Welcome to this episode of "The High Profit Event Show," where our host Rudy Rodriguez interviews Stacey Hall, author of "Selling from Your Comfort Zone" and other bestsellers. Stacey is a renowned figure in the marketing and sales industry, specifically for her innovative approaches to event marketing.

In this episode, Stacey shares her three-step marketing strategy designed to boost attendance and participation at events. The strategy begins with a free webinar that addresses a critical pain point that the event aims to solve. This is followed by a five-day challenge that deepens engagement and provides incremental value, prepping attendees for the paid event. This paid event is where the major solutions are offered, and attendees convert into clients. Stacey's approach is crafted to build trust and commitment step-by-step, making it a must listen for those looking to enhance their event marketing strategies.

Stacey dives into her philosophy of "Selling from Your Comfort Zone," which opposes traditional aggressive sales tactics that push individuals beyond their comfort zones. Instead, she promotes a methodology aligned with personal values and strengths, ensuring sustainable and successful selling practices. This philosophy not only resonates with her personal coaching style but has also been shown in her book, which serves as a guide for those looking to refine their sales approach to be more aligned and less intrusive.

Listeners will gain invaluable insights into:

• The mechanics of constructing a webinar that captivates and converts.
• Techniques to increase engagement through challenges that encourage active participation.
• Strategies for converting engaged participants into paying customers, with a focus on creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

This episode is full of information for anyone involved in event planning, marketing, or sales, providing actionable insights and proven strategies to increase both attendance and revenue. Be sure to tune into this episode for a deep dive into making your events more profitable and aligned with your values. Your next event could be just a few strategic steps away from massive success!

Want to connect with Stacey?

Website: https://www.staceyannhall.com/index?

Book: https://www.staceyannhall.com/selling-from-your-comfort-zone-book

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/staceyhall1/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoForYesSuccess

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/successwithstaceyhall/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceyhall1/

If you'd like to be a guest on the High Profit Event Show, click HERE.

Hi, I'm Rudy Rodriguez, and welcome to today's episode. Today, we have a very special guest, the author of Selling from Your Comfort Zone and five best-selling books, Ms. Stacey Hall. Welcome, mam.

It's great to be in your studio, Rudy. Thank you.

Most definitely. I'm really excited to have you on today because I really appreciate your recent experience and expertise in the event space, specifically how you've really mastered the challenge model to get people to pay to attend the next event. Honestly, when I interview guests and I talk to people, that's typically the number one thing. They're like, how do I get more people to buy tickets to my next event. That's the top of mind question. I think you cracked that code. I know our guests are excited to hear how you did that.

I'm ready to share and reveal it all. So it's really a three-step process. So I'm looking forward to sharing that with you.

Awesome. Well, how do we do this? How do we jump right into your three-step process? Because people want to hear the juice and then a little bit on the back end, I'll have some clarifying questions and ask you some, maybe some more questions about your book, as well as Selling from Your Comfort Zone so our audience can learn more about what you're currently doing.

Sounds great. All right, so here's the three steps right away, and then I'll go back and explain each one of them. The first is a free webinar. Want to start with a free webinar, kind of an info session, that's going to be focused on one of the pain points that will be solved at the event. The second step is the five-day challenge, which is expanding on the solutions for that problem but only giving a little bit of information, just enough for them to do something with it in a day. But again, to have more, you come to the event. Then there's the event itself, whatever that is. It can either be another five-day challenge that you're charging for. It can be an in-person event. It can be another webinar, but it's longer and maybe it's more in-depth. So the event can be whatever you want it to be. It's simply something you want people to buy from you. So to sum it, let's say. So those are the three steps. How I identify what the webinar at the front end is going to be, the free webinar, is I'm looking at my audience. I know that they have one major problem that I want to solve, but that major problem will also produce sub-problems. So I'm going to give you an example of that, if I may. So let's say my audience overall wants more leads and sales. However they can get them, that's what they want, leads and sales. Well, if they don't have enough leads and sales, I know some of the sub-problems they have is they're lacking some confidence.

Either they lack confidence at the beginning or they're starting to lack it now because they're not producing. They are struggling financially, most likely. So that's another problem. Another problem could be that they really don't understand who their audience is. You get the idea. I break down what could be all the other sub-problems. From there, I look at, okay, what's the one that I've been hearing the most about from my audience? Whatever that one is, that's what I'm going to do the webinar about. So if the biggest one is that they're losing confidence because they're not making as much money as they want in their business, I'm going to create a free webinar, how to quickly generate income even if you've been struggling up to now. Let's just say that's the free webinar. I'm going to blast it out. It's free. I'm going to anybody that's already on my list. I'm going to spend time prior to the webinar making connections with people who match my audience because I want to build up a fresh audience along with an audience that will do anything that I put out there for free. That free webinar is going to provide, as I shared before, ways that you can quickly start generating income. I'm going to feed into it a few tips related to the other problems that they have. But I'm not going to make that webinar longer than an hour. It's only going to be maybe a half hour to 40 minutes with Q&A at the end.

So I'm dropping tips and I'm making it clear right from the start that this webinar is going to give you a few tips and I'm going to be hosting a five-day challenge because there's no way that I could give you everything in an hour. That's why I'm going to expand on this. You get to know me, and we're going to come back to that phrase, know me. You're going to get to know me over these five days and I'm going to be there so you can answer questions, I can answer your questions. Does that make any sense so far, Rudy?

That's really great. I love how you came right out and said, I got three steps. A free webinar where I dial in on the number one problem that you're hearing from your audience and you bring them in with that. Then from there into a free challenge for five days and then from there into the paid event. I'm tracking very much. I love your formula, how you have that broken out.

Well, it comes from the formula, which it's out there. I didn't invent this, but our audience wants to get to know us. They want to like us and engage with us and they want to have trust in us before we can sell anything. So the free webinar is to get to know me, especially if you have no idea who I am, but we just started to get to know each other. So here's an opportunity to see how I teach, what I talk about. We'll get to engage with each other during the challenge, during the five days of the challenge. The challenge is a challenge, not just a group, because I'm going to draw a video each of the five days with the tips I want you to have. I'm going to give you a challenge to get into action that day. You'll have 24 hours to take action on the challenge and to comment on the video. Ask me a question, tell me what you liked. It doesn't matter to me. You're going to engage with me each of those days. When I put the next video in, the other one comes out. I do that. I know not everybody who has challenges wants to do that. They're like, well, they didn't get a chance to, I know they didn't get a chance. That's what makes it a challenge, not a regular group. So this is showing me who's going to be very likely to get into action, because Rudy, I'm sure, everybody who's listening, we have all had people dominate our time and our attention and never took action.

They ask a thousand questions. They want to know this. They want just one more question. Just one more question. For me, I'm saying I'm reducing that happening by making them have to do something. If they don't do it, I simply say, let me know when you've done the action and I'd be happy to talk with you about that. So this is how the five days go. I acknowledge each day, I acknowledge the people who actually did the action, because we know people love acknowledgement and celebration. That acknowledgement and celebration tends to have people want to do more and continue more on through the week. The prize at the end of the week for people who do every action that's there all five days within the time period that's required, they get a 15 minute private consult with me. They also get the recordings to have. If you didn't do all five days, you can buy the recordings. If you did all five days, you get the recordings as a free bonus for me, along with a 15 minute conversation. That 15 minute conversation is where I find out where they're still struggling. That's when I introduce my event. Now that the challenge is over, if you're still struggling with this, I believe that what I'm going to be sharing in my event, and for me, an event, again, can be a summit. It can be another five day challenge, but it's at a more advanced level.

It could be a group coaching experience over a weekend, let's say, or three days. It can be anything we want to call it an event. That event is going to address all the sub problems that the person has because of the first problem. They know me. They like me. They like doing my activities. They're most likely going to say yes to what I'm offering if I keep the price reasonable. And you said that I've had some significant success. I have my, this process on average has produced a 60% return. So 60% of the people who I originally enrolled in the free webinar, and then did the challenge with me, tend to then pay for whatever's the next thing for them to do.

That's excellent. I can see how your process creates a lot of engagement. It reminds me of a quote from T. Hart Eckard. The quote reads, the more you have people do, the more they like you. Yes. It's counterintuitive. It also, as you put these things up, like you said, you'll see the people that take action and they'll naturally filter out and basically earn your time and qualify, self-qualify for whatever that next step is. So I love how you lay it out and you do it so formulaically.

Well, thank you. That is one of my favorite quotes. It's a little bit, I use this phrase a lot with my clients. We want to be the bouncer of our business. We may be the owner. We also want to be the bouncer. If we make things too easy for people, and I hear this all the time, we offer something for free. Anybody who's got FOMO, fear of missing out, is going to say yes. Those are the very people who are also going to say they're too overwhelmed to either read the ebook or watch the recording that they absolutely had to have. So they're going to come in when we offer the free challenge. What I want to do is sift out the folks who are really there because they're anxiously waiting for solutions and they will do the do. That's usually about 60% of the overall from my experience, if you do it this way. Being the bouncer of our business means you got to show up. Okay, I've got the goods behind me. If you want access to them, you have to show me you're worthy. As you said, that's counterintuitive, but when we make it too easy, we look desperate and nobody wants to do business with somebody who's desperate.

Definitely. No one wants to do business with anyone who's desperate. I'm going to recap a couple of the tactical things I heard you say, because I think it's always helpful to capture that in the five days counts you do, you have a recording that goes out, but it's only available for 24 hours.

Yes.

And there's an action involved. So they either take the action or they don't, but that video goes away after 24 hours and they're on to the next day and so on for five days. At the end of those five days, the people who have taken all of the five days of actions have consumed the material. So they earn, one, the recordings and two, the 15 minute consult with you.

Yes. I can probably hear some people saying, how do you consult them and sell your tickets? Because all I want to hear is what their problem is. That's all they want to tell me. That's the only thing that matters. They're going to tell me how much they appreciated the challenge. I'm going to say, thank you. I'm so glad that you know what I'm really interested in is what are you still struggling with? You learned how to do this. What are you still feeling you would struggle with from here? They're going to tell me that. That's when I say, so many people, because they do, so many people tell me that, which is why I have something to address that. Would you like me to share that with you? No, they're there. They're not going to say, no, I don't want to hear what you're up to. And I say, Rudy, when they say yes, I'm going to say, okay, now I want to know, and I call this Stacy's scale of sales. I want to know on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being, I really want to get this problem solved as quickly as possible and one is, I'm just humoring you. I'm just being nice. Where are you on the scale? People will give an honest number more so than they will if you ask them to describe that it can be all across the board, but they'll give a number. If it's an eight or less, I know they're not ready to take action. If it's an eight or less, I'm going to say, I understand. This is not a priority for you at this time.

When it is, you let me know, and I'll be happy to share with you what else I have. Now that might sound, I mean, this is right along with T Hart. This is like, what? Yeah, that's how I want to, I want people, when they're not a nine or a 10, I want them to go, really, you're not going to say, no, because I'm not in the business to convince anyone. So you're welcome to go, have a nice life. You're still struggling with that, but it's not a priority for you to get it resolved. No issue. Now, sometimes, and I'm going to be honest with you, not a lot, because usually those people really don't want to go any further. But sometimes they'll say to me, what would you have told me if I was a nine or a 10? I will say, are you a nine or a 10? Well, no, not really, I'm just curious. It's like, well, then you don't, doesn't matter what I would say to those people, because those people want to get it handled right now. So when you're ready, you let me know. I just release them. It's with love and kindness, but we don't need to get into where I'm begging them to come into my event. The nines and 10s are really both 10s, because a nine is somebody who usually doesn't want to seem too eager, but they're a 10. With that, I'll say, okay, great, let me show you what I've got and how it's going to address what you just told me. If you feel that this is for you and you can afford it, are you ready to make a decision? Now, I haven't even shown them anything yet.

I'm just gonna say, I'm gonna show you how this is for you. If you're a 10 still, you can afford it, are you ready to take action? Usually a 10 will say, yes, if I can afford it, I will do what I can to get into it. I'll say, good, then go grab your credit card. So you're ready. Then I will show you what I have. They do it, they come back. I'm on Zoom, I take them to the sales page. Of course my benefits are gonna be laid out there. I take them through the benefits and I match them to the issue they told me is the most urgent for them to resolve. Then I say, do you see how this is going to solve that problem for you? Yes, okay, the fee is this. Does that work for you? Considering that you're gonna get this problem resolved. That's how, I'm gonna say, I get a 90% closing rate when they get there, that 60% was of the people who start the challenge. But I've already done my weeding out before I go through the whole sales process.

Excellent, Stacey, thanks for sharing that. To clarify and verify the 60% of people that start the challenge, those are those people that show up on the first day of the challenge actually.

Exactly, exactly.

Are they there on the fifth day?

Yeah.

That's remarkable for a free challenge.

But it's not really free. That's the, it is, but it's not. They know ahead of time exactly what to expect. I have questions that they have to answer when they come into the challenge group. Some people are gonna say, where are you hosting this? I do it on Facebook in a group. Some people love to do the challenge inside their general prospecting group because they think that inspires other people to participate. It gets too unwieldy. Sometimes people will come in for part of it, not. So, if I'm doing a challenge, it's in a special group. I know everybody who's in there who said they wanna get started for the whole five days. Now, I don't remove anybody, but I'm just them keeping track of who actually does participate in the challenge.

What I'm hearing, so the thing that contributes to a 60% completion rate is setting expectations upfront. So it's all the way from the webinar through the whole challenge and letting them know that, yes, they're not paying money to participate in the free challenge, but there's expectations around effort and assignments and station. So they're paying for it with sweat equity per se. As a result, because you're asking so much, you're having so many people actually get to the finish line. I, with other people I've interviewed and spoken with, I wouldn't do this much engagement with their boundaries. I hear numbers lower, close to like 20%. So I love that you're at 60%. I think that's a huge point for our audience to tune into how the difference that these little things make that you're saying, it's a difference between 20% of people finishing a challenge and 60%. Then of the 60% that are finishing a challenge with a 15 minute consult, I mean, talking about their problem, giving them a one to 10 check, if they're a nine or a 10, telling them to grab their credit card, you're gonna show them the solution. I love the line you said, if you feel this is for you and you can afford it, are you ready to take action? Then having them say, okay, so you're ready, grab your credit card. I'm gonna show you, I'll show you what I have. It sounds like 90% of those at that point are.

They are, I'm not sure, I'm not going, and that's the other key. I'm not going from a free challenge to something that they have to pluck down $2,500 for. If I was doing that, I would take them into an advanced challenge and charge more. I've coached clients to do this. Like they'll say to me, well, I have a group coaching program and it's $5,000 to get into it. Okay, well, you're not gonna bring somebody who comes in for free to a $5,000 program unless they've been with you already in other things. So why don't we take them from the free challenge into maybe a $197 five-day challenge, which is a portion of your group coaching program, modules, course module, and you let them know. Then even there from $197 to $5,000, but at least they've had 10 days with you. If they're still showing up and you have a payment plan, you might be able to get them into that program at $5,000. The higher the touch, the higher the price you can charge.

So, ads aren't necessarily gonna get you a lot of people, but I can hear other people watching us and going, hey, I don't have time to talk to that many people, I wanna run the ads. Well, run the ads. I'm gonna be running ads very soon now too and testing that out against this model. Because sure, you reach more people, 20% of more people is going to pay off well. But I just wanted this to be a very high touch because I want a long life with my clients. They start here, we go to this and we go to this, and then they stay with me every month and we keep working together. So I'm looking at the long-term of each person I get the privilege to work with.

That's excellent. You made a point that I think is important to emphasize here is, trying to take someone from zero to a hundred or from free to 5,000 or 10,000 or higher, which I do see people attempting at times. Yes, you might be able to get a client or two, but it's probably too much too soon for most people. That's why I agree that a free challenge, a good section point is somewhere between say 50 bucks and 300 bucks, so maybe a thousand bucks if you really got it dialed in, and you've been doing it for a while and you really have maybe some support on the backend. But on a one to many model, I would say from a free to something, say under a thousand, but then when you are able to get them to that next paid event and you're able to deliver much more value, let's say in a two or three day event and then you can introduce a $10,000 or higher type program. That's the model that I see that works well, free challenge into a paid ticket to the next paid event, adding significantly more value, more immersive experience, and then ascending into the high ticket program.

Absolutely, and that's what I do.

Yeah.

If we remember that no like and trust factor and that trust has to be there, people will fork over a dollar for something. So you could even charge a dollar for the challenge. Some people do that. It's like, it's a dollar and it's just to prove that you're committed. The way I look at it is if I'm gonna take a dollar, I might as well just do it for free. I wanna see the action more so than that dollar. But the amount of trust has to go up for every, I'm gonna say for every $50 that is being asked.

Most definitely. Thank you for sharing that. We only have a few more minutes left in our interview. By the way, this has been gold, even dropping very actual, clear, specific golden nuggets. I'm gonna go back and listen to this recording. Myself, I've taken a page full of notes. So this has been a great interview. I do wanna point out that you are the author of your recently released book, Selling From Your Comfort Zone, The Power Of Alignment Marketing. Would you mind taking a minute or so to share a little bit about this book and how our audience can pick up your book or how they can learn more about you and what you do?

It'd be a real honor. So I have, I'm on a mission. Let me put it that way. My passion is to get people back into their comfort zone, especially in the area of selling, also in all of life. And why, especially in selling, is because the sales trainers that have been around since my father was in sales and I was a little girl, when he listened to the tapes as he dropped me off at school or when I came home and he was making dinner. I mean, come on, folks. We know that getting people out of their comfort zone produces anxiety, upset, worry, procrastination. None of which is really conducive to somebody getting out and wanting to build relationships with other people. It causes them to be very much in their own head. So it is not true that we have to get out of our comfort zone. Our comfort zone is actually where our power is, where our values are, where we feel strong and confident. We wanna stay there and expand out like a rubber band a bit from there. There's plenty of room in every direction. In my book, I talk about how to do that and how to create alignment with your audience by helping them stay in their comfort zone. As a result, we produce more sales, more satisfaction and success. I give a step-by-step process on how to make that happen.

Very cool. Where can our audience go to learn more about your book or what you do?

Well, I'm giving a shout out to Barrett Kohler Publishers, one of the top publishers in the world. It's on Kindle, Audible, and in paperback everywhere. Books are sold throughout the world in every country.

Okay, wonderful. Is there a website or anything we can give our audience for the show notes?

Sure, my website is StaceyAnnHall.com, S -t -a -c -e -y -a -N -N -H -a -L -L .com, StacyAnnHall.com. and on my website, you'll find information about the book, endorsements, snippets, and you'll also find some courses for me that I'm offering for free. So you can learn how to put the book into action. It's called Eight Steps To A Sale, and go for yes.

Outstanding. Thank you so much, Stacy. This has been an excellent interview, and I really appreciate you being on and sharing this value with our audience. So thank you again. I appreciate you and look forward to seeing this episode go live and getting the feedback from our group. I think this is going to be a popular one.

Hi, I'm looking forward to it. Rudy, it's been an honor to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Definitely.