At the start of January I got my hands on a new coaching client's funnel.
It was a mess, and that is putting it lightly.
They had 13 email sequences that were all linked mainly from 3 leads magnets, and all were branching off based on activity of people in those sequences. ie… when someone clicked do something else, or add people who buy one offer to another sequence… and so on.
9 offers were laced through the emails and there were 9 upsell pages after every offer.
There was a maze of automation, tagging like nothing I have ever seen before, Zapier triggers and all kinds of other things like Proof and Deadline Funnels all linked and hooked up to their Kajabi.
They had this all set up for them by someone last year and spent a small fortune doing so. They didn’t tell me how much they had spent, but it was over 5-figures!
The biggest problem was, their ads agency is burning their budget and hardly any sales are coming in.
Essentially the funnel was not converting.
The ads agency was blaming Kajabi and all the set-up, offering instead to build it out on another system, and then they quotes another 5-figures to re-build it all.
That’s when they got back in touch with me and engaged me to help them at the start of this year.
It was the middle of December, at an event that we originally started talking. They explained things to me then, and I suggested we get on a call together in the new year so I could spend more time with them.
I did however ask them to test something before Christmas… a much more simplified way to get leads onto a call with them, and then use that call to sell their offer.
In two weeks running up to Christmas, they had this test set up…
- They ran one advert to a low-cost offer
- 80% of the people that bought that offer booked a call
- Then, they converted just under 50% to paying clients for their premium coaching offer
What staggered me was the email I got back saying that the sales made in the 14 days after before Christmas…
....this was a greater number of sales from their funnel than they had in the 6 months prior to us speaking.
When they engaged me in January, here what we did in just 7 days… well they did all the work themselves, I guided them…
- They left the ads running to their low-cost offer they set up in December and stopped all other ads, terminating the work with their ads agency.
- They cut the email sequences to 3
- A delivery sequence for the low-cost offer.
- A welcome sequence introducing who they were.
- A single upsell sequence.
- They reduced the upsells to only 1 upsell at the front end, right after purchase, and 1 upsell in the sequence.
- Every sequence gave the ability for people to book calls with them.
- They simplified the automations in the system as I showed them the reports in Kajabi and how to create dynamic segments to see how things can work better.
- We removed DeadlineFunnel and Proof from all their web pages too.
What were the results?
From January 11th to February 11th, they had generated 3x the income for their online course than they did the whole of 2024 – that's just in one month!
And the ad spend went from just over $4,000 in this one month, down to just $800.
We stopped confusing customers, simplified everything and it worked.
This is the Minimum Viable Funnel™...
"If you need a flowchart to understand your own funnel, your customers are probably lost too" ~ Ant Hodges
Think about it…
When was the last time you bought something through a complicated process?
Did you ever go back to that business?
How many sales are you losing because people get confused and leave?
Most marketing experts will tell you to add more sequences, more upsells, and more automation.
But that's exactly why most funnels fail.
The solution isn't more complexity.
It's less.
I've spent years testing this.
The simpler the funnel, the higher the conversion rate.
Every single time.
Your Action Steps This Week...
1. The Funnel Simplification Audit
o Map out your current funnel on paper
o Circle areas where customers might get confused
o If it takes more than one page to draw, it's too complicated
2. The Sequence Reduction Challenge
o List all your current email sequences
o Identify your top 3 that actually drive sales
o Consider pausing or consolidating the rest
3. The Offer Clarification
o Check how many offers you're presenting to customers
o Limit to a maximum of 3: entry offer, core offer, and one upsell
o Make sure each has a clear value proposition in one sentence
Remember, simplicity isn't just easier for you, it's better for your customers too.
A Personal Note
I find myself having this conversation weekly with entrepreneurs who've been led to believe that more complexity equals more profit. They've spent thousands on complicated systems and wonder why their sales are struggling.
While spending time with other entrepreneurs and even working with my own business coach in recent weeks, I noticed this pattern again. Three entrepreneurs I spoke with had the same issue - their marketing had become so complex that they couldn't explain it themselves in under a minute.
That's the real test… can you explain your customer journey in one breath?
If not, it's too complicated.
In my 18 years of business, I've never seen a complex funnel outperform a simple, focused one.
Never.
Simple works better.
Speak soon,
P.S. Need help simplifying your funnel? Join me for a live Q&A tomorrow inside my comunity... join today if you are not a member
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