Lessons

Lesson Info

Customer Goals

So let's, go ahead and jump right in before we talk about our next topic goals and emotions in the first one hundred days, there were some questions that we were heading getting as we were going right into break and I think if I'm paraphrasing a little bit but the question wass how do why not sound creepy when I'm getting customer information? Okay, so let's come back and talk about that just a little bit in the last segment for those of you just joining us, we were talking a lot about your audience and tracking information about your audience and learning about your audience, and I gave the example that, you know, you want to ease into this stuff, okay? The worksheet that you have has dozens, if not over one hundred different things that you could track about your customer, you don't want to do all of that on day one, okay? It's kind of like using the dating analogy that we use this morning and will be using a lot more this afternoon. It's one of those things where if you were on a fi...

rst date and you said so how many kids do you want to have if you're in your forties or fifties and you're in the zone where I'm making this decision or this is where it's at kind of a more acceptable question if you're twenty one and you're on a date asking that yes, it may be useful information but let's not quite jump too we're having kids together right out of the blocks ok, so you want to just ease into it tio help you not sound creepy there's two things number one don't go for it all on the first date this is good advice in general particularly applicable to our customers as well and number two have it be a genuine conversation. The best way to not sound creepy is to offer up the information yourself like for example, earlier today I shared that I'm one of seven kids, so if I share that with someone it immediately creates the space for them to share oh, I don't know how many siblings they have whether they have children, what their relationships with their twitter and it doesn't feel weird at all because I've taken the first step I said you know hey, this is this is who I am this is where I'm at or in your interest you know, if somebody shares well I love to travel internationally oh really what's your favorite I mean stop and think about if I said you guys I love to travel internationally what's the most obvious next question where where have you been what's your favorite place? What have you done what's the coolest place you've ever been where you hoping to go next and now we're in conversation it's not creepy if it's authentic it's not creepy it's riel it's not creepy if you're genuinely interested which frankly that's the number one issue most businesses fail on they're trying to get the information to check a box off to be able to say yes we know they're birthdate yes, we know what their hobbies are be a little less creepy just have it be part of a conversation we're gonna have a whole section about how do you gather this information about your customers where we're going to be talking about some ways you can do it in terms of spending money spending time making observations rest assured will come back to it but for this section we're going to be talking about goals and emotions during the first hundred days we're going to start off our conversation with goals there's kind of this ah classic customer service story of someone walking into a hardware store and saying I need a drill and the sales person immediately says well let me walk you right over here we have forty eight different drills for you to choose from we have big drills little drills fast real slow drills we have a pink trail for the ladies we have black drills, we have green drills you know we have drills made in america we have drills made overseas and they kind of jump into this whole conversation without recognizing that, the stated goal, I need a drill doesn't actually need the unstated goal what's the unstated goal anyone? John, thanks for grabbing the mike what's the unstated goal to make holes I need a hole. I don't need a drill. Brilliant. I need a hole now how many customers of a hardware store walk in and say, I need a whole maker? No one yet if we stop and pause and we actually just used that wonderful brain that we have and take it one level deeper than what they're saying. It's pretty clear that that's actually what they're looking for, right? This is what you need to be doing in your business. You need to acknowledge okay. What are their stated goals and it's important that we know those right? Because that's what they're saying matters to them. But equally important night there say even more important is to know what their unstated goals are. Now some of you are looking me ery online. You may be thinking, you know, wait a second, showy. I have a hard enough time tracking what their stated goals are. Holy cow, how my going to imagine what they're unstated goals are. Rest assured, we're going to take care of you couple things were going to give you some specific tips during the presentation some of the people in the audience are really good at this, so I'm gonna be calling on them. We had a chance to have lunch and I got to know a little bit more about their business is and how they do so we're going to actually pull some real world examples and the moral of the story is it's a work in progress, it's evolving okay, you don't need to freak out that it's all about oh my gosh, I can't tell you right now, joey, what all the stated and unstated goals are great, you're in the right place. Congratulations, it's good that you're joining us for the class, right? Because the goal is by the end of the three days, you'll feel a lot more comfortable with it. You'll have some practice, you'll know how to do it, okay, so if we go back to the very first work sheet that we did all right, the very first worksheet in our exercise was about defining audience personas and if you recall from earlier in the session today, we given named the persona right kind of a famous name or popular culture reference so that we kind of knew what the name is and we just not describe some key attributes or descriptions about that type of customer, that type of audience member that type of person we then filled in their personal motivations. What is it that excites them? What is it that drives them? What are they feeling? What air their key drivers? And then we had stated in unstated goals which we skipped, which we're going to talk about now and then we had potential pain points and needs from the business, so if you haven't had the chance to fill out the worksheets, maybe have this one out on the desk continued to fill it out as we go, but for now, we're specifically going to focus on this part the stated goals and the unstated goals. As I mentioned with the drill example, life gives us wonderful opportunities and wonderful challenges, right? Because we need people at face value and they tell us what they want, but the more we get to know them, the more we realize there's some things they're not telling us to bring it back to the wonderful dating analogies which we keep using this is fascinating and the typical relationship between a man and a woman in fact there's this wonderful movie that my wife and I often refer to its got vince vaughn and jennifer aniston and there's a scene in the movie where she wants vince to do the dishes ok and she says I want youto want to do the dishes and he's like who wants to do dishes no one wants to do dishes that's her unstated goal her stated goal is do the dishes the unstated goal is I want youto want to do the dishes now at the risk of getting into a game of semantics and forgive me because the men in the room are kind of like yeah I got to do the dishes and I'm not even interested in that's not an unstated goal for me or a stated goal but it may be for your partner right? Um this is the nuance sometimes the thing they're saying that their leading with if we just take him at face value you no find I did the dishes why aren't you happy you said do the dishes I did the dishes I met your stated goal yeah, but the attitude you did it with right? I wanted you to be excited you're not doing the dishes I wanted you to maybe acknowledge that I prepared the meal so would be awesome if you could contribute by doing the dishes that's the unstated goal right kind of makes sense cool so let's talk about how we can start to identify some of these stated and unstated goals you haven't exercise in your workbooks that says audience member journal and it has two entries day zero and day wanted okay now, as I told you guys earlier one of seven kids I had a little sister and she may be watching live and she's probably horrified to know this, but she had a diary it was one of those little diaries was pink with a unicorn on the front of it or something or strawberry shortcake and I had a little key that you could open the diary and unlocked the diary with well, she would keep the key hit and that was fine, but she didn't know that you could actually open it with a paper clip. This was kind of a precursor to my days in the cia, but moral industries you could open it very easily and I would occasionally open the journal and I would read what she had to say and you might be surprised that a twelve to fourteen year old girl when I was reading this as a sixteen year old boy, there wasn't really that much in there that I was interested in, right I was just like really like pages and pages of I wonder if he likes me really I think there was nothing there this exercise is going to be a little bit different, okay, what I want you to do is for the left side of the worksheet for day zero I want you to write the journal entry that your customer is writing at day zero as a reminder for we talked about earlier day zero is thie assessment stage it's not just one day it could be several stages, so we're writing the journal thinking of who is our customer and what are the things they're going through as they're assessing I want you to write, you know what it is that they're looking for, where the emptiness in their life isthe how that thing that they're looking for is spilling into other areas of their life, how it impacting their experience do your best to connect with the emotions they're feeling right? The reason it's written out as a journal what would we write in our journal or our diary were uncensored we're not worried about spelling we're not worried about did I say it right? We're being really honest, we're sharing with ourselves and we're filling in this journal writing about what is that experience? All right, so go ahead and do that while you're doing that at home. I took the liberty during the lunch break of picking on one of our studio audience members, asking them to write out the journal that their customer would write on day zero so they can share it with you. So bob, if you could just help everybody understand do thirty seconds on what your business is and what your product is, so they have a context for who the customer is described the customer a little bit very brief and then read the journal entry you put together for them that's kind of that you imagine they would write on day zero before they met you while they're still in the assessment phase take it away, bob okay, so our product is scrubbed lee scrub lee dot com and it's a duplicate contact remover tool ah piece of software removes dubica contacts cleans up your address book okay? Most of our customers are thirty to forty five year old men who are professionals technically inclined who have at least fifteen hundred or more contacts in their in their address book so they're well connected sales rules typically ok, ok, so here's what I wrote for their journal entry great, my contacts are a total mess when I look at my client jim smith I get five duplicate jim smith's now which jim has his home address in it I need to send him his thank you gift and I don't know that one has his email know that when his phone number and oh here it is I've been dumping contacts into my address book for the last ten years with multiple phone numbers and phone upgrades and software upgrades ah my contact list is just a mess why isn't there a service that can automatically merge all of my duplicate contacts together and I have sixteen are six hundred linked in connections as well why can't all my connections data updated my contact list and I want photos and birthdays and everything updated so that everything's all in one place and cleaned up nice I love that answer big round of applause for bob go ahead and keep the mike because we're gonna talk a little more about it I love it so great description of where the person is and as you see, he kind of started to cede his journal entry with and my company has the solution right way start to get a little bit of a feel for that, right? Okay that's good and that's important hold off on that trust a little bit because we want to make sure we're really connected with them. Most business owners the challenge they have is they say I know everything about my customers motions I know all there where are we here I know while their stated needs they need a piece of software that merges all their contexts conveniently what's thie unstated goal what's the thing that isn't there let's dive deeper and lots of times we can find it in the emotion what are the emotions that that customer is feeling on day zero uh frustration frustration okay. Ah wasting time wasting time for a successful person with thousands of contacts who's been in sales for ten years is time a commodity that they have a lot of huge yeah, you know I mean it's really something that they value and they guard and if we're wasting time it's costing them what's it costing what's it costing them at work downtime where they could be more productive downtown where they could be more productive lost sales lost opportunities could be lost money if they're sending stuff to the wrong address absolutely lost money if it's going to the wrong play looking bad in front of the client if they send it to the wrong email hey bob it was great meeting with you yesterday but instead of going to bob authorities in it goes to bob smith and it's like whoops how does the emotional how does this bill into their personal life let's see what's important here is I don't know if the camera's on bob's face he started to be like well wait a second I never really think about my customers personal life and I'm not being critical this is something that happens with business owners around the world regardless of your industry this stuff applies to you how is it affecting their personal life? What do you think that customer this sales guy that you've described by not having his contacts all sink easily in one place what's it's costing him in terms of his personal life so that frustration he has carries over when he comes home and probably or answer freaking lutely yeah slowly he comes home angry he comes home frustrated he missed the sale. He screwed up and it was his own fault. It's not something needed khun blame on somebody else in the account team or the support team he's the one that sent the e mail to the wrong person because his contacts weren't merged properly. Yeah, but who does he take that out on? Family children yeah, self yeah, perfect there it isthe so we'll quick to point the family right? So he takes it out on the spouse first partner probably takes it out on the kids not specifically, not billy you know, I didn't have that right email and I'm mad at you, but when billy's jumping up and down, you know, and dad dad oh, it's so good to see you and dad, right, right. And then where does it really hit himself? Yeah, late at night lying in bed. What did I do? Yeah, that's the connection he went with your customers, you want to understand them in that way you want to understand? You know, people do this and it drives me crazy. You've all heard it that what keeps you up at night sales thinks oh, my god, stop asking that question because it's so annoying don't ask the customer that ask at night what is my customer beating themself up for your customer in this case is probably going I'm smarter than this. I've been doing this for ten years. How have I not figured this out? I know how important it is to have good relationships with my customers. I know how important it is to know their birthdates, their kids names. Why am I not doing a better job of tracking this? Why am I not doing a better job communicating them? Why am I not a better person? That's a completely different conversation than most of you were having with your customers. Most of you are having the conversation off my product look at that's features and its benefits and it's going to make your life easier and it's going to make your life better? I'm not saying you should put this in your marketing, but imagine if your marketing had in a motive field that said bob scruffy is going to make you feel better about yourself it's going to make you connect with your spouse better it's gonna make you have more time for your kids it's going to make you not be on vacation scrolling through going ah, which phone number is his? I got a call this guy, I'm five minutes late for the call and I'm on vacation on my spouse, my kids were playing in the pool my spouse is furious that I'm in on the phone and my kids are wondering where dad is how we have a different conversation about do you really sell software is a service or do you sell software as a way to truly make your life better where it matters not in the business context cause let's began that that matters but you know it's that proverbial thing you never see anybody with a tombstone that says I loved how much time he spent at work no it's doting father loving husband wonderful member of the community will be missed was treasured that's what we want to come to make sense that's great alright yeah rather ask how about those people whose product or service is something that's more generally considered frivolous a toymaker like I used to make video games used to be a good designer so what about video games whose stated job is to distract you from your family and from your I mean but you're like you know maybe you make little plastic trinkets you know how do you approach it for those types of products and services? Yeah so great question and I actually have a toy company is a client I'm very excited about so I've actually played in this space a little bit so let's talk about video games since you gave that example what are thought is the typical customer for a video game what are they looking for escape may be a little action, some entertainment, right vent frustration look at how video games are being developed now and the difference between video games with pong. I know I'm dating myself okay? Compared to where we are today, what are the best video games about today? Connection it's about being on xbox live playing with your college roommate and your little brother who's still in high school and to brando's that happened to join your game and driving around shooting aliens together? There's a piece of it it's about the game there's a piece of it that's about the escapism there's a piece of it about getting the aggression out there's a piece of it about the emotion, but there's this also this piece about humanity, about connection, about I'm really busy, I live thousands of miles away from my family and loved ones I haven't seen my college roommate since our reunion four years ago. I'm not going to see my family again until christmas, but there's this technology that will allow us to all log on, put headsets on and shoot aliens together cool, and this is a sweeping stereotype when it comes to genders, because I know there's tons of female video game players, but for male video game players, men are not as quick to be like let's connect and let's bond and let share, but, hey, russ, you want to jump online and play some halo with me, and, uh, you know, it'll be a way for us to connect cause we haven't seen each other in a while, okay, now we're there, so there is not a business in the world that isn't struggling with this challenge of, well, two degree my stuff it's kind of a commodity, like if I'm really honest, they could get it somewhere else. And even though is a ceo, I puff myself up, and I say we're changing lives and we're not a commodity. We we differentiate ourselves from the commodity's out there, that's our competitors, we offer something better. Fact of the matter is there is an emotional level that you could be connecting on. There are unstated goals whether that saving someone time allowing them connection kind of if you study. I know we talked about him a little bit earlier, but like tony robbins talks about this six human needs, how is your product providing them a feeling of significance? How is it providing them a feeling of certainty? How is it providing a feeling of uncertainty, something interesting and different, you know, and exciting, not uncertain, bad, right, because there's uncertain, bad and uncertain good but how can you be uncertain? Good. How can you create some love and connection? How can you give me a feeling of growth? How can it give me a feeling of contribution? You touch on those things, you're blowing people's minds. Okay, so what do we learn in this journaling exercise? Well, what we learn is we think we know our customers, but we don't. And what we learn is if we were to do two journaling exercise, we probably quickly start writing about how awesome our thing is. Instead of really spending the timeto anchor in to what are they feeling? What are they doing? What's their experience. Okay, we have another sheet in the worksheet packet that is called audience member of gold tracking. Ok? And just to give you an idea of how this works again, we have the picture where you can put a picture of your audience member there persona. You can write their name underneath it and then list out their stated goals and thereon stated goals, and the reason they're check boxes next to those worksheets is because once you've identified what their stated goals and un stated goals are it's really easy to ask, are we actually delivering on those things? Are we actually making that happen? And you can kind of go down the list, and my goal again is to make worksheets that actually teach you how to do this stuff if you were to fill this out and imagine each kind of strip is a separate persona, right? So this is the person buzz light year from our earlier thing. This is the tech person, this is our customer that we're going after. What are their stated goals? I want a better technology that cleans my contacts, you know, and make sure they're all sync up what they're unstated goals. I want more time with my wife and kids, I want to feel better about myself. Whoa! Now we're getting into the meat and then we can say, how are we doing that? Our marketing materials and then let me be really clear because I can see this now, two weeks from now, somebody who's watching the course or here in the audience is going to email me and say, joey, we put on our website that our software will give you more time with your kids, and we'll help you be the better father instead of the door bag that you are not exactly what I'm talking about, okay? But if you change the way you think about dealing with your customers, you can change the way you're messaging it you can change the way the interaction is you can start to seed things where you say, you know, a lot of our customers have had this experience where the frustration they have with their contacts and the lack of organization spills over into their personal life I mean, I don't know if that's you but some of our customers tell us that you and the person's going oh my god, it's me, they know me, you know and then you have the opportunity to build on it. Another thing to take into consideration is the difference between their short term goals and needs and their long term goals and needs. Most business owners spend all their time up here urgent right what's my need I need my contacts to be seamlessly connected their long term goal or their long term need is to make them more efficient to get them the promotion to get them a bigger bonus to get them to buy a bigger house for more room so that their significant other feels really excited about where they're living. Not only is it a long term goal it's an unstated goal in the conversation of o is your contact cell for the one I want but how are we going to spend some time thinking about this how are we going to connect with what their long term goals are? Well, the way to do that is the other side of our worksheet day one okay and the goal on the day one journalist to be able to say after they've bought your product in the ideal world, what would they be able to write about you? What would they be able to say about now, how they're feeling, how their life is different? What has changed? And again in a little bit of studio magic we had somebody pre do one of the worksheets, so shary, tell us a little bit about your business tell us a little bit about the customer that you're writing the journal entry for and then read the journal that they would hopefully right after day one of working with you, sure, so my company is observed connect influence and I have sort of different levels tears of clientele I guess you could say like I'm hired to deliver speeches and trainings to corporations and their teams and then of course I have people that buy the online products for this I focused on my one on one on one coaching clients and even there I have two different sections one is the sort of the c suite leader and but for this one I focused on thie middle management person who's wanting to make their footprint in there, kurt you know, climb the corporate ladder, get recognition all of those things and love it if I composited just for a second she notice what suri did? She started out by telling you, oh, I have all different kinds of services and offerings and I coach people and I work with lots of different leaders and there's kind of two subcategories to do coaching it's the ceos or the middle managers and I kind of narrowed down to the middle manager and it's the person that's dealing with this and trying to corner climb the corporate ladder see how much easier it is when we get really specific not to mention that psychologically your mind started thinking of people that could use her coaching services whether you wanted him to or not the more she started to describe a person, we all look for connections and so we started to think, well, how that person she's describing who do I know that looks like that? Who do I know that's that fit it's a great opportunity for later down the road for st to say, you know, maybe you know somebody like that, I don't know maybe you do maybe you don't and I'm like no, I totally know someone like that my friend phil and next thing we know we've built in a really non creepy cool way to do a referral okay so forgive me for interrupting but I just want to say that your modeling it perfectly so what would they tell me about what they want right? All right, this is what I this is what I wrote forgive me I just had my first coaching session with suri holy cow that chick really knows her stuff, huh? So can I pause you for a second right here what I love is suri got into it right? But what's fascinating is are we watching herself sensor are we watching you're saying oh yeah people know I'm freaking awesome you know what exactly can I know that about you own it say you know what? I'm here to make a difference in people's lives I'm not like every other business they're doing business with I'm here to actually make lasting change hopefully you guys have picked up that like that's my mojo it's a lot more exciting way to live no make any apologies for diabetes like I am chicken also this is amazing I rock did tell us I really think that she will help me grow and reach recognition in addition to coaching I know that I can email or call her at any time with any quick questions or any problems that come up s o being self just the real world of this is I feel I'm not good at setting the path those met that map that you describe so I love it if I'm a part, so what happens sometimes is by doing the exercise off what we want them to be able to say, we realized the gaps and how we're doing it, we realized, gosh, my clients are able to call or email me any time you might telling him that my telling him that on the first call or is it something that's just like in the contract? And I'm expecting them to remember, um, I reminding them they have this opportunity and my saying, hey, you know what? Since you can call any time let's role play in practice, it call me next thursday at some random time during the day oh, you're going to teach me what it is that you do that is so special in different you're going to help me to understand changes the conversation going well, and they definitely know about the calling and emailing me because they definitely use it where I'm not so good as a where I wrote here is I'm not too clear about what to expect, but I'm hoping it unfolds as we go like you just don't set the path clearly enough, I feel on dh, so, to be clear, you actually wrote as if the person was writing, I'm not too clear what to expect, but I hope the path will unfold yes so if one of your customers was saying, I'm not too clear about how this is all gonna work out, but I'm hoping it works out okay probably really honest assessment about where most of our customers are how do we take that one step forward? I'm not too clear about how it's gonna work out, but you know, she gave me this map that shows it works and I saw those two testimonials that she emailed over to me the videos of her clients talking about like yeah remember in the beginning when I was working with cherie I was like, is this even gonna work? I don't know, but boy I held in there I held in there to finish the full six week engagement and bye week six I was like, this is even better than I thought social proof letting them know it's going to be okay, I'll walk you the path andi I wrote she gave me this awesome binder with some amazing information I can't wait to dive in. In fact, I might even cheat and flip ahead to check things out because my clients are very type a um I thought that she would just help me run meetings and maybe with sales, but after the first session I really see how this can apply too so many different areas of my life right away she gave me some great techniques that I can use as early as this evening and I really can't I can't wait to try one out next time I see ex person because there's usually one person that they can't crack the influential code with and um she also let me know that this is building a new skill with new habits and that she'll be there with me every step of the way awesome awesome. So what I like about this is we're really clear about all the things the person might feel respect lee has a little bit of the same field that bob stead of charting starting to say and I do this and I do this and I do this the other thing to explore is, what are those long term things that they're going to get for what air the emotional things that go beyond, you know, would they actually write that one person? Or they would say I am so frustrated with my relationship with my boss, I've been working here for eight years I'm really hoping that cherie c answer, I'm really hoping that she's going to help me to connect with steve in a way I've never connected before I'm really hoping that because I connect with him, I'm going to get the promotion and once I do, I'm actually going to feel good about having decided to go to work for this company after college instead of going to work for this other company where my roommate did and now they've I po'd and he's a millionaire and I'm still in middle management hoping to climb the ladder, the more we can connect in and I get some of you that are maybe more traditionally business minded or like joey, this is a little too much this is a little too who jeep ujiie emotional right humor me try the exercise try to actually connect on that deeper emotional level because I think when you do you will realize aspects of your customers aspects of your audience that maybe you've never even thought about before that's awesome so we have this worksheet here we've done the stated and unstated goals filling them in here on the stated and unstated is a really great opportunity for you to take like the journal answers that you did because that gets you out of the head. The dilemma with this worksheet when we start with it if somebody says, what are the stated goals? And I imagine most of you are like, ah, I don't know what to write like stated I'm I want to drill what are the unstated goals? I don't know uh oh maybe it's that they want a whole ok fine that's one but now what? Now that I have ink on the page in two spots, how do I go deeper you go deeper by connecting. You go deeper by, like doing the journaling exercises.