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Stepping Stones:

An Alternative to Value Ladders and Sales Funnels

This is a different way of thinking about the things you sell.

It’s not The Correct way.

It’s not The Guaranteed Success way.

It’s just a different way.

Value Ladders and Sales Funnels aren’t a prescription for success. They are frameworks to help you understand how your audience might interact with your offers (the things you sell).

This blog post is about the way I look at my offers.

I’m sharing because thinking about my business in this way has made it easier for me to create new things, and sell my existing offers.

My Problem With Value Ladders and Sales Funnels

They’re a bit linear to work for my brain.

My brain likes to leap about in multiple dimensions and ask impossible questions, and wonder ‘what if…’

But Value Ladders look like this:

And Sales Funnels look like this:

Stepping Stones Ladder and Funnel Worditude (1)

They’re about doing one thing and then another thing and then another thing.

But what if people don’t want to start with the free stuff? Can they jump right onto a paid product?

What if they don’t like one stage of the Ladder/Funnel - should I still tell them about the other things that would come after it?

What if I have an idea for a thing I want to create, that I know people would benefit from and would make me money, but doesn’t fit neatly into the Value Ladder or Sales Funnel? Do I build a whole new Ladder or Funnel just for this new thing? How do I get people from one Ladder to the other one???? 🤯🤯🤯

Lake Worditude

My business model looks more like a lake.

In the middle of the lake is a beautiful island named ‘Marketing Mentoring’.

It is a very fabulous island and I want people to know about it so I mention it as often as I can. You don’t have to climb rungs on a ladder, or pass through stages of a funnel to know that Marketing Mentoring Island exists. It’s not a secret.

All around the island, the lake is studded with Stepping Stones.

Some of these Stepping Stones, like my blog posts, and freebies and £7 courses are quite close to the shore, making it a little easier for clients to take the leap and climb aboard.

Some of the Stepping Stones, like my bigger courses, are a little further away from the shore, and near the island.

There are no rules about how clients can use the Stepping Stones. They can take big leaps over multiple stones to reach the one they’re most interested in right now. Or shuffle across to the nearest, easiest one to reach. They can move closer to the island, or further away.

My job is not to tell people how to use the Stones.

My job is to make sure there are plenty of diverse Stepping Stones in the lake, solving different problems, and giving different experiences and outcomes, and to let my audience know that the Island and the Stepping Stones exist, so they can make their own decisions about where to leap to and when.

With each Stepping Stone leap it becomes more and more likely that one day they’ll hop across to Marketing Mentoring Island, even if their journey there was a long and wiggly zig-zag.

Not everyone will go to the island, and that’s OK.

Because I love that the Stepping Stones are helping people with whatever they need at that moment, and it makes me extra income on top of the Marketing Mentoring subscriptions.

When I am inspired to create a new thing, whether it’s a blog post, or a course, or a 1-1 offer, I don’t need to fit it into a Value Ladder or Sales Funnel.

I imagine it as a Stepping Stone.

I don’t try to control someone’s journey across the Stepping Stones to the island.

I just point out which other Stepping Stones they might be interested in and continue to remind them that Marketing Mentoring Island exists (and is fabulous).

And for me this feels like a much more relaxed way to create and sell offers.