How Stories Break Through False Beliefs with Steve Larsen
On today’s episode of Just the Tips, Dean and I welcome Steve Larsen, a good friend of mine and, to be honest, a man who is more obsessed with funnels than probably anyone on the planet. I had to ask him, out of the gate, how he got that way, and his answer may be something you can relate to. As he told us, he had tried to do business in traditional ways, everything from driving web traffic to even door-to-door sales, and nothing was as effective or efficient as ClickFunnels. Steve knows this side of the business inside and out—he estimates he’s built about 500 funnels—so if you want legitimate tips on how to make funnels work for you, you have to listen to this week’s episode.
What makes a good funnel?
While Steve has made somewhere around 500 funnels, he says it hit upon what made a successful funnel somewhere around 200. He told us on this week’s Just the Tips that it isn’t about the design of the funnel—people obsess way too much over the design, he says. Instead, it’s all about the offer creation. If you don’t have a good offer, the smartest design in the world won’t save your funnel. Instead, you should be focused on funnel hacking, looking at what other funnels have been successful, what are people selling that the market wants? As Steve says, too many people think about what they like, but they are the wrong people to ask. You have to have an offer that fills a need in the market. Focus on the fundamentals!
The key to better marketing? Breaking down false beliefs.
One of the things we talked about with Steve is how to abandon the false beliefs you have (like, say, design is essential to a funnel’s success). He had some really interesting insights to share from his experience. And it turns out that as obsessed as he is with funnels, he’s really obsessed with story. He told us how it came to him one day that all behavior is driven by belief, and belief is driven by story. So all he had to do to get someone to change their beliefs was to trump whatever story was in their head, with a better story of his own. It’s a really interesting perspective, and one he dives much deeper into on this episode of Just the Tips.
The three types of false beliefs
Steve says there are three kinds of false beliefs that every marketer needs to come up with a story to counteract: The vehicle, the internal and the external. Learn how to do this, and you can literally sell anything. The vehicle is what will get them to their goal. The internal is what you think will lead you to (or stop you from achieving) your goal. And the external are the things that are outside of your control, but that you tell yourself will impact you one way or another (e.g. time). This is really fascinating stuff that on one hand, seems so fundamental but on the other, is a next-level approach to selling and marketing. Steve shares so much insight, making this a must-listen-to episode of Just the Tips.
How to tell a great story
As Steve says, you need to factor in all three of these beliefs if you want to get people to change their behavior. And so for any marketing, you need to understand how someone thinks they’re going to achieve their goal, what internal and external factors may be holding them back, and then tell them stories that address all three. As he says, you want an epiphany to go off in their heads, without you actually saying what that epiphany is. There’s a lot of deep and interesting content in this week’s episode from Steve, and if you’ve ever gone near a marketing department, you have to listen.
Outline of This Episode
- [3:47] How Steve became interested in funnels
- [6:33] What makes a good funnel?
- [13:30] Focus on the fundamentals
- [16:51] Dropping your false beliefs
- [23:19] Starting at the false beliefs
- [27:40] How Steve puts together a story
- [33:05] How Steve tricked our listeners
Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
