OTO. SLO. Tripwire. It sounded like a secret code …
I had committed the ultimate copywriting crime: sending an email that bamboozled my reader.
Know the feeling? When you get so excited about something, you forget that 99% of the world doesn’t know ALL your acronyms?
So … back to my story … this fellow asked me to explain Sales Funnels in a nice, easy, and simple way.
The explanation was so helpful to him. I thought you might like to read it too …
Because if you have something to sell and are looking for the very best way to do it, you need a sales funnel!
Sales Funnels can be simple or wildly complex. And building them from scratch can be time consuming and expensive.
Fortunately, new platforms with templates and drag-and-drop features make it quick and easy to design and hook up your pages. And once your funnel is set up, you can test, tweak, and watch your profits grow!
How does a Sales Funnel Work?
Here are the 3 main steps to one of the simplest sales funnels – the OTO, or One-Time-Offer.
Let’s start 
at the beginning …
Imagine Jane, a brand new small business owner. After working five 16-hour days in a row, Jane’s office is nearing disaster.
Her desk is piled two-feet high with a Jenga-like tower made of toppling stacks of papers and manila folders. A coffee cup holds the crusty remains of last Wednesday’s espresso, and the file cabinet is about to burst.
Jane browses the web in search of a way to get organized. She’s searched Google, Facebook and Pinterest for hours.
FINALLY, she comes across your Facebook ad, blog post, or link to …
1. The Freebie Opt-in
Also known as the lead magnet, content upgrade, or “click-bait,” this first step of the sales funnel offers a deliciously enticing, helpful, and free product in exchange for the prospect’s email address.
This could take the form of any of the following:
- A PDF printable download telling her which papers to keep and toss
- A yearly organizing calendar
- The chance to win a prize – a best-selling book on organizing
- A free consultation – with a professional organizing coach
- Tomorrow’s free webinar – on productivity and paperwork
- A personality quiz – which kind of organizer are you?
- A 7-day email course about organizing for tax time
If Jane trades her email address for the freebie, she’s automatically sent to a Thank-You/Upsell Page, where she sees something like this:
“Thank you for joining our fantastic ______. We promise to send you nothing but wonderful tips and hints to help you __________ better and make all your dreams come true.”
When Jane fills out the form, she becomes a sales lead.
Along with the Thank You, Jane sees …
2. The Tripwire Offer
A Tripwire gives your new leads a low-risk opportunity to buy something at a typical price range of $10-50. It helps people get to know and like your goods or services.
Jane might be offered a product sampler pack, mini-course, or popular resource from a membership site in exchange for her credit card information.
Just below the Thank-You, she finds a $17 video course with a bonus bundle of worksheets. She’ll learn top-secret strategies, never before revealed, from top Virtual Assistants. All her papers and digital files will be organized in no time – and it will be so easy!
3. The One Time Offer (OTO)
Now that Jane has entered her Visa number and clicked “Order Now,” she sees a One Time Offer. She’ll be on her way to life-changing organization TODAY with only one little tiny click. And she’s been click, click, clicking along right up to this point.
The offer pops up in a Video Sales Letter (VSL) or Sales Page written for super-achieving, multitasking, work-at-home moms just like her.
But she’ll have to act now – the ultra-low price won’t last forever.
In fact, there’s a real cut-off for the time and date (not the fake ones that restart every time you reload the page!)
Every time Jane rejects part of the funnel, its mystical paths gently bring her back. How? … with re-targeting and friendly, helpful email autoresponders.
Now that she’s on the list, who knows when she’ll be ready to buy?
What will move her forward?
- It may be a compelling email sequence or an invitation to finish the checkout process with the cart she abandoned
- It could be a tax audit that turns into a receipt-hunting nightmare
- Or it could be the gut-clenching cold panic of having lost both her cable and electric bills at the bottom of Paper Mountain
So there you have it – the funnel. It’s nothing like a warm funnel cake dripping with sugar and saturated fat …
It’s much, much better ….
This is a money-making machine.
Want to know how to get more leads and sales with high-conversion funnel copy? Contact me today
