Joel Erway, high-ticket course expert and founder of The Webinar Agency, invented a marketing concept called the Power Offer. (Read more about the Power Offer and selling high-ticket courses in his excellent book, the aptly-named High-Ticket Courses.)
In short, the Power Offer involves calling out your avatar, offering a big benefit, and asking the prospect if they’d be interested. More to it than that, but for our sake, those are the bare bones.
The Power Offer framework is quite flexible. I’ve used it to write all sorts of copy, from VSLs to emails.
On the latter point, the email I’m breaking down today incorporates the Power Offer framework and some extra copy to create what I will coin the Naked Sales Pitch…
And I think it’s perfect for high-ticket, limited-seat coaching programs.
Keep reading to see why…
About Peaceful Profits
Peaceful Profits is a company that helps other businesses (mostly online businesses) streamline their marketing and scale while creating predictable revenue streams (paraphrased from their homepage, by the way).
It was founded by Mike Shreeve, a career and business coach.
According to Authority Magazine on Medium.com, Mr. Shreeve also:
- Serves on the boards of three nonprofits
- Owns another online company
- Self-publishes fiction under several pen names
On that last bullet: Part of Mr. Shreeve’s personal brand is based on his belief that you can grow an entire business or brand by writing a book. No need to get fancy — lots of free/inexpensive DIY channels out there.
I bought some material from his company on how to write and publish a book quickly. It’s not necessarily designed to help you write the next American novel. It’s more for getting a lead-magnet-style business book out there. Something you might offer:
- For free through your website, and;
- As a low-price physical copy
That’s for another project I’m working on. Non-fiction, mind you.
This resulted in me getting on Peaceful Profits’s email list. Which brings me to the email…
The Email: The “Naked Sales Pitch”
I call this the “Naked Sales Pitch” because, well, it’s a sales pitch that isn’t dressed up in storytelling or “how-to” type of content:
Nothing wrong with storytelling or information, but you don’t always need to use it…
Especially if you’re launching an offer with scarcity and a narrow target audience.
The “Naked Sales Pitch” lets your customer “self-qualify” by telling them the offer, how it works, and who it’s for.
In this case, the offer is a high-ticket business coaching program with limited seating.
However, the pitch is for a free call to see if you’re a good fit. No monetary risk reduces the need to dress up the pitch even further.
Let’s get into each piece of this Naked Sales Pitch:
The Subject Line and Preview Text:
Here’s the Power Offer with a few tweaks:
Subject lines can only be so long. Furthermore, the subscriber is already the avatar based on what traffic source brought them to the list.
So there’s no need to call out the avatar here. The avatar is already reading this stuff. Focusing on the benefit is better.
Notice, however, the big benefit is there. $100k/month is a nice round number…
And getting there in 12 months sounds like a realistic “stretch” goal for the avatar.
This target customer is immune to the “get huge money in 1 week” claims (which are BS anyways). 12 months doesn’t offer that quick gratification, but it’s not that long of a timeframe to hit such a huge milestone. Perfect balance of excitement and realism.
The Body Copy
The subject line only needs the juiciest parts of the power offer. The body copy offers more room to flesh things out into the Naked Sales Pitch.
That’s why Peaceful Profits adds the avatar here:
“But Bradley. $100k is reasonable for an agency, but are solopreneurs really able to make that much?”
Yes. That’s $1.2 million a year. I’ll admit it’s definitely a stretch, but not all of it has to come from client work.
I know copywriters that, based on what they’ve alluded to, may clear as much as $25k/month (or more) in client revenue alone.
Add products, affiliate sales, joint ventures, and other stuff… $100k/month might be a stretch, but not impossible.
Furthermore, it’s 12 months. The solopreneur should have the funds, leverage, and time to commit to 12 months of this.
Enough rambling. The next part is interesting:
Why did Peaceful Profits repeat themselves, you ask?
Perhaps for the skimmers.
Or, honestly, it could be a mistake. I don’t know. Could be some other advanced marketing tactic. It didn’t stop me from reading the whole email. (Lesson in there.)
One thing I would do differently is to adjust the 2nd line in the unbolded copy (the stuff discussing the benefit) also to include a “without dealing with *insert primary problem/objection here*”. I think it would make an even smoother transition into the bolded stuff and ease a customer objection.
Now, we build on the Power Offer to create the rest of the Naked Sales Pitch:
Now that the customer is “Product Aware,” they need to know how it works. They want to make sure there’s a clear process to follow.
Peaceful Profits lays out precisely what steps you go through (in list format, excellent) in the program to achieve the desired result. Transparency without giving away the paid stuff.
This builds trust, eases customer doubts about how results are achieved, and screens out anyone who doesn’t think this method will work.
That last part is good, by the way. Accepting people into a high-ticket program that isn’t highly suited to them can lead to refunds. You want to help people that you’re confident you can help. That’s called qualifying your prospects.
Speaking of, Peaceful Profits does more prospect qualification rather explicitly:
Qualifying your prospect once again turns away people who don’t meet exactly the type of customer profile you need.
At the same time, it gets your ideal customer nodding their head with every bullet point.
“Yes, I help others with my expertise. Yes, I have a $3k offer. Yes, I want to stop handling offer/service fulfillment. Yes, I have $500/month to invest. Yes, I want to hit $100k.”
I don’t know if this is one of those NLP psychological tactics or whatever, but either way, the prospect is almost selling themselves. They’re getting excited to join because this copy seems to be reading their mind.
So it’s time to call the reader to action:
Peaceful Profits reiterates the benefit and urges action with a bit of scarcity (“reserve your spot”).
This is outside the realm of email copy, but notice how the reader is told to schedule a (presumably free) call.
The free call is yet another method to:
- Further qualify prospects, so you only end up with customers that are the very best fits for the offer
- Sell them throughout the call as you get to know them and their needs more… amping them up to hand you their money
One last bit after the CTA:
Add some basic urgency to seal the deal. Nothing high-level here. Can’t really hurt conversions.
Takeaways
One big takeaway:
If you’re opening enrollment into a high-ticket, limited-seating coaching program…
And you maintain an engaged list of loyal subscribers…
You can start the whole email sequence with a Naked Sales Pitch.
Give the reader the Power Offer (call them out, promise a big benefit, ask them if they’re interested)…
Explain how the program works…
Qualify your prospects so you screen out all but the best…
And get them on a free call/sales page/order form (depending on your pricing, probably).
After that, you can simply send belief-shifting, objection-busting, FAQ-style, or testimonial emails to nab the skeptics.
It seems so simple, I know. But ultimately, you aim to help your subscribers. All you’re doing here is offering to help them and being transparent about who you can help.
What to Do Next
- Get on my email list using the signup form below.
- Reach out to me if you want help writing emails like this one.
- Check out Peaceful Profits if you want help growing and scaling your business!