Welcome to The Birdhouse newsletter. It is approximately a 5 minute read.
In today's newsletter, we're going over:
Why a $50 DIY template loses to a $5,000 done-for-you retainer on conversion rate, not just revenue
The exact friction points that kill self-serve offers before the buyer ever starts
A 24 hour audit to find where your funnel is asking people to do work they don't want to do
What actually happens on a sales call when you remove every step except 'yes'
Apply to work with The Birdhouse (link)
Cut your DIY tier and raise the price of full service
(What) If your business offers a cheap self-serve version next to a premium done-for-you version, kill the cheap one or stop promoting it.
(Why) Buyers who wanted to do the work themselves would already be doing it, so the DIY tier mostly attracts people who never had budget in the first place.
(How) Do these things:
Audit your current offer stack today and count every step where a premium buyer has to put in unnecessary effort.
Pick the 3 highest-friction steps and rebuild them as fully managed deliverables
Raise your premium tier price by 20 to 30 percent this week and run it on your next 5 sales calls before you touch anything else.
If you have a DIY product under 1,000 dollars, pause it within 24 hours. It may be cannabolizing your DFY high ticket option. (or just attracting the wrong buyer and serving as a distraction)
Here are some of the best links I have found since last time I emailed you:
From the Birdhouse 📼
Why you must manage your reputation (link).
Why your call transcripts are a gold mine (link).
News 🗞️
X's latest algorithm open source and what to consider (link).
The call that started this issue
Last week a prospect told us flat out: nobody wants to do the work, that's why people pay huge premiums for something fully done-for-you instead of doing it themselves for cheap.
I see tons of people who sell to affluent demographics, but assume price is the objection, so they build a cheaper version to catch the people who say no. In practice, that cheaper version usually just proves the premium tier is worth it.
You think you’re “capturing the 99% people who can’t afford your main offer”, but in reality you’re putting the wrong people into your funnel who never upsell (I’ve went through this myself).
The math nobody runs
Here's example math I experienced first hand. Say a DIY content template sells for 50 dollars and a done-for-you ghostwriting retainer sells for 5k/month. On a landing page, the DIY option might convert 2% of visitors because the barrier to "try it" is low, but the barrier to actually finish it, use it, and get a result is high. Most buyers download it and never open it again.
The DFY retainer, sitting at 90x the price, often converts a higher percentage of qualified sales calls, sometimes 8 to 12%, because the buyer only has to make one decision: yes or no. There's no second step where they have to write, edit, or execute anything. The friction lives entirely on our side of the table.
What this means for your offer
If your funnel has a cheap tier and an expensive tier sitting side by side, look at what each one asks the buyer to do. If the cheap tier asks for more effort than the expensive one, you've built it backwards.
The low ticket option only makes sense if it is a quick implementation that directly gets a result that leads into your higher ticket offer. you also need to implement a process to convert that low ticket buyer into a high ticket buyer in the shortest amount of time possible.
If you can't do the above, it's better to just focus on going direct to book a call for the high ticket and give everything away for free, which will in effect increase your organic reach as well as your reputation and authority in the space.
If you like this newsletter and want to work with us, there are a few ways we can do so:
or, you can just reply to this email.
I reply to everyone.
Hope this helps.
Cheers.
Marcos
