ALL $1M/MONTH CALL FUNNELS USE THIS STRATEGY (THAT MOST IGNORE)

Earnings Disclaimer: You have a .1% probability of hitting million dollar months according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. As stated by law, we can not and do not make any guarantees about your own ability to get results or earn any money with our ideas, information, programs or strategies. We don’t know you and, besides, your results in life are up to you. We’re here to help by giving you our greatest strategies to move you forward, faster. However, nothing on this page or any of our websites or emails is a promise or guarantee of future earnings. Any financial numbers referenced here, or on any of our sites or emails, are simply estimates or projections or past results, and should not be considered exact, actual or as a promise of potential earnings – all numbers are illustrative only.

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Watch the full video breakdown on this topic here.

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Key Takeaways

1. The “VSSL Problem” – When you run a direct paid call funnel, your sales team often complains about lead quality. They claim prospective buyers “aren’t ready” because they’re missing the in-depth framing of longer content, like webinars and challenges.
2. Two Types of Prospects – One group (Person #1) loves consuming content (webinars, long-form videos, challenge funnels) before hopping on a call. The other group (Person #2) refuses to watch or read anything; they want direct answers on a live call, effectively using your sales call for their education.
3. The Missing Role: Educator – To master million-dollar months, adapt your sales process for both groups. That means designating a role—an Educator—who can field Person #2’s questions on a dedicated “education-first call” before handing them off to a closer.
4. The Two-Call Close – The first call addresses Person #2’s immediate questions (education), then the next call closes them. Trying to push Person #2 through a one-call close often fails because they never consumed your pre-call content in the first place.
5. Scaling Beyond $200k–$300k Months – Businesses stuck in the lower six-figure monthly zone typically focus solely on Person #1 or Person #2. The top 0.1% who break $1M/month systematically serve both demographics—resulting in unstoppable revenue growth.
6. Improbable but Not Impossible – Hitting a million dollars a month places you in a rare stratum of entrepreneurs. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than 0.1% of businesses surpass $10 million a year. While not guaranteed, adapting these advanced strategies can significantly improve your odds of scaling.
7. Million-Dollar Month Tactics – Embrace advanced strategies like the Hammer Them approach (intense pre-call content distribution), the Venus Fly Trap 2.0 funnel structure, short-form and long-form indoctrination, and the Trust Flywheel to nurture prospects thoroughly—both pre-call and post-call.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction: A Funnel Problem as Old as Time
2. Breaking Down the “VSSL Problem”
3. The Reality of Two Different Buyer Types
4. Person #1: The Content-Binge Prospect
5. Person #2: The “Call-First” Prospect
6. Why Sales Teams Complain: The Education Gap
7. Shifting Your Process: The Educator Role
8. Refining the Two-Call Close
9. Adapting Your Marketing: Pre-Call Framing & Post-Call Follow-Up
10. Scaling Beyond $200k–$300k Months
11. Case-in-Point: How Top Earners Solve the VSSL Problem
12. Important Disclaimers & Realities
13. Building Million-Dollar Momentum
14. Final Thoughts on the Call Funnel Revolution

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1. Introduction: A Funnel Problem as Old as Time

Every entrepreneur focused on scaling online has run into some version of the same funnel frustration. You spend a fortune on advertising to generate calls and fill your team’s pipeline. Yet your sales team hits you with that inevitable complaint: “We can’t close these leads; they’re not qualified!” or “They’re not warm enough!”

Sound familiar? If you’ve ever tried direct “call funnels” where a single ad flows into a short landing page that invites prospects to book a call, you’ve probably heard these grievances. Meanwhile, you also see or hear about business owners who crush paid call funnels—some who even sail on into million-dollar months with a high success rate. So you wonder:

• Why do some people absolutely dominate with call funnels while others flounder?
• Why do the same salespeople who are great at closing organic leads or webinar-trained leads suddenly lose their nerve with paid call leads?

In this blog, I’m going to break down exactly why this phenomenon occurs and how you can fix it. It’s a quintessential problem I call the “VSSL Problem,” and it’s older than the funnel itself. My goal here is to guide you through an advanced solution that the true top 0.1% adopt to smash through to million-dollar months—and keep stacking them.

But don’t fool yourself: the odds of scaling your business to $1M/month are tiny. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests fewer than 0.1% of businesses ever hit $10 million annually. Reaching $12 million or more—that’s a million-dollar month—places you among an elite fraction of an already small fraction. Still, if I can help you improve your odds and get richer in the process, that’s my mission.

Let’s dive in.

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2. Breaking Down the “VSSL Problem”

I call it the “VSSL Problem” to point out a few key pain points in direct call funnels:

1. V = Volume of calls. When you turn on paid advertising, volume goes up, but lead quality is often suspect—especially if your ads lack powerful indoctrination or only revolve around a simple promise.
2. S = Sales Team Complaints. Your reps say: “These leads aren’t ready. They have no clue who we are. They’re just looking for freebies. They’re not going to pay.”
3. S = Strategy Blind Spots. You’re ignoring how different buyer personas operate. You might have all your marketing geared to a single ideal scenario (like a warm, nurtured buyer), forgetting not everyone operates that way.
4. L = Lead Education Gaps. The real friction is that leads come in undereducated about you, your method, or the solution. Your funnel’s messaging might expect them to arrive “already sold,” but they aren’t.

Your top sales performers might close the small trickle of lay-down deals from these call funnels. However, the real money is in serving both types of leads effectively—and that’s where so many entrepreneurs stall out.

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3. The Reality of Two Different Buyer Types

Here’s the core distinction that sets the million-dollar-a-month earners apart from those languishing at a few hundred thousand:

There aren’t just “hot” and “cold” leads. There are, in essence, two distinct buyer behaviors inside any audience:

• Person #1: Loves to be “framed” first. They’ll happily devour webinar replays, watch hours of your long-form content, join your multi-day challenge, rummage through your website, and show up on a call already sold on the big idea.
• Person #2: Refuses to watch anything. They want their answers now—on the phone. They see your call funnel ad, they book a call, and they show up asking a million questions. They want to get it all from a live human because they feel group webinars or multi-day challenges are a scam or a waste of time.

If you only ever built your funnel or sales process for Person #1, you’d logically end up frustrated when Person #2 hits your pipeline. Your closers say, “These leads aren’t warm. They didn’t watch the webinar. They don’t even know what we do. They’re not qualified!”

But the truth is, Person #2 can be just as qualified financially, psychologically, and intellectually—they just prefer a different approach. Often, they’re every bit as ready to buy, but they want direct, immediate clarity from a real person. They don’t want to hunt for that information across a 3-hour challenge replay. That’s not how they roll.

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4. Person #1: The Content-Binge Prospect

Let’s look at Person #1 in detail. This is everyone’s favorite lead. They come in after they’ve:

• Watched your short-form and long-form content repeatedly, binging hours of your YouTube channel, podcast interviews, or blog articles.
• Joined your challenge or webinar for days or hours at a time. They’re the ones who watch your entire 90-minute or 3-hour broadcast with excitement and admiration, soaking up your testimonials, your frameworks, and your disclaimers.
• Consumed the “Pre-Call Homework.” If you send them videos to watch, PDF guides to skim, or any preparatory content ahead of a call, they actually do it. They see it as the logical next step.

By the time they finally talk to your sales team, these folks are basically sold. They see your brand, your system, your team, and everything you stand for as a solution they’re excited to purchase. The sales rep’s job is straightforward: clarify a few details, quote a price, and close.

And that’s precisely why your team loves them. They’re easy. But…

Person #1 is only half the picture.

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5. Person #2: The “Call-First” Prospect

This second type of prospect doesn’t trust or doesn’t care for standard marketing indoctrination. They prefer live, interactive question-and-answer sessions with a real person. They also often think:

• “Webinars are a waste of time.” They believe these events or challenge funnels are just an elaborate pitch. They don’t see the benefit in waiting an hour or more to get the handful of answers they actually want.
• “Homework” is an annoying chore. If you label anything as “homework,” they cringe. The concept reminds them of school, which might carry negative associations of forced tasks.
• “I’ll just ask on the call.” They want to speak to a real person. They want on-the-spot clarity, rarely reading your pages or going through your content.

A sales team used to Person #1 immediately sees Person #2 as “unqualified.” Why? Because Person #2 arrives with the same sorts of questions that your webinar or challenge funnel might have already answered. The sales rep sees these questions as proof that the lead is “too cold” to buy. But in reality, Person #2 is often just as serious. They’re simply wired to only trust direct conversations.

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6. Why Sales Teams Complain: The Education Gap

In a perfect world, you want to impose your standard process on all leads:

1. Awareness (they see your ad).
2. Pre-Call Framing (webinar, challenge, long-form video series).
3. Sales Call → Close.

But Person #2 inverts that. They do:

1. Awareness (they see your ad).
2. Sales Call → Then maybe, if needed, they’ll watch something (or do a second call) after they get specific answers from a live person.
3. Close.

When your funnel or your closers only know how to handle prospects who have already been “incubated,” Person #2 becomes an immediate point of friction. The closers start complaining that these leads are “too early in the sales process.” This results in the dreaded phenomenon:

• Sales Reps: “Shut off the paid ads! These calls are a waste of time!”
• Business Owner: “But we need more volume to scale to $1M a month…”
• Sales Reps: “We’d rather you do a webinar or put them through a challenge funnel. Our close rate is better that way!”

It’s a never-ending loop until you recognize that you can’t funnel Person #2 into the same funnel path as Person #1. You have to adapt your marketing and your sales approach.

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7. Shifting Your Process: The Educator Role

So, what’s the solution? You insert a role in your sales organization that’s effectively an Educator. This person (or persons, if you scale to multiple educators) handles the direct, immediate Q&A that Person #2 craves.

7.1 Why You Need an Educator

• Person #2 arrives with raw, unfiltered questions. They’re not “qualified” or “unqualified” simply by virtue of ignoring your content; they just want direct engagement.
• The Educator answers knowledge gaps. Instead of forcing a one-call close on a prospect who’s never consumed a single minute of your content, the Educator invests the time to walk them through key points, effectively replicating the essence of your webinar or challenge funnel—one-on-one.
• The Educator can quickly spot real prospects. Sometimes Person #2 asks questions that reveal high intent or serious budgets, even if they present as “uninformed.”

7.2 Live Transfer vs. Scheduled Follow-Up

• Live Transfer: If your Educator is free, your closer or Setter can pass the call over in the moment when they realize, “Oh, this is definitely Person #2.” The Educator then fields the questions in real time.
• Scheduled Call: If the Educator’s not free, or if you have a high volume of leads, you schedule an “education call.” This is a more advanced version of “setting an appointment,” but the stated purpose is education, not immediate closing.

Either way, your closers avoid banging their heads against the wall trying to run a fast close on someone who’s just looking to learn. And that is how million-dollar-month businesses scale their direct call funnels. They aren’t culling these “uneducated” leads; they’re educating them in a dedicated environment.

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8. Refining the Two-Call Close

Introducing an Educator means Person #2 goes from a single-call funnel to a two-call close. Consider how that works:

1. Education Call – The Educator invests time to clarify your program, your solution, your background, the results you help generate, and the answers to all those questions the prospect needs before they feel comfortable about your method. This conversation effectively is their “webinar” or “challenge,” but done one-on-one.
2. Closing Call – Once Person #2 is up to speed, or they’ve had time to absorb the initial info, they move to a dedicated closer. This is where the actual pitch, objection handling, and final close occur.

You might think, “But that’s more sales calls. Isn’t that less efficient?” Possibly in the sense of manpower and scheduling. But if it opens the floodgates to a larger group of prospects who would otherwise vanish from your pipeline (or blow up your sales reps’ morale), isn’t that worth it? Successful million-dollar-month earners find the ROI absolutely worth it. They convert more “call-first” people who might have otherwise been cast out as “unqualified.”

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9. Adapting Your Marketing: Pre-Call Framing & Post-Call Follow-Up

You don’t only adapt your sales process. The marketing side has to keep up as well, especially as your funnel volume grows. Here are essential pieces:

9.1 Hammer Them Strategy

When dealing with Person #1, you want to saturate them with content before their call—webinars, emails, short form, long form, text messages. That’s the “Hammer Them” approach. The more they see your case studies, credibility, and real-world proof before the appointment, the more they show up prime to buy.

9.2 Venus Fly Trap 2.0

This is a sophisticated funnel design that lures in potential leads with a tantalizing promise or piece of value, then “snaps shut” by delivering thorough indoctrination in a condensed format. Person #1 thrives in this environment because they love to soak up your unique approach. Person #2 might never read or watch it, but that’s fine—because you’ll catch them via the Educator approach anyway.

9.3 Trust Flywheel

Trust-building must be baked into every stage—whether it’s before the call or after that initial “education-first” call with Person #2. This is where your brand stories, testimonials, social proof, and consistent follow-up become crucial. Person #2 might want a follow-up deck or a quick mini-document with the highlights after the education call. Provide that, further speeding their decision.

9.4 Post-Call Sequences

In some cases, you might have a Person #2 who’s still not fully convinced after that first education call. Or you might have a Person #1 who came in warm but needs a nudge. Build robust post-call automations and sequences featuring personalized videos, success stories, and invitation emails that invite them to a closing call.

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10. Scaling Beyond $200k–$300k Months

Many business owners hit a wall in the low-to-mid six-figure monthly range because they can only handle one of these two types of prospects well. Typical scenarios:

1. Only Person #1 – You might rely heavily on long-form content, lives, challenge funnels, and lengthy “homework” or “pre-call” sequences. Fantastic for warm prospects who love that approach. Yet you lose out on the “call-first” crowd, and your sales team whines about the few “uneducated” leads that slip through.
2. Only Person #2 – This is rarer but happens. Some businesses never build out robust marketing or pre-call content. They rely entirely on direct phone engagement. They do well with call-first folks but never harness the massive potential of Person #1 who loves to binge content.

To catapult from, say, $200k–$300k months into the million-dollar territory, you must harness both sets of prospects:

• Keep your organic strategies (webinars, challenges, content marketing) robust. That’s your bread and butter for Person #1.
• Run paid ads into a direct call funnel but adapt a two-call structure for Person #2, complete with an Educator and advanced pre/post-call sequences.

This is precisely what you see in businesses that climb into the $1M/month zone. They don’t abandon paid call funnels because the leads “aren’t ready.” They adapt. They add the necessary staff. They build both funnel experiences simultaneously. They capture all the money.

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11. Case-in-Point: How Top Earners Solve the VSSL Problem

Over the last decade, I’ve worked with more than 40 different businesses that now consistently hit $1 million+ per month in revenue. Some have even gone well beyond that, crossing $5 million or more. Here’s what they all have in common when it comes to handling the VSSL Problem:

1. Pre-Call Content – They have well-crafted, on-demand indoctrination (long-form videos, short-form clips, entire mini-courses) to warm up Person #1.
2. An Educator – There’s always at least one role dedicated to bridging the gap for those who skip or ignore the pre-call content. These educators almost act as personal “webinar presenters,” but for one lead at a time.
3. Two-Call Closes – Instead of forcing Person #2 into a single call, they schedule that second conversation (or do a live transfer) once they’ve provided the necessary background. This synergy results in far higher conversion rates and satisfied sales teams.
4. The Right Mindset – They recognize that “complaining about low-quality leads” is typically a sign that the funnel or the team is unprepared to educate. They see the underlying opportunity in that uneducated lead, rather than dismissing them.

When you see the ultra-successful talk about direct call funnels as a “goldmine,” it’s often because they’ve seamlessly integrated a marketing approach for Person #1 and a dedicated Educator approach for Person #2. Their sales team is no longer frustrated but is instead pumped by the volume of calls and the consistent conversions that happen at scale.

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12. Important Disclaimers & Realities

12.1 The .1% Achievement

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, hitting $10 million a year (let alone $12 million) is something fewer than 0.1% of businesses ever accomplish. That’s the reality. It’s a tall mountain. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

12.2 Not a Guaranteed Road

My strategies, frameworks, and personal experiences are never a 100% guarantee you will achieve the same results. Some people get stuck at a few hundred grand a month. Others never crack the $100k mark. I’m here to simply pass down lessons from those who have climbed that mountain, so you can decide if you’re ready to implement them.

12.3 Small Business Threshold

Even at $200k–$300k months, you’re still well within the typical definition of a small business if you don’t surpass $40 million a year. Most people never break that threshold. But if you’re reading this, there’s a solid chance you’re chasing that next big rung: the million-dollar-month mark. Understand you’re playing in a game with extremely small odds. Accept it, and then do the work anyway.

12.4 The “Person #2 Gap”

No matter how good your brand is, how strong your funnel is, or how many glowing testimonials you have, a specific portion of your market will always prefer direct, real-time Q&A over passive consumption. Failing to adapt to them can be the difference between a stuck funnel and a million-dollar monster funnel.

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13. Building Million-Dollar Momentum

So, how do you build the momentum needed to push your business toward these lofty goals?

1. Acknowledge Both Buyer Types – Break down your funnel to see how you’re currently catering to Person #1 and Person #2. Are you inadvertently repelling or ignoring the second group?
2. Create an Education Flow – Build out an entire structure for Person #2 that may include an Educator team member, or at the very least, a distinct “education-first” call step in your pipeline.
3. Refine Your Marketing Assets – Don’t skimp on your content, especially for Person #1. Keep them engaged with advanced strategies like the Hammer Them approach, the Venus Fly Trap 2.0 design, or multi-day challenge funnels. Make sure your short-form and long-form content speak powerfully to the questions your best buyers have.
4. Enhance the Sales Process – Train your closers to spot the difference between Person #1 and Person #2 fast. Equip them with a seamless internal handoff to an Educator or an “education call” for those who want real-time Q&A.
5. Iterate Constantly – Even top earners who’ve soared beyond $1 million/month revisit their call funnel strategy, pre-call framing, and educator approach often. Markets evolve, and your funnel must keep pace.

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14. Final Thoughts on the Call Funnel Revolution

The direct call funnel isn’t dead, despite the negativity you hear from some sales teams. It’s thriving for those who recognize two fundamental truths:

1. Person #1 is the “traditional dream lead” who welcomes your entire marketing indoctrination funnel. They’re easy to close because they’re already sold on your message.
2. Person #2 is an equally viable but distinct segment that wants to “meet the brand” by speaking to a human. They can be closed, too—but they require a two-call process and an educator’s guidance upfront.

When you accommodate both, your entire business transforms. You’ll see that your paid call funnels don’t just produce “unqualified leads”; they produce different leads. Adapt your approach, and you’ll unlock a new revenue channel that can carry you to truly rare financial heights.

Remember, none of this guarantees success. It simply replicates a path that 40+ businesses I’ve coached or consulted for have walked. They soared from mid-six figures a month up to $1 million/month or more. They did so by facing the VSSL Problem head-on, ditching old assumptions about lead behavior, and building a process that welcomes Person #1 and Person #2 with open arms.

If you’re serious about scaling, focus on bridging that education gap for your leads who skip content. Introduce or train an Educator who can handle real-time Q&A, adapt your funnel to a two-call close if necessary, and keep layering advanced marketing indoctrination for the leads who do love to binge your content. The synergy of those two sides is unstoppable when done right.

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