Add Value to a High-Ticket Product By Adding Access to You
Let’s talk about what access to you could look like. Giving personal access to your expertise can take many forms, and each of them greatly boosts the value of your online course or product. Here are some tips for adding you into the mix:
You could offer unlimited email access. Please, don’t allow yourself to be scared by unlimited email access. I know what’s going through your mind!
If I give people unlimited email access, they’re going to email me 25 times a day, and I’m going to be tied to my email, and I’m going to lose my life because I’m focusing on email.
It’s not true. People are going to be very respectful of your time, especially if they’ve invested a lot of money with you. They are only going to send you emails when they really need help. They’re not going to send you an email every hour. It’s not going to happen. I’ve had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients over the last several years, I’ve only had one client ever, that I had to go to and say, “look, you’re really abusing this unlimited email thing.” He would send an email in the morning with 25 questions in it.
What if Someone Takes Advantage of You?
The first time he did this, I fell for it. I took an hour or so and I answered every one of the 25 questions. I sent it back to him. I was honoring my unlimited email policy. My feeling is, if you have 100 people signed up, and one person takes more time than the others, well, that’s okay. Because some people will never, ever ask you a question, so it’s still fair for you. You have one person that takes a little bit more time, and it’s okay, it really is.
I wrote him back, answered the 25 questions. An hour later, or maybe 2 hours later, he had another 25 questions – these were follow-up questions. I dutifully answered maybe half of them, sent it back. He had more questions an hour or 2 later, I wrote him back and I said, look…
This had been building to this point for some time. I probably could have nipped it earlier. But I didn’t want to. I really wanted to honor unlimited. I hadn’t at that point ever really thought about what’s my limit for unlimited. Because, it’s unlimited!
But, I wrote him back and I said, “look, here’s what I think is happening with you. I believe that you are over-analyzing what you’re doing, instead of implementing what you’re doing. So, here’s what I’m going to recommend. Instead of sending me 25 questions, send me one, I’ll answer it, and the only thing I want you to do before you ask another question, is implement everything I taught you for question one, then come back to me.” And, immediately, that’s what he began to do.
I didn’t have to address the fact that he was sending too many emails. I simply had to address the root problem, which was, he was spending all of his time writing questions instead of doing the work. I addressed the problem of doing the work and he got to where he was sending me a question every other day. I’d send him an answer and he would do the work. Then he began to have success. In fact he began to have much more success after that, far more than he had for the 3 or 4 months prior. I hadn’t quite realized that was his problem. I was just answering his questions.
Once it became so pronounced, I nipped it in the bud. You can do the same thing too. Frankly, you’re probably never going to have the same issue. Or, if you do, it will just be with one or two people and you can figure out the root problem and address it, just like I did.
So, unlimited, you can give them unlimited access. Nobody, almost nobody, will ever abuse it. So, don’t be afraid of unlimited.
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Other Options for Access to You
There’s an old saying that when you first start your business you have lots of time – but you don’t necessarily have a lot of money. But, when you have been in business for a while, if you’ve done things right, you don’t have much time but you have more money. Obviously, that refers to the idea that when you first get started you have to do some things with your time that you would pay others to do once you had more money than time.
But, I like to look at it from this perspective. When you’re first starting out, you have more time. Give it to your subscribers. Really, invest it in your subscribers. What do you have to lose?
When your first starting out, you could give people some access to you. Here are some more ideas:
- You could give them an hour of one on one consulting.
- You could give them 3 hours of one on one consulting.
- You could give them 3 – 20 minute sessions of one on one consulting.
- Have office hours
- Do group Q&A sessions
Here’s how to do office hours: have a 1 hour open coaching slot, once a week. You can literally give them your home telephone, or office number, or your cell number. Or you could get a Google Voice number and have it ring to your phone so you don’t have to give your actual number out. Then say something like: “between the hours of 10 and 11 on Wednesday, if you call me, I’ll answer the phone, and I’ll answer any of your questions. And, if you get a busy signal, call back in 5 minutes.” That’s a model that some coaches use. I don’t use that model, but it’s a model that a lot of people like, and it’s something that you can certainly use and still control your time.
You could also give a few live group coaching calls, similar to what I do. And, you can also record those coaching calls, just like I do 😉 Not only do I record my coaching sessions to give to you, but I also file these away so I can re-use them over and over and over again. It can go in future versions of this coaching and I don’t have to re-teach it. Or I can create a stand-alone product with it. Or a bundle of products. Whatever I want. Group coaching is a really versatile bonus 😉
ALL of your teaching should ALWAYS be recorded! Anytime you teach a coaching program, you should record everything. You can repurpose those recordings in the future. Here’s one more tip. Anything you record, you can also have it transcribed. And, you can have your transcribers create ebooks for you. You can have your transcribers break your recordings into articles. Submit articles, and it takes away your article typing time. All of that. It’s a great bonus.
That gives you some ideas for adding access to yourself on as a bonus to your product. Honestly, people will rarely take you up on it, but it will greatly increase your conversion rates! It has really high perceived value, and that works in your favor.