MBA2597 Q&A Wednesday: How Do I Sell More Online Courses?

0:28Do you have an online course that's just not selling? alone is not enough. This is why I'm excited to answer today's question on Q &A Wednesday for Mary. How do I sell more online courses? Mary, you are not alone. Many course creators overlook the importance of having a system in place to sell their courses. So today I'm going to break down three powerful sales systems you can implement to turn more leads into paying students.

0:56Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons to help start, grow, and scale your business. Three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Today, we're going to dive into the question, how do I sell more online courses? By the way, if you have a question you want to ask here on Q &A Wednesday, go ahead to our website, 100mba.net slash Q and submit your question there. The key to selling more isn't just about creating great content or running great ads. It's about having a clear sales system that you can follow every day. With that one, you're just hoping for sales.

1:31Okay, so we're going to dive into three proven systems that I've used that can help you sell more courses and grow your business. I'm going to walk you step by step how to implement these, what are the advantages, some of the drawbacks, and which one to choose if you're just starting out. But first, let's talk about why you need a sales system. And the answer is very simple. Every successful business has a sales system. I learned this the hard way. I try to market my way to make more sales, and that's just not smart. Marketing gets people in the door, but sales is what converts them into paying customers.

2:04A sales system isn't about convincing people or saying the right words or being slick. I learned this from my father, who was one of the top salespeople in this field for 20 years. A sales system educates your audience. It builds trust and it creates some sense of urgency so that when they're ready to buy, they understand why they should buy. Again, selling isn't about convincing people. It's about helping them make a decision. So let's dive into the three sales systems I recommend if you're selling online courses. These are in the order of highest converting to not so bad to least converting.

2:39Still good, but not as good as number one. but they're also in the order of most effort to least effort. And this first system, system number one, is the most powerful system, and that's using live launches. Let me show you how it works. You only allow enrollment for your course to be open for a specific window, usually about 7 to 14 days. Now, you can open enrollment several times in the year, but you're only allowing a window for people to sign up and be part of your course. You're going to create a marketing campaign around this window building excitement and urgency. Then after the window closes, no one can buy your course until the next launch.

3:19So why does this work? Well, people are motivated by deadlines and scarcity, and they need a reason to buy now. This is why a lot of stores have these like one day sales. They just need to get into the doors so that they could buy. Give them a reason to buy. And with an open and closed enrollment, this gives them a reason to say, okay, now's the time I have to role because I'll have to wait X amount of months until it opens again, and I don't want to do that. There's also a focused energy with a live launch. It creates a buzz and drives higher conversions. Typically, a live launch kicks off with a live workshop or webinar or a series of workshops.

3:55This allows you to learn about your customer, build trust, and then present your offer. When you present your offer, this is when the cart opens, and this is when people can enroll into your course, and it's open for a period of time, let's say seven days, and then the cart closes, meaning that your enrollment closes and they can't buy beyond that point. Now, another hidden advantage of live launches is that you're not constantly selling and marketing every single day. You're only concentrating your efforts to sell your course certain periods of the year when you're opening and closing that launch when enrollment is available.

4:31This allows you to focus on other things like recruitment, building a team, improving your product or service and just running a business in general, right? So this allows you to really concentrate your efforts when it comes to marketing and sales at certain seasons in the year. A lot of people find this very relieving because that means they don't have to be selling every day of the week. Now, if you want to see a real life example of a live launch and how it all works and all the moving parts, then you're in luck. At the end of March of this year, we're doing a live launch for the all new$100 MBA program.

5:02We're going to be running three days of live training. It's absolutely free and it's followed by a limited enrollment period. This is when we're going to allow people to sign up for the program. Now, if you want to invite to the live launch for the three days of free training, just sign up to any of our free resources over at 100mba.net on our website. Just sign up to any of our free guides or templates and you'll be on email list and you'll get an invite to that launch. So whether you're interested in our 100 MBA program or not, you get to see the moving parts of how this is all done. So let's talk about efforts versus reward when it comes to this sales system to sell your online course.

5:40Live launches are high effort, but they're high reward. You can run them via email campaigns or via a big live event like we're doing with workshops and webinars. There's some people that don't do the live webinar or live workshop thing. They just kind of launch it by emails to their email list. But I think that's a missed opportunity because you get to build a lot of trust, answer a lot of questions, answer a lot of rebuttals that people have when it comes to your offer when you have a live workshop or webinar. Live launches are like a grand opening. You're making a big splash and giving people a reason to act now.

6:15Now, a word of warning of this first sale system, a lot of people feel a little bit anxious of the fact that they can't sell their course when enrollment is closed. So they feel like, what if I don't sell enough during the launch and I need the money? And that's a valid worry. So what I would recommend is doing this system after you've sold your course a few times and you have some confidence in the product you're actually releasing to the world and you feel like, hey, people will buy this if I give them all the information that they need to make a decision. So you're feeling a little bit nervous about not being able to sell because of that window and closing enrollment.

6:49Don't worry, I got another system for you, which is sales system number two, an ongoing sales process. This is a system that I recommend you use if you are just getting started for several reasons. I'm gonna go through them in a bit, but let me first talk about how the sales system works. Your course is always available, but you're going to guide your leads through a structured sales process. Here's an example. Let's say a lead gets onto your email list with a freebie or some sort of guide or what's called a lead magnet. They get on your email list via something valuable for free. You then nurture them with valuable content emails over the next few weeks.

7:25Great trainings, maybe a good newsletter. Maybe you're sharing some videos you created, just really good value. Then after them being on your email list for, let's say, four weeks, you invite them to a live workshop or webinar where you teach and offer your course. Now, this means that you're going to have to run this live workshop or webinar regularly, whether it's every week or every two weeks. I encourage you every week if you're just getting started because you want to learn as much as possible about your customers. You want to have as many reps as possible of delivering this workshop so that you get better and better and you have a polished delivery, all that stuff.

8:00There's a bit of work here, but you're getting the chance to sell your online course every single week. So think of it this way. Let's say you get 100 people on your email list every single week. That means after four weeks, that cohort of 100 people that joined that week will get an invite to the webinar. Let's say half of them attend. 50 people come to the webinar. Those people get exposed to your course and to your training. The reason why this works is because this system builds trust over time, making it easier for your audience to commit to your course because they've been on your list for a while.

8:30They've gotten some great content and now they're interacting with you in the workshop. The other thing is that the live workshop allows you to connect directly with potential students, answer their questions, address their concerns. This, again, gives you a chance to build that rapport and trust and also learn about your customer, like I mentioned, so you can build a better product. Now, when it comes to the system, consistency is key. If you show up regularly, run your regular webinars, whether it's every week or every two weeks, your audience will too, right? What I found is that when I ran my webinar software company, Webinar Ninja, we're selling off software, and I ran a webinar every single week.

9:04And I found people coming to my webinars over and over. Some of them didn't buy, okay? Some of them attended three webinars, four webinars, five webinars, seven webinars. And on the seventh webinar, they bought. And it just gives them a chance to learn more, to interact with you. Some people need more convincing, or I should say more education than others. Some people are just like, make sense, no brainer, I'm buying. And some other people are like, I'm not sure. I want to compare with other people. Let me learn a little bit more. I'm not ready yet. Some people are a little bit more hesitant and need more exposure to the information.

9:36And by offering a weekly webinar, you can allow them to learn more every week, ask questions, and really just feel comfortable with the purchase. And I really like this because it really lowers the buyer's remorse, meaning that people that buy from me are very confident they made the right choice because they're not pressured and they had plenty of time to make a decision. All right, let's move to sales system number three to sell your online course. And that's called Evergreen Launches. And I think this is a great sales system if you're selling low-cost courses, anything like$200 or less. So how does this work?

10:11This is an automated version of the ongoing sales process, that sales process number two I just talked about. It uses tools like a software called Deadline Funnel to create unique deadlines for each person on your email list. Leads are invited to watch a pre-recorded video or presentation and have a set time to take advantage of a special offer. So they actually have a unique deadline for each person on the email list and that deadline's real and it's expired and they can't get that offer, the page that has the offer actually gets redirected to another page that says, hey, the offer's over. This sounds sophisticated and quite technical to implement, but it's actually quite easy to put into place.

10:48I did it several times in my companies and it works really well to maybe get somebody to buy your entry-level product and get you some sales on autopilot. It's basically like I just mentioned where they get on the email list, you nurture them, and then you invite them to a webinar, but this time they're just going to a prerecorded video. Now, word of warning, some people make a mistake here. They make a huge mistake and they send them to a prerecorded video, but make it look like it's live and say, welcome to the workshop. And, you know, that's just lying, okay? And you're trying to build trust with your audience and that's no good.

11:23You should not do that at all, okay? What you should do is say, thanks for coming to this recorded video. I recorded it so that you can learn more about my products and services. If you have any questions, you can reach out to our support team. Be honest because the whole point of doing this whole thing is to build trust. And if you are blind to them or you try to be something that you're not, you're breaking trust. So why does this work? Well, everything launches don't require you to show up live, right? It makes this a little less demanding on your time. And I think this is a good option if you have multiple products and multiple courses and you kind of want to test this out with a low price product.

11:59It also works because it keeps your course available to new leads at all times. If you want to keep your course available, but you also want some sort of urgency and a reason to buy, this is a good option. The trade-off is though, while Evergreen launches save time, they don't convert as high as live events. And that's just the truth. I've done so many live webinars and workshops. I've done over 500. By far, the live interaction converts much, much better. I would say probably, if not 2x, 3x better than the Evergreen launches. Now, you probably will get a lot of people to go through the evergreen funnel because you're not restricted by a certain period of time or date on the calendar.

12:37But the lack of interaction means you miss out on building real time trust. I only recommend this third one if you have multiple courses, one that's low cost, and you want to focus your live interaction time and your live launches and all that kind of stuff on a more high ticket course. And you want to kind of get people started and get into your paid funnel via these evergreen launches. Evergreen launches are a sell it and forget it type of approach. But remember, automation doesn't replace authenticity and live interaction. So regardless of which system you choose, the goal is the same. Educate your audience and help them make an informed decision.

13:16Just to recap real quick, live launches are high converting but require the most effort. I like them because I like to make a lot of sales and it's worth my effort. Ongoing sales process are steady and consistent and evergreen launches are automated and scalable. Here's what matters most. You want to pick a system that matches your style, your needs, your resources, and your goals. The most important thing is to have a system in place because without one, you're leaving sales up to chance. You're not guiding your leads to a place where they can learn more and buy your product. I hope that helps.

13:51What I learned over the years is that, you know, selling online courses isn't just about creating great content, you know, through the course. It's about having a clear, effective system to get people to see the value of your course, of your product. And remember, sales isn't about being pushy. It's not about trying to cajole somebody into buying something that they don't need. It's about guiding your audience and helping them make the best decision for their needs. Sometimes it's not right for them to buy at this moment. And that's okay. They're not ready yet. They don't have the money. They don't have the time to implement.

14:23They don't have the desire. Maybe down the line they will. And when they are ready, they won't go shopping around. They'll come back to you because you've built that trust with them. Thanks so much for listening to the$100 MBA show. So if you want to go deeper with me, if you want to keep building and growing as an entrepreneur, then you're going to want to sign up for our newsletter. Just go to 100mba.net and sign up for any of our guides or freebies, and you'll get our regular newsletter. Now, this is not any kind of newsletter. It's my way to coach you from afar every single week. What I do is I send you an email with three things, something to think about, something to do, and something to learn.

14:59That way you're building your skills week after week and getting better. Thanks for tuning in. If you want to support the show, this podcast that we've been producing for over 10 years, the best way to support us is to subscribe. Hit that follow button or subscribe on any podcast app you like to use. Or if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. Hit that like button if you like this episode. Thank you in advance for doing that and supporting the show. I'll see you in the next episode.

15:29Thank you.