Usually the price is discounted per bundled product so you would in fact pay more per item in the bundle if you where to purchase them separately.

This strategy works well with complementary products that can usually go together and make it easy for the customer to purchase the bundle, at a discount, instead of purchasing the products separately.

An example of this would be bundling your personal fitness training sessions with a 3 month course of some or other supplement that will increase the results they receive from your training.

Now the customer has an option of getting the supplement directly from their trainer, who has obviously done the research into the supplement already (easy sale) as opposed to perhaps purchasing a supplement from elsewhere.

You then get the benefit from increase revenue per sale then if you didn’t offer a bundle, as the customer may have purchased their supplements elsewhere.

This will work with any type of business whereby you can offer complementary services or products, and if you are not already offering product bundles, try testing different packages straight away.

Well we are going to make good use of this information to really maximize the profits you can generate from your business.

A very effective strategy is to offer much higher value and profit services or products on the back end, to customers who have already purchased from you one or more times.

Since we now already know you are more likely to get a sale from existing recent customers, it makes sense to take advantage of this and offer high value product or service to these customers, with the assumption that you will get a better conversion rate then if you had offered these high ticket items upfront.

These are the type of services or products that would be a very hard sell to a new prospect.

Imagine you see ad in the paper for a book on weight loss that costs R4500. You may think that there may be something of value to this product since it costs so much, however would you really invest this much in a product from somebody you know nothing about, who is making promises you don’t know if you can trust or not? Not likely.

However, let’s say you have been a fitness customer of Jim for 6 weeks, have started to see great results from his training sessions as well as the 2 supplements he has recommended so far.

This means you can already see the first 3 purchases you have made from Jim paying off and the “promises” made in the marketing of his original lower priced products have not been false.

In month 3 Jim now tells you about an advanced fitness training program he has for R7000, and shows you proof and testimonials of other satisfied customers that have completed the program.

You will be far more likely to do whatever is necessary to find the funds to invest in this program since you trust that Jims promises are real, since has delivered on previous promises so far!

The idea is to use lower priced products to obtain customers and get them into your sales funnel. You then begin to build their trust in you. If you do this by over delivering in every way on the purchases already made, you will be in a position to nurture a loyal customer who will truly trust in anything you say, and will buy anything you offer them. I promise you this (trust me J )

Actions:

1. Take a look at your current business and try and come up with ideas on an advanced product, course or service you can offer on the back end to existing customers.
2. You may be thinking that what you are already offering is as advanced and as high priced as can create. This is usually not the case. If you’re selling something people are buying on their first purchase, then there is always an opportunity to create a new advanced version or complementary service or product you can offer these customers on the back end. Use your imagination!
3. Before you begin offering any higher priced products (or anything at all) on the back end, you need to make 100% sure you are delivering (over delivering!) on your current front end products.

Obviously you won’t be very successful on the back end if you’re not delivering on your initial promises, as your customers will probably trust you even less then if they had never bought from you before.

Right now, im going to start of with a quick example of a back end sales funnel:

As a personal fitness trainer, your core business may be a once-a-week fitness training session, which is what you market and sell to new prospects.

Most personal trainers and other health professionals will only focus on their core offering, and will never realize they now have a customer who has already put their trust in them, and are now prime targets for additional sales!

So, on week 2 at the end of the first session, you may discuss diet with your training customer, whereby you will recommend a great weight loss product that will maximize the results they receive from your fitness service.

Naturally, they can get this product directly from you, or they can purchase it from www.XXX.com (your special internet link whereby you generate commission on every sale).

On week 3, you can now mention to them that they are now ready to go onto the next level of supplementation, so you recommend product B.

On week 4, you mention that you know of an excellent book on dieting that has helped you get to where you are right now, and by following it as well as continuing to take the 2 supplements, they would get excellent results in combination with your training services.

This book and be purchased at www.XXX.com, another special link which generates you commission with every sale.

This is a very simple back end sales process for a fitness professional.

So, lets do some math:

Previously, let’s say the customer was spending R100 per day (1 hour session) for training, or R400 monthly.

Let’s say you have 30 training customers a month.

That’s R12000 per month you get for your fitness training.

Now, if you had implemented your backend process correctly, its easy to get an average of 40% to accept your back end offers.

That’s 12 customers who purchase the two supplements in month 1, as well as the book.

Supplement 1 makes you R100 commission

Supplement 2 makes you R80 commission.

Book makes you $120 commission.

That’s R300 for each of the 12 customers that accepted the other offers, each month.

So 12 customers R300 = R3600.00 additional for that month for only a small bit of time invested in recommending the products to your customers, at no additional cost to you.

Additionally, if the customer keeps purchasing supplement 1 and 2 each month you will get $35 per customer the following months as well.

Not bad eh?

The back end sales funnel can be very powerful and I recommend you experiment as much as possible with making additional offers to existing customers. Obviously each business is very different and you may think this is not possible in your business but I can tell you this is not the case. There is always opportunity to grow a back end in any business.

One important thing to note. You will see from my example that the additional offers to customers were made in the form of a recommendation.

This is very powerful. Remember in the introduction I mentioned that once the customer has already made 1 purchase from you, you now have their trust.

Well, this means that any recommendation you make for an additional product or service that may help them is now coming from somebody they now trust and thus you can expect a very high percentage of them to go with the recommendation.

Actions:

1. Sit down and consider your current customer base. What additional products or services do you think will complement (not compete!) with your current offering. What other products or services are targeted at your specific group of customers?
2. Once you have developed this list, are there any products or services you can offer them directly. Perhaps a new service you can create?

Remember, it is usually more profitable to offer them your own services or products, then it is recommending another service or product for a referral or commission fee.

1. Finally review your current business and customers and try and find points in time and opportunities to make your recommendations.

It’s important to note right now that an offer sooner than later is more likely to result in a sale, as customers are more likely to make another purchase very soon after the last one.

Backend offer 1 and 2 should ideally be made within the first month of the initial offer, after then your conversion will go down.

In the next few articles, we will look at the different types of backend offers and strategies you can employ.