Rory Vaden

The Four F’s to Convert Online Messages Into Sales

Once someone comments on your post, you know they have an interest, and it’s important to respond by thanking them directly. Then, let them know you’ve moved the conversation to direct messaging. This is where Rory’s process of the Four F’s begins.

The First F starts with “How did you Find me?” This question helps to collect information about what’s working best and where people resonate with your content most. They’re going to share whether they stumbled across you or if it was a particular hashtag they follow. 

The Second F is “What was your Favorite part?” Once you know how they found you, whether that was reading your book, seeing one of your videos, or hearing you in an interview — this question probes deeper to understand what their favorite thing about your content was. You can also ask, “What’s your favorite thing to learn about?”

This leads to the Third F: “Tell me about your Future.” In other words — what are your goals?

Before you sell, find out what they are working on, and figure out what they care about. Spend time learning about them by asking questions. Unfortunately, most salespeople are interested in the sale first and the person second. If you build your sales philosophy about people first, that will separate you from everyone else. At the core, this is about always focusing on winning the relationship first, even if you lose the sale.

“If you focus on making sales, you’re going to feel pressure, but if you focus on building relationships, it’s going to be great. If you focus on making sales, then there’s wins and losses, but if you focus on building relationships, there’s only wins.” – Rory Vaden

By building relationships, you consciously make a decision to play the long game. Remember, stop thinking about how you can make money and start asking, “How can I help you?”

The final step is where the conversion or the sale happens. The Fourth F is a Free call to action. 

We always want to provide “A next free step,” which can be anything from scheduling a call, downloading a PDF, or free training. 

“We do a lot of evergreen type stuff where there’s a hidden video, but [for someone interested say], ‘Here’s a link to it.’ They watch an hour-ish, and what do we do in that hour? We drive massive value by teaching as much as we can for free, and then they’re going to want to take the next step.” – Rory Vaden

It’s important to understand that even when you are doing this 100% correctly, you don’t have control over others’ timing. In a workshop full of clients, you can easily have one person who’s followed you for five years next to someone who heard you on a podcast five days ago. This is another reminder of why we avoid being self-centered and become service-centered and choose to focus on the long game.

Focus On The Promise and The Payoffs

In sales and specifically copywriting, most people focus on the features of their product — but sales are never about the product. Sales are about what the product does for the person and what it allows the person to achieve. 

“[This is] what we call the promise and the payoffs. Think about it like this, if we’re going on a trip, there’s the vehicle and the destination. In copywriting, the words we use should be about describing the destination [more so] than the vehicle. The vehicle is how I get there. … The more you talk about the destination and the less about the vehicles, the more likely they are to buy.” – Rory Vaden

Whenever you’re writing for the purpose of persuasion, in addition to the promise and payoff, you want to describe people’s problems and their pain. The problems and the pain are staying stuck where they’re at now, and what you want to demonstrate is that you can help them get out of their situation or problem. Rory explains how you write great pain language. 

“Describe a day in their life as it exists now in the absence of your solution. … It’s called pain because to the person [you are serving], when they hear [your solution,] they go, ‘Oh God, yes! Oh, that’s it! You get it! That is what I’m struggling with.’ The more accurately and viscerally you are in your ability to articulate the problem in pain, the more naturally and likely they are to trust that you have the solution.” – Rory Vaden

Rory clearly shows how different this approach to selling is as we identify with our clients because we prove that we understand their pain. If you understand their pain, they automatically assume you must also understand the way out. 

“Getting people to buy is actually pretty simple. ‘Where do you want to go? Where are you now?’ — that gap is the sale. If I can get them to tell me where they want to go and the frustration they’re experiencing in trying to get there, they sell themselves.” – Rory Vaden

Instead of constantly trying to sell what you do, become an expert at asking questions to learn what people’s biggest pain points are. You will always be able to serve the people who need your help the most.

Why You Should Listen to This Rory Vaden Podcast Episode Right Now…

Guys, this is the final episode in our series geared towards helping you build powerful personal brands in your quest to grow your side hustle. We highly recommend listening to the full episode to get all of Rory’s wisdom, and don’t forget to share it with your friends! 

If you haven’t listened to the first three episodes, you can click the links for Episode One on “How to build a personal brand,” Episode Two on “How to multiply your time and income,” and Episode Three on “How to beat procrastination and rewire your brain for success.” 

I highly recommend learning more about Rory on his website, or you can follow him on Instagram. To take the next step toward building your own brand, you can go to lewishowes.com/brandcall to get a free call with someone on Rory’s team. Expect questions about your goals, what your future looks like, what you’re trying to create, and if it might be helpful for Rory or his team to support you in building your personal brand and executing everything you’ve covered. 

If you enjoyed this conversation, please make sure to spread the message of greatness and inspire someone else in your life. If you enjoyed this you can tag Rory, @rory vaden, and me, @lewis howes, on Instagram with a screenshot of this episode and your greatest takeaways from it.

Rory has definitely practiced what he preaches and delivered tremendous value throughout. After such an inspiring series, I think this final quote from Rory sums up the philosophy to live by:

“Don’t sell someone something they don’t need.” – Rory Vaden

I want to leave you with this quote from Michelle Obama who said, “Success isn’t about how much money you make. It’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.” 

You don’t have to change their life forever, but you can show up with a positive attitude, a smile, and be of service to someone. I want to remind you if no one has told you lately — you are loved, you’re worthy and you matter. I’m so grateful for you. 

To Greatness,