Lessons

Lesson Info

Identify & Engage the Opportunities

Less than twelve is identify and engage your opportunities so again we're going to bring up the customer journey this is your opportunity to choose where you going to focus on you know? And he was going to focus on less appointments and less money as being the thing that people are complaining about the frustration that they have what are you going to choose to start with? You've got to start somewhere just because you choose something now doesn't mean that has to be the product that you have to build you just got to start somewhere, okay? So don't don't freak out about this step just start um now we need to actually engage those questions. Those frustrations, those goals on one of the ways that you could do that is through social media now for andy, it may not be first through social media might be through going to a conference or maybe writing on article for a trade publication so that you know, he can talk to people where they're actually talking about the things that he wants to ta...

lk about. But from a lot of us social media is where we're going to go first for this I happen to think that I'm very good at this, but there's someone who is absolutely justus good if not better at this than me and that's ra meet settee from I will teach you to be rich he is all amazing at this and he has a team of people that are amazing at this if you want a crash course on what this looks like poor through this man's facebook page alright, I pulled out one thing here on dh that's a question that says if you run your own business what's a tough business decision you've made in the last three months I know where he's getting at this because his markets, my market and people talk about making tough business decisions all the time how do I make better business decisions so he's going to ask people what are the decisions that you're making let's talk about this is this something that you that you are actually thinking about? Is this something that does really matter to you? Uh and so you know, I wouldn't look at the numbers here the numbers don't matter so much, but this is something where he can get a response and start start gauging what what level of mattering this particular question is based on other data that he has, um and the reason this is so important is that social media or going to conferences or going to networking events wherever you're going to do this social media is an opportunity is say I hear what you're saying does this sound about right? The first step isn't to respond the first step is just to engage and and engage the level of interest I hear what you're saying does this sound about right that's what we're meat did hear I hear you saying that you have tough business decisions to make tell me more about that does that sound right? Is this something that you care about? Alright, so panelists, how did you initially start talking to your people about what matters to them? What were your first steps? Sasha? You post on facebook a lot and you kind of put a lot of ideas out there for people and see what where the conversation goes. Is that what you did with ten chasm adventures? No, the thing I have all these business ideas and I'm in the choosing stage and I have an idea for quirkyalone matchmaking service eso that's something I put out recently was if I was to do something to help quirky people meet each other, would you prefer to have something like it's just lunch with six people, which you prefer to have one on one meetings or a cocktail party? And yeah, I got lots of ideas is and response is sweet and I would say there's probably even things that you engaged with people about before saying, what would you prefer this to look like two right? Because you've been talking to people about being quirky alone and getting into relationships for a really long time yeah I mean and that began that day were talking with a woman who is quirky and successful and awesome and went to it's just lunch and had a miserable experience so it was you know totally from a conversation as well as from others who have had a miserable experiences but similar services yeah perfect marie's this is something that you've talked about and you've talked about it more in terms of forums or groups like facebook groups which is a great place to get this done that's where I found almost all my all my students initially effect I I was sort of you know, lurking in a few groups where I knew that designers were specifically in and I would just say that sort of worried in my living room a strategy where I said, hey, I have an idea for a course this is what I'm hearing but I just made a really simple page on my site I said here's a link to it if you're interested and started to build a list that way awesome yeah and it sounds like you had said earlier too about you know, send giving people proposals that had worked really well for you or systems that had worked really well for you so it sounds like even again even before you said I've got this idea for a course you were saying things like so I hear you're having problems writing proposals that actually get you know that actually get the deal closed right spent about a year doing like experiments and generosity oh yeah, I was like really get ridiculously useful in all these groups and just see what happens and people responded very, very well I yeah, I think you know, you don't hold back when it comes to giving things away when you're engaging the's conversations and saying to people I hear you does this sound about right? Would this be helpful to you remember you because you didn't expect anything bad exactly remember that, general? Yeah, and I think, you know, the fear is that when we're that generous that people are going to then not want actually buy from us later on and it just doesn't work that way, maybe they just don't bind now, but they may buy something from you in the future and even if they don't that's okay, yes, but by and large, I really think the more you give away for free, you get exponentially more sales out of it. S oh, be generous. I love that experiments in generosity. You guys should feel that marie really it okay? So we're going to go back to a hot seat and I'm actually gonna come back to andy, but you could stay in your seat for now is that work okay, so I'm curious you know what could you dio to engage the conversation about some of the things that we talked about just a little bit ago um to engage conversation um well look for face there is a few facebook groups but they're not very aid, so I guess that's where would be star? Yeah, absolutely on dh publish articles in trade magazines and stuff yeah, I think that publishing for you in trade magazines could be absolutely huge you should definitely talk to bridget who's sitting right next to you on the thing would be writing block post and putting them on twitter in places where people can sort of find them or stumble over them yeah and you know for you because there aren't tons and tons of people talking about this that can be difficult, but it can also be a huge opportunity the huge opportunity is that there probably are people searching for things like this and you have an opportunity to rank really high really fast in google search results. So what I would dio is take some of these things that you hear people saying doing thinking and feeling and start putting it into the googles keyword search tool s so there's an actual search tool it's it's part of sort of the adwords sweet but you don't have to use advertising to use the key word tool you khun take what you've put on this perspective map put it into the key word tool in a couple of different ways experiment with it and it'll actually spit back to you what people are searching for so it's another way that you can really make sure that what you've got on your perspective math and what you're thinking about is accurate to what people are looking for then you can write a block post about it and you'll be all but assured that people are going to stumble on it because it's things that people are actually looking for and the nice thing about that is too is that they might not be looking for, you know, creative, creative marketing mind set right there not necessarily looking for how to promote their veterinary practice social media but they are looking like but it is the things they might be searching for us. How do I keep my veterinary practice open right? Maybe that's what they're searching for it so you say here the three keys to keeping your veterinary practice open and then you could talk about the web sites, social media on other things that you could be doing okay some good questions about engaging the conversation and kind of starting to validate the ideas that you have yeah, you recommend, like directly engaging someone with twitter like at reply and a direct conversation and or sort of general statements and invite conversation yes, absolutely both if you can engage individual people that you've identified as potentially like the exact right people, I mean that's the idea you can engage anyone individually, you just also have to kind of go through a process, is it is this answer the right answer for the kind of people that I want to serve? Is this kind of the person that I want to serve? Yes, oh, absolutely at replied, people look for people asking questions people ask me all the time, even though I talked about it all the time, how do I actually go about listening on social media? And I spend a chunk of my day and buy a chunk? I don't mean ah, big piece, but I actually devote a chunk of time, which I think is the difference. A lot of times you were procrastinating on facebook, we're not using facebook, right? So I spent a chunk of my day looking through my news feed, figuring out what are the questions that people are asking, what are the frustrations that they're expressing? And if they fit the idea of who I want to be working with, I absolutely engage those people same thing on twitter, same thing you know, wherever I absolutely engage those people, and I ask for more information, or I make a suggestion, I hugh, I hear what you're saying is this have you thought about looking at it this way, that kind of thing so I can figure out, you know, where they're mine it really is? Yeah, marine tio what I was looking for was, I would use the ever no clipper, and I would just take screen captures of some of the facebook threads I was seeing. So even if I wasn't ready to engage, I would just hashtag and I knew I could kind of search it later and be like that's logged post that's ah that's a tweet and just kind of collected a little bit, yeah, and every note is a perfect place to document all of this stuff. If you're an ever note user, if you're not a never know either, I love it for this process. Once I've done that exact same thing as well copied and pasted tweets, facebook conversations, whatever, but then I also will use it to catalogue all of my responses because I find what I'm going through my new speed like that my brain is going a mile a minute. Well, they really should be thinking about this and so I will write down it's my way my evernote looks, I will create a title for the note that would essentially be like a block post title where I'm acknowledging what they're thinking about where I'm saying this is what you're saying this is what you're thinking this is what you're doing, this is what you're feeling, whatever that would be in the title and then I'll just make dropped down to myself what I think the question should be or what I think the problem is or what I think they should do next and then that becomes the basis of the block post. So if you notice all of my block post now, almost all my black post now start with acknowledging a particular problem like my last block post was on asking the question, what if people want to buy instead of how doe I ensure I'm going to build a product? That's how do I know that this product is going to sell? But at the beginning of that post, I say these are the questions I hear all the time. How do I know my product's going to sell? How do I know people are gonna buy howto I have better sales conversations with people? Well, the answer isn't asked those questions, the answers to ask a different question, what if people want to buy? And so all my block post start off now with acknowledging something from my perspective map and then I tell them what I think the real answer is, because so much of my work is dispelling misconceptions and bus saying assumptions, and I think that that's true for all a lot of us and it's, a super effective way to engage people, because what you're going to find over and over again is the things that people are saying doing thinking and feeling, you know, as an expert, aren't overly effective, or they've got the wrong idea, they've gotten the wrong message somewhere, and so we get the flare very, very, very fun job of providing new hope for people, but you have to meet them where they're at, you have to meet them with what they're already saying, doing thinking and feeling, if you do, if you don't do that, they won't care. I've been there, I've done that, it sucks, but you want people to care about what you're doing, because what you're doing is important, and you're doing it to be of service to them, so you have to start with what matters to them. You have to start with where they're at, what they know right now, and then you can talk to them about what you want to talk to them about, okay, and we're going to do that more in the next couple lessons, yeah, melissa I was just going to say one of the things that's been really useful for me in understanding what my people are saying and thinking and feeling and doing is for my podcast live creative. Now I host a free q and a call where they once a month where they can call up, log into a videoconference platform and ask me any questions they want, and I just riff on my answers, and then I turned those into podcast episodes and I, you know, I just like they show up, they tell me what they need so I know what they need and beauty really great. Yeah, and that's a great thing to do. I'm just gonna offer one caveat on that and that that is the questions that people ask us and the problems that they tell us we have they have are different from the questions and problems they're talking about with other people, or they're often different, and the questions that they're talking about with other people are the ones that are actually closer aligned with what they're really saying, doing thinking and feeling people like to tell us what they think we want to hear, um and they don't know that's what they're doing often, it doesn't sound that way to us, so that's the only caveat that I have about that is that there may also be something else going on. So every time someone asks you you a question, every time someone says they have a particular problem, think to yourself what else could be going on here? How else could they be talking about this? What would this look like if they posted in their facebook feed? Instead of asking me about michelle related to that? Like, I've started a podcast and I have a community that I want to build around the podcast and do you think, like mining the conversations they have not with me, but with other people is a great way to get at what they actually are talking about how they're talking? Absolutely. Why do you think I created a facebook group for this class? Yes, that's exactly what you want to dio it's exactly what you want to dio absolutely all right, we've got to wrap up for now. Sorry, sasha. So your homework from this lesson is to come up with five to ten social media posts that engage what you think you're hearing from your prospects really simple, just like we're meets example, I hear I hear this is what you're saying. Does that sound about right or tell me more about that? I see you. I hear you. Uh, tell me more about it. What else is going on? Let's get a little bit more specific with this problem. That's all you need to dio it could be, like, ten sentences long this piece of homework that you have to dio, but it could be hugely valuable and by hugely valuable, I mean tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars later on, so please do it. All right, let's, look at what's coming up in lessons thirteen through eighteen you're going to test your unique point of view with content marketing so the response is we're going to start crafting, we're going to use our unfair advantage. We're gonna use our expert perspective, but we're going to do it from in response to what we know people are saying, doing thinking and feeling you're going to clearly articulate the value of what you have to offer. You're going build your product to sell and decide on format delivery, packaging and price oh yeah, oh yeah we're gonna cover all of this on. Then you're going to make your first ten to twenty sails through carefully inviting the right people I get to talk about all my favorite stuff today, guys is so much fun