Before You Build Your Sales Funnel…

Proof of Concept is how you validate your big idea. Before investing time, effort and money on creating the infrastructure around your big idea – say building out your online coaching program – you need to validate the assumption that people actually want your online program.

I speak to coaches and consultants everyday who think they know what the problem is in their market – that’s the easy part.

But finding a solution that people actually want is what you have to validate. And it might not be your online coaching program!

And before you say, “but there are other online coaching programs out there that do the same thing” – answer me this: how do you know people actually want YOUR online coaching program?

What differentiates your program from another is also the very reason why it might not be ‘the’ solution people are looking for.

So, back to Proof of Concept – it’s how you validate people actually want what’s in YOUR online program.

…on the other hand, is the most minimal form of your solution that you can launch to validate that the solution is the one your ideal clients will BUY.

This enables you to start learning how your ideal clients react to your solution – say your online program – before you waste a ton of money building something out they don’t want. I’ve had clients delay a launch for 6 months filming all the components of their online program before launching only to find that the program didn’t really address the many facets of the problem people were actually going through OR that the program dealt with issues that weren’t really high priority for the clients – so the perceived value of the program was nowhere near what the coach or consultant originally envisaged.

What a colossal waste of money, effort and precious time!

To recap…

POC’s test the validity of your programs features, i.e does it produce the solutions that people want.

MVP’s test its viability, i.e. will people actually pay for the solution.

POC’s you can partially validate with market research.

But at some point, you’re going to have to “take the show on the road’ – meaning, ask for the sale!

Better done BEFORE…

…you’ve built out a complicated sales funnel, whatever that might be (webinars, video launch funnel etc..)

…you commit to a full schedule of non-revenue generating activities like building out your membership site, online program, videos, material et al.

Why not generate the sales you need to then invest in creating a leveraged sales funnel that saves you time, money and effort later on.

Only build what people actually want AND will pay for. Jeenius! (as one of my marketing mentors Frank Kern always says)

It’s really not rocket science. It’s surprisingly practical.

But even the smart, capable coaches and consultants I speak to will throw these concepts out the window because it SEEMS easier to hide behind the computer.

Because someone has told them that they never have to do sales calls. If you think sales is something icky and yucky, then you need to read this. 

Because they can see how some other guru in their field has managed to have successful [webinar] launches.

What you don’t see are the early stages before the automation and the webinars, the partnerships, the mailing lists, the goodwill…and so on and so forth.

You definitely don’t see prior POC and MVP.  Think about that.

So now as a business, we no longer build sales funnels for coaches and consultants who cannot show us that they have at least 10 people sold into their high end programs.

If you’re in the initial stages of your idea  – then the path towards a funnel is first PROOF (POC and MVP) where you hone your offer and your message (find where you are on the digram below )