The Autopilot Booking System

Ken Kelly here … last year my website automated 343 bookings with a value of over $100,000 (USD) in turnover.

98 % of these bookings were done on auto pilot. It made my life so stress free. I’m going to share how you can do the same.

This is a process that sifts and sorts potential bookers, filters out the unlikely ones and leaves me with those enthusiastic to commit money … or what is called a funnel. What Julian is showing you with creating Youtube videos, that too is a funnel to collect potential clients. You will be creating many versions of  ‘the funnel’.

In this series I am inviting you to look over my shoulder as I expose the methods of how to set your website to autopilot. 
I will be showing you the inner workings of my own website and sharing what works for me.

The fee for this is $0.00 and better still, you don’t need any special coding skills or to be a computer whizz kid to follow along.

Why do I need a website?

For this system to work you need a website. Not just any old website, you need a website that you can get into and make changes yourself. In this first video I show you how to setup a website from scratch in under 5 minutes.

The internet is the single biggest revolution to business since the industrial revolution.
You don’t have to look far to see the impact that online shopping has had on the high street as we see anchor stores with over 100 years of trade, closing their doors and going bust.
The message is plain and simple, “Get online or go out of business”.

This is scary, we are performing artists not marketing gurus or web designers. A search online for someone to build a website returns thousands of results with confusing claims of Google first page ranks, pay per click campaign, bits, bytes, metadata and a whole pile of words that sound just like magic words that have been made up for a show.

You’re going to need to do some prep work for you to choose a useful domain name. I’ll get to that soon. First, I just want you to see that this is not technically scary, that it is well within your ability.

What if I told you you could have a website within 5 minutes?

I know it sounds insane but you can…

The 5 Minute Website

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I remember taking the plunge and hiring a web designer to build me a site. The site looked ok, it had my picture on it and the text I sent through and even a video of me at a show but it certainly wasn’t bringing in any bookings. When I asked why I wasn’t coming up on Google, the designer said that for yet another fee, he could do some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to make my site visible. SEO? Site Visible? I didn’t know I had paid for an invisible website.

I learned the hard (and expensive) way that a website needs to be more than an online glossy brochure. A successful website is a piece of software that guides a booker through a process that leads to you getting booked. I am a magician and I love learning secrets so I set about learning the mysteries of internet marketing and the complexities of website design. What about you? Where do you fit into all of this?

Understanding how all these pieces of the puzzle fit together is simply going to make you better and faster at this. In these videos I show you behind the scenes of my own website exposing all the tricks that make it work. I will be teaching you all these techniques as we go through the autopilot booking system together, but first, lets take the 30,000 foot view (as Julian would say) and look at the big picture and see how this can work for you.

Part 1 of the sales funnel

• Where my website traffic comes from
• How I direct that traffic using a call to action
• Why I hide my phone number on my website
• The automated booking form
• 5 tips that get bookings on autopilot
• Why I smile when I don’t get booked

Part 2 of your sales funnel

In the second part of the process you looking to get the most relevant information in front of the booker in the shortest possible time. If the booker has the information they needed to make a decision and the package meets their requirements, it is likely that they will take action and book you.

• What info should you send a potential booker
• How to make it personal and gain an advantage over your competition
• Where do you mention your price
• How get your potential booker to take action and book you

Enquiries go stale quickly.  As soon as the booker has another offer on the table that meets the brief, they are less likely to consider your offer so swiftness is the name of the game.

You can’t man your computer 24-7 waiting for enquires. Thist is where the auto-responder ‘s first email smooths the way for you. It tells the potential booker that you are ‘on the case’ and that your package is worth waiting for. It buys you a little extra time. 
Even with this time buying technique, the clock is still ticking as the potential booker has a buying need, they want to have the chore of finding an entertainer sorted.

Focus on giving your client all the information they will need to book you in one shot. Think about questions the client may have and answer them in your package information. Make sure your price is big and bold -don’t be shy and hide your fee in the last sentence – be proud and make it a bold statement.
Give your booker clear directions on what you need them to do to be able to process their booking. You will save your booker the frustration of a string of emails too and fro.

The Aweber form fields are editable allowing you to setup the fields you need in your enquiry form. Fields will certainly include date and time but consider what other information is useful to you for you to better serve your client.
I ask for the name of the birthday child in my enquiry form. This allows me to personalise the emails I send.
I have recorded a much higher booking rate from an email that says blah blah Emma’s 7th birthday party, rather than blah blah your child’s birthday party.

Be sure to add a call to action. It is so easy to forget to tell the booker what we need them to do and sometimes its about stating the obvious. You want to give a clear instruction of what you want your potential booker to do, something like “to make a booking, reply to this email with the following information. Then put the info in.
You will increase your success rate by giving a call to action because when the prospect is reading your package info they are involving themselves on an emotional level. Its almost like they are talking to you and you need to tell them what you want them to do. Don’t be shy, make your call to action load and proud and your potential bookers will reward you by becoming customers.

Part 3 of your sales funnel

• What to put in a confirmation email
• Getting your booker to market you
• What to put in your contract
• How a an envelope and stamp can make you money
• How to measure success and what is working

This is where it gets exciting as this is where the potential booker makes the decision to trust you with their entertainment needs. The client or prospect or potential booker is now your booker and they have moved to the next stage in your sales funnel.

The Booking Confirmation Mail

There is strong evidence that shows that buyers are psychologically susceptible to making more buying decisions or following calls to actions once they have made the decision to buy. If you want to see the might of this in action then take a look at the impulse item racks in the checkout lines of supermarkets.

When your booker was a prospect, you were just another option on the table, but, once the buy decision was made you became their entertainer. Your booker has formed a psychological bond with you and you are able to use this in your confirmation process.

Give your booker 3 steps to follow and include one that helps your business grow. The three step process covered in the video helps you by increasing your social media presence, it makes sure you have the correct details for your gig and it leads the booker to unsubscribe from your prospect list and add themselves onto your bookings list. This is so powerful, your booker does all this for you because you set them 3 steps to follow to book you.

The Contract

By sending your booker a contract, ok its not really a contract, its a confirmation letter, you can accomplish a variety of goals. Firstly it formalises the relationship which lowers your risk of a cancellation. It gives you opportunity to put your terms and conditions in writing, and as the booker has to sign and return it, they are more likely to read them. Terms and conditions may refer to cancellation fees and conditions you need to be able to deliver your act, by signing the terms your client is agreeing. The contract gives your booker the piece of mind that they are dealing with a professional, I have found bookers find comfort in having what is on offer laid out beforehand.

Get paid for your time!

Sending the contract takes time, paper, ink, a stamp and an envelope so you need to be compensated for your investment of time. The information used in the contract is a simple copy and paste from the information the booker provided on Aweber so this takes less than a minute, printing takes two minutes and addressing an envelope, packing it and placing a stamp taken another 3 to 4 minutes. In the video I cover how you can make a profit on this time investment and how you can provide a better level of service to your booker in doing so.

The last part of the funnel is measuring your success and adjusting the system to maximise the areas that work. using simple spreadsheets and the information provided from Aweber, you can really drill down into your business and see what is working. having the stats on hand is like having your finger on the life pulse of your business, if anything starts to go wrong you will feel the change in pulse and you can take action.

How Aweber Works –
Autopilot in 3 minutes!

I have shown you what Aweber does, now let me walk you through how it works.

There you have it. It is not hard to set up a system like this. You CAN do this. I want you to succeed at this which is why I am telling you to just put the brakes on for a moment.

There is some very important foundation work to be done first. This is not hard and it doesn’t take long and you MUST do it. It’s tough love! You are going to create a business plan.