The 4 Biggest Myths About Selling Your Signature Offer Through a Virtual Summit
If you’re here, there’s a high likelihood that you don't fall for the virtual summit myths that are always floating around.
However, you've probably heard some of them, and may believe them to some extent. These myths about summits held me back from going all-in and deciding to host my first summit for way too long. And they may be holding you back from the life and business changing results that summits can create for you too.... especially if you use a summit as a way to launch your signature offer.
So today, we're going to do a little myth-busting!
We'll cover…
- where these myths came from
- what they are
- how we help our clients avoid them
Virtual Summit Myths
Let’s dive into these myths. Of course, these myths are rooted in some truth, but with most of them, the truth comes from people not doing things correctly and then judging an entire strategy because of it.
Here we go!
Myth #1: Summit’s Don’t Work
Have you heard that summits don’t work? Or that summits only work for influencers with a certain number of people on their list? I believed this one for a long time and it held me back from launching my first summit because of it.
Where it comes from
I believe this myth comes from people launching crappy summits or summits that have bad messaging that doesn't communicate the value of the event well. It can also come from people who wing it based on the outward stuff they see when they watch other events. This always leads to missing out on details and strategies that go on behind-the-scenes to make a summit a success.
How we help our clients avoid it
Honestly, we try to help everyone avoid hosting a summit that doesn't work through the Summit Host Hangout Facebook group and podcast. But of course, we do it on a much deeper level with our clients.
- We make sure that our clients events are perfectly positioned so that they don’t end up hosting an incredible event that no one signs up for.
- We have a full project plan with over 300 tasks that we lead them through step-by-step to host a high-converting virtual summit.
They follow a proven system that they know will work, rather than winging it based on stuff they’re picked up by watching other events and hoping it works.
Summits DO work, when they're done right
I’m going to give you some examples to help bust this myth and see how a summit can work for you.
- We recently had a client host a summit that brought in over 5000 registrations, $41.4k in all-access pass revenue, and $88k in course launch revenue - 4x her biggest launch before that.
- Just a couple months ago, a client broke the record for the highest-revenue summit using our strategies with an event that brought in over 33,000 attendees and $245,000 in all-access pass sales
- One of my recent summits brought in 6500 attendees and $121,000 in all-access pass sales
If you host a summit with vague messaging for a broad audience with a general topic, it's not going to work. But with the right strategies, we consistently see summits work incredibly well for our clients.
Myth #2: They’re gross and pitchy.
Have you heard that summits are gross, slimy, pitch-fests? I have! I actually hated summits when they first started because of this. I distinctly remember a conversation with a mastermind where one of them guessed that 2016 was going to be the year of summits and I was like “gross, that’s the worst”.
Where it comes from
This myth is rooted in some truth, because the way many people host summits does feel pretty gross and overly pitchy. I think it comes from…
- not understanding or caring about engagement-based, feel-good strategies
- subscribing to the bro-marketer way of doing things
- not knowing how to correctly position offers throughout a summit
But summits don't have to be pitch-fests, and in fact, they're actually a lot more profitable when you focus on making it a valuable and engaging experience for everyone involved.
How we help our clients avoid it
We prioritize attendee and speaker experience above everything else in our summit strategies. We've seen time and time again that when you prioritize creating a great experience for others, your results follow. Our summit-to-course-launch system builds great awareness around your course, membership, or group program throughout your summit without pitching at all! In fact, you only pitch it at the very end, but by the time you get that far, you've subtly build awareness of your offer in a natural way during the summit to the point that attendees are begging you to open the cart!
Summits don't have to be pitch-fests!
The most recent summit that I used to launch a course using these strategies was a smaller event with around 1500 attendees. I used all of the strategies I teach clients in the Summit in a Box Accelerator.
- Throughout the event and in our feedback surveys, I never had one negative piece of feedback related to the launch from either attendees or speakers.
- In fact, my speakers kept derailing our live panels by choosing to talk about how incredible the program was without my prompting - I had to keep getting them back on track!
- Attendees were commenting on a specific video that's part of our summit-to-course-launch strategy asking me to open the cart or take their money. Several students have had this happen at their summits too!
- In the end, we went on to have a $63,000 course launch from that small summit.
If you use the right strategies - summits can be highly profitable without being overly pitchy.
Myth #3: They’re more trouble than they’re worth
This one goes along with the first one about summits not working, but it’s a little different. Have you heard someone say that summits are more trouble than they’re worth?
Where it comes from
Similar to the first myth, it comes from events that aren’t put together the right way and hosts see poor results. Summits are a big project that require a lot of time. Of course they will feel like a waste of time if you don’t get good results.
I think it also comes from looking at summits as a one-time event rather than something that can be leveraged in an ongoing way to grow your list, increase revenue, launch your offer, and use that momentum moving forward.
How we help our clients avoid it
In addition to our summit strategies that help avoid an unsuccessful summit with low conversion rates and low profit margins, we also have a full system for post-summit profits inside of our Accelerator. This is a customizable way to leverage all the work you did and build the momentum to have bigger and better summits and launches all throughout the year.
All of that comes together to allow you to replace the other slow-growth strategies you've been using to grow your list or launch your course and replace it with something that works a whole lot better and serves you in lots of better ways.
As for people not thinking it’s worth it when they do it all on their own, I make sure that our clients don’t have to do a single thing for their summit from scratch.
- We provide copy and design templates for every website page and graphic you need for a summit.
- We have about 200 copy templates for everything from speaker pitching and communication, to summit promotion, to event-related emails, to emails that pitch the all-access pass.
- We have tutorials for all the tech.
- We have surveys, templates, written processes, task lists, calculators, checklists, and truly everything someone needs to cut hosting the time it takes to host a summit by about 75% - no exaggeration
And that makes it a whole lot more worth it.
Summits get bigger, better, AND easier with every event
The first summit I hosted took me over 400 hours total to create everything from scratch. With our templates and processes, our Accelerator clients typically spend about 120 hours total, or 10 hours/week on their first summit in the 12 weeks leading up to it.
Now compare that to hosting a repeat event:
- In my 5 round hosting the same summit, I spent about 60 hours of my own time on the event, including all of the interactions the week-of.
- I didn’t launch anything on the back of that one, but it brought in $121,000 in all-access pass revenue.
- The profit was a little over $70,000.
- I could have easily carried that momentum into a launch and future launches throughout the year to my email list that was now 6000 people bigger.
Seems pretty worth it to me!
Myth #4: Free summits attract low-quality leads
This one gets me fired up every time I see it! We've covered how much more valuable free summits end up being compared to paid events in an episode with Cara Harvey comparing free versus paid summits. But this one comes up constantly, so let's dive in even further:
Where it comes from
I think this comes from poorly done free summits. If you don’t host a summit well, of course, it’s going to attract low-quality leads.
I think it also comes from coaches who don’t actually know what they’re talking about and make a judgment with zero experience and teach others that way.
I think it can also come from people who prefer paid events and are trying to prove they’re “right” about their strategy being better.
I’m not saying free summits are always better than paid summits. There are times when paid events can make more sense strategically, but for first-time summit hosts, I recommend free summits every time.
How we help our clients avoid it
The biggest way we help our clients avoid this is by strategic event positioning. Of course, if you position your event wrong, it won’t attract the kind of people you want. With strategic positioning, you're able to ensure that you're attracting the right leads to your event who will be a perfect-fit for the paid offers you have to sell them.
We also put a big emphasis on attendee experience and help our clients build engagement throughout their summits. Engagement is huge and builds progress. There’s no reason for attendees to feel excited about buying from you when they didn’t see you in action or make progress with what you teach them.
Well positioned summits attract high-quality leads.
Let’s talk about a few examples of how this myth doesn’t hold true.
- The example I shared earlier with our client who 4x-ed her previously biggest launch to bring in $80,000 in course sales from a free summit.
- In the summit I hosted a few weeks ago, a sponsor and I experimented by having her launch her high-ticket group program on the back end of my summit. She made $60,000…it wasn’t even her summit…and we didn’t do most of the strategies I teach in the Accelerator because I hadn’t thought about a sponsorship working that way before.
So if someone else can have a $60k launch off of someone else’s free event, I'd consider this myth busted.
Ready for more?
I talked a lot about how we help our clients and mentioned some of the strategies we teach and provide the training and templates for inside of our Summit in a Box Accelerator.
The Accelerator is a high-touch group program specifically for experienced business owners who have a course, membership, or group program to launch on the back end.
We’ve taken our high-converting summit strategy, and combined it with our feel-good course launch strategy, and it’s really a formula that can’t be beat.
And to be clear, this application isn’t for us to judge whether you’re “good enough” for us. That’s gross. We’re not going to ask for your annual revenue or make you convince us how cool of a person you are. It’s two questions that will help us see if the Accelerator and this training can truly help you. Because if you’re not quite at that place yet, it would just be overwhelming.
But if you…
- have a successful course, membership, or other scalable offer, even if it’s just one launch to a tiny email list where you had a few sales come in
- have at least one person on your team, like a VA
those are both pretty good signs that you are where you’d need to be for us to be able to help you with the training and in the Accelerator.
Even if you think, “I don’t know if I have what I need, but I do want to learn about summits from you”, apply anyway! If it’s not a good fit, we have all kinds of other resources we’d love to direct you to.
Free Training Series: Summit to Sales
Learn how virtual summits can become your most effective lead generation strategy, cash injection method, and lead to a long-term, reliable increase in sales of your signature offer.