Dan Martell - Grow Your Business Using Virtual Summits

00:00:00.000 I'm going to share with you the same strategies that I coach all of my coaching clients on at

00:00:04.680 SaaS Academy to use virtual summits to absolutely crush their business growth.

00:00:23.540 Hey there, I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy. In this

00:00:28.080 I'm gonna share with you how to run a virtual summit

00:00:32.140 that generates revenue and influence for you

00:00:34.500 in your SaaS business.

00:00:35.900 And be sure to say the end,

00:00:36.900 we're gonna tell you how to get access

00:00:38.080 to an exclusive resource.

00:00:39.080 It's literally the worksheet

00:00:41.480 with the one page speaker invite template,

00:00:45.520 the offer designer, the summit offers,

00:00:50.140 like literally everything you're gonna need

00:00:51.980 to absolutely crush your one day virtual summit.

00:00:55.480 I'm gonna share with you how to get access to that.

00:00:57.360 But more importantly today,

00:00:58.780 I wanna talk about the five specific areas

00:01:02.420 you need to focus on to make sure

00:01:04.180 that your summit knocks it out of the park.

00:01:06.520 Let's get into it.

00:01:07.620 So if you're new to my work,

00:01:08.900 I've actually run dozens of virtual summits

00:01:12.100 that have produced tens of millions of dollars in revenue

00:01:15.280 and each one producing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:01:18.360 And the reason why is because virtual summits,

00:01:21.540 if done right, allow you to build instant credibility

00:01:25.880 very fast to an audience of ready-to-buy customers

00:01:29.960 for your SaaS product that you can literally

00:01:32.900 sell to on the summit.

00:01:35.560 So a lot of people don't realize this,

00:01:37.120 but using an event to bring your potential buyers together,

00:01:42.320 to listen to speakers that not even you,

00:01:45.000 some of you guys are like,

00:01:45.840 I'm not a really good speaker

00:01:46.880 and I don't have anything to say, fine.

00:01:48.580 You don't need that to make this work.

00:01:51.060 So if you ever struggle, like how do I recruit speakers

00:01:53.820 or how do I design the summit or what needs to go into this,

00:01:57.560 I'm going to share with you the same strategies

00:01:59.780 that I coach all of my coaching clients on at SaaS Academy

00:02:03.260 to use virtual summits to absolutely crush

00:02:06.600 their business growth.

00:02:08.220 So number one is credibility builder.

00:02:10.680 What I love about virtual summits is the ability

00:02:13.160 to go from nothing, an unknown person and nobody,

00:02:16.520 like you've never, you might be new to the industry you're in

00:02:19.620 to being one of the top thought leaders

00:02:21.840 or at least people that come to mind

00:02:23.580 when other folks think of the industry.

00:02:25.160 It doesn't matter if it's something hot like Web3

00:02:27.120 that's going on right now or HR tech.

00:02:30.220 You can use virtual summits to build

00:02:32.740 really great credibility.

00:02:34.520 And the reason why is because you're leveraging

00:02:37.900 the other speakers' notoriety for yourself.

00:02:42.900 The beauty of building a virtual summit

00:02:45.220 is reaching out to people in your industry

00:02:48.120 that are known for whatever area of the industry,

00:02:53.120 industry they're in, from your perspective,

00:02:54.960 it could be an author of a book,

00:02:56.280 it could be somebody that's got a YouTube channel,

00:02:57.840 it could be a speaker that's been on other stages,

00:03:00.260 similar to the topic for your event,

00:03:02.840 and bringing them to your stage,

00:03:05.100 your platform that you've created,

00:03:07.340 that everybody understands,

00:03:08.340 this is built by, and you can insert your product name,

00:03:11.460 then you get the credibility

00:03:13.300 that's associated with those people.

00:03:15.820 That, to me, is a powerful idea.

00:03:18.420 So where do you find these speakers?

00:03:20.560 My three favorite plays,

00:03:22.600 Authors of blogs, so you can use medium

00:03:25.380 or maybe your industry has a specific vertical blog.

00:03:28.280 So who's writing content, who's producing videos on YouTube

00:03:32.740 around the topic that your virtual summit's gonna be about

00:03:36.200 and or who are the authors thought leaders in the space,

00:03:39.900 people that have written books.

00:03:41.220 All three categories of speakers are great

00:03:44.760 to build your initial hit list of folks to reach out to.

00:03:48.260 Number two reason to start a summit is the built-in audience.

00:03:51.440 Now, here's the kicker that most people don't realize

00:03:53.640 is the speakers you recruit, you need to qualify them.

00:03:57.740 You need to ask them if they have an email list

00:04:00.940 that they can market their session to,

00:04:03.680 to let people in their world know

00:04:05.260 that they're speaking at your event.

00:04:07.060 And that is a big part of what makes virtual summits

00:04:11.420 so powerful as not only a credibility builder,

00:04:15.140 but as an audience builder.

00:04:17.060 Because if, and I've spoken on many virtual summits

00:04:20.120 and I've had a ton of speakers speak on my summits,

00:04:23.160 is asking them in the interview process.

00:04:26.360 It's like, I just wanna ask,

00:04:28.200 do you have an email marketing list

00:04:30.340 that you've used to market

00:04:31.660 your past speaking engagements to?

00:04:34.100 And how big is it?

00:04:35.160 Because some people have an email list,

00:04:36.400 but it's 50 people and they haven't sent an email

00:04:38.240 to the list in six months.

00:04:39.380 So you can ask those questions, right?

00:04:40.680 Just to qualify them.

00:04:41.600 Because if you have 15 potential speakers,

00:04:43.840 but you only have six spots, right?

00:04:45.340 It's a one-day summit, those are my favorite formats.

00:04:47.600 then you can qualify those 15 people,

00:04:50.200 maybe 80% say yes, but you can say like,

00:04:53.040 you know, we're really looking for speakers

00:04:55.440 that are able to introduce their strategies

00:04:58.420 and ideas to their own audience,

00:05:00.500 and we're gonna create a platform

00:05:02.300 where they can monetize that view, right?

00:05:04.840 And that's where it gets into the offer that I'll get into,

00:05:07.240 but like qualifying the speaker

00:05:09.780 to make sure that they have an audience

00:05:11.220 that they can market their speaking slot to

00:05:14.500 is what makes the virtual summit strategy

00:05:17.220 also an email and audience building process

00:05:20.720 that works really well.

00:05:21.840 Number three is the reverse the offer.

00:05:24.000 So the way I think about it is every summit

00:05:26.940 has to have an offer that is 100% aligned to the summit.

00:05:32.340 So if you're doing the summit on losing 10 pounds,

00:05:35.820 then the offer should be a way to fast track that.

00:05:38.840 So to me, the idea is whatever the benefit of the summit is,

00:05:41.680 maybe it's get your first 100 customers,

00:05:43.840 maybe it's recruit your next three C-level employees

00:05:47.440 or whatever, the offer for the summit,

00:05:50.680 usually, you know, if the tickets cost $100,

00:05:53.420 maybe the offer is like $500, right?

00:05:55.400 So five times the cost of the ticket

00:05:57.520 is a way for people on the thing.

00:06:00.280 Some people make the mistake because they're like,

00:06:01.720 well, if they're already at the thing at my summit

00:06:04.400 and they're learning all these strategies,

00:06:05.780 why would they pay more money to get the same outcome?

00:06:09.060 And the truth is, is people that are at the thing

00:06:12.480 trying to learn about solving their problem,

00:06:14.920 haven't solved it yet.

00:06:16.520 And if you create an offer that's got templates

00:06:19.440 and best practices and accountability and training,

00:06:22.540 kind of like an online group,

00:06:25.380 maybe a mastermind or a coaching program

00:06:29.000 or an online course,

00:06:31.060 they're gonna wanna pay to solve their problem. 0.82

00:06:33.680 A percentage of them are anyway.

00:06:35.300 And that's the offer that you can offer to your speakers

00:06:38.640 to share that.

00:06:40.020 Usually it's 50%.

00:06:41.560 So if the speaker is speaking at your summit

00:06:44.200 and they promote the summit and their speaking slot

00:06:46.900 to their audience, to their email list,

00:06:48.800 and people sign up for a ticket to attend,

00:06:51.900 you give them 50%.

00:06:53.100 And if people buy the summit offer at the end of the summit,

00:06:57.200 you give them 50%.

00:06:58.180 So they essentially get built in affiliate structure

00:07:03.440 based on them selling the offer that you sell at the summit.

00:07:07.240 And the easiest one, if you're like,

00:07:08.800 oh, I don't know what to sell,

00:07:10.140 The recordings is the first place, okay?

00:07:12.640 Selling recordings of your summit.

00:07:15.040 I'm actually, I've got a friend, Chris,

00:07:16.420 doing that not too long where, you know,

00:07:19.300 adding an upsell, they're running a summit

00:07:22.600 of the recordings of the sessions to watch afterwards

00:07:25.260 to share with their team at 50% of the ticket price

00:07:28.540 is the offer.

00:07:29.400 So it's whatever $100 to attend, $50 for the recordings,

00:07:32.960 that's the offer.

00:07:33.800 It just increases the average order value

00:07:35.320 and it's a super simple way of doing it.

00:07:36.780 But even better is price something five times

00:07:39.440 the price of your ticket,

00:07:40.560 make it something that you sell at the event

00:07:43.120 and do a sales presentation at the virtual summit

00:07:46.600 to get people to buy.

00:07:47.880 Number four, single focus.

00:07:50.460 So this comes back to deciding

00:07:53.040 what should the title of your summit be?

00:07:56.660 Where people typically make the mistake is going too wide.

00:07:59.680 They try to do something around health.

00:08:02.340 It's the health summit, it's the SaaS summit,

00:08:05.060 it's the whatever summit.

00:08:06.620 and it's way better to focus

00:08:08.480 on one aspect of the problem, okay?

00:08:11.740 So instead of just like a growth summit,

00:08:13.980 we're gonna call it

00:08:14.840 the Facebook customer demand summit, right?

00:08:18.400 And make it very, very, very focused and specialized

00:08:21.740 then all of your speakers are 100% people

00:08:25.540 that can speak to that thing. 1.00

00:08:27.080 It could be somebody that's all about Facebook videos,

00:08:29.980 Facebook ads, Facebook copy, Facebook community,

00:08:34.440 like literally all Facebook, everything,

00:08:37.680 that just nails the singular focus.

00:08:40.040 It cuts through the noise

00:08:42.040 and it brings your ideal, perfect, ready-to-buy prospects

00:08:46.300 to be able to sell your summit offer.

00:08:48.580 So that to me is focus on one thing,

00:08:52.000 have five to seven speakers speak on that one topic

00:08:56.580 and just absolutely create the value for your audience

00:09:00.720 and that's how you have a winning summit

00:09:03.120 without stressing yourself out,

00:09:04.420 without trying to create a big sales event,

00:09:06.900 just, or a big event team,

00:09:09.100 and just focusing all your energy

00:09:10.900 on that one specific problem your market is having.

00:09:14.320 So quick recap, the five advantages

00:09:17.300 and the five areas to focus on

00:09:18.740 when you build your virtual summit

00:09:20.340 is number one, credibility builder.

00:09:21.960 It is the fastest way to be nobody,

00:09:24.360 to be super credible.

00:09:25.480 Speaker, audience.

00:09:27.000 You wanna leverage the speaker's audience

00:09:28.860 to get distribution and sell tickets.

00:09:31.280 Three is reverse offer using the outcome

00:09:34.520 of the summit as the offer.

00:09:37.140 So whatever you promise,

00:09:38.260 you want to sell them more of the same thing

00:09:40.600 at a low level upsell just to the recordings

00:09:42.780 and then single problem,

00:09:44.060 meaning don't make it about everything.

00:09:45.580 Focus on one specific aspect of the problem

00:09:47.840 and deliver all the speakers, all the content,

00:09:50.380 all the messaging and positioning on that specific problem.

00:09:53.660 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,

00:09:54.940 I want to share with you an exclusive resource

00:09:57.080 called the Virtual Summit Creator Worksheet

00:09:58.940 click the link below to download your copy.

00:10:01.580 It literally has the one page speaker recruiter format,

00:10:05.700 the offer designer and examples of summit offers

00:10:08.720 that you can swipe and deploy and use for your inspiration,

00:10:11.620 your creativity, literally just follow the steps.

00:10:15.280 I even have the whole worksheet to fill out the name

00:10:17.760 and the different offer types.

00:10:19.240 And it's all in this one worksheet.

00:10:20.980 Click the link below to download your copy.

00:10:23.560 And if you liked this video,

00:10:24.600 be sure to click the like button, subscribe to this channel,

00:10:27.380 leave a comment, let me know

00:10:28.540 What is the number one thing you took away

00:10:30.100 that's added the most value to your next summit?

00:10:33.220 And as per usual, I want to challenge you

00:10:35.080 to live a bigger life and a bigger business,

00:10:37.380 and I'll see you next Monday.

Dan Martell - May 02, 2022

Grow Your Business Using Virtual Summits

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript