Lessons

Lesson Info

Identify the Key Valuable Outcomes

I want to look at key valuable outcomes. What I mean by this is that there are really ... There's really kind of a set, a limited number of things that people really value, outcomes that they really value. Maybe you've heard before like that if you want to market anything online, you either need to help people lose weight or save time, or make more money, right? Those are the three things people care about. Well, there's actually 30 things people care about. There was Bain & Company and the Harvard Business Review did a whole study of this and I, there's a , they released an article on HBR. It's just the elements of value, it's an absolutely brilliant thing and we're gonna get into sort of the beginning of it, but if you want the in-depth on this idea of finding these pieces of value, these elements of value that are common across all markets, all customer segments, you can look that up. But that's really what it boils down to. And because value is kind of limited in this way, cust...

omers only value a certain number of things. We need to rely on customers to tell us what is good, not ourselves. So, this quote is from "Ready, Fire, Aim" by Michael Masterson and he says, "How do you know that your product idea is good?" It's not because I tell you it's good. It's not because you think it's good. It's not because your fellow audience members think it's good. "Business is not and must never be about "what the business owner thinks is good or right. "Business is about providing to the customer "and that value can be determined only by the customer." So again, there's been a couple of times here where I've asked you to step out of thinking about things in terms that you find valuable or what you think your product does and really think about it from the customer's point of view. And focusing on these key valuable outcomes is going to allow us to do that because when it comes down to it, value is actually really cliche. Value is really cliche. Right? For a long time, as a business coach as an early early early business coach I didn't want to market myself as helping people make more money with their businesses because it just sounded so cliche. Here's the thing, what do people value about growing their businesses? Making more money. And I can talk to about how, you know, you can find sort of personal actualization, self-actualization through your business and you can become the person you want to become. And I can talk to you about how you can make a bigger and greater contribution to the world, just like I am today. But at the end of the day, what's the most valuable thing, the most urgent thing, the thing that makes people make a decision about what business coach they want to work with. It's making more money. It sounds cliche. Cliches are cliche for a reason, right? They're true. (laughs) So I'm gonna ask you at this point not to overthink it. Remember the last lesson I said, "I really need you to think hard about this." Okay, this market analysis is gonna take you some time. Really pick apart this opportunity that you have. When it comes to your value statement, I don't want you to overthink it. I want it to be really easy. I want it to feel pretty obvious. And I want it to be a little cliche. Don't worry, we will un-cliche it then, but I want it to be pretty cliche. So, these are some of the elements of value from that HBR article that I mentioned that I think are most applicable to you guys. If I tried to fit all 30 on this page, it would be nuts, but let me go through some of the ones that are, not only cliche, but extremely useful. First off, saves time. I already mentioned that one. A bunch of you have offers that help people save time. Ay-Ellit, we kind of talked about that in the last segment with your hot seat. One of the things a resource library like yours does is help people save time. That's a key valuable outcome for you. I don't think there's any way that you can convince me that's not one of the ones that you're gonna need to sell people on. (laughs) We'll see. We'll see. But saving time is huge. It's just this really kind of functional value everyone wants more time. Everyone wants to save time. If you can say to somebody, "Yeah, I can get that outcome for you. "I can get that result for you "and I can do it in half the time." That's really valuable, right? So it saves time. Uh, simplifies, is another one. People love things to be simpler, right? They love it when you uncomplicate something for them. You take out the bells and whistles. You take out the, "It depends," like I always say and they just make it as simple and straightforward as possible. Extremely valuable. Makes money. We talked about that and we'll come back to that one. Avoids hassles. That's another one that might be really great. Jennifer, I can see that one working really well for you. There's all sorts of hassles that artists on on the track, on the journey to becoming recognized, to getting those grants, to getting their name out there in a way they've never ... Getting their work out there in a way that it's never been out there before. It looks like that world is full of hassle, right? Applying for those grants, you gotta know the right people, you gotta know the right words to say, you gotta know all these things and it's all a giant hassle. And I could see how your core offer is gonna help people avoid that hassle. Provides access. I've been talking about that one with CoCommercial I think is huge. Now that is not limited to membership communities, just social networks. You can provide access in all sorts of different ways. Uh, reduces anxiety. I mean, we live in an anxious world, right? If you can take your product and say, "Hey, I know you're really anxious about your parenting. "I know you're really anxious "about dropping the ball in your business." My service helps you reduce that anxiety, so you can have peace of mind about how you approach parenting, your business, your customers, whatever it might be. Uhm, and then one more I'll talk about because this one's gonna be popular with all of our coaches, hah, that are watching, is self-actualization. People want to become their best self, right? Now that's fine, that's true. People do want to become their best self. They want to be the person that they dream of becoming or they want to be, they want to becomes the person they admire and think that's that is the life that I have ahead of me too. My caveat with that one is that it's actually really hard to sell. It's something we do value extremely highly, but it's also something that we have a lot of distress around. In other words, uhm, it's hard to imagine someone being able to help us actually fulfill self-actualization. Right? So if you're gonna choose self-actualization, I'm gonna need you to choose like some saves time or some reduces anxiety or some avoids hassles too. In other words, if you're delivering on a really high level value, a proposition, a real, a really high level valuable outcome, I also need you to make it real for me too. I need you to tell me on a lower level, a more functional level how that's gonna work out too. How I'm gonna save you time. How I'm gonna reduce your risk. How I'm gonna simplify things for you. All right? So every author, every offer, maybe every author too, I'm not sure what came out just then hah, every author has two to three key valuable outcomes and you've seen these things on websites. They're like little bullet points. They're little modules on a sales page. If you look at how apps are sold, right? They're the, they're the little ... You know how the websites are always like, they're like this. They're little blocks. Each block is a key valuable outcome. They're explaining why this is gonna save you time. They're explaining why this is gonna help you avoid hassle. They're explaining why this is going to provide access to something you've never had access to before. All right. These are very very simple ways of defining value. So let's look at some examples here. For Bambas, simplifies, quality, and therapeutic value. Obviously, they would never say those words, but this is, if you look at their website, if you look at how they sell their awesome stocks, this is what they're saying. So, simplifies, they do that, they fulfill that key value outcome by actually selling their socks in bundles. So you can buy a bundle of four, you could buy a bundle of six, you can buy a bundle of 12. It makes it really easy to swap out all of your crappy socks for Bomba's socks. So not only is this a way that they're selling, they're, or you know, message they're using to sell their product, but it informs the method in which they sell as well. And so if you remember back to the last lesson and I was talking about how all of these pieces need to be aligned, that once you realize what your unique selling proposition is, you can go back and look at the rest of your offer and say, "Every decision I make, every feature I want to add in, every message I try, whatever it might be, it needs to line up with that unique selling proposition. It's the same thing with these key valuable outcomes. I can use these to help me make better decisions about the development of this product. Quality, we talked about how what Bomba sells is comfort evolved or cutting edge comfort. They're looking at a scientific approach to creating a quality sock. And then therapeutic value, like that's just comfort, right? They feel really good. Trust me. Like I am not a paid Bomba spokesperson. I can tell you they feel really good. Hah, so that's Bomba's. Uh, if we look at Airstory, Airstory's gonna help you save time while collaborating. It's gonna help you integrate other people's ideas; collaboration. And it's gonna help you avoid hassles while collaborating. And so that's all built in and there are little gifs on the sales page and there's little explanations on the sales page about how this works as you get onboarded as a new customer, you get walked through these exact thing. Here's how you're gonna save time. collaborating with your colleagues. Try this trick. Here's how you're gonna avoid the hassle of having to knock on someone's door or send an email. Try this trick. So it's embedded, that valuable outcome, is embedded at every stage of the customer experience. It's not just a way to sell it. It's not just a way to talk about the value. It's actually creates a framework for making decisions. So Jennifer, when you asked earlier, like, "Okay, this is what I want my core offer to be, "but I don't know what it looks like yet. "Are we gonna talk about that?" It depends. Uhm ... (laughs) But really that's what we're talking about right now. When you say I'm gonna help people with this, this, and this, so they can get this job done, now you have a framework to say, "What does that look like?" What does a service, what does a course, what does a program look like that fulfills those three promises and helps them get that job done? That's how product development works. Product development isn't ... Oh, I need, I want to teach a course or I want to put together a service package and so I think I'll do this, this, and this, or, you know, it's gonna be six sessions and I'm going to give people this much email support. That's not how product development works. You start here and then you ask yourself, "What do I need to give my customers? "What's the experience I need to create for my customer "to fulfill these promises?" To really create the full featured story here. Then one more example, again, CoCommercial. We save people time by letting you ask your question and go about your business and we'll fill in the answer. Obviously, we provide access. We've been talking about that a lot. We provide access to other business owners. We provide access to experts. We provide access to a network of dependable reliable folks. And we also provide affiliation, in other words, a sense of belonging, right? When you're on team CoCo, you're on team CoCo. Not only that, you are the new economy, right? Some of you guys have "I am the new economy" t-shirts. So that's what CoCommercial's all about, and so every time we have a decision to make, every time we think about price or events or how we're gonna onboard new members or who we're gonna hire next, we ask ourselves what's gonna help people save time? What's gonna provide better access to things they've never had access to? And what's gonna help them feel like they're a part of this community, that they're affiliated, that they belong here and that they're no longer isolated and alone? So again, it's all about what am I promising? What's the value that I'm offering? And how do I build a product that actually delivers on that? Now that's a question that only you can answer, right? There's nothing I can teach you that's going to, you know, help you over that hurdle. This is it. This is the jumping off point. So as we continue building this value statement, always be asking yourself, "What does that look like? "How do I fulfill that promise?" So what are your two to three key valuable outcomes? And if you've got the workbook, I got them bullet-pointed out there for you, so I know you guys can answer on the fly, hopefully, because they're still in front of you. So Alai, we'll start with you this time. What are your two to three key valuable outcomes? Could've chosen saves time, but instead I chose simplifies, makes money, and reduces anxiety. Love it! I totally agree. Those are great. Greg? Real similar, simplifies, makes money, and connects with more people. Fantastic! You know what's great about them being very similar? Value's cliche. They should be very similar. You guys are serving similar customers who have similar concerns, similar needs, you're offering two completely different tools to help people get two completely different jobs done, but they care about the same things, so you're gonna want those key value outcomes to be pretty similar. Great example. Marriette? Marriette. Simplify, uhm, sorry I got to put my glasses on. Avoids hassles, and provides access. Excellent! Love it. Mm hmm. Ooh I like seeing how that's coming together already. Very cool. Jennnifer. Avoids hassle, reduces anxiety, and rewards means ... I assumed rewards means recognition. Yes, absolutely! I think those three are perfect for you. Ay-ellit. Reduces anxiety, peace of mind. Yes. Uhm, saves time and provides access. Yeah? Excellent! Great! I love how cliche they were. (laughs) Very cliche. Very simple. So if ... I mean ... Right ... Even just there. Without layering all the other stuff on that we've talked about, if you could just say, "This is my offer, "it's for this person, "and it helps them do these three things." That's a much simpler way than you've probably been talking about what you do, and guess what? It's gonna be more effective too. (laughs) So, uh, you know, so often I talk about really conceptual stuff. It's like, you're gonna have to think about it or tell yourself a story or do this writing exercise. I love this one because the results are very fast and suddenly, you're like feeling awesome about your ability to sell this thing that had been really complicated up until this point. So I hope that's how you're feeling. Hope that's how you're feeling out there too, but we're gonna keep going because it's not enough to just stop there. We could, but that wouldn't be fun. We need to keep going and make it more conceptual and things you need to think about. So, how are these key valuable outcomes measured or demonstrated? How are these key value outcomes measured or demonstrated? In other words, what are your customers going to experience? What are they gonna be able to measure? What change are they going to see that's going to help you prove that you kept your promise? Because if you're saying these are the three things, the two or three things, these are the two or three valuable outcomes that you're gonna experience because you buy our product. That's a promise. And if you're gonna make a promise you need to be able to keep that promise, and to keep that promise you need proof. Yes, I kept this promise. Yes, I gave you peace of mind. Yes, I gave you access. So how are you going to measure that or demonstrate it? I'll give you an example. Uh, saves time for CoCommercial. We can demonstrate or at least ask people to think about, you know, how long did you spend Googling your last business question? And in all of that time Googling, did you get a personalized answer? No? Well what about the last business question you asked at CoCommercial? There's a high likelihood that someone answered you within at least a couple hours, if not a lot sooner. And there's also a really good chance that that answer was personalized for you or is based on someone's experience who's a lot more like you than whatever showed up first in your Google search. So that's a way we can keep that promise. We can ask people to think about their experience of getting personalized help versus Googling things, right? Saves time, provides access, that's one way we can demonstrate that. How are you going to demonstrate your key valuable outcomes? What do you think? Jennifer? More grants submitted and accepted. Boom! Yeah! Now you can say, my service package for you, or my program, is going to take the hassle out of getting more grant proposals submitted and accepted. That's a very clear statement of value. Right? How about another example. Greg, how are you going to measure or demonstrate your key valuable outcomes? If we can get more customers and make more money with their business. Yeah, and you've also said one of the jobs that they need to get done is to reach more people. Yep. And one of the ways that you can demonstrate reaching more people is to get more customers paying for your thing, right? Yep. Thank you. So, now you're really bringing it all together.