In this first episode of our latest mini series "How to Get High-Paying Clients at Your Next Live Event" on The High Profit Event Show, host Rudy Rodriguez delivers a deep dive into the psychology behind high-converting offers and the communication strategies event leaders can use to increase enrollments, sales, and impact. Drawing from years of experience in events and sales psychology, Rudy breaks down why understanding human behavior is one of the most valuable skills an entrepreneur and event leader can develop. He explores how influence affects buying decisions and how ethical selling can be used to create genuine transformation while staying rooted in service and integrity.

Throughout the episode, Rudy unpacks several key principles from Dr. Robert Cialdini’s work on influence, including reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. He explains how these psychological triggers show up in everyday life and how event leaders can apply them ethically to create stronger connections with their audiences, increase trust, and improve conversions. Rudy also emphasizes the importance of identity and how assisting attendees see themselves as event leaders can dramatically shift their willingness to take action and step into bigger opportunities.

A major focus of the episode centers around why offers fail and what separates weak offers from strong ones. Rudy explains that people buy when the perceived value outweighs the perceived price, risk, or uncertainty. He shares common mistakes event leaders make, including trying to appeal to everyone, lacking differentiation, creating confusing messaging, and failing to clearly communicate outcomes. He also dives into the importance of urgency, bonuses, speed of results, and risk reversal when crafting compelling offers for events, coaching programs, and mentorships.

One of the most impactful sections of the episode focuses on the difference between abstract and concrete messaging. Rudy walks listeners through real-world examples of weak versus strong offers and demonstrates how specificity creates clarity, trust, and higher conversions. By clearly communicating who you help, what result you create, and how quickly transformation can happen, event leaders can dramatically improve enrollment and sales performance. The episode concludes with a practical framework and worksheet exercise designed to help listeners refine their messaging, strengthen their positioning, and create more results-oriented offers for their businesses and events.

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Let's talk about some offers. All right. Offers that convert. So when it comes to offers that convert, the first and foremost thing I wanna do is give you guys a framework of influence. Because at the end of the day, what you're wanting to do is you want to exchange and exchange your service, your product for something else, and you want.

Or for cash specifically, or maybe barter another service, but you're wanting to influence another human being to change their behavior. It's not necessarily easy, so the study of influence and really understanding human psychology and behavior, in my opinion, is probably one of the most valuable or the most important, uh, skills or studies or things that you can potentially develop.

What I'm gonna share with you here is an endless amount of resources on this subject, but this is the one I like to reference. It's Dr. Robert Cialdini's book, Influence, and the Six Weapons of Influence. A little context here on his book I like where he came from when he wrote this book. He actually was writing it as an advocate for consumers.

He wrote the book because he wanted to improve awareness to the marketplace of what basically Madison Avenue marketing corporations in New York were using to influence the everyday person. And the reality is that, yeah, he did this massive study of influence, very data-driven study, highly recommend the book.

But the book ended up being used by marketers and sales professionals to continue to influence the masses. Now, these are things that are, how do they say, they're tools. He calls them weapons. I'm just citing exactly what he says in his book. He calls them weapons. I refer to them as tools. Maybe he calls them weapons because he thought that people were using them as weapons, or he thought he-- like, these evil corporations were using them as weapons against people.

I don't necessarily have that framework. I think they're tools. Just like a hammer, just like a gun, the tool in itself is not good or bad. It's not right or wrong. It's not evil. It's a tool. Like fire. If you use fire, you can make food, warm up your food, cook your food, do a lot of good things with fire, and you can also burn a house down with fire.

With a gun, you can protect and you can harm. Same thing. So my encouragement to you, of course, I know this is speaking to the choir, is use these in the framework of service. Don't use this in any unethical manner. So first and foremost, of the six weapons of influence, I'll call them tools of influence going forward, one is the law of reciprocity.

There's actually a case study in this book that he gives of this religious group, and I don't remember the name, and I don't remember the location, but I'm sure you've come across something similar and a similar experience to this where they... Everything they did was based on donations. Not just donations, but going out in public and asking people to give them money.

They were kinda gypsy-like, but they were, like, an organized religion. And they weren't doing that great. Their sales were down, and their donations were down. And someone in that community got the idea that they're gonna go pick a bunch of flowers, and they're gonna walk up to people, and they're going to hand them a flower And then in exchange, and then they're gonna step back and they're like, put their hand out and say, "Will you donate something to me?"

Who's had an experience where you're walking around and someone just gave you something, and then they ask you for something in return? And guess what? The likelihood that you give them something increased dramatically. Why? Because they were eliciting the law of reciprocity. So simply put, uh, it's an internal feeling that when somebody gives me something, I feel like I owe them something in return, whether that's financial, uh, karmic, or otherwise.

Okay, I think we can all relate to this notion, but something to keep in mind is it's always-- this is like a law, almost like a law of physics, but it's a law of human behavior. It's always at play, and the more you give, the more people feel compelled to wanna give back to you. All right. Uh, two is commitment.

It's actually commitment and consistency. There's a lot more to this one than meets the eye. Uh, so this is the notion of small commitments lead to bigger commitments. That's why people say, "Hey, say yes to this, say yes to this, say yes to this," eventually saying yes to the big thing or the next thing. So small commitments lead to big commitments, and there's a thing that also compels us as a human beings in our minds that when we start something, we want to finish it.

I know some of us don't, but like, "Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm a-- I'm not a quick st-- or I'm a quick start, and I don't finish things, uh, based on my personality," this sort of thing. Yeah, people are at different levels on that spectrum of, "Oh, I start something, I gotta get it done." The reality is that it's part of our human behavior that if we start something, if you see like a little progress bar on the top of your screen, I, I'm sure the marketing agencies use that all the time.

It says like, "Hey, I'm ten percent done." There's a part of your brain that feels psychologically compelled to, to get that to a hundred percent. If I start something, I feel compelled to finish it. I gotta close that loop. It's human behavior. The other thing, and it's, it's under the same chapter in the book, but it's called Commitment and Consistency.

And you'll see here in the text, it actually say, "The drive to stay consistent with your past actions and identity." I would make the argument that staying consistent with your identity is probably the strongest force that drives every human being

Making a shift at the level of identity is the most powerful thing that you can do for yourself or you can do for another human being, uh, hopefully in a, in a way that's more supportive of what your goals and objectives are. I'm not necessarily saying there's good or bad identity here, but at the end of the day, it's, it's we go back to, we refer to what is our thermometer based off of our identity.

Who am I? Who do I believe my-myself to be in the world? And that also happens with your clients. When you're speaking to your clients, uh, having an understanding of their identity, who, who they believe themselves to be and who they desire themselves to be, and supporting them in making that, that level of identity.

I know there's a whole world of how to go about doing that. I'm not gonna do that in this workshop , but that is the most powerful thing that you can do for yourself, you can do for another human. In fact, when you go to a lot of these personal development workshops, and that's basically what they're doing.

Everything they're doing is leading to this notion of, I am a different human being. So that's why I'm seating with you guys to identify as being an event leader, because the more you identify with being an event leader, guess what? The more likely you are to do an event, the more likely you are to put yourself out there, the more likely you are to take that risk, the more likely you are to put this date on your calendar.

Once you own that identity, those things occur as natural next steps. All right, social proof. Who has walked past a restaurant or a bar or some establishment, and you saw a line outside, and you just had the thought, "Man, that must be a good spot"? It's an automatic response. It's a human thing. We're like, "Oh, somebody else has already done the work to figure out whether or not this is safe or this is good, and enough of them have figured it out, so I don't have to think about this, and I'm just going to go ahead and say it's good, or I should get in that line too."

It's pretty bizarre if you think about it. I know I've randomly gotten in lines without having no clue what line I was getting in because it was a long line, and I thought it must be good . So I reside in Puerto Rico, and there's this restaurant that's right across the street from me, and the owners are geniuses.

However, whatever they do, however they do it, they have a line that goes out the door. And I just see that line getting longer and longer and longer. It's not even like a fancy restaurant or anything. It's just like Puerto Rican food. But they engineer intentionally or unintentionally so that people are standing in line outside.

And I just sit there literally from the balcony and just watch people getting in that line, and it turns into this massive queue for some basic Puerto Rican food. It's crazy . So yeah, we have a tendency to want to do what other people are doing. Uh, well, how does this apply to you and your programs?

Obviously, when people are considering working with you, the more validation or proof they have of other people that they identify with, they can relate to, the better. All right, let's go to the next one, liking. So people like people who are like them or like the way they want to be I know it's like a tongue twister.

People like people who like them or like the way they like to be. Say that 10 times fast. So we have a tendency to want to like others that like us. And there was a case study in this book of influence, specifically where he interviewed or got the information. I don't know if he did the interview directly, but he referenced a study or interview of a gentleman who had the Guinness Book of World Records for having sold the most number of cars.

I don't remember if it was used cars or a combination of new and used cars, but he held a record. It was however many thousands of cars and made millions of dollars selling cars, and he didn't own the car dealership. He sold cars. He sold the most cars of anybody else in the world. And then when he was asked, how did he go about doing it, he said, "I have a system."

He said, "I have a system where, one, figure out what I like about someone when they come in, when I'm interacting with them, when they're coming in to look for a car. I take note of what I like about them." And what he would do is he would systematically send them a note in the mail. I don't know how often it was, but it was a systematic method, and he would literally put a note in the mail saying, "I like you," or "This is what I like about you."

He would try to give a specific compliment or comment. Very simple. He just focused on figuring out what he likes about people and letting them know what they like about them, and guess what would happen. Well, one, if he gave a compliment, it lists the law of reciprocity, which is in here, and then they would return it, and they would like him, too, whether they expressed it or not, but they definitely-- Well, verbally, but they definitely would express it 'cause they'd come back to him, and guess what?

They'd buy a car. And as simple as that sounds, eliciting the law, the law of likability and reciprocity in that way made him millions, probably tens of millions of dollars. So the invitation here is constantly ask yourself, "What do I like or at least appreciate or at least respect about another human being, and how might I communicate that in an ethical way that's not like trying to flatter somebody and that will improve your influence?"

Authority. It's another mental shortcut that we have. We have a tendency to just obey because somebody has a title, because somebody wears a uniform, and it's bizarre. In fact, there was a study that was in this book where I think it was done in California somewhere. They do all these crazy studies in California.

But they basically brought people in from the street. They say they paid them to do a study, and what they did is they had them go into this room behind one of those mirrored- Walls like they show in prison systems where you can see the prisoner on the other side, but they can't see you. Do you guys know what I'm referring to?

Can you get the idea? All right. So they're standing behind this mirrored wall, and they have a guy there who's running the experiment, and on the other side of the mirror, they have the person that's being experimented on. The truth is that was an actor , but the person that's-- they were experimenting on was on the other side, and he was connected to, like, these strobes, kinda these wires.

And the person that was doing the experiment would ask the person a question, and effectively, based on the person's response, he would then prompt the actual person who was being tested to push a button to shock that person. So, "Oh, they didn't answer correctly. Push the button. Shock that person.

Electrocute that person. Push the button." And you better believe it, people pushed that button. So people pushed the button at first because they started... The shock wasn't that strong, so they just started, like, a real mild, like, a little buzz or whatever, and almost everybody pushes the button at first. But then the experimenter would slowly increase the voltage.

It was an actor, so it wasn't actually shocking him. But he would increase the voltage, and then the person would push the button. At some point, people were like, "Oh, whoa, what's going on here? Like, I feel like I'm hurting this person. Uh, I don't wanna push this button. I'm done with this experiment." At some point, there is a threshold there.

So at some point, people gave feedback and would stop. They're like, "No, I don't wanna kill this person. I'm not here to execute someone." But here's the interesting thing about this experiment. What do you think the variable was that they tested here? They had a split test. They changed one thing. So here was the test.

Lab coat is the difference. Yes. So the person that was directing the experiment in one test wore a lab coat to make himself look like a physician. He had a badge and all of this stuff, looked like a professional doctor. And in the other experiment, he did not wear a lab coat, did not wear, like, the official uniform per se.

That was the difference. And what they found is when the person who was directing the experiment wore a lab coat, the people that were pushing the button, their compliance went up dramatically. Like, dramatically. They stuck around much longer, and they electrocuted the person at a much higher rate for a much longer duration.

I mean, how bizarre is that? Think about that for a second. That is, like, how we're wired. Just let that sit. It's an automatic response. So know that this is always happening, whether it's you doing it to you or somebody's doing it, or you're expressing that with someone else. And ultimately, scarcity. This is my favorite funny and cheap way of saying this.

There's nothing more motivating to another human being than a rapidly diminishing supply of something that they want. And the example I'm gonna give here, if you can relate to this or you remember this, toilet paper Yes, I just said toilet paper and you guys remember exactly what I'm talking about. 2020, toilet paper was all of a sudden the thing.

Couldn't find toilet paper on the shelves. People were freaking out. I mean, obviously that applies to food and all sorts of other things, but they couldn't keep toilet paper on the shelf due to COVID and that sort of thing. So people want things that are rapidly diminishing limited supply. It's like this basic notion.

So these are the six weapons of w- influencer tools of influencer selling. There's... I wanna make sure you guys have that in your back pocket. So why do offers fail? I'm gonna bottom line this for you guys. So offers fail at the end of the day because people have a perception that the value that they're getting is not worth the price that they're paying.

And what is value? And man, that's like an esoteric... We can sit here and talk about what is value. You should ask yourself what is value constantly, and what is valuable to the person that I'm interacting with, the people I'm interacting with. In fact, one of my mentors just said, "Put that question on a Post-it note and put it on your screen, what is value?"

And so I'm gonna give a simple definition here. Value is equal to benefit. And I would say perceived benefit or divided by price, because benefits vary depending on who's looking at the situation. So value is equal to benefit divided by price. At the end of the day, if I can super bottom line this for you, your offer must be perceived as more valuable, as valuable, which means the perceived benefit must greatly outweigh the perceived price.

And that price could be in the form of money, could be in the form of time, could be in the form of risk. There's several things inside of that. Now I'm gonna give you a couple quick specific instances, and do me a favor. I'm not gonna go deep into these, but I'm gonna say where this might show up, and raise your hand if you've honestly can relate to any of these seven points that I've shared.

Raise your hand if you've ever found yourself in a situation where you're just trying to sell to everyone. You have a thing, and you're just trying to sell to everyone that thing. It's not specific or focused or niched. That definitely impacts the perception of value. One, you're not addressing the pain point that people are dealing with.

If you ever find yourself relating to, "Hey, I think my thing is hot," but they're not hungry. Maybe I'm selling steaks, but they're vegetarian, kind of the notion. So lack of differentiation, not being able to be like, "Hey, how am I different than the next coach, the next person, the next program?" So that's another issue.

Show of hands. Raise your hand if you've ever struggled to feel out how you can differentiate yourself from someone else. Lack of speed. So at the end of the day, that people want that benefit as rapidly as possible and as low cost as possible. Unfortunately, if the perceived value is like, "Hey, I'm going to help you get your outcome, but it's only gonna take ten years," people are like, "No, thank you.

I'm gonna go find that pill," that magic pill, which probably doesn't exist, but unfortunately, that's how humans think. That's why these weight loss drugs that are super hot right now, we don't know how they're actually gonna impact people long term, but the reality is that right now people are consuming them like crazy because they're getting the benefit right away.

They're losing weight right away. And then uncertainty. What is the probability that I'm gonna get the result or the outcome? If people don't perceive that they have a high level of certainty that they're gonna get that result or outcome with you, uh, or with your service or offer, then that's a factor that influences them and ultimately risk reversal.

People want to perceive that there is no risk or minimal risk to taking you up on your offer.

At the bottom line, if your offer is confusing, people will delay buying. We wanna keep things simple. We wanna speak in the language of clients and the language of results and pain points. If people feel that you understand their problem as well or better than they do, they will trust you. There's another kind of weird statement to hear.

I'm gonna say that one more time. If you can describe someone's problem to them as well, if not better than they do, they trust you. And them trusting you is the most important factor in them becoming your client and giving you cash. All right. I'm gonna give you a big picture flow of how to create the components, and then you're actually gonna have an exercise.

I'm gonna give you a PDF, a framework to clarify your offer, and you're gonna have the opportunity to really dial that in or enhance the offer that you already have. So first and foremost, it's the problem. We talked about this over and over again. Understanding what the problem is that you're helping solve and making sure that you can describe it as well, if not better than the people that you're solving it for.

One of the ways I like to go about doing that is market research, which involves... I can read online, do all sorts of reading. AI is a great way to do, like, general market research, and I personally believe there's nothing that beats actually talking to people and asking them, "Hey, what is the challenge?

What is the problem that you're dealing with?" And having some intel. This is my notes right from the five interviews that I did specifically, so I knew that this is the first thing I need to focus on, is making sure that I'm being relevant to what people are sharing. Uh, of course, your offer needs to be a solution to that problem.

That's kind of a duh. And then you go about enhancing your offer with bonuses, adding value that differentiates you from other people and ultimately, ideally, there's a bonus that people be like, "Well, that bonus alone is worth me paying the price of admission." And risk and urgency. We talked about that in the influence area.

People will put off making a decision as long as they possibly can until they have enough reasons to make the decision right now. Everything only exists in the right now. We will put off making decisions, I know I do, uh, until I absolutely have to. For the most part, I prioritize based on what's the deadline, what's the urgency, what's the risk if I don't?

And just have to take into account people put off until you give them enough logical reasons, so you gotta be able to be logical with them, but as well as emotional. What are the emotional reasons to help them move forward? So these are big picture components of an offer. If you're missing any of these parts, bonuses, you maybe can go without a bonus, but it really helps, especially if you wanna get people moving forward.

It's like, wow, the bonus alone is worth it. It's great. So let's talk about weak versus strong offer. I'm gonna give you a few examples, and then I'm gonna give you the opportunity to clarify your offer. This is one of my favorite modules to cover. I'm gonna cover it at a very high level. Come on, guys. Come with me to the whiteboard.

It's gonna be fun. Come on. I keep whiteboards and journals and books. You can tell what I value by that. I was literally going through my parents' garage the other day, figuring out what I need to throw away, and I just can't bring myself to throwing away books and journals and whiteboards. There's this idea of your offer, and this, by the way, this right here is kind of like a meta thing I'm gonna teach you.

It not only applies to your offer, but applies to everything that you do within your business and within your life. But it's this notion of abstract versus concrete and also tangible versus intangible. So I'm gonna give you a quadrant here. We're gonna call this I for IT, for intangible, not information technology And T for tangible.

And I'm gonna say A for abstract and C for concrete. Okay, so I'll make the argument that any time that we're communicating, we're describing a person, place, or thing, or a situation. We're gonna be describing things in one of these four categories. Obviously, there's kind of the intersection of these.

Let's call it one, two, three, four. Let me give an example. I'm gonna say a word. Let me know which quadrant you think it is. Again, remember, this would be abstract and tangible, would be over here. This would be concrete, and then this would be intangible over here. So I'm just gonna say a word. I'm gonna say the word food

Yes. So four. Okay. Quadrant four, food. Yes. So it's tangible, concrete. Hold on. I used the wrong word. Here, let me clarify. I just realized that. Specific. So abstract and specific here. So I'm gonna keep going with this. So the word food. I'm gonna go a little bit further. I'm gonna say fruit. Does fruit become more specific and tangible for you?

You, you see that? Fruit becomes more specific and tangible. Okay, I'm gonna go further. I'm gonna say strawberries. Do you have a more specific and tangible image in your mind? You see that? Now I'm gonna go super specific. Chocolate-covered strawberry from Whole Foods.

Do any of you want a chocolate-covered strawberry right now? Yeah, you see all of a sudden where it goes from yes, food is kind of still an abstract concept because food for me may not be food for, food for another species. It's a bit of an idea. It's like what feeds us. We have interpretations of what that means, but you can see how we go down the line.

We can get that all the way down to a chocolate-covered strawberry from Whole Foods. We get a lot more specific and tangible. So I'm just putting that as an example here, and we're going to continue. So in a moment, I'm going to give you these examples of strong versus weak. And I invite you to think about that frame when you start to write out your offer.

Okay, weak versus strong. The more concrete, the more specific, more tangible, the higher it's going to convert, and the more you're talking about the results that people want. So weak, I help people transform their health. That's kind of a little bit abstract. Would you agree? Like, what does that mean? Does that mean lose weight?

Does that mean recover from terminal illness? Does that mean put on muscle? Like, what does that mean? That's cool. You know what it means, but do they know what it means? What would be better? Hey, I help you lose weight and feel better. Who would r-rather lose weight and feel better than transform their health?

Let's go much better. I help women age forty or older, forty plus, lose fifteen pounds in ninety days without restricted dieting or spending hours in the gym.

Obviously you'd have to probably be a woman to identify with that. But do you see how that one is much stronger and it's very results and tangible oriented? Okay. I'm gonna give a couple more examples just so that it comes home for everybody, not just the women in the room. All right. So I help you scale your business.

Eh. I help you create more freedom and clarity in your business. Hey, a little bit better. I dig freedom. I dig clarity. Funny enough, I think men tend to like the word freedom more than women, and I think women tend to go towards clarity more than men. So that actually hits both genders. But strong would be, "Hey, I help you generate 10 to 20 qualified sales conversations per month from your event without having to rely on paid ads

You see that? You see how that's a specific result and also an avoidance of a frustration or pain? It's like, "Oh my God, I gotta pay for ads and learn how to do all that stuff." Let's get into another example. I have three examples for you. I hope you run better events and I hope you get more engagements for your events.

Okay, maybe at your events. I hope you turn your next event into maybe 30 qualified applications and three to five new high-paying clients. Who would like three to five new high-paying clients? Ten, pay you ten thousand or more dollars. Who would like that? Okay. And see how that gets more specific there.

All right. Now it's your turn. I'm gonna put a PDF and you're just gonna follow the prompts. It's just gonna ask you a series of questions to clarify your offer and how to frame it in a way that's like specific, tangible, and relevant to your particular audience. It's called the Offer Clarity Worksheet.

And let me get you read it out loud to you so we can frame it so you guys know what's gonna be on it in case somebody can't click on it. So you're gonna ask yourself, where is your current offer? Is it in the scale of like abstract versus specific and tangible? Kinda gauge yourself. Just kinda write out very specific.

Just like, "Hey, this is who I help, this is how I help them." And just kinda make that sentence just like you saw in the example. And then how might you make it more concrete? How might you make it more specific, more results-oriented? And then also encourage you to add a timeframe. Like, "Hey, I help them in 30 days, 90 days," whatever that might be or less.

And then just some prompting questions in there to help you clarify it and perhaps make it a little bit stronger. And then the seventh step is just test your offer. "Hey, can I clarify that even more?" And then just give yourself a rating of one to 10. So all of that will be in the worksheet, and then I just encourage you to write this in your journal.