How Zack Zeller Closed $100K Deals Without Speaking a Word

[00:00:03] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santiasteban and I am your host. Our special guest today is Mr. Zach Zeller and

[00:00:12] Hector: he's the founder of ZZmedia. And mostly what we're going to talk about today is how to sell your services, how to sell what some people may call. Expensive or how to sell high ticket packages, without necessarily needing to do everything through a sales call. And I think that a lot of our listeners can benefit from that.

[00:00:32] Hector: So Zach, welcome and thanks for hanging out today.

[00:00:35] Zack: Yeah. Super excited to chat with you and dive deep into this.

[00:00:39] Hector: I come from the traditional sort of sales background where my my first job out of high school, I was, I would walk into middle aged women's houses and sit down at the kitchen table and try and sell them stuff. I tried to walk out with their credit card. not with the credit card, but with a credit card number, before I left.

[00:00:56] Hector: And so everything for me, I always fall back on, let me get in front of somebody, let me walk them through a sales call, , and it seems that a lot of people who sell services or sell, consulting or, or these things that are, not a 9 t shirt that a lot of them default to that as well.

[00:01:14] Hector: But what I love about what you've been able to do is kind of help bridge that gap or help, essentially scale people's expertise or scale the value or the trust that you would create on a call and to be able to do that in other ways. So, all that to say, catch us up on how you got Kind of to this place, some of the thing, stops that you made along the way.

[00:01:33] Hector: And then, if I, if I didn't say it clear enough, or there's other things that you feel that you do for your clients, shit, shed a little light on what you're doing with the people that you work with as well.

[00:01:44] Zack: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my big thing is that I never liked sales calls when I started my own businesses back in the day, which was a problem because I should have done a little bit more sales, but it gave me the opportunity to get really good copywriting. So funnels, emails, all of that stuff. Where I could reach out to a lot of people and almost orchestrate this, this, system of beliefs.

[00:02:17] Zack: that get them from point A to point B where they buy. And so I do the same for a lot of the clients that I work with. So I'm probably best known for working with people like Jason Capital, Jay Shetty, Les Brown, and taking their audiences on Instagram mainly and converting those into how to take it sales through chats.

[00:02:42] Zack: And so a lot of what happens when you change your sales process For copywriting is you're focusing a lot more on really sorting instead of selling and getting in front of the right people first and foremost, and then using a lot of these triggers and methods of influence to let people know that they're in the right place.

[00:03:09] Hector: Yeah. I think people are saying that sounds great. How do we do it? Or the other part of is well, that sounds like a lot. that sounds like a lot and mostly because it's just different from what most people are used to.

[00:03:22] Hector: I'm curious if there are things that you slam your fist, your head against your fist,and say, like, if only you knew this or like these types of people are working so hard, spinning their wheels, doing these types of things when if they just did it this way, It would be so much more efficient or effective , or, better.

[00:03:37] Hector: Are there things out there that you see that people , are doing that,kind of frustrate you being on the inside, if you will?

[00:03:45] Zack: Well, so the whole problem for a lot of people comes from how they see the game, and it's almost the same way how you train an elephant at the circus. So, and this is going to be a weird tangent, but it's, it'll pay off at the end, I promise, that you see these huge elephants, Tons, tons and tons of mass attached or led around by little ropes or little strings, because when the elephants were younger, smaller and weaker, a rope was strong enough to hold them.

[00:04:15] Zack: And so as the elephant grew up, it thought that the rope was something that would always hold them in place. And so they don't even try to fight it as they get older. The same thing happens a lot of time. When a lot of the times when business owners will try and sell their stuff, Because when they're starting to validate their offer and they're reaching out to people, they're typically getting Their feet are on the ground, they're handling a lot of these sales conversations, or seeing from the, first few dollars of, of ad spend, okay, this is working, this is not, but that little sliver of information, almost covers their whole perception of the marketplace.

[00:05:00] Zack: And so, recently, like I was working with a client, great at what he does. It has been doing it for 8 to 10 years selling very high ticket packages on the phone and teaching other people how to do the same. The problem is their email list didn't have the right people in it. Their audience wasn't filled up with the right people because their content strategy and their messaging was just a little misaligned.

[00:05:25] Zack: But instead of understanding that they assumed that their offer was too expensive, or they weren't selling something that people actually wanted. And it just causes you to continue to basically break down everything you've built up to try and revalidate and restart a new offer, which you don't, you lose all the momentum that you have.

[00:05:49] Zack: And it's really frustrating and it's really discouraging. And if you go out to five, 10 years. It disintegrates a lot of the, the trust you have in your instincts, in your, capabilities in, in your business long term. And so that's what I see with a lot of people who primarily run their business based off of referrals.

[00:06:13] Zack: They're trying content marketing, it's not really clicking. they're focusing on, tweaking and adding stuff to their offer to make it even more irresistible. But they're just. Talking it to a vacuum and not getting the proper feedback from the proper marketplace that would reward them for that stuff.

[00:06:38] Hector: Yeah. I think I have this sort of. I don't know what you call it, but a mindset that, you can sell, you can sell low ticket stuff, you can sell less expensive stuff via email or social media, but the high ticket stuff, , you're going to have to hop on a phone call or, And I remember there was a couple of people who really changed my mindset on this one was like a e commerce drop shipper, and he would sell 000 products and, and, at a time and how he did that, he had his own system and then, and then also the more widely relevant one was, is like people who are buying cars.

[00:07:16] Hector: Through text message. So it's if you are willing to do that alone tells me that that it's possible, right? It's just they need to either have the trust or there needs to be in a value or like now they talked about those boxes with crossing that bridge. Like now we just need to help them, have those beliefs and then we can we can sell those higher ticket items.

[00:07:36] Zack: Yeah, exactly. Well, it's almost like a really good way to frame this is understanding what a really good funnel look like,in the Wild West days of Facebook, maybe 10, 15 years ago. And for really good copy. You had your headline that led into a little bit of a story of, what people resonated with to know if it's for them, if it's not for them, it got into a value buildup, it got into the risk reversal, bonuses, things like that, like very classic types of sales copy.

[00:08:16] Zack: And everyone kind of understood if they're starting a business. That's roughly what a sales page look like. The reason I bring that up is because when people are looking to buy really high ticket things today, there's a template or a conversation they have in their mind. And so all of those elements are still great, but typically when you're going to email people or chat with people to get them into these high ticket sales, it's going to be more focused on a lot.

[00:08:52] Zack: yeah, a lot more of the. Exclusivity, how unique something is, who really, who's it for, who's in it for that sort of stuff. So it has a different, it has a different feel, and I'm sure you've seen this when you go through your email news, your email inbox and you see all the newsletters and it's some people are just You know, sending you directly to a link and it doesn't seem special.

[00:09:20] Zack: Some people you can tell that they're putting the time in to tell stories and connect with you. And it resonates, at least to me, it resonates differently. When those elements are there.

[00:09:35] Hector: Yeah, I'm really curious about is you've mentioned a lot of different platforms And, DMs and messages and emails, what do you feel like sits on top of, of those things? because it seems like you're able to deploy it in, in a variety of different mediums. , what do you feel is the same, regardless of what, What channel you're using, Zach.

[00:09:57] Zack: So the most important thing, and I got this from a really great copywriter, Gary Benzavanga, is to make your marketing valuable in itself. So part of that is making it easy and accessible and doing the work for your audience to find them where they're at and lead them like with the trail of breadcrumbs to where you want them to go. What I mean is. It doesn't matter if your business is on Instagram or LinkedIn or email, or you're using a combination of things, what you really want to be aware of is what, what is that ideal client, that avatar, that person you want to work with that is worth several thousand dollars to you over the course of the year, where, where are they hanging out? And what are they interested in? So I see people make this mistake a lot of times, Where I was talking to this lady in Costco the other day who sells fans, and she's posting pictures of her fans on Instagram, and it's great, and she was asking, because she knew I was vaguely into digital marketing, she was asking about a website, and this and that, and I was telling her, You make a website, you can make it beautiful, but then you have to drive traffic to it versus if you set up your fans on an Amazon or an Etsy or plug into a similar network, you're able to leverage the fact that people are searching already for your stuff, that they trust the platforms, and that's going to be a much easier sale versus, you creating a Shopify store, right?

[00:11:43] Zack: running ads to it, they have to click from Instagram or wherever they are currently to go to the website and see if they don't get lost, see if they trust it, see if they find what they want versus, using these other larger platforms.

[00:12:02] Hector: This is, this is really good. And I think we've laid some great context for people. So they're probably chomping at the bit, okay, Zach, what do I do? How do I do this? so when we get back from break, I'm curious for, I'd love for you to elaborate a little bit more on that process and, at least leave people with, a few steps that they can take, but we're going to get into that right after this quick break.

[00:12:21] Hector: Hey y'all. Today's episode is brought to you by amplify media and we are a podcast and content production company. Well, we like to think of ourselves as the media entity for your company or the media arm for your business, because chances are you have a product, a passion, a mission, a message, something that you're trying to get out to the world, but you may not have the time, the team or the tech skills to be able to do that.

[00:12:38] Hector: Well, if that's the case, we can help. Go to amplify media. com. That's a M P L a F Y media. com. You can also check the show notes For the link. And with that, let's get back to Zach. Zach. like we said, we laid out some great context and I think people see the value of this. I'd love for you to help,further crystallize it with maybe sharing what's possible or if people start to implement some of these things, , some of the cool things that you've seen happen in your experience.

[00:13:05] Zack: yeah, absolutely. So I always like to talk about Destin Weakman because that's, that's who connected us. I was working with him and he had at the time an email list of less than 600 people. And in our first 30 days, Sending a few emails to that list, we collected 15, 000 plus in his high ticket sales.

[00:13:28] Zack: And so the way something like that happens is really filtering for the right people. So the tool that we use was getting replies. From his email list to get to know a who's in the market for the problem that we solve and then be giving them more information and more sales collateral, or even flipping on a call with them to put butts in seats and get clients for his high ticket accelerator. And so you could do something similar and I have had that set up. I'll talk about this down the road. I have this seven day sales kit where we focus on sending out these questions to the list. And the way you want to do it is without revealing how you get people results. You just want to gauge if they have the problem that you've solved.

[00:14:22] Zack: And so the psychology behind it is that a lot of sales at a, at a level that just doesn't really work. If you're trying to talk to everyone and you're, having trouble getting high ticket leads and high ticket sales. A lot of that is because you don't speak to the specific problems people have. And so if we send an email from Destin's list.

[00:14:50] Zack: talking to, business owners that they don't have a budget for complicated marketing. They don't have a budget for running ads. Their business is limping along fueled by referrals a lot of the time, but Dustin has this. free way to tap into podcast guesting to, have the business of your dreams and make this seven figure leap.

[00:15:16] Zack: That sounds really, really good. And so we would want to first see, Hey,does, do you have a high ticket offer? Does your business mainly run on referrals? We want to tap into one specific thing that lets us know that this could be a really, a person on the list that has a specific problem based on where they're at.

[00:15:38] Zack: And we want. To qualify the people, have them reach out to us, and then we're in a conversation because we know we can help them. But imagine, you reach out to people on the list, and you're sending these, 100 to 300 word emails, seven days a week, trying to sell seats into your accelerator. And you don't even know if the people on your list have the problem that you solved.

[00:16:03] Zack: That's going to be a big clash. It's not going to be valuable to them. And so people will just tune you out. They'll unsubscribe. And they won't message you and the people that will unsubscribe and leave the list the fastest are actually probably the best leads in your business. The most qualified people that can help because they just, it's just such a mismatch that they know they need to get out of there.

[00:16:28] Zack: But the people you'll have left will be the people who will pay you 100 for your time and be unable to afford anything else. In your pipeline. So that's a big problem.

[00:16:42] Hector: Yeah. This, you, you mentioned the, let's call it the tactic of having them or apply. I know you just glanced over that, and it seems really subtle. I would just imagine that there's some, there's some, I know that there's some juice and some reasoning behind that. Can you talk about the, like, why specifically you have them reply to the email as opposed to clicking some link or doing something else?

[00:17:12] Hector: So

[00:17:13] Zack: Yeah. So yes. And it's really interesting because it doesn't just have to be required. The idea comes down in my head to permission based marketing. So I don't, I don't want to share a pitch or try and sell people until they're receptive and ready to buy. Right. And so if we first double check that they have.

[00:17:42] Zack: The problem and they come in and they take an action on that a, the buyer already has some momentum and is meeting you halfway and be, they're giving you permission and starting a conversation that, hey, they have this problem because most people you talk to, typically you're not going to be able to,see them in a police lineup of 10 people and pick out the one or two people who are ready to hand over 10, 000 for you to solve a big problem that they have.

[00:18:15] Zack: And so that's, that's a really strong tool. Like we use it. I had a client really, strong presence on LinkedIn with Paul and Helen Green, and they have a LinkedIn mastermind, and they sell these quiz funnel build outs and consulting. And they were doing a lot of product launches, getting a lot of phone calls.

[00:18:36] Zack: But we built a system where they could get people to essentially raise their hand for a webinar or a quiz. And that at the same time, we wouldn't just wait for them to go through the assessment, just the fact that they opted in Set them into a chat flow and send them a video sales letter to get them in a position to buy.

[00:19:00] Zack: And so we did Well, it's in Great British Pounds. We did 22, 000 Great British Pounds the first week of the launch. And they did another launch using that same system later and closed 100, 000. Yeah. 100, 000 great British pounds without taking a single phone call using that.

[00:19:20] Hector: that sounds amazing. What,\ else goes into that, right? I mean, is it, the magic and the follow up is the magic in the, personalized like prescription? Like that set, like doing 120, 000 and not having to hop on like on a phone call, that seems so far from where most people are.even if they don't execute on it, what are some of the things that they would have to do in order to enact something like that?

[00:19:46] Zack: Yeah. So I break it down. It's just four steps really. , the big problem before I get into those four steps is sales is powerful because it's almost like a rubber band. Where you can,apply push out on a rubber band with enough force to make it stretch at any, at any given time with marketing.

[00:20:08] Zack: A lot of the times you don't have that same control of the situation if the client going with that metaphor, if they're, a stickler. And they need a lot more facts and figures and details, and you don't include that in your marketing, you've lost them. You can't have that conversation with them and add more details or take away details, depending on how they thought.

[00:20:29] Zack: So, going into these four steps, especially if you sell something high ticket, I like to make sure everyone has all the logistics they need throughout the process. even if we're selling based on a lot of the emotion and the outcome of what you provide. So the first of four things is you need really good bait.

[00:20:52] Zack: And a lot of people miss out on this because it does take that extra work. It's your lead magnet. It's essentially solving that problem that people have. And I view it as a sample or a condensed version of your high ticket offer. So if you're, dang, I'll break it down for you. Make this, make this real. So if you're selling, let's say, 10, 000 set up with Amplify Media, what I would do as a lead magnet is almost like a case study of here's the seven steps.

[00:21:30] Zack: How Amplify Media took XYZ business. And edit an extra six figures a year from this podcast system. And then I would lay out, everything you do. And then the choice becomes, Cool, you know exactly what my business does. Do you want us to just Do it all for you, or do you want to figure out how to do it yourself and connect all the integrations and set up all the headlines and, get the right guests and, make the copy.

[00:22:01] Zack: Great. You're sharing really what the flow and what the process is to get the result. You're not telling them how to what good enough looks like what every single thing. piece of it is because when you have that good bait, it allows you to go into step two to chat with people. So you already, you already know people are coming in because they want the outcome you promised with the bait.

[00:22:26] Zack: You're giving them some value, some sample of what you do, which builds a lot of trust. At the same time, a lot of people wait when they have really good bait. They wait for people to come and contact them. We don't do that. We go ahead with an email or a chat sequence. And I view it as almost skipping the line or going to the VIP route. And this, this really came up working with Taki Moore and a lot of webinar stuff. And he noticed that, hey, out of everyone who signs up for a webinar, they want the outcome, but they're not going to sit through a two or three hour presentation in a few days. But if we reached out to everyone who signed up for the webinar and just said, hey, instead of the webinar, do you want to have a 10 20 minute call with us?

[00:23:13] Zack: To get the gist and see if it's a fit for you and ask us whatever questions you have basically leading into a discovery call was super effective because It allows people to skip the line and gets them to you faster. So I like to do that with chat scripts, which really just figures out if they have the money to work with you, if they can make decisions on their own, if they need what you have, and if it's a priority, if it's a now or not now thing, and then if it is.

[00:23:44] Zack: We sent number three, a VSL, so video sales letter. And really what that covers is a lot more social proof, a lot more of, Hey, here's how we do this thing for you. And we're opening up a few more spots for clients. in the next, month to get them set up with the whole Amplify podcast set up. here's a few past case studies of clients we've worked with like that.

[00:24:12] Zack: here's how much time it takes you. Here's,pretty much all the logistics and the details just to help them make that decision. We're not at this point. They have so much momentum behind. The conversation that yes, we're still selling them on the outcome and still tying the whole marketing process together with that golden thread of let's add six figures onto your business with this podcast done for you funnel like we still want to reiterate that, but we're not hitting them over the top of the head with those benefits.

[00:24:47] Zack: It's more of just letting them understand the scope of working with you on this. And then what we do is, the last phase, the last phase is optional. But if you want to send to a phone call on the back of that. Or to have chat agents live to answer any questions and kind of, tuck them into bed that helps a lot.

[00:25:08] Zack: And that's, that's the strategy that I was using, at the beginning when I talked about Les Brown, Jordan Balfour, like all those big names where we did over like 12. 4 million in chat sales over a two to three year period solely from chat, no phone calls. So We had chat agents on the back of those sales letters. We called it tucking them into bed. So we would basically answer any questions that they had and just give them the payment link and have them once they confirm that they were in and they were interested, we would get them paid and get rid of any obstacles or speed bumps in the way of that. Yeah.

[00:25:52] Hector: Yeah, well, that was a masterclass. I'm sad that we, uh, waited to the last minute to drop that, but I'm glad that we did because that really lays it out there. And I think it was always personally, I love the idea of webinars and teaching through webinars, but I also knew that my clients, To your point, we're not the ones that we're going to sit through a two hour, three hour training.

[00:26:16] Hector: And so this is a great way to get both because they're the ones who would register for it, but they're not the ones who would show up for it. , it's a great way to catch those people.

[00:26:25] Zack: And it's because that's the tricky part too. Well, coaches almost knocked over my light over there, coaches and business owners, it's so easy to start a social media account, or record some audio and put it up on, anchor and say you have a podcast and get yourself out there and put up a website. the problem is, is that you look around and you see. A lot of these strategies sending the phone calls, people posting the highlights of their business lives, people doing webinars, all this, people running ads even, but you don't know if those things are converting. You don't know if they're profitable. And most of the time they're not. And it's not, not just from a skill point of view, but a lot of, a lot of these low ticket funnels, a lot of these systems at scale, take time to dial in that you'll spend 15, 20, 000 over six months. And yeah, you'll be you'll be making money. You won't just be flushing 20, 000 down the toilet.

[00:27:34] Zack: but not all of that will be profit because you're going to be gathering data. you need to. See how many people are going from the creative to the landing page, how the VSL or your landing page is working, how many people are buying. If those people that buy on the front end continue to buy from you, like it's a whole thing that takes time and money to figure out.

[00:27:57] Zack: So all that being said is I like to keep it simple and focus on really steadily laying down one brick at a time as you build the castle that is your business. And not, not trying to jump from marketing play to marketing play, from copying someone else or because you think what you're doing isn't working because in business, a lot of things don't work for a while until they suddenly,hockey stick and get that momentum they need to really pay off for you.

[00:28:36] Hector: Yeah, so cool. Well, Zach, I want to keep asking you millions of questions here, but, in the sake of our listeners time, if they want to find out more about you, go deeper in your world. where's the best place to go?

[00:28:48] Zack: Yeah. So I'm on LinkedIn. Zach Zeller, 22. That's. Zach with a K. I also have the Sunday sales kit at we should not be doing this dot com. So that's a lot of the marketing and swipe around sending emails to your list to get replies for premium high ticket buyers for your stuff.

[00:29:15] Hector: I love that. And we'll link that up in the show notes as well. I want to thank all of you. Listeners for sticking around with us, we would be forever grateful for a rating or a view wherever you get your podcasts. And if you know someone who needs to hear this, hit that share button and let's grow the community together.

[00:29:30] Hector: But it's been a pleasure hanging out with you all. We'll see on the next one.