So if you have a membership or a mastermind that is 200 Euros and you want to try and group them, I’d say the first thing has already happened. You started filtering people by their willingness to pay 200 Euros per month.
So at that price point, you’re not getting people who are just starting up, you’re not getting people who are just sucking it to see. They’re probably fairly motivated at that price point. It’s a lot like the level I have at SuperFastBusiness, where we have a $599 member. One of the filters I use is I’d like people to be making at least $10,000 per year. So this is up to you to frame the expectations and to set the minimum standard that someone should have if they apply for your program.
Another example, if you go to SilverCircle.com/join, at the time of recording this, there is a set of statements, or questions, or filter criteria that someone should satisfy if they’re going to come on board SilverCircle at the price point that starts at $5,000 and then switches to $3,000 per month. Now, in that case, I want people to already be making a great profit. I want people to have certain things that are in their favor. And there’s things I won’t help people with.
There are types of industries I don’t want to work with, and I also don’t want people who are at the end of a run, where they’ve got everything going against them, and this is like the last ditch attempt, because it puts a lot of pressure on them and for me. There are other people I would recommend them to if they’re at that point.
So you don’t have to set segment by industry, but you certainly can. You might be the specialist in a particular industry.
The first thing I would do is have a look at who have you been serving, and what kind of results do you get? So I set up a scoring criteria for my SilverCircle customers. And I put different criteria that I would check my customers, both current and past, against, for things like, how much was I able to improve their business? How joyful was it for me to work with this person? What was their starting revenue? What was their finishing revenue or their current revenue, if they’re still on board? What did I learn from dealing with this customer?
And what I’ve done over time, and this is a long time, actually, around about 10 years, is I’ve adjusted my filters to screen out people who are a bad fit. So I haven’t chosen an industry in particular. There are certainly industries I don’t want to work in. So I screen them out. So I have a negative filter. And I’ve also mostly focused on horizontals instead of verticals.
So horizontal is look, SuperFastBusiness, let’s say you’re doing a minimum of $10,000 per year. Okay? If you’re already making half a million dollars per year, or a million dollars per year, maybe SilverCircle is going to be a good fit for you. And if you’re not quite making $10,000 per year, then I think SuperFastResults, some of the information products there or the coaching support program there, might be a good starting point. Or I also recommend people my book, or even my free courses or free podcasts. So there you go.
You could basically segment by revenue. And if you are a specialist in a certain field and all your customers seem to be from one industry, then certainly consider segmenting by industry.
The most interesting experiment that I had with regard to this was when I started my coaching program at the higher level, and it was about $599 a month, so it’s actually very similar to 200 Euros per month. I didn’t know if I was going to sell much.
So I thought I’d put it out there, and I just wanted to do it for three months to see if it was any good. And when I put it out there, I actually signed up 20 people. So I had two groups of 10. And then after three months, I resold it, and everyone stayed but another bunch of people came. There’s another two groups of 10. So I ended up having 40 people split into four groups of 10. But the most fascinating lesson for me was in those groups, there was one group of eagles. They were absolute high fliers. The people in that group were amazing, and they shared, and they were all very positive, and they had good experience.
Two of the groups, I would say, were quite normal. They were fairly average groups. There was a few good people, a couple of people slightly below average, and most of the people average. And there was one group where there was just, I think, one or two people out of the 10, really dragged the group down. They were super annoying, they were a little bit negative, they were difficult to deal with, they upset the other people in the group. And the culture in that group was terrible.
So it was like having four Petri dishes, and one of them was rotten, one of them was amazing, and two were just average. So after that, I really started recalibrating my filters. And I went on to having one group where I had around 30 to 35 people. And I’ve had 30 to 35 people in my SilverCircle group for 10 years. And it’s become good because of the filters that I set.
In that case, I have an application process, and I must speak to someone before I approve them to join. Now that does two things. One, it really helps you get the right people, and you can get good context for the type of people you want to bring on. So they can’t just order and come on for you only to discover at that point that they’re not the sort of person you’d like to help. And two is, it changes the positioning a little bit where they’re actually lucky to be involved in the program versus you having to sell someone.
I never have to sell someone on coming on board. In fact, for me, that’s a red flag. If they don’t want their success, and they don’t want to work with me as much as I want to work with them, then it’s probably not going to be a great match. So I actually use that as a red flag. So hopefully, these are some of the ideas that would help you decide how to segment or filter when you do a sort of mid to higher-level program to get the right people on board.
And of course, once you have people join, the absolute best thing you can do is obsessively focus on delivering an amazing result, because then you’ll learn who goes well with your program and attract more people, just like that. And remember, of course, to ask your success stories to share their success with you, because that would be a really nice thing for them to do. And you end up with a page like I have at SilverCircle.com, which is just a success story page, and it’s extremely strong proof for other people who want to come along, and it seems to attract people just like the people you’ve got. So that will hopefully help you build a really strong program.
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