appointment. Armed with this new offer, he went out and started advertising. Within months he had filled his clinic to capacity with new people coming into the front of his value ladder and a percentage of them upgraded to longer-term care, his wellness packages, and more! He was now getting more people in the front door, making more money from each person who became a client and serving his dream customers at a level he never was able to do before.

If you already have a product or service that you sell in the middle of your value ladder, what type of “bait” could you create to attract your dream customer? One of my friends owns a company that makes custom suits for people. He was stuck selling a high-end service but unable to see how to construct a solid value ladder (probably because the “front” at the time was $2,000). After a while, my friend tried giving away free cufflinks online. He put the offer up, started to advertise, and within days, he had generated hundreds of perfectly qualified leads. He then took these people through his funnels to get them to purchase their own custom suits.

Oftentimes, companies have a front-end product but nothing more to sell on the back end. For that, I love to look at what else they could bundle together. Could they offer a coaching program? How about a live event? What other results or value could they give their clients?

Most businesses I look at have one or two pieces of the ladder, but they rarely have a full value ladder. Once we add in the missing pieces, the business can start to expand dramatically. There’s no end to the level of back-end services and experiences you can add. If you keep providing more a...

A percentage of your audience will always want to pay you the premium to get more value.

The only limit to your value offerings is your imagination. Keep thinking of higher and higher levels of service, and you can keep charging more and more money. There’s always something else you can offer.

at the first tier of most value ladders, you are creating free offers that will get people to come into your value ladder, receive value, and give them a desire to want to start ascending to your paid offers. There are specific types of funnels that we call “lead funnels” that are designed to get your dream customers to join your lists and become leads.

You don’t have to have the value ladder finished to launch your company. In fact, when someone joins my Inner Circle, I first have them sketch out what their value ladder will become, and then I have them pick one level of the value ladder and commit to me that they will only focus on that one offer, that one funnel, until they’ve made it into the Two Comma Club (meaning they’ve made at least $1,000,000 gross in that funnel).

Traditionally, I tell them to pick an offer in the middle or the back-end of the value ladder (typically a presentation or a phone funnel), because the price at that level is usually high enough that you can cover your ad costs and still make a profit.

Almost immediately, she did what all great entrepreneurs that work with me do and said, “Now that this funnel is selling well, what offer should I create next?”

I think my answer surprised her when I told her that she wasn’t allowed to create the next tier of her value ladder until she had passed the million-dollar mark. She needed to sell at least 1,000 copies of her $1,000 course (1,000 x $1,000 = $1,000,000). Liz put her focus back into the webinar, and within a year she had passed the $1 million mark! She had 1,000 dream customers who loved her and who wanted more from her.

She created the next tier of her value ladder—a high-ticket coaching program—created the funnel, sent out an email to her customer list, and within days had filled up her coaching program!

the goal after you sketch out your value ladder isn’t to build all the tiers, but to focus on one. After you have figured out how to sell that offer, and you have built up pressure from your customers for more, then open the back end of your value ladder and start serving your true fans at a higher level.

When your ads stop working as well for your core offers, that’s when you start to build out new front-end offers to get new people into your value ladder so you can then ascend them to the offers you’ve already created.

As your dream customers ascend your value ladder (left), your offers will increase in price. Because of this, the number of your dream customers will decrease (right) until you’re finally left with your true fans, eager to be served at your highest level.

The secret formula was created to help you figure out who you want to serve, how to find them, what kind of bait you should use to attract them, and where you want to take them.