Graham Cochrane (00:03.074)
Most people think their offer isn't converting because of pricing or not enough leads or their marketing isn't right. But that's not actually why people don't buy. There's something else happening before anyone ever says yes and if you miss it, they either won't buy or they'll buy and not get results. Let me show you what I mean.
Graham Cochrane (00:54.828)
If you've ever been on a webinar or a sales call or a challenge or whatever it is and you've made an offer and someone says no, if it's one on one or if it's in one to many, nobody buys or very few people are buying, it is painful. Let me just say it from the get out. It is painful to present your thing that you've worked so hard on and it gets crushed. People say, I don't want it.
Right? It doesn't feel good. And so this is where a lot of people just either stop offering offers, they quit altogether, or they make wrong assumptions. Okay, I just need to offer it to more people. It's just a numbers game. If I get enough in front of enough people, eventually the nose turns to yeses, or it's the sales page, or it's, you know, the messaging and, and
You're sniffing around some things that are kind of true, but if you've ever felt the sting of not landing a sale, especially if it's repeatedly, I wanna encourage you today and I want to show you what has to actually happen for people to be able to psychologically say yes to your offer. What I'm gonna show you is when you see it, so incredibly simple that it's gonna feel like, didn't I think of that before?
which is great news because it's not gonna be hard for you to understand, but it's incredibly powerful because once you understand this, then you won't unnecessarily quit too soon or undo a good offer. You might actually have a really good offer. Now there is a chance that you have a bad offer. We have to talk about that. And literally right now as I'm dropping this episode, I'm in the middle of a week long 10K offer challenge.
And that's exactly what we solve is making sure your offer is irresistible. That's what I help clients do all the time is we craft high ticket irresistible offers. But let's just assume for the sake of today's episode that you actually have a really good offer, but it's not selling. Why? What is not happening? That's what we're gonna talk about today. Before anyone can say yes to your offer, they actually have to say yes to three things. Did you realize that?
Graham Cochrane (03:18.168)
The yes that you want to your offer cannot be the first yes. It has to be the summation of at least three other yeses. They have to say yes to the promise of your offer. They have to say yes to the premise of your offer. And they have to say yes to the practice of your offer. And most people get it completely backwards.
Let's unpack the promise. Step one.
I know most offers are garbage because most offers don't understand what an offer is. An offer is not your course. An offer is not your service. An offer is not the videos I get to watch and the workbooks that I worked so hard on designing in Canva. Nobody wants those things. Those are formats. Those are pieces. An offer is an outcome. That's it. It's an outcome. What happens to me if I take you up on your offer?
Do I lose weight? Does my baby sleep through the night? Does my bank account grow? Can I now speak French more fluently? Does my back pain go away or get reduced? Can I swim faster than I once did? These are outcomes. That's all offers are. So the point is that people aren't really buying offers, they're buying outcomes. So mistakes I see people make is that they actually don't have a promise to their offer.
They have a bunch of stuff you get. And if there is a promise to your offer, which give me a little clue, it should be probably the headline of your sales page or your offer page. It's an unclear promise. Okay, what does it even mean? It's a weak promise, meaning you actually don't promise anything specific. You're really vague, like improve your life. No one buys weak or vague promises, or it's the wrong promise. This one's interesting.
Graham Cochrane (05:22.9)
You might be promising something your people don't even really want. It might be promise you're good at delivering. It might be a promise you're comfortable delivering. But if it's not a promise people want to buy, that's number one reason why they're not buying your offer, is they don't really want your promise. If they don't want the result you're trying to sell them, nothing else matters. Does that make sense? So a huge part of
Whatever you're selling is getting absolutely clear on the promise that your offer delivers and making sure that that's aligned with something your target person wants. And everything is a promise. I'll give you an example. My book, The Effortless Business, is a promise. The title itself is a promise. People want a more effortless business. Or they're not even sure that's possible. What the heck does he mean? That sounds ridiculous.
I don't know, but it's intriguing because if it were true, if it were possible to have an effortless business, would you want it? Most entrepreneurs I know would. And then I clarify that promise in the subtitle, build a high income, low maintenance business and life. Okay, now we're getting more specific. I want high income, I want low maintenance business, I wanna make money but not have to sell my soul to this business that I built, I don't wanna be trapped in my business. I wrote this book because,
I interact with entrepreneurs every day and I know from my interactions with them what their pain points are and so I can make a promise to them that I know they're going to want. Do you want to make $100,000 a month consistently in your business working 20 hours a week or less and loving your work week? That's a very specific question. That's a very specific promise and I make that inside of my offers because that's what I know people want.
But I only know that because I've interacted with entrepreneurs and I've tried out different promises. Does that make sense? So the cool thing is, is you might have a great offer that might bring transformation, but the way you're talking about it in the form of what's the promise of your offer? What does it do for me? Isn't very clear. And so the more times you can get in front of a potential client, make an offer, practice the offer, you can sharpen the messaging or the promise of the offer. This is usually one sentence, right?
Graham Cochrane (07:50.073)
This is usually one sentence that your ideal person either says immediately, yes, I want that or not. If they're not interested in that promise, then that's where we gotta solve for first, right? They have to agree to your promise. I'm gonna move past that because that should be obvious. It's not obvious to most people, but take a look at your offer. Does it have a very desirable clear promise? If it does, and if you present it to people and they're like, yep, I want that, great first step.
Let's get to step two because this is where most really smart entrepreneurs lose to sale and that is the premise. This is the difference between gobs of money in your bank account and crickets. This is the difference between you having a wait list of clientele and selling out every program you offer to you begging people to buy from you and you chasing down and air quotes following up with potential prospects.
being like a creepy needy person, okay? This is the difference. They liked your promise, they're nodding their heads and saying yes to your promise. That's the first yes you got. It's a micro yes. Yes, I do want that promise. But you haven't gotten them to buy into your premise. Your premise is your belief about how the result is achieved. You made a promise. This is what my offer can help you do. This is what you want, right?
Well, here's my premise. Here's my hot take, my perspective, my unique angle on how to deliver that promise to you and all my other clients. Before people can say yes to your offer, they have to say yes to your premise. And not everyone's going to say yes to your premise. And this is what's interesting is that two people can sell the same promise, be in the same niche, but have completely different premises. Think about it. For example,
Let's say you're looking at two different business coaches. Their promise can be, can help you make more money in your business. That could be the promise. Here's a few different premises to get you there. Ads, that's one premise. You gotta just run Facebook ads. That's the secret sauce. If you get the right ad strategy dialed in, you'll have clients coming in left and right. That's their premise on how you scale your business. Here's another premise for how you scale your business. High ticket offers. This is my premise.
Graham Cochrane (10:10.036)
I believe the fastest way to have a more effortless business and scale your business is to have an irresistible high ticket offer. That is a huge part of my offers and it's part of my premise. A business coach could also have a premise. The secret to growing your business is more content. Go big on YouTube or even more specifically TikTok versus YouTube or Instagram versus TikTok. That could be their premise. Or someone else's premise could be
It's not content, it's outreach. It's direct outreach. It's sliding into people's DMs. It's connecting with people one on one. Both of these are two totally different premises on how to get clients. Another premise could be it's all about having the funnel. You're one funnel away. That's Russell Brunson's premise. That's how he sells click funnels, his software, right? So anytime he's presenting how to grow your business, he talks about funnels.
If you had the right funnel in place, your money problems would go away. He's trying to get you to adopt his premise, funnels, which leads to his offer, a funnel platform, right? But you could have a different premise. It could be live events, right? Live events are the strategy to grow your business. And therefore that would make sense if your offer were how to put on live events that grow and scale your business. Does that make sense? The premise is so important.
People don't say yes to your offer until they agree with your worldview. People can't say yes to your promise until they say yes to your premise. Does that make sense? They want the promise, but they won't ever say yes to your way of delivering the promise if they don't agree with and believe in your premise. This is your worldview. This is your
unique angle. And this is why, side note, there can be millions of us teaching the same thing, coaching the same thing, and all be in business. A, because there's seven plus billion people in the world, but B, because we each have a different premise of how to deliver on that promise. Does this make sense? People have to say yes to your promise first. Yes, I want that outcome. That's exactly what I want, Graham. Then they have to say yes to your premise.
Graham Cochrane (12:36.782)
Oh, I can see how having an irresistible high ticket offer is my best chance at scaling to 50K to 100K a month with ease. Because then they only need a few clients and it's easier to get them no matter what the algorithm is doing. Okay, I'm tracking, I'm tracking. They have to agree to your premise. Okay, does this make sense? These are two yeses that you have to get before they can even say yes to your offer. And there's a third one.
If the first step and the first yes you need is the promise and the second one is the premise, the third is the practice. This is your methodology. Your practice is your method, but no one will follow your method if they don't believe in your premise.
This is why people buy coaching programs but don't implement.
Have you ever sold a course or a coaching program and people bought it and were excited about it but didn't watch the videos or only got a couple in and then didn't implement? Of course you have because that's human nature. One of the biggest reasons why though is because they probably didn't say yes to your premise or agree to your premise before diving into your practice. And the number one reason why they didn't say yes to your premise is probably because you didn't articulate it.
You probably don't even articulate your premise enough in the sales process. In fact, and this is why I spent so much time on the premise, we'll get into this in a second, the number one most important part of a sales pitch is the belief shifting around your premise. Because if they don't buy into your premise, A, they can't say yes to your offer, but B, even if they did, they will never fully implement your methodology or your practice because they don't, at the end of the day,
Graham Cochrane (14:29.77)
at their core believe in your premise. So your methodology, your steps, your process for how I get people to lose weight, how I get people to scale their business, how I get people to sing with more confidence, how I get people to speak French or Spanish almost fluently, how I get people to save money on their travel with credit card points, how I get, how I get, whatever result or promise you deliver, the how you get people those results, your methodology, your practice,
people will only do what you say when they 100 % believe in your premise. And I'll give you an example of how this didn't go well for me. A couple of weeks ago, I had a gentleman apply for my Inner Circle. My Inner Circle is my highest level group coaching program. It's a $55,000 program for the year. And these are entrepreneurs who are already doing $20,000 a month minimum consistently in their business. And they wanna scale to $100,000 a month and they wanna work 20 hours a week or less.
That's all we do in the Inner Circle is help get that outcome. That is the promise. He saw my sales page for the Inner Circle and said yes to the promise without even talking to me, okay?
With that offer, to jump on a call with me to see if you're a good fit, you have to already qualify and you have to want the promise. So he qualified, he wants the promise, we jump on a call. He is a good fit for the program, by the way. We jump on a call and I ask him to just kind of explain a little bit more about where he's stuck, why he reached out to me specifically to get him unstuck. What is it about me that he thinks can help him? I know he wants the promise, I know he wants the outcome.
So I listened a bit more, because I'm always listening so that I can serve powerfully, even on a discovery call, even if that doesn't create a client, I want to serve that person powerfully to give them an insight that's helpful to them. I listened and I immediately knew two things. He's working way too much. He's captain his income. And the reason why is even though he has a lot of leads coming in and he's crushing the content game and he's crushing his funnels and he's a great marketer, the reason why is he is selling
Graham Cochrane (16:33.262)
low ticket courses, 200 to $500 courses. And he has a membership, but it's capped at 100 to 150 people and they're paying, you know, 27, 47 a month, but it's churning a lot. So it's just stuck at the whatever, 8K a month or 10K a month or whatever it is, right? He's doing great stuff. He's got a great business, but there's a pain. The pain is he's working too hard.
And it's getting harder to convert like it once was to his courses. He's seeing the writing on the wall and he knows he needs to adjust something. So this is when I start to talk about my premise. I say, well, my friend, here's what I believe. Your path out of this pain point and into the promised land is to create a high ticket group coaching program. And it should probably be around this price point, give or take for you. And
You need to probably close down this offer here and start to present this offer here. You're to have to present it in a new way to signal to the right people that it's worth it and the right people who want it and they can say yes to it. And if you do this, you're probably going to be able to cut your work hours in half and you'll probably at least double your revenue from 40k a month to 80k a month without even trying hard.
That was my premise. Go high ticket. He pushed back on the premise.
He pushed back. He would hem and haw, share his fears, his concerns, and he had a lot of them, but most people do. These are called objections. Well, I can't go high ticket in my industry. And so then I responded, yes, you can actually have clients in your industry. You've already done it. So, okay, that objection is gone. Okay, well, if I do this, then this will happen. And I say, this might happen. You don't know that it's gonna happen. And so I'm just trying to like gently, I'm not trying to disagree with him.
Graham Cochrane (18:29.782)
I'm just trying to remove excuses just to make sure that once those excuses are gone, he can still make an accurate decision. But at the end of the call, at the end of the day, he wanted the promise, but he didn't agree with the premise. And therefore he couldn't say yes. And I don't even think should say yes to my offer, my inner circle. In fact, if he were to come back, and I'm not following up with him because I don't follow up with people. I don't chase people down.
I let them chase me. they agree, if they want my promise and they agree with my premise, and as I'm gonna show you in a minute, they agree with the practice, they'll say yes. If he reaches back out and says, hey, I really wanna join, changed my mind, you know I'm probably gonna do? I'm probably gonna say, hey, why don't you just come to my next 10K offer challenge? I want you to come and participate all week long.
because I want you to really believe that going high ticket is the right solution for you. It is the right solution for you, but I can't make you believe that. And I don't think you're gonna be happy working with me if you don't believe that going high ticket is the right solution for you or that it's possible for you or that it doesn't have to be high touch or exhausting or all the assumptions we make about high ticket. And that's what my 10K offer challenge helps people see. And I can even help you create your high ticket offer in that challenge. So I want him to really buy into my premise and my practice.
my methodology of scaling businesses before he even, I even give him the chance to say yes to my offer. Why? Because I want him to implement. If he's gonna invest $55,000 in himself, I want him to get $550,000 of value back in the first 12 months of working with me. And he's not gonna do that if he doesn't take action. It's not a magic trick, right? You have to do the work to get the results. But he's not gonna implement the practice if he doesn't buy into the premise. Does that make sense? If someone
Doesn't agree with your premise you shouldn't want them as a client and that's okay They might be a good person you might be able to help them and they might want your promise But if they don't agree with your premise, whatever it is to get your result You shouldn't want them as a client. Let them be served by someone else whose premise they agree with and If that doesn't work out for them, let them come back later
Graham Cochrane (20:50.294)
Once they've had more time watching your videos, reading your book, listening to your podcast, whatever it is, to come to the agreement of your premise and then they'll be able to follow your practice and get results. Does that make sense? Okay. How can we make this applicable for you? I'm going to talk about two different scenarios. Let's say you do one-on-one sales calls, discovery calls, consultation calls.
someone watches your YouTube video or read your book or saw you at an event and they wanna look at what it looks like to work with you or hire you as a coach or a service provider and you say book a call, fill out this application, we'll get on a call and see if we're a good fit together. When you're on the call, you want to go through the simple checklist. After you listen to their pain point and you hear where they're at, either they will tell you number one or you can ask to clarify number one, do they want the promise? So this might look like,
You're listening to them. Okay, okay, I see what you want, where you're stuck, where your problems, where you've tried before, blah, blah, blah. You can say things like, it sounds like you want X, Y, and Z. Is that fair to say? And that X, and Z is your promise. If they go yes, then they've agreed to your promise. If it's a little unclear, or just another way of saying it is, very cool. That makes a lot of sense. I think I can help you. One of the things where the most...
important thing I help my clients with is X, Y, and Z. Promise. Does that sound like something you would be interested in making true for you in the next 12 months? Yes, I want that. Okay, step one. Do they agree with your promise? Yes. If they don't, then you're not even gonna be able to help them. But let's assume they're like, yes, I want that. Then the next step is, would you like to hear a little bit about how I help my clients achieve that? Promise. They're gonna say yes.
Cool, here's what I believe, right? Or you could start with most entrepreneurs or most coaches in this space or most people try to do X, Y, and Z, here's why it doesn't work. You could always start with that. You're busting the myth. Here's the common vehicle people are using to get to this destination, here's why it doesn't work. Here's what I believe. This is your differentiator. Now you're leaning into your premise. So I might say, it sounds like to me,
Graham Cochrane (23:13.834)
you want to scale your business to 100K a month and work half as much. Does that sound like what you want? Yes, promise. Okay, cool. Most entrepreneurs, I think, are trying to game the system with the algorithm. They're trying to get more leads or more followers or they're just trying to rely on ads or whatever it is. And those methodologies are a hamster wheel that keep people stuck and exhausted and broke. And here's what I believe. I believe that the number one fastest way
to make more money and work less in your business is to create a irresistible high ticket offer, work with fewer people, but in a deeper level at a much higher price point. That's my premise. I would present that and see what they think. They might go, that's interesting. Tell me more about that. Or they might go, yeah, I've heard about that, but I wonder about this. Now we just kind of land, and we just talk about the premise a little bit. I see if they agree immediately.
And if they don't, do they have questions, objections to the premise? Then we talk about the premise. I haven't even talked about the offer yet. We're just at the premise. If they agree with the premise, then you can get a little bit more specific about what that looks like in practice. Here's how I implement this with my clients. We dial in their high ticket offer. Then we work on attracting more of their ideal avatar to that offer. Not everyone, just the right people to that offer.
then I teach my clients how to sell with confidence, convert with confidence. So we talk about belief-based selling where it's not pushy, it's not convincing, it's not arm-twisting, it's real fun and life-giving and casual and empowering, and then I teach my clients how to scale up from there. So I might walk through the practice, my methodology a little bit, at a high level, just the steps to show them, to give them some certainty that I can get them that promise, and if they're like, yeah, that makes sense, well then I might present the offer. If they want the promise,
But they don't agree with the premise, I won't make them the offer.
Graham Cochrane (25:10.606)
That's what I would say to you. And I would be very honest. I would say, if people came to me and they're like, hey, I want that promise. I don't know if I agree with the premise or I'm not sure. I would say, hey, no problem. My offer, what I help people do is predicated around this idea. If that doesn't resonate with you, then maybe we're not a good fit to work together. And that is okay. I want to make sure you get the results you want working with someone that feels aligned to you. This gives people an out, which makes them
want you more because they've already agreed they want the promise and you say you can deliver the promise but now they're wondering maybe just maybe you know something about how to get that promise that they don't know yet or haven't considered that would be your premise and so then maybe they would like to adopt your premise okay so does that make sense can they agree on the promise can they agree on the premise if yes present the offer if not don't present the offer
Now let's take this on another platform entirely because here that's one of the beautiful things about a discovery call is you have time to work through this stuff in real time. This is also one of the downsides of a discovery call is it's very possible to be on a call with someone who's never gonna say yes to your offer because they don't already have the beliefs that you need them to have in order to say yes. This is why I prefer one to many selling on a webinar or a challenge or at an event because it gives me more time
to belief shift to get them to agree to my premise before I even make the offer. And I'm doing this in front of a lot of people at once. So let me show you how the promise, the premise and the practice actually can translate into a beautiful webinar template for you. Because this is all the webinar is. On a webinar, you need to sell the promise at the very beginning. It's usually the name of the webinar. It's the very first minute of the webinar. On this webinar, I'm gonna teach you how to X, Y and Z without
A, B, and C, promise. They're only there for the promise, because that's what you named the webinar, hopefully, and then they're gonna stick around for the next 45 to 60 minutes because you're selling the promise at the beginning and we're all like, put in the chat if that's what you want. Yes, that's what I want. If you've ever been on a webinar where people are doing that, if you wanna scale to 100K a month working half as much, put me in the chat. The reason they're doing that is to get you to give a micro yes, I want this promise. So now we're all in agreement.
Graham Cochrane (27:34.883)
that we want this promise. Great, we can move on from here. Okay? So I've already got them to say yes. You've already got them to say yes to one thing. I want the promise. Now, before you move into any of your practice and your methodology is you have to teach the premise. You have to teach the premise. This is actually the most important part of your webinar. Not your three secrets, not your steps, not the content piece. It's the premise at the beginning because
They won't really buy into your practice that you're gonna overview in a minute in the webinar if they don't really believe your premise. And your premise is what makes you unique. It's what makes them go, maybe this is still possible for me. Because you gotta admit, yours is probably not the first webinar they've ever been on for that topic. It's probably not the first book they've ever read around that topic, right? Like my book is a webinar in book form, right? I'm selling you the promise at the beginning, but then I'm teaching you in the chapter one, the premise.
All chapter one is, it's more than just this, but it's really important. Chapter one, what if working less was the secret to earning more? That's my premise, is the less you work, the more you make. Well, that doesn't make sense. Well, I got to get you to believe in that premise in chapter one before you are even going to consider reading all the awesome stuff in chapters two through eight that make you lots of money and cut your work hours in half. So we have to start with the premise at the very beginning of the webinar. And the best way to teach the premise is through your story.
Your story allows you to empathize with their pain and their problem where they're at, share your journey of transformation of how you went on this journey to discover this promise and you got to the promised land. And you probably arrived at a very critical moment where a light bulb went off. You had a mentor or a guide or a book you read or an experience that taught you a lesson of there's gotta be a better way. And that shaped your premise
on how you achieve that result. So you embed the premise teaching inside of a story, it's the best way to do it. My friend Colin Boyd has a great book called One Presentation Away. And he teaches this in his conversion story formula, which I believe he teaches in that book. And his framework is beautiful, but really embed your premise into the story and reverse engineer your story around your core premise of what you believe.
Graham Cochrane (30:02.934)
and it's your unique angle. If they can say yes to that and that story, you've already made the sale, okay? So sell the promise at the beginning, teach the premise in the opening few minutes in your story, and then preview the practice. That's it. High level overview of the practice. If you do that in a webinar and you present an offer at end of the webinar, people are gonna buy it. Because they've said, yes, I want that promise. They've come to agree with your premise. that's interesting. That makes sense, I agree.
and then at a high level you show them the practice. Well, now those practice steps make sense given your premise. Now your offer is implementation or it's going in depth on those things or it's accountability or it's time collapsing for those steps, it's all the above. This is how you take the promise, the premise and the practice and put into webinars. That makes sense? Okay, let's land the plane. You don't need a better sales script. You need better alignment.
between your promise, your premise, and your practice.
You might be listening to this and you don't even actually have a clear promise. That's your first step. What is the one sentence promise your offer makes?
Some of you have that promise, but you aren't clearly articulating, celebrating, selling the premise. You're burying it inside of your program or your coaching or your book or your course. Don't bury it, highlight it. Because people will not say yes to you and even if they say yes, because they're excited,
Graham Cochrane (31:43.97)
They will not implement your practice if you haven't got them to agree to your premise. They have to buy in to your way of thinking, your way of implementing what you implement, your way of teaching.
This is a big reason why I'm a proponent of long form video content like this. I do a video show, a video podcast every week because it gives me more time to help shift your beliefs so that you will buy into my premise. If you buy into my premise and premises, I have a few.
then you're more likely to do the practices I'm prescribing in these videos and this episode, and you're more likely to get results. And then you're more likely to want to do business with me and hire me because you're gonna get results from those practices because you bought into my premise for how you want to get the promise. See how it all comes together? So you might need to get clear on the promise. Most of us need to get absolutely clear on the premise and highlight that.
front and center in our sales process to get people to buy into that before we ever highlight the practices and the offer itself. When those three things are aligned, the promise, the premise, and the practice, selling becomes easy. It's one micro yes after another and then the final yes to your offer more than likely will just follow. I wanna give you a couple of resources. Number one, if you want...
help dialing in your offer and your offer promise, you should probably come to my next 10K Offer Challenge. If you're not in it this week, you missed it. It's happening right now. The next dates are on the page right now, 10koffertchallenge.com, I'll link to it below. If you can't wait for the challenge, pick up the book, The Effortless Business. It's only available at effortlessbusiness.com, which I'll link to below. Pick up a copy. It's the most affordable coaching I offer.
Graham Cochrane (33:43.286)
and implement what you learn there. Get really clear there on your promise and your premise. Sharpen that messaging and watch the yeses to your offer come in. I hope today's episode blessed you and encouraged you. If so, let me know in a comment below what was the most eye-opening part of today's episode. And if you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, you can always DM me on Instagram. We could have a conversation there at TheGrahamCocker and let me know that you listened to this episode and that it helped you in some way, shape, or form. Have an amazing week, my friend.
and I will see you on a future episode.
