Continuity offer, lifetime upgrades, get them to stick.
Lost chapter author note.
This chapter delineates lifetime versus one-time bonuses.
I thought too many people would struggle to fit it into their business.
But if you have a continuity service, this model can be very effective.
June 2017, after launching 30-ish gyms by hand and getting absolutely crippled by payment processing problems crazy story, by the way.
You can read all about that in 100 million leads.
Layla and I had had enough.
We wanted to wind down gym launch and do a weight loss offer instead.
But that meant I had lots of gyms to break the news to.
And when I called up the first gym to cancel his launch, he refused.
After some back and forth, he asked if I would just teach him instead of flying out to do the launch.
I agreed.
Gym launch was saved.
And just like that, I stumbled on gym launch licensing offer, which we still use to this day.
So instead of flying out, I provided our already proven gym launching stuff.
Think ads, scripts, sales training, follow-up tactics, and so on.
And I licensed it all for $16,000.
The stuff worked.
Jim's using our materials made on average 30000, almost twice what their investment was in the first 30 days.
For the average gym owner, that was life-changing.
But I still had a looming problem.
Even though the product was expensive and worked, I could only sell each customer once.
So after I sold it, that was it.
A problem if you want to reinvest in growth and pay yourself.
My preference.
I like getting paid.
So to solve it, I had to sell something else.
A continuity product fit the bill.
Even if I used all the cash from the first purchase to get more customers, the continuity offer would keep money coming in.
But I didn't have a continuity product.
Boo.
Then I had a stroke of luck.
A gym reached out and gave me a perfect opportunity.
Hey man, how are you?
I'm in.
Uh, what?
Seriously, on your next thing.
I've already made 55K in the last six weeks.
It's a 340% return.
So if your next thing is half as good as this, let me just buy it yesterday.
So how's your semi-private training going?
We actually don't have any, he replied.
How much do you make on supplements?
Zero.
We don't have those either.
Feeling confident now.
What about churn, hiring, internal plays?
You got those sorted?
Uh, not really his confidence.
Dropping wind coming out of his sails.
Time for the offer, i see.
So do you want to get out of the daily grind and actually scale a legit chain of gems?
He puffed back dude, that sounds awesome.
Like i said, where have you got him in down selling the upsell?
All right, it's way higher price and you got to stay longer.
Cool, i think.
So he said.
Getting a bit shaky, it's punching numbers into my calculator.
$42,000 a year for three years.
He sat there, silent.
Shoot.
Throw in the bonus.
On top of that, you'll get access before you start paying.
Cool?
Taking out his own calculator, he looked shocked, then smirked.
Alex, there's $3,200 a month.
That's 20% cheaper than gym lunch.
Yeah, you got a deal.
What do I get first?
Oh boy.
Well, that depends on what's holding your gym back right now.
So we'll figure out that bottleneck and then I'll make that play to solve it.
We'll repeat that process every two weeks until you've got more money than know to do it.
Sound good?
Bi-weekly plays specific for my gym?
Fantastic, let's do it.
Little did he know, I had nothing ready yet.
I left that up to future Alex.
But I did know one thing.
I had a continuity offer.
One where I provided a new money-making play every 14 days.
Yikes.
It was insane.
And so were the results.
I would keep this up for almost two years.
It exhausted me to my core, but it meant I could plow all the extra cash into getting more customers and get paid.
So I did.
And Gym Launch's revenue went up by more than 13x from 300000 a month to 4 million a month as a result.
So it worked.
This turned into an important lesson for me.
Customers would start any offer if I made it tasty enough.
But they'd only stick if they had good reasons to.
So I gave them one every 14 days.
Our revenue kept scaling, not because we sold more customers, but because I gave them good reasons to keep paying.
So a good offer got them to start and a good bonuses got them to stick.
Now, so can yours.
Description.
With the previous offers in this section, we got people to start our continuity program.
Now we focus on getting them to stick.
So once they become customers, they stay customers.
That said, we can get people to stick to continuity offers longer with bonuses.
More value on top of the continuity product itself.
So improving monthly stick means providing extra value in some way monthly.
When I make a bonus, I think of when and what.
For the when part, I use delays or milestones.
This means how long do they have to wait delays, or what do they have to do to achieve milestones, to get the thing.
For the what, I give them a one-time bonus, a variable bonus, or a lifetime upgrade.
A one-time bonus, you give one time.
Think of one thing, one use, one activity, or one time access.
A variable bonus, you give on a schedule, but it changes each time.
And a lifetime upgrade means a permanent high value change in continuity status.
Think an entire feature or service.
This means that you simply pair a when with a what.
Putting them together.
The person has to wait a certain period of time or do certain stuff to get the bonus once.
Get a variable bonus on a schedule like monthly, quarterly or yearly, or get the same bonus forever.
The time to the first bonus extends their stay one time.
And if you keep giving them bonuses, you can extend their stay more times.
If you're not sure what bonus to offer, think of it two ways.
First, how can I give them more or better of something?
From a value equation perspective, think faster, easier or risk free.
And finally, If you just want to list the different types of bonuses, refer to bonuses chapter in 100 million offers and feature downsells in 100 million money models.
Both will give you different perspectives on types of bonuses.
All in all, you can probably make a continuity offer on anything that provides continuous value.
You can get them to stick on that continuity offer longer by adding bonus value well after their first payment, and often
Here's some examples.
Delayed one-time bonus for local service.
When?
Stay a recurring customer for four months in a row and you become an advanced member.
What?
As an advanced member, you get access to our annual customer appreciation palooza.
Delayed recurring bonus.
Local service.
When?
Stay a recurring customer for four months in a row and on the fifth month...
What?
VIPs get first-in-line access to in-demand time slots.
Milestone bonus.
Digital product.
When?
For every friend you refer.
What?
We give you one more module.
Recurring bonus.
Consumable physical product.
When?
Stay a recurring dog food customer.
What?
A new dog treat, toy, or book every month.
When?
Stay a recurring butcher box meat customer.
What?
Lifetime free bacon with every order.
If you cancel, you lose it.
Continuous physical use, car lease.
When?
Every 3,000 miles, a milestone, or every six months.
Delay?
What?
You can get the car service for free.
Bonus.
Important notes.
Make sure customers know about your bonuses.
They can only get excited enough to stay longer to get it if they know it exists, so tell them.
Whether they're just signing up or a year in, always let them know what comes next.
And if you have recurring bonuses, right after you give it to them, let them know about the next one.
Always keep them wanting more.
How to tell customers about upcoming bonuses.
Let customers know the type of bonuses they get, but keep the bonus itself a surprise.
This gives you flexibility and makes the bonus more valuable.
In the gym lunch example, customers knew they would get a new play from me every month, but I kept the exact play as surprise.
To be clear, the bonus was on top of licensing stuff they already got.
This made it both recurring and valuable, which makes sense because we want them to pay as much as possible continuously.
Variable bonuses or lifetime upgrades.
Unless your bonuses give a huge and permanent improvement, keep it variable.
No matter how good you make your thing, customers will get used to it.
So giving new stuff more often, even if less valuable, frequently keeps more customers interested longer.
Making milestones for your milestone bonuses.
As always, I try to make all my milestones either things that make my customers more successful think activation points or things that make me more successful think advertising on my behalf.
Ideally, things that do both.
For example, if publicly posting that they are starting a weight loss challenge will increase their adherence and advertise my business, then why not give them a bonus when they do it?
Think of all the tips from the Win Your Money Back chapter in $100 million money models.
All of those apply.
Combine bonuses when you can.
You can combine both the whens and the whats from earlier.
For the whens you can have something that they get at a delay and another bonus they only get if they achieve a milestone.
For the whats, a one-time bonus will get them to sign up and stay to that point.
A recurring bonus, variable, or lifetime upgrade will keep them staying after.
So you might put one big bonus for getting them to stay for X period and then another permanent upgrade after they get the Y period and then another one-time bonus after they achieve a milestone.
Use them all.
With proper framing, you can make lots of stuff a variable bonus.
The bonuses can be new things, better things, or more of what they already like.
Giant streaming services do all three.
They already have more stuff than any one person could ever consume, ever.
But they still come out with new shows, more seasons that people like and better ways to match content to viewers' preferences.
Give customer status and bragging rights when they unlock bonuses.
Once customers unlock a big bonus, change their label.
For instance, after someone stays six months, you might go from calling them a customer to a VIP.
Smart cookies like us align the label with the traits of loyal customers.
From a customer to committed, lifer, advanced, invested, all-in, elite, and so on.
Bonus points if you make the label something they can brag about and feel bad about losing.
Kind of like airlines with their super-duper diamond status.
Celebrate status changes publicly.
The more you compare status changes with little ceremonies or graduations, the more value the status change has.
The more status they gain and the more status that gets them, the less they'll wanna lose it.
And by extension, getting them to stick.
You can do these monthly, quarterly, or when you have big achievements to celebrate.
Summary points.
To get more people to stick for the long-term, give them bonuses over the long-term.
When making bonuses, you want to know the when and the what.
When you give a bonus is either on a delay or from a milestone.
Delayed bonuses you give after a specified number of payments or time has passed.
Milestone bonuses you give after the customer does something or achieves a result.
What type of bonuses give you a one-time, variable, or lifetime upgrade?
One-time bonuses happen once and extend the duration of customer's tenure once.
So you may need to give lots of one-time bonuses over time and keep them staying over time.
Variable bonuses give a different thing each time.
Lifetime upgrade bonuses give additional features or services.
You can combine bonuses.
The more incentive someone has to start and stick, the better.
When someone earns a big bonus, give them a new label to show their superior status.
Make the bonus a big deal to the customer and do it in the public if they feel okay with it.
