Recommendations
The Business
Johnny helps experts have more freedom by turning their expertise into an online course. He typically works with speakers, trainers, authors and coaches. But he can work with anyone that has expertise that somebody else is willing to pay for. He helps people create, launch and sell online courses.
Background
Johnny has a degree in Quality Management from Sligo IT. He always wanted to work for himself even before he graduated. His first attempt at being an entrepreneur was at 28. He started in management consultancy and quality systems and then moved more into IT and web design.
Getting His First Customers
Johnny worked in the Leitrim Enterprise Office for 3 years. During that time he learned a lot about social media. He had a number of connections in some of the Enterprise Offices around Ireland. He offered all of them and their staff members a free master class on how to use social media.
The Enterprise Office’s were aware that they should be running courses on the topic but they weren’t really sure themselves how to do it as the topic was still relatively new at the time. This worked really well for Johnny because it gave the Enterprise Offices an opportunity to try before they buy.
Offering a sample service for free or at a discount gives you the opportunity to iron out any wrinkles in your course as well as getting testimonials. It also allows you to test the level of demand before creating your course.
Back in 2013 Johnny launched his first online course called Facebook for Pharmacists.
Johnny signed up 22 pharmacists before he created a signal video for the course priced at €197 each which was a €100 discount. He had over €4,300 in sales before he had created his course.
He had done research on how his course would contribute to their CPD (Continuous Professional Development) by speaking to the Irish Pharmacy Union. He made sure his course was inline with their recommendations.
It was a course that was available 24 hours a day. It was something they could do in their own time from their own office as well as allowing other staff members to avail of the course. He ticked a lot of boxes to make the course appealing and it worked.
Most Difficult Challenges in Growing a Business
Looking back Johnny says he didn’t focus enough on having his own sales process. He was lucky enough that social media was relatively new and there weren’t that many people doing it. He had a good foothold with the Local Enterprise Offices by offering free workshops. As a result word of mouth helped him to grow his business.
While these things helped his business he didn’t have a sales process in place. The problem is if those word of mouths stop talking, then you don’t have a sales process you can control. That was the biggest mistake he made in running his business.
When Johnny worked in web development a lot of construction companies came to him during the recession. They now needed a website, online marketing and social media because they were so busy getting work through word of mouth when that stopped so did their sales.
Johnny urges people to have a clearly defined sales process that you’re in more control of than relying on word of mouth. It’s important to have a marketing strategy that keeps your name out there so you’re working hard on becoming the go to person or business. When someone thinks of social media they think of company x. When people think of online course creation, Johnny is working hard so people say Johnny Beirne is the man to contact.
Tools to Manage your Sales Process
Email Marketing
Johnny states: People buy when they’re ready to buy not when you’re ready to sell. It’s important to have people’s emails and keep in regular contact. Johnny says he had people on his email list for a number of years who hadn’t bought anything. They hadn’t unsubscribed either. But then at some point they would have bought an online course.
Johnny recommends ActiveCampaign which is both a CRM and an email marketing system. The key is not the tool itself, although a good one helps, it’s the actual strategy. You need to do education based marketing which is putting good content out there. For example, Johnny has a free guide “Say it once, sell it often” on his website which you can access in return for giving your name and email address.
When you have the email you follow up and you nurture the relationship, you build trust and authority. At some point you tell them about a free webinar and you let the webinar do the up selling. Or you can tell them about a course and there’s an offer available at the moment. For example there might be a discount available for those on your mailing list.
The key is serving them well with great information and content.
Paid Ads
Jonny uses paid ads linked to a webinar which does the upsell to a product or service. The product is an online course and the service would be a one-to-one consultation.
Acuity
Johnny recommends using Acuity to manage free and paid appointments. He estimates he pays €19 per month.
Bullet
Johnny recommends Bullet for accounting. This helps him to manage basic bookkeeping. This keeps him updated on what invoices are outstanding.
General Advice
If you are considering starting a business Johnny recommends wordpress for your website because of the amount of great plugins available. He also highlights the importance of having a way of tracking invoices. Johnny recommends Bullet as it helps you do your returns to Revenue as well.
Jonny states “Email marketing is the foundation of my business”. If he has something new to say, sell or advise he can send an email to his list very quickly and it works exceptionally well.
Client Testimonials
“I can highly recommend Johnny’s training and coaching. Worth every penny.”
Joanne Sweeney
DigitalTrainingInstitute.ie
“If you would like to create an e-learning course to capitalise on in-house expertise or you are looking for new ways to connect with your customers I would highly recommend Johnny’s ‘Create your first online course’. He showed us how to structure a course, record and publish it and how to price it and I am looking forward to putting my new skills into action.”
Anne Walsh, AllergyLifestyle.com
Please note SoftIntro is an affiliate of ActiveCampaign
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