Mastermind Series: Best Practices For Your Cart Opening & Closing

Melissa: So we're going to hop back over to Susan.

Susan:  Hello. My question is about cart open and close and best practices for after the close.

So this is for an FML and I would like to hear what your best practices are first for day of the week. I'm not sure I could open it tomorrow, but I'm not sure if since tomorrow's Thursday, if I should just send some good emails and open the card on Monday and then best practices, what has worked for you for that initial? What did you send your new members?

This is for founding members. And so it's not going to be the exact thing, but I want them to just like, be able to dig into something, to learn something I'm thinking about maybe doing a, like a three or five day challenge. I'm not sure that's my question. What's working for you. 

Paul: And we'll just clarify because not everybody's in the same circles, the acronym FML means something totally different in the real world. So in the online space, in certain circles, it's, it's basically a beta launch. It's a founding member launch. It's taking something for the first time and offering it for the first time, like version zero, even before version one is perfected. So I just at least want to put that clarification there because not everybody will know what that acronym is.

Melissa: Good. Good. So let's open this up to everyone. If you have any best practices for cart opening, as well as like the cart close as well.  

Paul: All right. So I think we're gonna lean on you. Do you want to lean on me? So there's several parts to this question. So what I would say is right out the gate is be very, very clear on again, that offer because you need to know what pain point you're solving, what promise you're making with the offer that you have. And this is I'm going to give you quick versions of a lot of things that technically need way more deeper conversations,

but your offer is not Facebook lives. You're all sure your offer is not five videos in a series. Your offer is not the actual physical deliverables or, you know, whatever those deliverables are, what your offer is, is the people will receive because of them consuming or investing in your product or service. 

You need to be able to articulate that transformation, because if you can give me that transformation in one video versus 25, I'll take the one video all day long. I will pay more money for the shorter video to get right to the point, right? And not all topics can be covered that way, but I just need to understand is some of us pay more for convenience. 

So when you know what the offer is, are you going to land people into, then you have to keep in mind, is that when you do a beta launch, founding member, you know, version 1.0 of any product or service is that you first have to assess, like how many people have you naturally collected in your world that would potentially be perfectly aligned with this offer. 

Because some of us, when you see other people along and they'll go off and do a promotion and right out the gate, they are like, wow, I have a hundred people that signed up. This is awesome. While they already had people in their ecosystem, they had people in their world that were already aligned with the offer and the others we go out and we put an offer out and we don't, we didn't pre collect the right people for our offers. And then our friends and family members and the people on our natural lists. It's like crickets. It's like, Oh my goodness, two people bought. I thought it was going to get 50. Like I'm embarrassed. You know, other things like that. 

So I just need you to remember don't, don't take it personal, whatever it is, it's just feedback. Okay. So looking at it more from a logical standpoint. So what I would do then is from there, knowing what your offer is, what you're bringing people into and what that transformation is, how can you articulate it in as few as words possible? 

Because what a lot of people do is when they go in, they're new to marketing, they think if I can justify this 15 different ways and while this is why this is cool and wonderful and great, you are actually confusing people. How can I say this in the few words as possible? And then even before you post it out, go to one or two of your friends that you know, that this is ideal for and say, "Hey, can I bounce something off of you before I put something public?" 

Because if you give them that copy and they look at you, a deer in headlights, like I don't get it. Cause you need that honest feedback that, I mean, you missed the Mark and you need to have a conversation and, and fix it because a lot of people are copying and pasting and in a marketer's words and your people are not in the internet marketing bubble.

So they do not like a lot of times what the copy and paste templates are. So you gotta be careful of that now, then coming back, scarcity, urgency, exclusivity, things that are real, that are limited, create more desire and also get people off the fence that are aligned. 

So look at what makes sense for you as far as up the opportunity and closing the opportunity because, and I'm going to let you know, is that longer is not better. People were like, wow, you know, I'm going to do this. I'm going to open this thing up for two weeks. Well, it's just a slow, painful process that the people that would say yes or no is you're just going to live through this every day. 

Like nobody's signing up again, nobody's signing up again. You know, there's five people. We had a trickle in over five week or two weeks, five weeks or five days. If you're not doing a real, like if you're just doing true, like beta launch style where it's like, I'm just putting a post, sending an email, hitting my people in my ecosystem, but I'm not really doing a whole launch mechanism.

Then just know that that energy and effort you put behind it will get you an equivalent of Results. So you didn't put this bigger mechanism in front. So you don't have a lot of momentum in there share conversation around your topic. You're just hitting people blind. So just expect that you're going to get a lower result, you know, just be okay with that.

So we recommend that you don't do it. You know, don't close over a weekend. Don't generally speaking open over weekend unless you're selling things to people that are out and about on the weekends, because there's more people that tune off at a weekend. Don't open on a holiday, don't close on a holiday. If there's an inauguration going on, don't open or close on. And on days like that, like look for your national social things that are going on because you want attention. You want attention on your thing. Not other things. It doesn't matter your opinions about anything. Just we're talking about attention. And we made a mistake many years ago, like six, seven years ago, thinking one, it'd be really cool to launch a membership on black Friday.

And we will not tell anybody about it before that day,  biggest failed launch ever. And it was great. It allowed us to learn from it because we made over six figures. The next time we did that launch. So it was just something that we had to have that bruising experience to then go back and reevaluate a lot of things. 

So, but in general, if you're going out initially reverse, like what, what would you hope to get? How many people would you love to get? What would be like? I mean like a real number, don't say like a thousand people, you know, right out the gate. 

 Susan: I would be happy. I can envision 10 people going through my founding members launch and they're getting a result and my demonstrating the transformation they'll see over time.

Paul: Okay. So let's take that and let's reverse it. Cause it's all about messaging and offer. 

Susan: I anticipate fewer people, but I'm a positive person. That's why I said to him. 

Paul: Oh yeah. But I, I, I love the number cause it's very realistic. So what I would say though, is you reframe how you present that.

And I would be, I would lean into presenting it very openly. I am so excited about this brand new program that I'm putting out. I've never done this before. I've only done this private. And here's the thing though. It's the first time I'm going out. It's what I'm calling a founding member launch. It's a beta launch charter member or whatever you want to call it.

Here's the thing though. I could easily sell and put it out unlimited, maybe get, you know, 30, 40, 50 people, a hundred plus people. But I really want to get personalized one-on-one attention that I'm not going to be able to do in the future because this is the first time out. So I've decided I'm going to limit it to only 10 people.

So if you would like to be one of the 10, that's going to come in, cause keep in mind at 10, you're going to have more access to me. I'm not going to be able to do this in the future, but you're also going to be heard cause I'm gonna be able to get your feedback, but I need you to understand it's rough around the edges.

First time I'm putting it out. So even if you get more access, I'm going to be getting a feedback loop from you. That's going to help me build it and make it even better when I present this as a public offer in the future. But again, I'm only, I, the only way to service this properly is I only can take on 10 people.

So now I just took my hope and I just repositioned it as a scarcity limited time offer. 

 Melissa:  I would add with that as far as like with a closed cart and because you're, you are going to be wanting to work with that smaller group of 10 people. It does not hurt to do personal reach outs to people as well, too. If you feel like there are really good, that could be a really good candidate. Get on the phone, send them an personal email or a message and just have a conversation with them. It's going to take a little bit more of that, that back and forth. But a lot of times we kind of get stuck on this, you know, vision that it has to go a certain way with your launch, that they have to go through the process, but it can be very powerful if there's people that, you know, this will help do a personal reach out. Say, I have this program, I thought about you. I thought it would be perfect for you. 

I have only 10 spots available, but I wanted to offer you one of  those spots, because I really think this could help you. So I think that would also be something you could add to your cart, close strategy. And then whenever you do your cart close, and this is for everyone like that last day, that's the day when everything is out and about where you're really creating excitement for letting people know, like, again, that scarcity, that urgency you're on all your channels, talking about it, having conversations about it, we call that round the world. So we're, you know, on all the social media emails, like all the things, just letting people know because people are a little bit last minute sometimes, and they will wait until that last day.

That's usually when you find that's the most, action that you get. So just making sure that you're active and you're face is out there and reminding people about the opportunity about it. But definitely the personal reach outs I think would be really great too, because it can be a really great way to have that conversation and, you know, let them know that you want to save a spot for them. 

Paul: What's really cool is when you do personal reach outs, because it's a two way conversation, you get immediate feedback, immediate questions. It also helps you create immediate clarity because maybe your offer is not as clear as you thought. So then it allows you to go out publicly not to put that person on the spot, but allows you to change your message. Speak into, you know, I was thinking I wanted to pop on a Facebook live real quick. I think a lot of you might be thinking this about the program. And actually I want to explain, you know, so it gives you an opportunity to get this quiet feedback loop of clarity that maybe you missed the Mark on your messaging of the offer.

So then you can re go out and represent it because you have that two-way dialogue. You're going to get that open conversation they wouldn't normally get because the mass majority of people just don't comment. Even if they have a question they just don't comment. You know? So just, just keep that in mind too. 

Susan: What are you doing after, as soon as people are in, after the cart closes, is it just an email? Should I jump on a live with them? 

Melissa: That's where you just, you love on them. You email, you do lives, you, you get them, you know, you get them, make them feel welcome because that's that, that first initial time is making sure that they feel good about the decision that they made to join your program.

So you know, all, all of it. Yes. Yeah. 

Paul: what I recommend is that there's different stages that we normally talk into when we coach in this part right now, if we just call it the perfect onboarding experience. So from a member experience standpoint, going through the entire path of being a member or a course owner, sit down and just brainstorm to yourself, what would be the perfect onboarding experience and write down and make your own system. Some of them mentioned on another question that they would do a "Bonjoro" in our "BombBomb", where they would do a video message to the person, welcome them personally, on board, some do private one-on-one depending on the price point or the system they have set up.

You could put a physical card in the mail or a welcome box, depending on price points. And depending on the experiences that you're doing, you know, there's, a lot of different touch points, but you had the ability, like, what's your flavor? What's your style? Like, what do you bring to it? But when you're, you can preplan this ahead of time.

So then it's a process and the system, because if you just leave it up to your own mind, when you're slow, you're going to do really cool things. And then when you're too busy, you're going to totally forget. And then what'll happen is you'll have inconsistency with client experiences. And that's what you don't want to have. Is anybody comparing notes?

Like, Oh yeah, I got the box of chocolates. Oh, well, what you got the box, I didnt get any chocolates, what's up with that, you know, you don't want that to happen later. 

Melissa:  So you'll have to keep us posted on how your launch goes. 

Susan: I'm going to pull the group to find out if we should call you the, over-delivers club instead. I thank you both a lot. 

Melissa: Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited for ya.