How to Overcome the Big Objection

A few weeks ago, we wrote about a super effective way to grow your audience with online courses which we call the Substitute Teacher Technique.

As follow-up, today we’re sharing some tips for overcoming the big objections you might encounter when making your pitch.

Quick Recap of Technique

The Substitute Teacher Technique starts with recognizing two things:

• There are thousands (sometimes millions) of potential learners who are interested in learning what you’re teaching. In fact, they’re likely already engaged in learning about the topic from an influencer — a speaker, author, media personality, etc.
• The influencers your potential learners follow are looking for two things you can help with 1) ways to provide more valuable content to their existing audience (your potential learners) & 2) ways to grow their own audience.

In the blog, we talked through 4 steps to the technique:

1. Identify influencers
2. Tailor one of your courses
3. Set the right price
4. Make a pitch

After The Pitch

Now, even if they buy in 100% on the value to their audience and to them, 90% of the time you’ll hear something like this: “This sounds great, but I don’t have time.” The good news here is that an online course provides very easy, low time investment ways of co-teaching. For example:

• Ask them to only participate in one or two 30 minute live sessions via a web stream that you set up. They can answer the top questions from the online course, dig deeper into a topic — anything they want. Learners love the opportunity to hear from someone they admire live, and it doesn’t take more than an hour or two for the speaker.
• If the influencer has an upcoming speaking event, consider timing the the lessons so that the course culminates with the live event where the speaker can discuss the course. This is can be an attractive option for influencers as well because it 1) gives them something uniquely interesting to talk about and 2) they’ll likely get more people to come hear them through the course.
• If they’re already updating a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel, suggest that they highlight something going on in the course that week in the content they’re already posting and incorporate that in the course.

In short, the Substitute Teacher Technique gives experts exactly what they’re looking for and gives you a whole new audience and everyone’s happy.

The most recent use of this technique was a non-profit organization that teamed up with a popular blogger who participated in a couple live streams and highlighted questions on his blog. They registered over 3,500 people, 80% of which were totally new members.

While results will vary, we’ve yet to see this technique fail. In fact, in every case both the course creator and the influencer were pleased with the results and often begin to discuss the next course to teach together right away.

Hope this helps! Let us know if you have questions in the comments below.