How to Create a Sales Funnel to Sell Online Courses with Chris Benetti

Learn how to create a sales funnel to sell online courses with Chris Benetti in this episode of the LMScast podcast hoasted by Chris Badgett of LifterLMS. Chris has a membership software called MembersPRO and also a funnel building software called Quick Convert. Chris Benetti shares his story and what he’s learned through his years working with developing his products in the marketplace for how course creators can create effective digital funnels.

He discovered the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, 4-Hour Workweek, and that opens up your universe when you read those type of books covering non-traditional wealth strategies for the first time. As Chris qualified to become a tradesman, during that year, he ended up just reading books at work similar to how many online entrepreneurs face the daily life friction and end up building the motivation to break out.

Chris found an internship at a local digital marketing agency, and that’s what introduced him to the ClickFunnels space with Russel Brunson as a prominent member of that community. He ended up building his own agency around large ClickFunnels projects and went into a partnership for his company MembersPRO.

Chris shares some great strategies for working on the top of the funnel which is something many course creators need help with. A top strategy is usually getting into Facebook groups and communities where people are asking questions and provide value to their group. Providing consistent and awesome value is a tremendous way to build that top of funnel, which you can then work on closing by helping those users solve their problems and fulfill the emotional need to make their lives easier.

To learn more about Chris Benetti and the awesome projects he has going on, be sure to head to MembersPRO.com and QuickConvert.io. Chris leaves us with a great quote from Henry Ford of “Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.”. As an entrepreneur, if you think you’re not good enough to do something, then you are probably ultimately right. You put the limitations on yourself. If you go into the world every day with optimism and a good attitude, then ultimately you are going to create that scenario for yourself.And at LifterLMS.com you can learn more about new developments and how you can use LifterLMS to build online courses and membership sites. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us!

Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett:
You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Chris Badgett:
Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest, another Chris, his name is Chris Benetti. He has a membership software called MembersPRO. That’s at MembersPRO.com, and also a funnel building software called Quick Convert. That’s at QuickConvert.io. Welcome to the show, Chris.

Chris Benetti:
Dude, thanks for having me.

Chris Badgett:
I’m excited. We’re on the other sides of the planet, but we have a lot of similarities. We’re really into membership sites, marketing funnels. I saw that you were connected to Alex Sharfin, who I think is a really cool guy. If you’re into Alex he’s really into the entrepreneur personality type and personal development and leveling up your game and all that stuff. I’m really excited to get into it with you. How did you get into this crazy world of membership sites, funnels, online business, marketing in this game? What was your way into this world,

Chris Benetti:
Dude, so my story is probably … It’s probably a bit long, but generally out of high school, I went straight into becoming a tradesman. Where I grew up, we have a lot of mining around us, iron ore mining specifically. As I transitioned from being an apprentice to becoming a tradesman after four years of being in the industry, I just was over it. I’ve always been more so like, how can I get things done efficiently? Or like, how can I use my brain instead of my hands to get things done? I still like using my hands to do stuff, but generally speaking, I feel like I’m smarter than needing to do that, if that makes sense. I felt like I was trapped in this industry that wasn’t really serving me and where I wanted to go.

Chris Benetti:
And I’ve always been primarily focused on financial freedom and things of that sense. I’ve been quite savvy early on, but that ultimately led me to question in this industry, do I really have a future? Do I really enjoy doing this? Even though I’ve done this qualification and I’ve been certified in this and that, is it something that I really enjoy? That led me down to learning about investing. I ultimately discovered Rich Dad, Poor Dad, 4-Hour Workweek, and that obviously opens up your universe when you read those things for the first time. As I qualified to become a tradesman during that year that I was a qualified tradesman, I literally was just reading books at work. My working roster was two weeks away from home, one week at home. During those two weeks away, I was literally reading a book a week.

Chris Benetti:
I was just consuming this entrepreneurial knowledge, like a mad man. I didn’t talk to anyone in my lunch breaks. I literally just read books and kept to myself. Through that process, I had started to discover people like Anik Singal, eventually Russell Brunson. And ultimately that led me to joining some of their programs and just trying to make something work from there. After about a year of being a tradesman, I ended up getting fired from my job, basically just to some stupid regulation that they had as a company. And I went to a place where I was like, what do I want to do? Or like, how can I make this a benefit or make this a positive? And I found an internship with a digital marketing agency that was local. They were like right into the ClickFunnels space, the Russell Brunson space.

Chris Benetti:
And that really gave me an entry point to reinvent myself as a person. I basically just deep dove into being their funnel guy. And within eight, nine months, I actually was invited to ClickFunnels HQ. And I ended up becoming the number one funnel designer in the Southern Hemisphere at that event that they were hosting. And that just drastically increased my influence in that marketplace. I started signing all the big ClickFunnels clients and I ended up starting my own agency and just working with all these awesome people during that same time.

Chris Benetti:
That’s when I went into a partnership for MembersPRO and MembersPRO’s had a few iterations, but ultimately it’s been something that we’ve been developing alongside me being in with all the influencers of the ClickFunnels community. That’s how I got started and rapidly increased my I guess relation and community in that space. And that’s how I got introduced to Alex Sharfin and Rachel Peterson and Stacy Martino and even Russell Brunson. I rapidly became aware in that space and was able to get some really, really cool connections and make some awesome friends as well.

Chris Badgett:
Man, it’s a long story, but it’s super good. And it’s super interesting. If somebody’s feeling in a similar way, I won’t go into my whole thing, but I was a sled dog musher in Alaska. I worked with my hands. I totally know what that’s like to be reading all the time and developing, it’s almost like a secret life as an entrepreneur where you’re discovering this other aspect of yourself and what would you have to say to somebody like that?

Chris Badgett:
Like, what did you do? You were going into the books, I guess you were going onto the internet and searching, what were you searching for? What kept you going? What lit the path so that you didn’t give up and you just kept going and you kept leveling up and getting more and more into that world? How did that continue to grow without you stalling out? Because a lot of people stall out or they fail or they get discouraged or it’s harder than they thought. How did you persist?

Chris Benetti:
That’s a fantastic question. Initially, it was just the intrigue around funnels and all the things All the books were new to me, all the information was new to me. I was like, there’s so much to learn. And the books are one thing. There’s a wealth of trainings and stuff on YouTube that even weren’t available in 2016 when I started. But there’s so much information out there that can help you get excited about that space. I would say the first thing is like the intrigue and excitement. You have to have something that you are excited about every day. Otherwise you are ultimately going to hit a wall and it’s going to be too much of a barrier for you to continue with. The next thing was when I lost my job and then had a new opportunity to work as an intern, that was another area where I was like, “I can show up and I can become a better person if I commit to something like this.”

Chris Benetti:
I really found it beneficial to work with someone for a year and a half, two years, even if it meant I wasn’t building my entrepreneurial business in a sense, it still helped me rapidly develop myself and eight months, nine months becoming from nothing to number one in Southern Hemisphere at one thing, like that’s a very big accomplishment. If you are able to rapidly grow under someone, even if it delays your journey for say like a year, I still think it’s better than you trying to hit a brick wall again and again, and not getting anywhere. Even though you have this disguise of like, “I’m working for myself or I’m building my own thing,” you know? Sometimes you have to take what seems like a detour to get to where you want to be.

Chris Benetti:
But most of the times those detours are what I find to be the most beneficial for growth. And ultimately I was able to work for someone. It wasn’t a ton of money, but I was still able to work for someone and learn a lot of mistakes under them, without me needing to front the cost for those things, which is always beneficial, right? Alongside that as well, I was also able to meet a lot of those influential people through that company. It really helped me to rapidly develop my network as well, which I would not have known how to do if I didn’t say work for that company as well. There’s a lot of different things there that happened that helped me get through the right steps in the right way, even though … Ultimately, I want to say that I’m this mastermind genius and I went into all these opportunities knowing like, “Oh, this, this is going to be the outcome.”

Chris Benetti:
But ultimately what happened was it just happened to be the right process for me to go through. And I was just so in the moment with everything that I was just focused on how can I build myself up? How can I develop these skills? How can I offer value to my boss or my company that I’m working for as well as their clients and how can I show up like no one else does? And that ultimately led to me being able to set myself up for success, I would say.

Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. I imagine that agency was an in person office, or was it a remote agency?

Chris Benetti:
In person office.

Chris Badgett:
Yeah. And in terms of a marketing agency, sometimes marketing agencies do a lot of different things. How did you end up like in eight months being like a super funnel specialist?

Chris Benetti:
That’s a good question.

Chris Badgett:
Versus just like, I mean, there’s a lot of things in marketing. How did you end up with that unique skillset?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. These guys primarily focused on Facebook advertising.

Chris Badgett:
Yeah. Which means you need a funnel for the ROI. You need to have a clear path, right?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. Their ads managers were basically setting up these basic, like crappy funnels for clients. I was like, “Cool. I can come in here and pretty much manage all of this for you” kind of thing. I rapidly came from nothing, obviously learned for a few months and got really good for a few months, even six months, and then basically took over that and then became the head of that department within the company.

Chris Benetti:
It wasn’t an big company by any means, like 10 people kind of thing, but still I was able to go from nothing to let me just manage this all for you guys. And I even got some VAs underneath me to help with development and things like that. But ultimately it was just there was a need there that needed to be filled. And I was super passionate about that kind of stuff at the time and still am. And was able to allow me to just jump right into that role and to serve that need for my company that I was working for.

Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. Well, let’s build on the idea of ClickFunnels and the one funnel away concept. You’re one funnel away from like success, but you still need a product to fulfill on the backend. A membership’s a great product. How did you end up bridging effective marketing and sales with like a killer membership offer that ultimately you built a software around?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah, so MembersPRO when we first launched, anyone who’s in the membership space will know how unattractive the ClickFunnels membership area is. Ultimately MembersPRO, when we launched, we saw an opportunity to basically look at their platform and create a-

Chris Badgett:
Do it better.

Chris Benetti:
… plugin that makes it better. We didn’t even necessarily develop a standalone right away, but we developed as a plugin for them and we basically just helped fix a lot of the features that they didn’t have, or quite frankly were broken. Like mobile optimization, login security, reviews, ratings, like a ton of different … Date release for the lessons rather than just drip delay. Things like that. MembersPRO basically you could put a couple of lines of code in your membership area and MembersPRO would plug in and essentially manage all of those things for you alongside our software that we had on the side.

Chris Benetti:
We initially created that to go into the ClickFunnels membership area. Then after a few months after we did a big launch, we had a big customer enrollment period with our launch. We had launched lifetime initially. We saw that ClickFunnels started to see us doing that. And this was back actually before they had even tracking. You couldn’t even see what lessons your customers-

Chris Badgett:
Progress tracking, yeah.

Chris Benetti:
… were completing and stuff like that, which is just like standard stuff, right? We actually implemented that and we were the first tracking tool to plug into your membership for ClickFunnels. Anyway, they saw that we were fixing these features for them. They started implementing tracking. They started implementing date release and that’s where they stopped. But as soon as we started seeing them do that, we’re just like, “Oh we’re pretty much not going to have a business if we try to continue to be a plugin.”

Chris Benetti:
What we did is we pulled back on that and then we looked at what the next big opportunity for us would be within that space. And ultimately we decided to then create a standalone platform that offered a seamless, like desktop to mobile experience and really just drastically overhaul the way that your content could be delivered. Because even now ClickFunnels, it’s not a standard. It’s like below the standard. And it was outdated when it was released in like 2014.

Chris Benetti:
Today, if you’re still using ClickFunnels, there’s much better solutions, like your platform, like my platform. There’s just better ways of doing things. We developed a new platform and we currently have been redeveloping our platform again for the third time, for about two years now. That’s set to release in the start of next year and that’s a brand … We redeveloped everything from the ground up again. Yeah, that’s how MembersPRO was introduced into the space.

Chris Badgett:
Who’s like the perfect customer? I mean, I notice in the space sometimes people mean a lot of different things when they say membership or membership site. What is a membership site on MembersPRO and who is that ideal customer that uses most of the tool and loves it and succeeds?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. A lot of our ideal customers are actually in Russell’s inner circle and things like that. I would say-

Chris Badgett:
High end coaches and experts kind of thing?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. It’s really high end coaches, experts, people who want to deliver an exceptional customer experience. MembersPRO, we’re able to really help people deliver their content in a really nice way, and ultimately eliminate some of the tech woes that come with it. A lot of the people in Russell’s inner circle like to use ClickFunnels as a product for marketing and fulfillment, ultimately what they have is their fulfillment has issues. They ultimately have a ton of support tickets and things around logins and even multiple logins for different membership areas. It gets really overwhelming and it’s too much sometimes. Steve Larson, as an example, is a customer of ours. He basically migrated to MembersPRO and we were pretty much able to eliminate all of the membership based support questions that he had from a technical standpoint.

Chris Benetti:
And what we did was we took him from having say 15 different membership login places inside of ClickFunnels to now having just one and hosting all of his courses within one membership area, essentially. You can imagine how drastically that would’ve made a difference for him at scale, doing 5 to 10 million dollars a year. It really just helped consolidate everything for him and take that headache and mess off of his place and put it into … Plate, sorry. And put it into one concise area for his customers.

Chris Badgett:
I love that. I mean, solving real people’s problems like 15 logins or whatever. I mean, that’s how you build great software. I love that. How did the Quick Convert come into being?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah, so Quick Convert’s a cool product. It’s actually something that I white label. Like I said, I’ve been a funnel guy forever. Out of frustration of the CF platform just lagging, I decided to pursue white labeling this platform so that I could offer my clients and other people who I talk to every single day, a better solution. A lot of people were getting frustrated with trying to build websites on CF, low load speeds and stuff with CF as well. It’s quite horrendous how bad load times are on that platform right now. 2.0 is hopefully going to be much different, but ultimately there was just a lot lacking features and not much development. And obviously we know now why, because they’ve been redeveloping the platform, but out of that frustration, I decided to pursue developing Quick Convert so that I could have a better solution on the marketplace.

Chris Benetti:
The reason why I decided to white label versus being like an affiliate, because I wanted to have a level of control. And one of the best things at MembersPRO is I’m able to offer amazing customer support. If you go and look up our Trust Pilot, as an example, we’ve got five out of five stars. Everyone’s just like, “Te support is phenomenal.” And that’s because I’m able to control that to a very high degree. With white labeling a platform, I’m able to control that support channel, and I’m able to make sure that my customers can get results. Then further, I’m able to also log in as an admin to their account and help them with migration, help them with setup, help them with all the technical things that I know a lot of the clients coming into the space have issues with. The other thing as well is I can control the price if I white label as well.

Chris Benetti:
There’s a lot of platforms out there that are very expensive or perceived as expensive to someone who’s just new and starting out. With Quick Convert, I’m able to start the pricing at like $37 a month, which is $60 less than the competitors who offer one tenth of the product, you know? That’s a cool opportunity for me. And even though I’m not making a lot of profit off of that, I’m able to help people in my opinion, to a better level. I’m just the person who likes to give back, who likes to offer value to the marketplace and being a white label of this platform just allows me to do that to a high degree of then just being an affiliate and then passing off all the support and passing off all the stuff to other people. Because I like to show up and I like to help people. That’s where Quick Convert came into place.

Chris Badgett:
MembersPRO is like the back end and Quick Convert is like a funnel builder to get to the sale. And then ultimately, how do you connect between the two softwares? If somebody converts in the funnel, how do they get into MembersPRO?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. Basically for MembersPRO we work off of webhooks right now. In the next version of our platform, we’ll have OpenAPI and Integrations Direct, but for now, basically you just plug in a webhook into whatever platform you want to integrate with. Then you just tell us how that is triggered. And we will automatically send them a login from MembersPRO. And basically we look at what the customer’s email is and what they should get access to with that webhook being triggered. And we will automatically just give that access to them in their MembersPRO account. It’s just a simple webhook connection. You choose the trigger point. Then we basically on the MembersPRO side have what courses they should get access to, what email they should receive when they sign up. And we automatically send that information to them.

Chris Badgett:
That is awesome. When you look at your customer, I know one of the arguments of funnels is like, you don’t need a website, you need a funnel, right?

Chris Benetti:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Badgett:
Do people need a website anymore or, will just a funnel do?

Chris Benetti:
I think people need a website. I don’t think websites are necessarily … You’re not going to see a massive direct ROI on a website like you would with a funnel. And ultimately, I think you need both. And for different reasons. Websites, in my opinion, are all about visibility and branding. How can I show my brand in an effective manner? How can we be ranked in Google? How can we show value with content, like blogs and things like that? Websites are important for a different reason. And it’s more so around visibility and branding. Funnels obviously are driving people down a direct conversion path, whether it be new leads, new sales, repeat sales, et cetera. Funnels come into place when you have a specific offer that you want someone to take up on.

Chris Benetti:
If you have a new lead generation product, like a free download, a free video series, things like that, that’s where you would have a funnel. And that funnel starting point might be on your website, as an example. Underneath your hero section, you might have like, “Hey, get this free guide.” And people put their name and email in. That can then redirect and start the funnel flow. Right? The funnel doesn’t necessarily have to be a series of web pages. The funnel can continue through email. It can continue through multiple different sources of communication. But ultimately the funnel’s purpose is to take someone down a specific conversion path. And you just can’t do that with a general website, because a website gives options. A website can take you down multiple paths. There’s not one call to action in a website, but when someone starts going through a funnel process, there is one call to action. And it’s a very specific process that you’re taking someone down. You need both in my opinion, but for different reasons.

Chris Badgett:
What do you recommend for somebody who’s let’s say an expert, maybe they’re already pretty successful, they’re just not a marketer and they’re new maybe to the online space? Let’s say they have a membership, maybe there’s a course in there. Maybe there’s some other things in there too, in the membership. What one, two or three funnels should they think about creating without getting overwhelmed? Like where should they start?

Chris Benetti:
That’s a good question. And I think a lot of people definitely overcomplicate this process, but you should have a way to generate leads. And depending on your product, if you have a course where it’s a thousand dollars or less, then you should really have something that sells that product. And for those price points, you want to look at something like a VSL or workshop funnel, or even potentially a webinar funnel. These can be either on a low ticket price point range, something from like 7 to $30 maybe, to get access to the training, the training can then be like an ascension piece where it then sells the next piece of the journey. It could also be a training series if you will, but you need something that’s like, “How do I turn people who don’t really know much about me into customers?”

Chris Benetti:
Some sort of training funnel that then gives them an offer to upgrade to the next thing that you have available for them is important. If you have a program that’s like say 1,000 to 5,000 as an example, then you’re really going to need to look at something thing that gets applications or gets people booking in on your calendar. That can pretty much be the same front end funnel. It’s just that the call to action would then change from being a, “Buy my core offer” or, “Buy my program” to, “Hey, I’d love to help you with this strategy. Book in a time on my calendar and let’s chat about the next steps” as an example. That can then take someone into booking a call with you, and then that can be a sales process for you from there.

Chris Benetti:
If I was starting out fresh, like both of those things are going to generate leads for you regardless of if the sale happens. You’re able to then have that in an email list and follow up with that client via email or that potential client via email. Then depending on how your conversion rates happen, you are going to be at least getting some sales, but more importantly getting some calls on your calendar to then book some sales. And like, that’s the difference between making very little money to now like making 5, 10, 15, $20,000 even just from converting a few calls every single month. That’s where I would start, and I wouldn’t overcomplicate it too much.

Chris Badgett:
When you talk about a workshop or training funnel, are we talking about a video series, or I know it could be … There’s lots of different ways to deliver it, like live or more like a bootcamp, webinar style thing, or more of like a prerecorded video series landing page thing that it trickles out over time. Which one or both or what?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. It can be different things. I would probably recommend that you start with a challenge. A challenge is quite good these days, and it can just be a five to seven day challenge. And ultimately you want to be taking someone through a journey and teaching them your core framework from an informational standpoint. You don’t want to give them too nitty gritty. You just want to teach them the core concept over those five to seven days. Then on the last day of the challenge, you would then have the offer to ascend to the call offer or to book a call with you. That’s definitely a good process, because ultimately you can run that live through like Facebook groups and things like that. You can charge a small amount so that you are getting an initial ROI, at least breaking even, and that’s going to help you take people through that process.

Chris Benetti:
See if they’re engaging with the content over the days, get feedback. And you’ll be able to refine that over time and eventually turn it evergreen. I definitely like that structure and it’s definitely something that works really well, like really, really well. And especially if your customer is new to the online marketing space or you’re teaching something that’s new and not really well known, you’re going to get a decent amount of demand for it. And you’re going to be able to help those people quite a lot. And to a higher degree if you just had something prerecorded as an example. I definitely like that structure. If you wanted to try and automate things right away, something like a VSL or a webinar that’s from to 60 minutes as an example. Russell Brunson’s got his perfect webinar format. That’s pretty good. It works.

Chris Benetti:
It’s very story driven, not much value in general, but it does work from a sales conversion standpoint. Something like that would be good as the actual deliverable. Then that would essentially lead into the sale or the call. That’s two different formats, live and prerecorded, but you’re going to have a lot of issues trying to just launch a webinar right away and have it work just because you haven’t got the market feedback. You don’t know what works or how your story resonates with people. You need to run that probably live a few times, I would say, to at least get some traction in place.

Chris Benetti:
I guess the short answer here, Chris is like, it kind of depends. Nothing is destined to work right away out of the gate. It’s going to take some work to get something to convert, especially if you want it to convert at scale on evergreen basis. But if we’re putting a few months of effort into something like this and then we’re able to effortlessly convert a thousand dollars multiple times a day, then it’s worth it at the end of the day. It does take some work, but you mentioned if someone’s already potentially successful, the first place I would start is get some sales on a one to one to basis, get some money, cover your expenses, make sure that you’re earning some money initially and then start to put these automated processes in place or more scalable processes in place. And that’s going to help you ramp up your coaching business from there.

Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. And you mentioned at a certain price point, it makes sense to do more of an application versus like a straight sales page, buy now situation. Can you just speak a little more to that? I mean, people just don’t drop like 8k on a checkout form necessarily or 20k, whatever. I know the price point is a factor, but anything else going on there? What’s the upper limit in your experience of what people will just put through on a checkout form without talking to anybody or applying, or anything?

Chris Benetti:
It depends on how indoctrinated they are into your world. If someone’s been following you for a few years and you drop a two grand offer or even a three grand offer and they really like you and-

Chris Badgett:
They trust you.

Chris Benetti:
… see a lot of opportunity and they trust you, right?

Chris Badgett:
Yeah.

Chris Benetti:
Then they’re going to be like, “This is fine.” But I would say for most people they haven’t got that awareness. They haven’t got that know, like, trust factor yet. A thousand dollars from a cold audience is the limit. And it’s even hard to convert that these days, especially with people being more clued on about sales processes and fake scarcity and all the marketing stuff, right? from anything above a thousand dollars, potentially $1,500, I would say it’s probably going to make sense for you to book in 30 minute sales calls to then start to at least get feedback and talk to people so that you can gauge what the interest is, and the conversion rate of your offer.

Chris Benetti:
Because if you can’t convert someone one to one on a call then your automated sales process is never going to be able to convert someone on an automated basis. It’s definitely a price point thing, but it’s also a know, like, trust thing as well. People need to be able to know that this is real. There’s a lot of things that have created scarcity for people who are buying these products in the marketplace, like scams and people who are promising results and not being able to fulfil that. If you can get on the phone with someone it’s going to really help build that rapport much more faster than you delivering an automated video to someone would do.

Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. Well, let’s travel a little further back up the funnel and talk about traffic. I mean, there’s paid ads, but what else can we do? What’s working today for traffic or if somebody needs to get some people into the funnel, what can they do? I know that’s a big question, and there are … Paid ads are great, but what else can we do?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. Paid ads are great. Paid ads also are a pain in the butt. Especially as you’re starting out, like you’re probably going to spend a lot more money than you would’ve expected on paid ads, unfortunately. I would say community is probably the coolest thing for-

Chris Badgett:
Like Facebook groups and stuff like that, or?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. Facebook groups, even people on your profile and even connecting with other people. If you can join a Facebook group and even get known by the person who owns or moderates that Facebook group, then there’s potentially good opportunity for you to run co-hosted workshops and things with that person in that group. And that’s going to create a lot of visibility and eyeballs for you and it’ll rapidly put you on the expert list essentially for that group. If you made an offer with that group owner, as an example, then you are going to be at a higher level than if you were trying to cold source leads from that group as an example. But the first place is definitely going into communities, offering value, not fake value, like rags to riches type type stories like you see in the ClickFunnels community as an example, but true value.

Chris Benetti:
What’s your expertise and how can you offer awesome value to these people and be consistent with it? Probably even just schedule some time in your calendar, like for Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, spend two hours on those days just going into these 10 communities and offering value to them. And you are very rapidly going to be known as an expert in that group. People are naturally going to want to reach out out to you if they find value in that post. But you’re also going to find that the group owners will see you as an expert and they’ll likely want you to come in and help them with content creation or help them with workshops and things of that sense. The next step or the thing that you should make sure that you have well set up initially is your Facebook profile.

Chris Benetti:
And I would recommend that you have a good cover photo. It speaks very clearly to what you do, how you help, things like that. Your bio on your profile directly tells people what you do, how you help as well. Then on the less side, you’ve got your links to things that you offer. You can basically put a funnel link right into here, even in your cover photo, even in your bio that drives people to your training funnel. That would essentially take someone through a webinar process, a VSL process to convert them into a sale or even into a calendar booking. You can also potentially just put your calendar link on there right away. It’s probably going to create a lot of people who muck you around a bit. It’s definitely worth putting them through some hoops first, like a training is an example, but having a Facebook profile optimized in a way that it can drive leads directly to your sales funnel is going to help you with that organic conversion, right?

Chris Benetti:
You won’t have to spend money on ads. You just have to spend some time giving some value a few times a week as an example, but that’s definitely if I was to do it, I would do that. Then what you’re going to find is people are going to friend request you, you’re going to create a big network on your personal profile. Then from there giving value on your socials personally, without going into any communities, is going to be another way that you can start to generate leads. You can start to do offer posts. You can start to do things like that. And that’s going to create a ton of demand where you can follow up with people in Messenger and things like that to then drive them through your funnel or book calls with them, et cetera.

Chris Badgett:
Wow. There’s some gold from the miner. That is awesome. A question, there’s a nuance to that one I want to ask you about. When you’re building community and maybe you’re doing some outreach or exploring for partnerships. I see sometimes on Facebook, like I know I personally, I get pitched constantly. But then there’s these people that do it well, or there’s like this win/win or it’s not like there’s immediate ask or this awkward thing. I don’t know. I actively develop partnerships, but I’d be curious to hear from you, if you are going to intentionally grow your network through Facebook and use it for business as an example, LinkedIn too, or whatever, but how do you do cold outreach to a strategic partner, potential partner well, that doesn’t know you from Adam?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. I would say that whatever you do, you need to offer value first. And this is hard to give advice on. It just depends on like what your expertise is, but maybe I can give you a quick story of what I have done in the past to help build that strategic relationship and partnership. I used to work with Rachel Peterson quite a lot. She’s pretty big in the social space. She basically, any social platform she’s touches, she can blow up on. Like, TikTok, she’s got over a million followers now as an example. And it’s just because she’s really good at consistency and understanding what the market wants to see. But early on in start of 2018, I saw that Rachel was having a lot of issues with her funnels, like her stuff was butt ugly.

Chris Benetti:
And it just didn’t portray the Rachel Peterson that I know in a very effective way. What I did was I saw that she needed that need. And what I did was I offered to help overhaul one of the funnels that she had. I wanted to just do it to her as a free service. “Hey, I just want to help,” you know? I strongly believe in doing that kind of service to create the relationship initially. And for me, it paid off in a massive way. And that’s how I was able to get connected with like Marley Jackson, Alex Sharfin and a lot of the big names in that space, but not only … I ended up working with Rachel for about 12 months, but the initial project, we ended up four timesing her funnel results.

Chris Benetti:
She’s already a wizard at Facebook ads, but her funnels got four times the results it did before I came through and then she basically hired me for 12 months after that at two and a half grand a month, but also referred a shit-ton of people to me and created a ton more relationships that I would never have had entry to beforehand. Yes, it took me probably a couple weeks of my time for free to help initially create that relationship. But once the door was open, there was a lot more opportunity that came through that. And so, especially if you’re starting out, like I was, it makes sense to devote time and commitment to people and offer value first.

Chris Benetti:
And let that be an opportunity for you to open up the strategic partnerships and the connections that come from those services. Now it may also be hard sometimes to recognize who is going to move the needle for me? Who do I offer my time to? Who do I offer my services to? If you have services, who do I offer this to? I would say if someone is an influence in the same space as you, then it’s going to make sense for you to offer time to, or value to, I should say, to help create that relationship and connection to other people in that space from an audience standpoint, from a higher up standpoint, like an expertise standpoint, from a influencer standpoint. There’s a lot of different things here to look at.

Chris Benetti:
But if they have the audience that you want, then you should definitely go and offer as much value to as possible. Even $10,000 worth of value, literally just offer as much value as possible to create that relationship. There’s obviously intention behind it, but try to do it in a way that’s authentic and not like I’m trying to offer value to you so that I can get something in return. Just off of value with no expectation in return. And I promise you that that’s going to return more value than if you went in there expecting something from someone. And that’s what I did with Rachel and Alex and other people. And it worked out really well for me.

Chris Badgett:
Wow. Another solid gold nugget. My last question for you is around impact. I saw in one of your videos that you’re trying to help people who are trying to make an impact, make a difference, not just make money. I see in our industry here, sometimes people get a little wrapped up in themselves of like, “Oh, I need this. I want this type of business, this type of freedom” and so on. But in the circles that you run in and your customers and whatnot, the people that are really making a big impact to their customers or their communities or their learners, what are they doing? What patterns are you seeing around entrepreneurs that really make an impact?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. People who I work with and who do things differently is ultimately they have a core mission that they’re on as a company. Whether it’s in the relationship space for marriages and helping people get back on track with their family or in the make money space, ultimately what I’ve seen is that they have a mission that they’re trying to help people with and everything that they do is in alignment with that. If they’re trying to help people get out of becoming divorced, or if they’re trying to help people with making their first dollar online, they have a mission. And everything that they do is in alignment with that mission. The way that that’s different, I think, than the rest of the marketplace is you’ll find a lot of people who will tout about all of the results that they have, or the money that they’re making.

Chris Benetti:
They never really like relate it back to their overarching mission that their company is trying to achieve and the way that they’re trying to give back. A lot of our clients essentially, they are going somewhere and you can see that their company and the way that they do things and the way that they care about the fulfillment of their products and their customer service and everything that they do, everything aligns with what they say they’re going to do. At the end of the day, if someone’s actions don’t align with what their words say, then ultimately I would say that they’re probably not super serious about what they’re trying to do and what they’re trying to achieve.

Chris Benetti:
When people truly align what they’re doing with what they say they’re doing, then that’s where I start to look at like, “Okay, this person is actually trying to make a difference. And I can see that they’re actively trying to do that.” There’s a lot of people who are just like, say that they’re doing this or say that they’re trying to help people. Then they sell a shady program or they do this shady act. And it’s like, it doesn’t actually align with what they’re saying. And that is, I think, the biggest weeder in this space. That’s my perspective, actions speak much louder than words for me. And I like to see people showing up every day and being committed to a specific mission for their customers and just following that every day.

Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. That is Chris Benetti. He’s from MembersPRO.com and Quick Convert.io. Any final words for the people and also where can they find you on the world wide web?

Chris Benetti:
Yeah. I love to end interviews with this quote, but I think it’s by Henry Ford. “Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.” I love that. It’s in my email signature. It’s just something that I truly abide by. Essentially, if you think you are going to have struggles with something, if you think you’re not good enough to do something, then you are ultimately right. You put the limitations on yourself. If you go into the world every day with optimism and a good attitude, then ultimately you are going to create that scenario for yourself.

Chris Benetti:
That’s a fantastic quote that I just love to abide by every day. For me, you can find me on Facebook. I think it’s my username on mostly everything is just I-T-S, like it’s, Benetti, B-E-N-E-T-T-I, and yeah, just come hit me up on Facebook. Send me a message. If you do hit me up, let me know that you’re from the podcast and I’m more than happy to chat with anyone. I just get flooded with friend requests though. Just send me a message as well, and I’ll make sure … I check all my messages. Yeah. I’d love to chat.

Chris Badgett:
Well, thanks, Chris. Appreciate you coming on the show and thanks for all the value you shared today. We really appreciate it.

Chris Benetti:
Dude, thank you so much for having me. It’s been awesome.

Chris Badgett:
And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode, and I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS.com/gift. Go to LifterLMS.com/gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.