As online business owners, you’ll probably sell an online course at one point or another.

Once you’ve added a course to your product suite, there are different

What is a VIP Upsell?

A VIP Upsell is a coaching upsell for your online course to provide additional 1-1 support or services.

You may provide additional coaching for them to ask questions, feedback on some deliverables like their copy or resume, or some services through your agency. It really just depends on your business model and client needs.

They’re a great way to bring in some additional launch revenue, while serving your audience at a higher-touch.

But! You’ll of course need to keep yourself organized so you can actually benefit from the additional revenue, not get lost in the admin of fulfilling these containers.

Everything You Need to Run a VIP Upsell to Your Coaching Container or Online Course

#1: A clearly defined onboarding process for your online course

We’ll want to have a strong foundation to build off of in terms of onboarding buyers into your course.

This doesn’t have to get complicated, a simple delivery email from your email marketing platform will do – but you will want to have something setup that easily gets people started with your product.

Check out this blog post for things you can automate when someone buys your digital product, for some additional support with streamlining this process.

#2: Clearly identified deliverables of your VIP Upsell

Next, we’ll want to be clear about what the upsell is. What are they getting when they sign up with you? You’ll want this to compliment the outcome of your online course.

The goal here is to help them achieve their goals faster with your 1-1 support or services.

Some options for this VIP upsell could be:

1. Feedback on something they’ve created in your course, like copy feedback, resume feedback, feedback on their design, etc.
2. 3 60-minute Zoom calls to help them implement the course materials
3. A Day of Voxer coaching where you can answer any questions and brainstorm next steps with them
4. A Done-For-You service to help speed up the time it takes for them to complete a step in your course (like maybe you build their branding for them)

You truly can get super creative here and figure out all sorts of ways to further support your customers.

But you’ll want to be clear on what this upsell package contains. And I don’t recommend getting toooo custom with these, unless you want to spend a lot of time managing the client deliverables. (which is totally fine tbh, but be prepared for more custom = more work).

#3: The Price of Your VIP Upsell

Once you’ve gotten clear on what your deliverables for your VIP upsell package are, now you can start calculating the price for it.

Now, pricing is a whole discussion that I don’t have enough space to discuss in this blog post.

But! What you’ll want to keep in mind when coming up with a price is:

1. The time it will take to fulfill the deliverables
2. The help you’ll need to hire to fulfill the deliverables (if any)
3. Taxes

Make sure your price will at least cover that, and then don’t forget to add a buffer.

#4: An Application Process

This step isn’t 100% required, but it can be a good way to touch base with potential buyers so you can get to know them a bit more and determine if they’re a good fit.

It’s a nice touch to a) get to know who is interested in the upsell, and b) show exclusivity.

And this doesn’t need to be like ‘you can’t sit with us’ kinda energy, but not everyone will be a good fit for your VIP upsell. Which is okay! This will just help reduce the amount of unsatisfied clients down the line.

You might not even say no to anyone either, but it is a nice step that I encourage you to take.

#5: A Client Management Tracker

Next you’ll need to keep track of the status of their deliverables, what they’re currently working on, and the due dates for when they need to complete them by.

You can do this with a simple Google Sheet, but I always recommend a project management system for these types of things.

#6: Communication Platform

You’re going to need to communicate with your VIPs regularly once you sign them on.

I recommend getting them into some sort of communication platform that you only use for business contacts. And don’t just email them – they might get lost and we definitely don’t want that.

I recommend either Slack or Voxer.

Slack is great if you already use it and you’re working with people who also already use it. It can be tricky when you’re working with more B2C type audiences though (unless they’ve used it in their work life or something), just because it is a little bit trickier to use.

Voxer is a walkie-talkie style app that’s a great replacement for Voxer. But you can also just message like you can when you text.

Either way, keep it to something you don’t use in your personal life so you can maintain boundaries. You’ll want to make sure you’re regularly able to see notifications in case your VIPs have questions, but you also don’t want to get it mixed in with your friends messages. So no texting or WhatsApp.

Where to store all of this information?

So to be honest, if you know me you know my obsession with ClickUp. And yes – I do really love it for a lot of things.

But to be completely honest, I recommend setting up an Airtable base to keep this all organized in one place.

My main number one overall tip that I will always say when it comes to systems and staying organized is to try and keep everything in one place as much as possible.

And I’ve tried to build this system in ClickUp, but it’s just messy and I like Airtable better for this.

You can keep pretty much everything I shared in this blog post all in one simple base, making it really easy to find information on the fly.

Now you’re ready to start selling your first VIP upsell! Have any questions? Feel free to send me an email at alex[at]anomadicentrepreneur.com and feel free to ask away 🙂