Convert a free consumption asset

1. Where it sits

Five attraction offers are named as the main set; this one is handed over as a sixth, standing outside that set. The reasons given for keeping it apart are that it takes the most skill, it is the most shapeless of the six, and it is the most complex — while also being one of the most used devices in marketing.

It differs from the other five in timing. The job of an attraction offer is to win customers and recover what they cost quickly; here there is a delay between the free thing and the sale, which makes the recovery looser. It can still be done inside thirty days.

2. What the free thing is

The free thing often runs anywhere from 20 minutes to 5 days. It could be a single video, a PDF, an audio file, a live event or a workshop — anything a person will consume heavily, learn from, and come out of thinking I can do this, at which point they put money down. This works for books, webinars, video sales letters, events, workshops and video trainings too: anything that holds a person's undivided attention.

It is a selling tool that you give away. A good one also delivers value; a bad one is only a pitch, and the instruction is not to make one of those. The free thing teaches, and while it teaches it breaks the beliefs that stop people buying what you sell. The better you know your prospects, the more systematically you can break the beliefs they get stuck on. Think of it as a list of frequently asked questions with the volume turned up, ending in an offer that solves the next concern, or carrying calls to action built into the body so the reader can take the next step at any point.

Why it works. It reverses how trust is normally earned. The surest way for somebody to know you will deliver value once paid is for you to deliver value before they pay. Education is put at the center of advertising: marketing is helping someone change a belief so that they decide to buy.

3. How much time the free thing needs

The time required rises with three things: the price of what you sell, how cold the audience is, and the price relative to what the buyer can spend.

What is sold	To whom	What might be enough
A $20 item	Consumers	A 7-second ad, straight to purchase
A $7,000 item	A business owner at $50 million a year	A 30-second ad
A $500 physical product	Consumers	Maybe an ad alone
Above that	Consumers	Most likely phone sales added

Flag: where the thresholds sit. The table has an ad alone maybe enough for a $500 consumer product, and phone sales most likely added above that. A second reading: under about $500 a video sales letter can be enough, and typically over $1,000, to consumers especially, a 60- to 90-minute presentation is needed; $1,000 is roughly where it changes. This page does not settle which reading is right.

The picture used is a runway: the bigger the plane, the longer the runway. Nobody sells a timeshare off a free ebook; they fly people down for a seven-day cruise and sell at the end of it, because by then the buyer trusts them.

Marketing and sales are one continuum. Every buyer is held to need a certain amount of information before buying. With enough brand goodwill, reviews and word of mouth, a carmaker can sell a car at 30, 50 or $100,000-plus online with no salespeople at all; and if it also had people phoning the prospects who did not finish, it would make more still. Marketing gets as many people over the line as it can, and sales fills the gap for the rest. The free thing is how you move people along faster — heating up a prospect in two days from who is this to I trust them completely. How much time that takes depends on who the prospect is.

4. The formats and their benchmarks

The seminar dinner. In the chiropractic trade, free dinners on a health theme — sometimes steak dinners — carry a 90-minute presentation inside a three-hour meal. The presentation sells a consultation at $50 to $100. The consultation sells a year-long program at $5,000 to $10,000, with supplements and nutrition protocols.

Stage	Benchmark
Room to the first purchase	25 percent, into what is called the $1,500 thing
Consultation to the program	A third of those who show up
Diner to the program, overall	Somewhere near 10 percent
100 diners, 10 sold at $10,000	$100,000 from one dinner

Flag: the first stage is priced two ways. The consultation the dinner sells is priced at $50 to $100; the benchmark for the same step converts the room into a $1,500 thing. And 25 percent followed by a third of those who show up is closer to 8 percent than 10, and lower still unless every consultation buyer shows up. This page does not settle which reading is right.

The multi-day challenge or virtual summit. Three to five days. The very standard run is give on day one, give and ask on day two, repitch on day three; the challenge run is give, give, give, pitch, repitch with proof. At a high enough price, push people from the five days to a phone call to finish the sale with a salesperson. The goal of every such event is to break the prospect's core beliefs while delivering on the tactical promise made at the start, or in the headline of the promotion.

The benchmark for a virtual event is 2 to 5 percent of everyone who opted in — not of those who scheduled or showed. Two to 5 percent is for mass-market, cheap opt-ins and is stated as the worst you should see; a narrow niche should run well above it, and more brand, a warmer audience and a tighter niche all move it up. With a thousand opt-ins, converting 2 percent of them at an expensive price is said to offset the cost.

A five-day outline — this is an example, and it could be compressed into one day:

1. Your story, why this matters to them, why you can help, and a shift in how they see the problem compared with what they have tried.
2. A piece of value aimed at their doubt about their own ability.
3. A piece aimed at the second concern, typically something outside themselves that they believe will block them.
4. Notice that the core offer is coming the next day.
5. The pitch, then the repitch with questions answered, past success stories brought on, short case studies, and the offer restacked.

The one-on-one version. The same structure is described as the simplest way to sell, and you could run it with one person at a time. Offer to spend five days with one person — five one-hour sessions, five hours of your time toward a named goal. On day one, ask permission to make an offer at the end; if they say no, stop there. On that first day, also learn their goals, what has got in the way, and the friction they have met; frame the sale. Across the middle days, break the beliefs that will stop them. At the end, recap, ask whether it was useful, ask for referrals of others who would like the same free sessions, and then make the offer. A beginner can simply ask what working together for $3,000 a year would look like to them; after 20 such conversations you will have a fair idea of what to offer.

One owner's first business ran this for a donation of 500 to 1,000 to a charity of the client's choice, once a week for 12 weeks, with the pitch at the end. The lesson drawn: pitch halfway through, and it probably could have been done in six weeks. Five weeks can be compressed into five days.

Headlines that might fit: a free find-your-perfect-product challenge; a free five-day find-your-niche challenge for agency founders; a five-day plateau buster for weight loss; five days to substance-free; a five-day pain release; five days to get unstuck. Solving the first problem creates the next ones — advertising, a website, inventory — which you solve for money, and they believe you because you kept the first promise. You can usually deliver a great deal of value in five hours, or in five sessions of 90 minutes.

Calling it one-on-one raises how likely they believe they are to succeed. To scale, add technology, virtual summits and automation; the most leveraged form runs on autopilot every hour, automated and personalized, which is what businesses at $100 million a year are said to be doing. If you're starting out, none of that is needed: text people and ask what time suits them, and show rates stop being a problem.

The webinar. The five days compressed into 90 minutes: the origin story in the first 15 minutes, the big obstacle in the next 15 minutes, working down to 45 to 60 minutes of value, and the next 30 go to the pitch with a stack. The benchmark for most webinars is 10 percent of those who attend live.

The no-pitch workshop. A second view drops the pitch and makes the event the start of the sale:

1. Frame it. Say at the start that nothing is for sale today. In return, ask each person to promise a three-question, ten-second survey and to confirm in the chat. In this view the method fails without that promise.
2. Teach fully.
3. Survey before the questions, not at the very end: remind them of the promise, post the link, and have them say when they are done. The questions are on SOP 218, section 4.
4. Follow up every maybe the survey finds.

A rule of thumb, asserted, not measured: in any room about 10 percent say yes to anything, 10 percent say no to anything, and the other 80 percent are maybes, eight times the sure buyers: 40 percent need time, 40 need education. Another form: 60 percent show up, most fearing a pitch; of them, 10 percent leave once selling starts, 80 percent are unsure but feel pressured, and 10 percent want to act. Non-buyers still count: fans and people who spread the word. The long promotion (ads, landing pages, calls, emails, texts, posts) makes a pitch at the event feel owed. Building the talk is SOP 280.

Flag: whether to pitch inside the free event. The webinar format gives its last 30 minutes to a pitch and is judged by the share of live attendees who buy. The no-pitch workshop sells nothing in the room and is judged by the maybes it moves afterward. This page does not settle which reading is right.

The strategy call. Tell people you will not ask for their card on the call — this works well if you mean it. Then use the qualifying call as the strategy call: find the problems they have and give real value by clarifying what is constraining them next, whether the offer is sold to businesses or to consumers. Once you have provided that value, you can reasonably qualify them for a sales call and hand them to the salesperson. Build the salesperson up — say he has helped people just like them get where they want to go, ideally recently and with this exact system. The benchmark is 25 percent or more of those who reach these calls.

5. The three beliefs every sale has to break

1. Circumstances. I don't have the money is really a failure of resourcefulness; I don't have the time is really a failure to prioritize, since everybody has the same time. Get the person to point the finger at themselves: it is up to them, not their circumstances.
2. Other people. The belief that others should behave as they want. The person is responsible for their own life — not the partner, the spouse, the employees. They need to ask for support rather than permission. When someone says they cannot because of their children or spouse, reframe it as how this helps the children or the marriage.
3. Self. I can't do this; what if I fail? Get them to face the decision, give them the variables needed to make it logically, and make it feel unhurried: a decision made long ago, acted on for the first time today.

Teach concepts, not tactics. Everyone gets value from concepts; only people who execute get value from tactics. This is named as the common mistake in free-value assets.

Breaking a belief takes five steps: this is what you believed; this is why it is wrong; this is what is right; this is why it is right; proof.

6. The free thing as a filter

The free thing is an education process that builds your ideal prospect and puts off everyone else. If you are losing people, it matters who they are: if they are the right people, that is bad; if they are the wrong people, that is good.

These assets can be added to any sales process in any business to raise close rates and the average ticket. Put a video between the first and second call, require one before the first call, or have someone watch five before they speak to you. The question in every case is how much friction the sale needs: as much as needed, and no more.

7. What this page does not decide for you

• Which format fits your offer. No formula turns the three inputs in section 3 into a format.
• The right benchmark for a niche offer. Stated to be above 2 to 5 percent. This page gives no figure for it.
• How long before the free thing must convert. Thirty days is possible; not established on this page as a rule.

8. The checklist

Question	The answer
What it is	A free selling tool that also delivers value
How long	Often 20 minutes to 5 days
What sets the length	Price, audience temperature, price relative to buying power
Dinner benchmarks	25 percent to the first step, a third to the program
Virtual event benchmark	2 to 5 percent of opt-ins, as a floor for cheap, mass-market opt-ins
Webinar benchmark	10 percent of live attendees, for most webinars
No-pitch workshop (a second view)	Promise no sale, get a promise of the survey, teach, survey before the questions, follow up the maybes
Strategy call benchmark	25 percent or more
The three beliefs	Circumstances, other people, self
How a belief is broken	Old belief, why wrong, what is right, why right, proof
What to teach	Concepts, not tactics
How much friction	As much as needed, no more

9. What this page does not cover

A consumption asset takes its place in a full sequence of offers on SOP 59, the page that assembles a money model. The five offers it is set apart from are SOP 60, SOP 61, SOP 62, SOP 63 and SOP 64, and none of them is ranked against it here. What is offered after the free thing has done its work begins with SOP 66 — Run the classic upsell and choose the moment. Choosing a lead magnet in general is SOP 13 — Choose and build a lead magnet, and writing the headline of the promotion is SOP 21.

Webinar software and event logistics are not covered on this page.