EP 81: What Makes a Summit Profitable? The Must-Have Elements to Turn Views into Sales
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Hey everybody, welcome back to the Acquire podcast where we get to talk about sales, lead generation, list building, marketing, scaling, exiting, all sorts of different stuff, pretty much everything in between. I'm your host Jenny Wright, I'm a list build and lead generation expert and today I'm going to kind of blow your mind. I know I am, I just know it.

Because if you've probably thought about hosting your own virtual summit, you know they're an amazing way to grow your list, you know they build authority, you know they create a powerful connection with other people. But let's get absolutely real because that's what we do here. Most summits are a ton of work.

100% and many of them flop. Why? Why do they flop? Because people are not focusing on the right things and they only focus on attendance over profitability. Now, your definition of flop and my definition of flop might be completely different. I'm talking about Summit did not convert. I did not get sales. I did not get all access pass sales or VIP sales. I did not sell my program product or service. Now, here's the thing.

Just getting thousands of people to sign up for your summit means absolutely zilch.

if you're not turning those views into actual sales or good referrals, to be quite honest. So in today's episode, I'm breaking down exactly what separates a six-figure summit from the one that just barely breaks even, okay? And whether you're hosting or you're thinking of hosting a summit in the not-so-distant future, these are the strategies that are going to make an absolute difference so that your summit is profitable, not just popular, okay?

So the first thing that people are doing that I think is insane is there's no clear monetization plan. So if you don't plan for profit,

It seriously will not happen. And so this is an exhaustive approach that we go through when we're planning a summit. And I know you're like, Jenny, but I don't like to plan. I like to fly by the seat of my pants. Good for you. I'm so happy that you do. I can't because if I go by the seat of my pants, stuff doesn't convert. Sales don't happen. Okay. And this is what happens with big summits. So please, if you're one of those fly by the seat of your pants people, please

please team up with somebody like me who spends an exhaustive amount of time working on the plans because you'll have a better result. So too many summit hosts cross their fingers and hope that their all access pass or VIP pass is going to cover their costs.

Too many people really, really hope this is going to work and hope is not a strategy. It's if your only revenue stream in your summit is your all access pass, your VIP pass, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Now, it doesn't mean that you will not make a ton of money off of it. And you see lots of people out there who tout that they do, but it is not the only thing you should be focusing on. The truth is profitable summits bake monetization into every stage.

from pre-launch to post-event, right? And this is something that if you're not already doing, I need you to think about. It's going to be a difference maker. It is a complete game changer. So the people that you're hearing who are touting, I made $54,000 on VIP sales from my last summit on only 1,000 guests. Awesome. I'm so happy for you. Or, you know, and those numbers are all skewed. But if they're saying that, they're not telling you all the planning that went into the back end of it.

So what I want you to do before you start reaching out to speakers, before you start even putting pen to paper on anything, you need to map out your profit strategy. How is this summit going to profit for you? How is this thing going to work? Right? Where's the money going to come from? Are you focusing on the money coming from the all access pass or VIP sales? Is it coming from sponsorships? Is it coming from backend offers? If you're only relying on one income stream,

You're already limiting yourself. So don't do that. This is actually not a difficult thing. It's just time consuming. Okay. Stack multiple revenue streams. Think VIP all access sales. Think paid workshops. Think sponsor slots. Think backend offers like a coaching program, a membership or a mastermind.

Build an email sequence that nurtures attendees towards these high ticket offers or whatever the offer is after the event ends. And in the last solo I did, episode 77, I really talked about the conversion strategies and having a nurture sequence and a sales sequence and all those. So if you missed that, go back and listen to it because I think it might help you for this one. And that could be good.

Now, the next thing that people tend to do or I see is they really don't spit, like they don't pick really strong speakers. And sadly, your best friend is not your best speaker, probably, right? So if your speakers, here's my fast rule. If your speaker is not aligned with your audience's goals and it's just a networking event, it's not a summit. If your ideal client is not on your speaker's list, it is not going to be a good summit. If your speaker is

is a huge person who right out the gate says they're not going to promote and their name should be enough to be on your event. It's not going to work. It's okay to have one or two big speakers if that's what you want, hoping that there'll be a draw. But I will tell you from over a decade of experience, 450 plus summits, big names tend not to convert. It's great. And I will tell you,

I've had big names on the summits I've worked on. We've had, gosh, we've had like Amy Porterfield. I did a political summit once that had Condoleezza Rice, okay? Names that you think would be huge draws. Now, the one with Amy Porterfield on it, of course, that is a pretty big draw, especially because she did promote and Amy is a different beast, okay? But I'm talking about big names where people are like, my name alone is a thing and I can't promote because I have so much other stuff going on.

The Condoleezza Rice summit, the political one, it didn't convert. And it's not because Condoleezza Rice is an amazing and a huge name, regardless of what your politics might be. It's just that the name didn't pull. Now,

Condoleezza Rice didn't have a list to email about this event. It didn't match. She didn't email because it wasn't a match. She didn't do anything wrong. And it's just that the host picked somebody that the name wasn't enough to pull people in. Right. And so you have to make sure that your ideal speaker has an engaged audience, not just a big one.

So big numbers don't actually matter. I just vetted out a speaker for a summit. 23,000 followers on Instagram. Every Instagram post had five or six comments and maybe 30 likes. Do those numbers seem to match for you? Does that seem like it fits? Because it doesn't. There's no activity. There's literally no engagement. So 23,000 people on Instagram is not the draw. Look deeper. Are they willing to promote? This is a massive factor.

I actually create what I call a social contract with my speakers. I actually don't even get them to sign agreements. I think getting speakers to sign agreements is kind of useless unless you plan on reusing their content for a book or a podcast and then of course get a speaker agreement. But for a summit, it doesn't matter. I've had people sign agreements and still not promote. Having an agreement signed by an expert is still not going to make sure that they promote. What makes them promote is the social contract.

And even that is about 85% bulletproof and the rest of the time, no. What I do with my social contracts is I get on a pre-call with all of my speakers and I have a call with them and we talk about promotion. And then five minutes before the interview even kicks off, I reiterate my social contract. Hey, a prerequisite to be on this event is that you promote. What are you, first of all, is that okay with you? Secondly, what are you willing to do in order to promote this event?

I don't tell people how to promote or what to promote. I don't tell them two emails and two social media posts. By the way, stop doing that. You'll only get one social media post and one email. Maybe, maybe two, maybe. But you won't get anything more. You will not get the above and beyond people. If you go to people and say, what are you willing to do to promote this event? They will then tell you what they're willing and then you are now in a negotiation.

If they said, Jenny, I will send two emails and five socials. And you're like, wow, that's so much more than I wanted. You can say yes. If they say, I'm just going to promote on social. And you and I both know, because we've talked about this, that promoting only on social doesn't work. An email is necessary. You then are now in a conversation. You know what? That's great that you want to promote on social. Super appreciate it.

My experience and what I've been told is that email is incredibly valuable to this process. And so email would absolutely be a requirement to promote. How do you feel about that? Everything is always that bounce back conversation. Again, don't ever tell anybody how to promote. Ask them what they're willing to do and then open up the negotiation, right? So weaker speaker selection can tank a summit. It can kill it before it even happens, right?

So can the lack of planning that we talked about before, right? So making sure that you're looking at multiple revenue streams and you're baking those in, you're selecting incredibly strong speakers. Now, strong speakers does not mean the biggest names. We've talked about this. You need the right names, the right people. Some speakers who are big just don't promote. This is just a fact. And their audience may not even meet a great fit. Instead, you have to look for that perfect alignment with your topic or topic adjacent.

from people who actually want to participate, who are hungry to do this. I did a bundle a couple months ago with my partner, and we had one of our contributors, Kayla,

Kayla over promoted for us. Okay. She's a fricking superstar. Now she is topic adjacent to what we were talking about and she promoted on social. She did multiple stories over three months. And I mean, multiple stories, not the minimum multiple. She sent emails, she promoted, she did a lie. Like she was all over the place. Every time she did it, I was super thankful and sent her a thank you note for doing so because she went above and beyond. She was hungry for leads and

She knew how to do this. She understands her social contract and she followed through. That's what you need. Those are the people that you want. Now, an additional thing that you can also do is create speaker tiers. Okay. Mix of big names that, you know, just might be a little bit of a draw, but you're not totally counting on it for authority. Midsize experts with engaged niche and audiences. And then I like to sprinkle in some new people and I'll tell you why.

I love giving people a platform that is hard for new people to get. I love giving people who are hungry, attentive, eager, a platform, even though they may never have done a summit before, even though their list might be 38 people. I don't care. I want a mix of people on my event that are going to create the best possible event for my client.

And sometimes that is a brand new person that just has an incredibly good message. So don't discount people. And whatever you do, do not follow this whole 5K list minimum BS. And if I could use stronger words in keeping this podcast family friendly, I would. But it is...

in all caps, BS, to ever require a 5,000 person list minimum. I've been saying that for a decade because that's what I was taught a decade ago, and I absolutely hate it. And I've proven it false over and over and over again. So don't do that. The biggest issue people do as well, this is number three, is poorly positioned VIP or

Just having an all access pass or VIP offer doesn't mean it's going to sell. If your all access pass or VIP is just lifetime access to the recordings, that's not enough to make people want it. It doesn't have the value that you think it does. And by even just putting a monetary value of like $297 on the recordings, it's

is a fallacy. Nobody's going to believe that those recordings are worth that much. They absolutely aren't. They just don't have the value that you think. Okay? So people buy value, not videos. People buy stacks, not just one thing. So think of your A, your all access pass or your VIP as a premium package, not just a way to watch videos. What can you add to give it that premium feel that they get for a steal?

I didn't know that was going to rhyme until I said it. So bundles have high value, right? So look at creating your VIP as a bundle. Add in exclusive VIP sessions, add in networking, add in worksheets, speaker Q&As. I like offering a workshop. I like to offer, gosh, a couple of years ago, we did workbooks. They didn't go as well as we thought. And there's so much work. So don't do those.

But I love offering a bundle. It really does seem to bump up that intrinsic value. And I think a lot of people love it. And then look at offering a fast action bonus to create urgency. It's not fake urgency. It's, you know, a early bird and then a post offer number, which is different, right? And make sure that those, that you have really ROI driven bonuses. I love a good bonus in an all access pass, like,

a roadmap, a blueprint, an integrator, something along those lines that helps with implementation of what they learned on the summit. I think that's a really valuable thing. And then the last big, big, big thing that I can talk about is the must-haves for what I say is a six-figure summit event, right? So we talked about planning, we talked about speakers, we talked about all access pass. Now we've got to talk about a profit-first promotion strategy.

Your summit isn't just an event, it has to be a marketing machine. Close all the loops, fill all the gaps. We talked about this in episode 77. The most profitable summits out there treat registration like a high-level sales funnel, not just a registration funnel, a sales funnel.

pre-launch buzz, speaker-driven promotion, email and retargeting campaigns. Even if you're not going to spend a ton of money on ads, get your pixel everywhere in your funnel for possible retargeting later. Strategic partnerships and affiliates. Get people helping you, right? So if the whole purpose of a summit is to borrow other people's audiences, what are you borrowing? How are you doing that? Who can you connect with that has exposure?

I'll give you an example. You could get a SaaS company that supports your ideal client in the way that you want them to, whatever that product is, and ask them for discounts on their product software. And then ask them to do a mention. Hey, we're going to be seen on such and such a summit. And you can get a special discount for our software when you register. Okay, that'll help drive registrations, right? So think of your summit as an offer, not just an event.

market it like a sales machine. Market it hard. Leave no stone unturned, okay? What is the registration journey look like? Again, close all the loops, fill all the gaps. If people aren't seeing the value immediately, they're not going to sign up. How are you going to make sure they see that value?

Or worse, they're going to ghost you. So where are the opportunities? Fill them. Make sure that there's no way for people to get out. Fix everything, right? Run early bird registration campaigns with perks. Have speakers send out strategic promo emails. Promo period is three weeks minimum. Never two weeks. You'll never get it on two weeks. You can get it on three.

Not just, "I'm speaking, come watch me." Your speakers have to really be strategic when they promote. Not just, "Come see me and my bestie on this."

Those emails don't work, right? And then if you are running ads, which I highly suggest that you do, if you can, retarget the warm traffic who hasn't signed up yet. Retarget, retarget, retarget. It drives the price of your ads down. You get a better result. Now, monetization. This is freaking massive. Back-end sales equal long-term profit, okay?

A summit isn't just about what you make during the event, it's about what happens after. And I break it down into three stages: 30 days, 90 days, and 6 months. 30 days after the summit, that's probably when you're doing your biggest push. 90 days after the summit, that's probably where you're getting some stragglers. 6 months, that's probably when you're getting the accumulation of everybody who would have converted from the summit. And I check in with my clients at all of those stages to find out how they did.

That is how you do it. Okay. You have to look at the after, because if you tell me, oh my God, Jenny, I only got 500 people registered, like 500 people registered on my summit. Okay. How many of those can we convert? First of all, what's the offer? What's the product we can sell on the summit? You know, all of that. What's the price point? What's the value? All those types of things. And then how many can we sell in 30, 90 and six months? And then tell me if it was successful or not.

That's where the money is in the after part of the summit, right? You have to look later. A summit isn't just a revenue generating event. It's a lead generation funnel that funnels bigger sales down the road. The people who bought the all access pass your VIP now are potentially your mastermind purchasers later.

If you don't have a follow-up offer ready to go when your summit launches, you're leaving a gargantuan amount of money on the table. Always have that planned out first. So plan a post-summit webinar, challenge, workshop, masterclass to convert attendees into buyers. Create follow-up email sequences that nurture summit leads towards that signature offer. And then make sure that you're closing all the loops and filling all the gaps leading up to that.

I love offering very, very exclusive summit-only discounts on high-ticket services. For example, 30 days into a membership, attend this really cool session for my private mastermind, my 30K mastermind. Come and attend one of my coaching calls with my mastermind to see if it's a good fit for you, right? Exclusive summit-only discounts on high-ticket offers or mid-ticket or low-ticket, but at least something exclusive really helps.

And then I really want you to look at your data for optimization. If you run a summit once and tell me it was a failure, I tell you to run it again. Look at your data, see where you can improve, and try it again. One of my friends, past clients, and somebody I work with now, Sean Q, he ran a challenge over a number of years.

He ran it, I think, 18 or 19 times. And by the end of it, he made $265,000 off of like the 19th time you ran it because he optimized over and over and over again. He can run it with his eyes shut. Same thing with summits. You don't have to do it 18 times. I highly recommend you do, but do it. Anyways, the first time you do it, whether or not you think it's a flop, you got to do it again. You got to change it up. You got to look at your data. You got to see what

What worked, what didn't work and make tweaks. Most summit hosts never dig into the minutia of their data so they just don't know where they lost money. The most successful summits and sales campaigns analyze conversion rates, analyze email open rates, analyze attendee behavior. What did they do? When did they do it? If you run a three-day summit and nobody showed up for your day three interviews, nobody's listening on day three.

So why would you put a sales activity on day three? That means you should run a two-day summit and put your sales activity on day two, maybe on day one, right? A profitable summit isn't just about getting people in. It's about tracking where they drop off so you can fix it the next time. So you never have that mistake happen again. If you're reviewing your numbers, you're not guessing, right? If you're not reviewing your numbers, it's all a guess. It's like, I don't know, maybe this, maybe that, right? So registration page conversion rate,

30 plus percent. These are your benchmarks. 30 plus percent. Hire me and my team, it's going to be over 40. Okay? All access pass VIP conversions. I want you to get 10 to 15% of all signups on your summit to convert to your VIP all access pass. Email engagement. Your benchmark here is at least 20 to 25% open rate

On average, not just day one, day one, you're going to have your biggest open rate. It's going to be 40 to 50%. On average, over the entirety of your summit, three days, four days, whatever, what is your email engagement rate? Look at your drop-offs. When did you get your unsubscribes? How many people, and this is actually fascinating to me, is how many people used like crappy email addresses?

for I don't even know what reason. I don't know why they do it. They use like really like non-working email addresses. And then you see bounces. Look at why people unsubscribe. Some people actually put a reason. It's quite valuable, actually. Those are really cool. And then you tweak your summits in the future based on these insights again. Okay. So benchmarks, registration, 30% or better. VIP, 10 to 15% of all signups. Engagement rate on your emails,

average 20 to 25%. I'd like to see it higher, but that's about the average that we can expect. Okay. So here's the deal. You can run a summit and you can run it like a free event. You can run it like a registration event, a lead capture event that gets people hyped, but it doesn't actually drive sales or you

You can build a summit from scratch that strategically grows your revenue while still delivering an insane amount of value for your attendees. One that you can rinse and repeat over and over again that just gets better and better. And if you want help with this, this is something my team and I either come in and strategize, like I come in and strategize and you build. My team comes in and we white glove it and build it for you or a combination of the two, right?

I would love to chat. I've helped businesses turn summits into six-figure launches, even sevens, and we can make yours into a revenue machine too. If you're thinking of hosting one, book a call. Let me help you build out your strategy. Let's figure this out so you have a successful event.

And if you listen to the end here, I appreciate you. I really appreciate you listening to acquire. I love doing this podcast for you and we have some really great guest episodes coming up. So stay tuned. It's going to be an incredible, incredible spring and a great, great rest of 2025 with acquire. I'm excited. I feel rejuvenated to be able to share this with you. Um,

I feel alignment with my guests. I feel alignment with my solos. And I think that this is going to be a fab year to give you a ton of content. So thank you so much for listening. And if you love it, please leave me a review. Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you all soon. Take care.