Art of Earning, Art of Growth
I’m in the middle of a series of posts on leveraging your customer’s perspective (and your business’ unique strengths) to discover how to take your ideas to scale. We’ve talked about to-do lists, evolving your business model, leveraging love, and using small ideas to create the most impact in your market.
But what else can you do with an intimate knowledge of your customer’s perspective?
1. Devise an engaging content strategy.
When you know what’s on your customer’s mind, you can create content–blog posts, email updates, social media posts, videos, classes, etc…–that meet her exactly where she’s at. Instead of hoping that the latest social media trick will tip the scales in your favor, you offer fresh ideas, instant inspiration, or genuine entertainment that lets your customer know just how in tune your business is with her needs.
When you write like everyone else and sound like everyone else and act like everyone else, you’re saying, “Our products are like everyone else’s, too.” Or think of it this way: Would you go to a dinner party and just repeat what the person to the right of you is saying all night long? Would that be interesting to anybody?
— Jason Fried, Why is Business Writing So Awful?
And perhaps more importantly, do you want to give your customers the impression you think they’re just like everyone else? No. You want to make them feel special. One in a million.
For example, Lisa Claudia Briggs, from Intuitive Body, knows her Most Valued Customer tends to bear the weight of the world on their shoulders. They internalize outside stress (at work, in their families, with friends) and turn that into unhealthy habits like overeating. She calls them empaths. Using the Customer Perspective Process, she can use that information to create instant connections and establish trust with potential clients. She recently wrote about the advantages of being an empath, turning a perceived negative into a positive. That’s great (long-lasting) content!
2. Use the media to spread your story.
Your customers are the media’s customers. The same people that buy your products and services also buy newspapers, magazines, and cable. Reaching your customers through the media (as opposed to advertising) means your coming through a trusted source. You earn the title expert or insider from people who get paid to mete out experts and insiders.
My friend and colleague Brigitte Lyons, a media strategist for microbusinesses and creator of the Your Media Map program, uses the Customer Perspective Process to both better understand her own clients and to train them in preparation for dealing with the media.
As I was preparing to launch my publicity planning program, Your Media Map, I brainstormed the work participants needed to do before they went after the media. The first thing that came to mind was Tara’s Customer Perspective Process.
One of the most successful mindset shifts you can make to dramatically increase your hit rate is to keep in mind that you and the media share a common customer. Your right-fit media is just as invested in serving your MVC as your business is. When you keep this commonality in mind, your approach to a journalist (or blogger) changes from being a self-interested pitch to a customer-focused collaboration.
This mindset shift is the key to launching a successful media campaign — and it also helps you calm the jitters you’ll feel when you approach a journalist with a huge audience. You know their reader inside-and-out, because she also happens to be your MVC.
3. Construct a sales process tailor made to duplicate your best customers.
Too many businesses use fancy language to sound like they have a solution. Any kind of jargon–business, self improvement, design, craft, advocacy, etc…–is a barrier between your customers and your work. Your sales process isn’t an opportunity to display your smarts.
It’s an opportunity to match how the value your business creates matches the needs and desires your customer is already expressing (or not expressing) the way they’re expressing them. For example, Jen Louden knows the frustrations, questions, and desires that teachers face when they enter the virtual classroom. She’s crafted the sales process for TeachNow, her signature program for creating confidence & clarity around teaching-as-business, to reflect those frustrations, questions, and desires in her students’ language.
4. Build a business model that exponentially increases your revenue.
When you construct your business model using your customer’s worldview, you can anticipate what products or services he’ll want and when. That means that each satisfying experience with a product turns into a marketing device for the next.
Your business retains highly satisfied customers who continue to invest the products & services they depend on.
According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, a loyal customer can be worth 10x as much as a single purchase. If your customers could purchase 10x more from you, you’d be quite happy, right? Crafting a smart business model around your customers’ evolving needs–based on your knowledge of their worldview–means they’ll have that opportunity.
5. Turn your business into a referral engine.
You’re not the only one who needs to talk about your business. You need your customers to be consistently referring clients to your products & services, too.
They’re unlikely to feel comfortable using your description for your business. If the only way you know how to talk about your business is through careful brand language, you’re missing out on a big opportunity for scale. When you give your customers ways to talk about your business from their perspective, it’s easier for them to spread the word for you.
I’ve seen this happen beautifully with my book, The Art of Earning. My customers (that’s you!) are all familiar with the starving artist archetype. By turning that on its head and challenging their perspective, they have a fun way to recommend the book to their friends and colleagues.
Your customer’s perspective is powerful.
Seeing the world through your customers’ eyes is a powerful thing. It’s more than just attracting your right people. It’s the foundation for a business that is truly social, truly sustainable, and truly successful.
Click here to learn about my next Customer Perspective Process boot camp.
Art of Earning, Art of Growth
The number one reason your business isn’t generating the revenue it could be is that your business model is not set up to generate more.
People who earn more know a very important fact:
It’s easier to earn the second $50,000 than it is to earn the first $50,000.
Or the second $100k, or the second cool million.
In other words, once you’ve earned $50,000, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be earning 6-figures. The difference is that earning 6-figures generally requires leveraging your earning. It means no longer trading time for money. It means understanding what parts of your business can be duplicated over & over again with almost zero effort. It means finding a tipping point again, and again, and again.
You don’t have to give up family time to earn more. You don’t need to resort to shady promotional tactics or annoying affiliate campaigns. Instead, your business needs to embrace a better business model that is based on value & results, not time & energy.
If you’re putting too much work into earning too little, there’s a good chance your business is based on a relationship model.
Now, don’t get me wrong! Relationships are great. The human element is the most important element of any business. But here’s what starts to go wrong when you base your business on a relationship model:
Relational transactions happen most often in project-based or one-to-one client scenarios. The easy way to develop a relationship is with time, exchange, and getting-to-know-ya. You put your whole heart & soul into the process. Those relationships turn towards a transaction when you have something that fills a need for the other person.
It’s a feel good way to do business. But it’s a slow process. Each customer represents hours of time, loads of money (don’t think your social media use & Skype coffee dates aren’t costing you), and emotional stress waiting for those relationships to convert.
On the other hand, sales in transactional models come fast & furious. They utilize scale to generate the revenue that’s needed in the business. Transactional models are built on acute needs & impulse purchases.
The difficulty with this model is that it’s hard to achieve customer loyalty, harder still to truly delight your customers. Once a solution is purchased, there’s often no word from the customer to find out if it’s working or not. And this type of business might leave you scratching your head, wanting more.
In a perfect world, there would be a sweet spot between transactional models & relational models.
Not to get all Dr. Pangloss on you, but the New Economy just might be the best of all possible worlds.
There is a sweet spot. There is a way to build a business that takes your big ideas and your brilliant products to scale in a way that makes each customer feel special and singled out.
Your customer understands that you are doing business with him in mind, that your business is geared to her success, and that you have a vision for how his life can be better.
Leveraged income isn’t outside the customer relationship cycle. It’s an integral part of it. You don’t develop leveraged income opportunities to generate money where before there was none. You develop leveraged income opportunities to solve problems for people you care about, over & over & over again.
If you’re making $10k, $20k, even $50k per year, you’re already solving problems for people one at a time. To make the jump to your dream income, your goal is to solve problems for people 10, 100, even 1000 people at a time.
Don’t fight your desire to forge & foster relationships with your potential customers. Just realize that you can serve more than one person at a time. In fact, you owe it to your customers to do just that.
Art of Growth, Big Thinking, Customer Perspective Process
It’s not often I ask you to think smaller. Today is one of those days.
You have read everywhere, and rightly so, that one of the chief ways get traction for your brand is to sell people on your purpose, your larger vision. “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” I don’t even like breaking out this axiom of enlightened business anymore because it’s become cliche and misused.
Yes, your vision & purpose is key to the success of your brand, but it is not a substitute for clear statements of value. You don’t get off the hook for being clear about what your product does, how it is used, and what the expected outcomes of use are because your purpose is so grand.
A particular area in which I see this plaguing business owners is in what I will call the “transformational service sector.” Think coaches of almost every kind and consultants of every ilk. That includes many of you reading.
And even if it doesn’t, keep reading. Winky face.
Sharing your vision for your customers and the purpose of your work is directional. It helps to catch them up in the flow of your work. But it doesn’t trigger their desire to buy.
People buy when they’re ready. They need to be both ready to buy into your vision and actively looking for a solution to a stumbling block on the path to that vision.
Your job isn’t to provide a straight, newly paved highway to dream life. It’s to anticipate the happy detours and not-so-happy ice storms they’ll have along the way and guide them through. When they’re ready for a happy detour, metaphorically speaking, they’ll be looking for museums to visit, places to eat, and spots to explore. When they run into the not-so-happy ice storms, they’ll be looking for shelter, tire chains, or a tow truck.
If you’re especially observant of your customers, you know exactly when the detours come and when the ice storms will hit. You can then show up when they stop and say…
“Hey! I know you and I know where you’re going. Let me help you with this.”
“This” is what you’re actually selling. And it’s what people actually buy.
Here’s a more concrete example. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I’ve been doing some “research” on online dating strategy. One of the books I’m reading is by the founder of a company called eFlirt Expert. They offer services to help people looking for love online be more efficient and effective.
What they don’t do is try to sell anyone on the idea that buying from them will result in the perfect match or finding a soul mate. Instead, they’ve identified tasks that online daters need help with on the path to doing just that, such as picking which sites to use, building your profile for you, replying to the messages you get, or giving your profile a makeover.
Here’s what that looks like for the customer. He decides he’s had enough of bad blind dates and the bar scene. He’s ready to give the online world a go. First, he has to decide which site to use. Panic (hopefully mild!) ensues. He uses eFlirt Expert’s free dating site evaluation service. Bingo, he signs up for the recommended sites.
Then he starts building his profile and starts searching the site. He doesn’t the get the response he wants immediately. So he remembers that online dating company and goes to see what they have to offer (of course, he’s probably getting an email right about this time to remind him of what they can do for him). Profile building! Yes, that’s what he needs.
With a shiny new profile, he’s getting lots of messages from great potential matches. He wants to make sure he’s answering them properly. So he goes back to that company and signs up for email reply services. If all goes well, he’ll be dating away in no time and, hopefully, finding a relationship.
You tell me. Which is more compelling?
An offer to coach you through the dating process to find your one true love? or
3 distinct offers that deliver 3 specific outcomes?
Boom, as they say.
Before you give me a million and one excuses about why this isn’t a good model for your business, let me give you three questions you will be able to answer that prove otherwise:
- What questions do your clients commonly come to you with in the process of serving them?
- What tasks do your clients commonly need to complete in the process of achieving their goals?
- What frustrations do your clients commonly feel during the process of making progress?
Within the answers to those questions are the seeds of specific service offerings, leveraged programs or products, lead generation tools, blog posts, emails, even Facebook updates or tweets. They’re sign posts on the journey from the moment of readiness to the fulfillment of your shared vision.
Each answer is a potential place to enter the market.
One of the reasons my book, The Art of Earning, has sold so well is that it answers a question that all of my clients have had at one point or another. The Art of Growth is positioned to do the same thing by answering the question, “How can I create a bigger impact with my business but put less energy into it?” Our bestselling products at Kick Start Labs, Website Kick Start and Sales Page Kick Start, address two tasks every entrepreneur in the digital space need to complete: building a website and writing a sales page.
The more specific a task I can help my customers complete, the more likely they are to know that they want it. Not only that, the more likely they are to want it on their own terms, meaning I need to do less to push the product. They will search it out.
That’s not to say that an all-inclusive package can’t be a great product. But it’s not likely to be an easy sell. The thing is, most customers simply don’t believe your 12-week course or your VIP day will put them on the fast-track to achieving your shared vision. Let’s be honest: I don’t care how good you are at what you do and how ready your customers are for change, transformational services–from the technical to the metaphysical–simply take time, growth, and natural progression.
Any one product or service is one step in the right direction. Not a teleporter.
You can build a solid business model on breaking that journey into its natural pieces. Or you can struggle to sell something so grand it’s literally unbelievable.
Hold onto your vision. Sell the steps to it.
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Want a framework for breaking your big ideas into smaller ones that really sell & get better results?
The Customer Perspective Process walks you through exactly that. You’ll learn how to breakdown the many tasks, milestones, and questions your customers will have on their way to reaching your shared vision.
Click here to learn more about The Customer Perspective Process virtual boot camp from Kick Start Labs.
Art of Growth, Business Brainstorm, Customer Perspective Process
Last week, I did an Insight Intensive with Nancy Sherr–a gorgeous and dynamic coach guiding women through transitions and towards a zestful life. I read the copy on her site, I watched her introductory video. I could tell she knew her customer. And suddenly, I did too.
I could imagine all the women who had put so much energy into being the perfect wives to their influential and powerful husbands only to have their 20 year marriages end in divorce. I could see all the women who had put their whole hearts into being perfect mothers only to wonder what to do with their whole hearts when the kids left the nest empty. I could picture all the women who had set aside every shred of their femininity to compete in a masculine world only to feel cold & distant upon retirement or layoff.
Nancy’s work naturally picks up where these transitions leave off. It’s the clearest opportunity and the one that most easily lends itself to an offer. But that’s only one opportunity for her to serve her best clients. She could imagine only serving them at this juncture in time. She could see her clients as static.
Or she could choose to imagine the lives ahead of them. She could choose to hold a vision for her clients as they pursue their zestful lives. And she could choose to create products that serve that growing & evolving vision.
Much of the problem with the way most businesses have chosen to see their ideal client is that it stops at “now.”
You can have one distinct ideal client profile. But that profile doesn’t have to only exist at the point of pain, frustration, or need. No, that profile–that person–has a history. She has unique experiences that have shaped who she is at this moment. She also has a future. She has hopes, dreams, and the day-by-day reality of moving through time.
Innovative businesses hold a vision for their customers. Innovative businesses use their unique insight into their customers’ day-to-day lives to see what tomorrow will look like and create the solutions that meet them at tomorrow and beyond.
“What business a company is in depends, in large part, not on existing customers but who tomorrow’s customers will—and should—be.”
— Michael Schrage, Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?
That is not to say that who your customer is changes. But it is to say that your customers are changing. You have the opportunity to continue to serve them as they progress.
Or you can take a myopic perspective and only sell to them “now.”
Consider the newspapers. Newspaper companies think they’re in the “newspaper” business. So it’s difficult for them to innovate outside the product that people have always wanted from them. They think their customers buy newspapers.
But that’s not at all what their customers buy. Their customers buy “news.” That’s a fundamentally different way to look at the value provided.
So their customers have become people who seldom read things on recycled wood pulp anymore. News customers engage smartphones, tablets, laptops, social media platforms, and countless other sources of news.
The “newspaper” business might be dying but the “news” business–at least the market and demand for news–has never been greater. If newspaper companies forgot the paper part, what innovative solutions could they come up with to not only meet their customers with the reality of today but to lead them to the promise of tomorrow?
What about your industry? Do people actually buy “coaching?” What do they buy instead? Are people actually buying “website design?” What solution are they really seeking? Do your customers care that you’re a wellness coach? What personal change are they willing to put money on?
Knowing the business that you’re really in helps you to see how your customers grow and change beyond the 1-point product or service you’re selling now.
Your customers’ needs change. Their desires evolve. The way they want to interact with you and your community transforms. The way they want to be communicated with shifts.
This can be scary. But it’s really an opportunity.
As your understanding of your customer-through-time evolves, you will see that there are truly countless opportunities for you to meet their changing needs. There are desires & needs that naturally rise to the surface as the people you serve grow. Those desires & needs translate to offers & opportunities, each with its own set of constraints and objectives.
Each time you identify one of these needs, you have the opportunity to layer the messaging, community, and revenue for that new offer on top of your existing offers. And that can lead to big returns in each department.
Seeing your ideal customer as a living, breathing, growing human being means you can see your business as a living, growing, thriving organism instead of a one-trick pony.
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Ready to chart the course for your customer’s journey and a path of growth for your business?
Understanding how your customers grow & change, as well as the ups & downs they’ll have along the way, is a big part of The Customer Perspective Process. You’ll learn to apply your customer’s journey to your business model development, content strategy, and strategic partnership strategy.
Click here to learn about The Customer Perspective Process virtual boot camp from Kick Start Labs.
Art of Earning, Business Brainstorm
Here’s a dirty little secret about business in the digital age: people aren’t as financially successful as you think they are.
I’m not saying anyone is lying about their earnings. If someone tells you how much they’re producing, I would trust it. What I mean is that you perceive the people you admire, many of the business owners who seem to be “crushing it,” to be more financially successful than they are.
This isn’t an exposé on others lack of success; it’s an exposé on the thought patterns and assumptions that keep you struggling when you should be thriving.
When you stare at your Twitter stream or the fancy websites of your colleagues, your mind plays tricks on you. You confuse the shiny veneer with deep success. I do too. It’s an easy mistake to make.
When you see a highly organized, well-executed launch, you associate it with a small team of gifted marketers and lots of sales. What you don’t see is the one-woman show, the sleepless nights, the endless “hustle,” the working-too-hard-for-too-little routine.
When you see an ebook or a program or an affiliate campaign, you associate it with waking up every day to hundreds of dollars more in the bank. What you don’t see is the lack of sales or the constant work required to move a small amount of inventory.
When you see a business with a wait list, you associate it with a calendar full of exciting clients and a bank account full of service fees. What you don’t see is the unpaid bills, the anxiety of asking for payment, and nagging feeling that there’s a better way to be spending time. What you don’t hear is the quiet whisper of, “Who am I to want anything different than this? I should feel blessed to be this busy.”
This might even be you now. You’ve executed the launch, you’ve created an opportunity for leveraged income, or you’ve sold out your calendar. People tell you that you’re successful. And you believe them. But again, you’re left with the nagging thought, “I didn’t think that success would feel like this.”
Look, I’m not trying to be a downer. I’m an optimist – but I’m also a realist. And I woke up with a strong desire to let you in on this secret. The reality is that I know all this because these business owners – the ones you associate with big launches, profitable products, and sold out service calendars – they come to me when they’ve had enough. And I’m generally as surprised to hear from them as you’d be! They open up and tell me they want to make more money, work less, and structure the business differently.
What I’ve discovered is that the source of their frustration is the engine of their business, the thing that keeps it motoring down the road. What’s the engine? It’s them!
When you’re trying to be the engine of your own business it can manifest in many ways:
- pushing out tons of free stuff to try to gain traction
- doing “the work” at the expense of building the business
- saying “yes” to every opportunity for exposure or joint venture
- changing surface-level tactics and hoping for a different result
I recently wrote that after the sparkly follow-your-passion dreams wear off and the reality of hard work sets in, it’s easy to confuse busyness with business. When you are the engine of your business growth, busyness seems like the answer. If only you put in more hours, if only you checked more things off the list, you could get the business where you want it to be.
It’s the truly successful people who realize their business is run by something greater than their sheer effort.
The business grows because it’s built to grow. The model provides for growth through clear channels of customer acquisition, products that build on previous successes, and systems that eliminate busywork while replicating results.
It’s a mindset shift. And a drastic one, at that.
It requires you accepting that more work, harder work, or sheer will is not the key to getting ahead.
And it requires that you have faith in your ability to step back from the work far enough to see how the business could succeed without your constant interference.
