67: Train Your Digital Employee with Stormie Andrews

25
Sep

Stormie Andrews is the president of Yokel Local, an inbound marketing agency and HubSpot partner that helps companies generate revenue, reduce sales cycles, and increase customer lifetime value. We talk about the world’s best buyer persona system, customer delight, and the six-step inbound marketing methodology. 

—

Listen to the podcast here

 

Train Your Digital Employee with Stormie Andrews

Our guest is Stormie Andrews, the president of Yokel Local, an inbound marketing agency and HubSpot partner that helps companies generate revenues, reduce sales cycles, and increase customer lifetime value. Welcome to the show, Stormie.

Great, Steve. I am so excited to be here with you today.

It’s great to have you. So, we always start the show with the question about the entrepreneurial journey. So, what’s been your journey to running Yokel Local Marketing? How did you get here?

Well, it’s interesting. So, Yokel Local was founded back in 2010. But how I got here, I’m located in Las Vegas. And for those of you that can recall, back in the 2007, 8, 9 timeframe, there was a major mortgage housing crisis meltdown. And Las Vegas was the epicenter of that disaster. I was here in Las Vegas, I was the vice president of sales and marketing for a home builder, and we got crushed. But while I was in that role for the home builder, I was in charge of marketing and I was able to cut my teeth.

In the world of marketing. And unfortunately the builder, we were private home builder had to close our doors and I wanted to get out there and help local businesses. I knew when I was in charge of marketing, I was struggling with this world of digital marketing. That’s when I met my business partner, Darrell. He was an internet marketing guru. We were able to join forces, put our heads together, and originally when we started, we had a purpose of helping local Las Vegas businesses. We did that, and now we’ve grown and we’re helping businesses all over the country.

So, before we get into how you actually did that and what you’re doing, I’d like to ask you about business frameworks. Have you used any management blueprints or business frameworks to kind of shortcut your way to success, to build a systemize your business, Yokel Local, or maybe your previous, the home builder business, maybe you use something there. Can you tell us something about that?

Yeah, we’re fortunate enough where I would say five years ago, my, Yokel Local, we joined a business peer advisory group. And in that peer advisory group, we have some incredible people that come and speak to us as business owners, but we also have a phenomenal business coach, someone who sits there with us, we meet monthly, and he holds us accountable. I have a firm belief if it wasn’t for him, we would be in big trouble, or we may not even be here today, because there were many times we wanted to make a decision, but based on his experience and his leadership, we were able to make better decisions.

And then over the years, we’ve been introduced to systems like EOS and quite a few other systems where we were able to integrate different elements within our business, CEO tools, and a few other platforms where we’ve been able to integrate bits and pieces from the various systems into our business. And it’s been very, very helpful.

Okay. So you mentioned CEO tools, which is a really, uh, interesting toolkit. When I was in Vistage, Craig Kramer, the late Craig Kramer was still a Vistage speaker and he, he’s, I think his stock was one of the best, he was the best, uh, speaker on the circuit and was one of the most invited speaker. I had the privilege of seeing his talk about the CEO tools. I’d love to hear some of the tools that you have used from his toolbox if you could talk about them.

The tools from his toolbox. That may be interesting because we implement it. Because we have this, I’m going to call it a hodgepodge. I don’t know, now it’s to the point where some of the advice we’ve gotten from our business advisor, some of the elements we’ve taken from EOS, and some of the elements we’ve taken from CEO Tools, I’m not sure which came from which. I would probably have to go back to the book and say, did this come from CEO Tools, or did this come from EOS, or did this come from our business advisor?

We’ve been fortunate enough, like I mentioned, where we’ve had some incredible speakers and the group that I belong to is very, very similar to a Vistage group. It’s laid out almost identical. Being able to pull the specific tool from CEO tools may be difficult for me to pull off the top of my head right now, but it has been instrumental, but I don’t want to give credit to a different platform or the wrong platform thinking it’s part of CEO tools because in reality, I don’t know which came from which at this stage.

You also on our pre-interview, you also mentioned the book which you used where you said that in this book, you read about the strata level of different employees and how it impacted their activity level and their impact. Can you kind of remind me of that book and perhaps talk about that concept?

Absolutely. We had a gentleman come speak at our group. That’s where I first learned of Strata Level. His name is Tom Foster. And he had a couple of books, one of which being Outbound Air. And I ended up buying that book on Amazon. And it was a great story about an airline that, it was a fictional story about an airline that would promote people the way we typically promote people. We would say, this person’s been the longest, let’s promote them into the next position of leadership.

And what I learned from his teachings as it pertained to strata level is that we’re all wired differently and each of us have a different strata level. So someone who has a strata, and the higher the number, the better. And basically what a strata level represents is how far someone can think into the future without having additional outside input or oversight. And that’s a very valuable tool to have, especially in the world of digital marketing and really any business. And what I learned from the Strata level is that some people look into the future, you know, they can only see an hour or two into the future.

Strata level represents how far someone can think into the future without additional input. Click To Tweet

Is that someone, even if they’re exceptional in regards to what they do, is that someone you want to put in charge, in charge of long-term strategies? Probably not. And what some businesses do, and we were absolutely guilty of it, we would promote people based on longevity and based on being great people. But if they didn’t have the ability of understanding and seeing almost immediately that this action will lead to this result, which will lead to this consequence, which would lead to and lead to and lead to, and it may have devastating consequences three, four, five, six months down the road, that may not be the person that we would want to put in leadership.

So basically what the strata level concept is, it’s being able to measure someone’s ability of seeing far into the future. The further that they can see into the future, usually the better they’re wired to handle strategic thoughts and strategic thinking. And I like to think of it this way. This was an example that he provided that I thought was brilliant that we can all relate to. Let’s think about compensation models. On the lowest tier of compensation models, someone thinks in regards to being paid by the hour.

Their thought process is I make X amount of dollars per hour. Well, generally when you get into someone who is lower level management, you would think that their compensation isn’t based on hourly pay. They may see it in terms of I make X amount of dollars per week. Their bosses may have a compensation package where they’re thinking of revenue in terms of months. I make X amount of dollars per month. And then your corporate executives, their compensation are typically thought in terms of annual compensation packages.

And that’s a great way of thinking of strata level. The entry level persons, they’re thinking short term, the higher level thinking long term. So, you can ask questions. You can ask a series of questions to see how people respond, and their response will give you a pretty good indication if they’re looking for, if they think short-term or long-term. And it’s been instrumental in regard to our hiring practices at Yokel Local.

Yes, that’s fascinating. You know, it reminds me of a quote that I read many years ago. I think it was in a in a marketing book from the 1930s before Second World War. And there was this survey quoted in this book about another survey. The survey that was done, I think, at Harvard University or some other big Ivy League school. And they asked the graduating students to actually write down what their goals are. And most of the students didn’t have very well formed out goals, but some of them had really long term goals.

And then they kept in touch with these people. And 20 years, 30 years, what they were doing their whole career rather than just the next step, they actually achieved a lot more. So the longer you look forward to the future, you’re able to look forward to the more successful you became. So it definitely makes sense to look at the employee that you’re about to hire and see whether they have the ability to look into the future or not. That’s a really cool tip. Okay, so let’s switch gears here and let’s talk about another book, which is called The Best Buyer Persona System. And I believe you’re the author of this book, right? So what is this? Why did you write this book? And what is this book about?

So it’s the world’s best buyer persona system. And it’s about creating messaging for the benefit of your most ideal prospects and your ideal customers. Prior to getting into the world of digital marketing, I had a pretty successful sales career, did a lot of sales training. And my sales training wasn’t really about being a better salesperson. It was more about being a better listener to give you the ability of communicating more effectively to the person that you’re communicating to. The more information you can get from them and understanding their modalities, understanding their viewpoints as it pertains to their models of the world, their communication style.

Sales training wasn't about being a better salesperson but a better listener. Click To Tweet

The more information you can gain in regards to the person that you’re communicating with, the better you can craft your messaging for their benefit. And then the world went digital. And we didn’t have as much of this belly-to-belly sales people, we had more of this digital employee now acting as your salesperson. This digital employee being your website, acting as your salesperson, acting as your customer service representative, acting as your company spokesperson. It’s designed to be so much more than a billboard. And unfortunately, many businesses think of their website as nothing more than a digital billboard.

But if you can train this digital employee to communicate more effectively, you will get a higher quality of leads, you’ll get a better conversion rate, and you’ll get happier customers because of it. So the world’s best buyer persona system was developed because I started using traditional buyer personas years ago when I was in the home building industry. And when I would develop a buyer persona, on paper it looked fantastic.

I had lots of demographic data in regards to who our ideal clients were but it was just demographic data and what I had come to realize is that people don’t make decisions based on demographics people make decisions based on emotions and if we can understand their emotions their triggering events their pain points their action beliefs. What do they believe will happen if they do business with you versus their inaction beliefs.

And if we think about their journey through their entire buyer’s journey from the awareness stage becoming aware that they have a pain point and a problem and they’re looking for a solution and the consideration stage where they’re considering their alternatives down to the decision stage. If we can spend a little bit of time giving and putting energy and effort towards those pain points, those issues that our ideal customers are experiencing, well then it puts you in a unique ability of crafting messaging that’s designed to resonate with them.

Have you ever done business with a company where you saw their messaging and you instantly thought wow, they get me, I want to do business with them? Well that doesn’t happen by accident and I figured more businesses can do it too. Traditionally it was your your fortune 500 companies that had the resources and the budgets to do lots of focus groups and put a lot of money to figure this messaging out. Your small businesses didn’t have the ability of doing it. They didn’t have the budget, they didn’t have the know-how, they didn’t have the resources. That’s how the world’s best buyer persona system was born.

I started down this journey in reality, you know, I started down this journey when I was in third grade, but starting to document it, I started down this journey seven years ago. I had some incredible people help me along the process of putting together something very, very special that allows businesses to really craft their messaging so they can attract the people they want to do business with, while simultaneously repelling the people they don’t want to do business with. It’s been a very powerful tool.

So, let me understand. So this was best by a personal system. You actually do you actually interview your target market customers? And this is how you get the information to build it up. Or is it more of a based on research or is it done by your digital employee? Do you train your digital employee to do that stuff? Yeah. So I’m a little bit confused about that. Can you enlighten me?

In an ideal scenario, in an ideal world, you would have the ability of interviewing your ideal customers and get their perspectives. But what I have found is, is that is in most cases, it just doesn’t happen. Your ideal customers are busy and you don’t have the ability of putting the focus groups together. Believe me, I’ve tried. We’ve gone down this path and it’s just, it’s very difficult to get those individuals together. So with the buyer, the world’s best buyer persona system is, it’s the next best thing.

And when you’re not able to get your customers together, and if you are able to get your customers together, combining that with the questions inside the world’s best buyer persona system is even that much more powerful. So when you’re not able to get your customers together, you have to use your intuition and your, the best information you have available. And normally what I find is if a company gets together and they put their customer facing team together in a room.

That would be your sales team, your customer service team, anyone who’s customer facing. You can go through a series of questions and a series of worksheets that allows you to craft the pain points and the issues that your customers experience. Because if you’re customer facing, you have some of the information. And what you do is once you complete the worksheets in the World’s Best Buyer Persona system, it helps you craft and create a story, a narrative in regards to that person and their pain points, their issues, their struggles.

And then you’re able to share that story and that narrative company-wide. It allows your salespeople to have much more empathy, gain more trust during the sales process, but you also share it with your marketing team and your marketing department. So as they’re crafting the messaging, you see it is the people in charge of your website and your marketing team, they’re the ones that should be training this digital employee.

And they can’t train the digital employee if they don’t have the necessary background information as it pertains to your most ideal customer. This gives them the knowledge, the information that they need so they can begin to train your digital employee to perform better by putting messaging on the website, by putting messaging within your social media messaging by having this almost this Rosetta Stone in regards to the messaging that all departments and avenues can use to allow the synergistic approach to your marketing and messaging.

Empower your sales team with empathy and trust during the sales process through customer insights. Click To Tweet

Okay. So basically, you brainstorm with your market-facing team and you use their collective intelligence to figure out what these messages are based on the demographic and the psychographics of your target customer. So their pain points. Then you train your digital employee to send out the right messages and to populate the websites with the right copy and all that stuff?

That’s correct. You’re doing it through the entire sales cycle. You see, when we think of your ideal customer, their pain points, their issues, their concerns may be totally different when they’re in the awareness stage as opposed to the consideration stage as compared to the decision stage. So you have to understand that that person may in all likelihood go through all three stages, which means your messaging is going to be a little bit different for the people that come across your brand, depending on the stage that they happen to be on at that given time.

And are you thinking about a single persona or do you see most of your clients to have multiple buyer personas that they’re going after?

The vast majority of our clients have multiple personas. And what happens is you can send your clients on the path that matches their journey. So let me give you an example. And I can use the example of a LASIK eye doctor, because this is something that many people can relate to. One of the things that we realized when someone wanted to have LASIK surgery, there was only two concerns. You either fell in one camp or the other. There were very few other issues. Camp number one was safety.

They were afraid of having a laser shot in their eye and going blind, right? Safety, is the procedure safe? The other camp was finances. They figured LASIK’s gonna be safe, but can they afford it? Those are the two camps, two totally different messaging. So when we applied the World’s Best Buyer Persona to a LASIK center, we made the path very easy for those two personas. When you landed on the homepage, there was a call to action that related to the person who’s concerned with safety, a call to action, it sent them on a path that was designed to speak to their pain points, their issues, their action beliefs.

They can still get to the other section of the website. They’re not completely isolated, but it was designed to put them at ease, reduce the tension as early in the process as possible. And their conversions, lead count went through the roof. Just by making that simple tweak. And you can do it with most of our clients. It’s figuring out who your personas are and then creating a path that makes it very easy for them to follow based on their pain points, their issues, their concerns. Does that make sense?

Yes, I mean, I often see on websites that there is a pathway for if you’re a customer, there’s a pathway if you’re a franchisee. Let’s say it’s a franchise company and they have franchises, so they’re marketing themselves both to end customer as well as potential franchisees. And then there are two call to actions and, you know, everyone picks their own and then they clearly get the message tailored to them. And obviously you can have multiple of these CTAs.

And I just want to give you just a comment on the franchisee and franchisor, because that’s a great model, but let’s think about something. Let’s say if you have a model that you want to bring to market and you’re looking for franchisors. If you wonder, and let’s say if you’re not a well-known brand, you’re not McDonald’s, you’re something that someone discovered your brand and entrepreneur and they’re like, this would be interesting.

We understand their motivations and in many cases, their motivation is going to be safety as it pertains to an unknown brand. You know what, if I’m going to invest and get a franchise for this brand that seems really really solid. I love the product I love the concept but is it going to work and I’ve got to put X amount of dollars a few hundred thousand dollars into This there’s going to be in many cases. There’s going to be an extra There there may be extra emphasis on safety.

They want to make a safe decision so understanding that their motivation their need that needs to be met right off the bat may be a good idea to ensure that your messaging isn’t about how great your product is and how great you, you know, and, and what you, what you’re able to do in X, Y, and Z. It should be about safety. How safe this investment is by showing maybe some testimonials of some other people that have had the same concerns and they’ve been able to take their franchise to new heights. So giving social proof, giving proof of other agencies, case studies where you can address those safety issues early. That would be an example to expand upon what you just stated. Safety is usually a strong motivator in that space.

All right. So moving on to the messaging. So one of the things that you say on your website, or maybe your digital employees says it, I don’t know, is that you have to message So what does it look like? What does it look like messaging at the emotional level?

So, one of the things we want to find out, if you want to message on the emotional level, you need to find out what their action beliefs are. What do they believe will happen by using or taking advantage of your goods and services? You also need to understand what their inaction beliefs are. What do they believe will happen if they don’t move forward? The model, one of the models that we use is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which basically it’s a model, it’s a framework that goes over the needs that need to be met in a hierarchy of needs, meaning that the physiological needs are the strongest, meaning if all things being equal, if your physiological needs aren’t being met, well, you know, those are the strongest needs that need to be met. Your physiological needs are the needs for food, shelter, water, basically survivability. Once those needs are met, then we have a secondary set of needs and a tertiary set of needs and so on.

If you want to message on the emotional level, you need to find out what their action beliefs are Click To Tweet

It’s the Maslow’s Pyramid. Yeah, exactly. Maslow’s Pyramid.

And once you have that type of information and understanding the action beliefs, the inaction beliefs, combined with the motivations, it allows you really to speak to, craft your messaging that’s designed around those emotions. Not necessarily craft around your goods and services, but taking your goods and services, making that secondary to the emotions. Because people make decisions based on emotions. 80% of our decisions are based on emotions, why wouldn’t you have messaging that’s designed to resonate and resonate with the emotions of your ideal prospects?

Like for instance, on our website, going back to our website, we have people that approach us, if you go to yokellocal.com, the first thing on our website that it mentions is outsell, outgrow, and outsmart. And the reason that we have that as a primary message is because when people reach out to us, they want to outsell, they want to outgrow. That’s really what it comes down to. Well, our value proposition is if you want to outsell and you want to outgrow, the first thing you need to do is outsmart. If we’re not going to figure out how to outsmart, it’s going to be very difficult for you to achieve those goals.

And what it allows us to do, it gives us a message that resonates with our ideal prospects and it allows us to have a conversation where we can put them on a path that thinks more strategically. Because when someone’s not thinking strategically, they’re not a good fit for us. We want to deal with people that want to think strategically, put strategy in place, not just a lot of tactics. And it seems to work very, very well.

Ok, that makes a lot of sense. So what is their action belief? Is the type of persona they are, customer or franchisee, maybe. And then what are the motivations? And probably the physiological level, if they are looking at your service, it’s gonna be more about self-actualization or, I don’t know, belonging perhaps, or financial success. So you fetter that out with the questions. So you figure out what the emotional drivers are, and then you tailor the message to the driver.

That is correct. And going back to the action and action beliefs, if it is, and we’re looking at it from the perspective of your ideal client. So let’s use the franchise or as the, you know, the, the franchisee, they want to buy a franchise. What’s their belief system? Meaning that if they move forward with, you know, signing a contract to open a franchise of what you have to offer, what’s their belief system.

If everything goes correctly, their belief system may be, if this goes correctly, I’m going to have this amazing business that’s going to generate X amount of dollars in income and everything’s going to be unicorns and rainbows, right? On the other hand, what’s their inaction belief or what is their belief system? If this turns out to be a horrible mistake? Their inaction belief, or it could be that if this doesn’t go right, well, I’m going to have to continue to work for an employer forever, and I’m going to lose my life savings.

And my wife’s going to throw me out the house because I’ve invested our entire life savings into this crazy thing. So it’s understanding from their perspective, understanding what their, what success looks like to them, what failure looks like to them in regards to their action and inaction beliefs because you need to address that. You need to address that with your messaging. This way, having a message saying that addressing both of those viewpoints is very, very powerful.

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So think about half glass, half full or half empty and have a good story to support both. What’s the upside? What’s the carrot and what’s the stick, if you don’t make the decision. Absolutely. So that’s great. So one of the things that you do, if I read your information correctly, is to also leverage NLP, Neurolinguistic Programming, to improve marketing. Now, I don’t, recently I have not heard so much about NLP, but about 10, 15 years ago, it was this older age, everyone was talking about NLP. Tell us a little bit about why NLP helps and how do you actually use it and what does it take to be able to communicate using NLP?

So, let’s give the definition of NLP first. So NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. And now let’s break that down a little bit further. Neuro is the brain, linguistics, words we use when we speak. And programming really stands for the models that we make of the world. Everyone has a different model, so what I mean by that is, based on each of our education, our background, our experiences, our belief system, creates this distortion of reality that each of us have.

Because ultimately that’s what creates your reality. My reality is going to be different than yours. Yours is going to be different than the next person’s, so on and so on. And what NLP, so understanding that as the basis of NLP, NLP helps you get into quickly identifying using techniques that helps you identify the words that people use can help you determine their model of the world. Reading their body language, understanding their body language and voice inflection, it’s really a very, very powerful tool that helps you get out of your head and it helps you get into the other person’s head because you’re spending a lot.

It teaches you how to pay attention. That’s important because someone can say, hey, just pay attention more. Well, if you don’t know how to listen and if you don’t know how to take advantage of the visual cues, it makes it very difficult to apply the teachings of NLP. So when it comes to the world’s best buyer persona system, my background in NLP was understanding that it’s about the other person and understanding that there are cues based on the way people speak and the way that they communicate provides insights and cues to the way that they see the world was instrumental in building the world’s best buyer persona system.

Lots of questions that we have within the worksheets are designed to help you determine the models that your ideal customers make of the world, which allows you to make better, far superior messaging that’s designed to resonate and connect with them.

Can you give me an example of what it would look like, specific words perhaps?

One more time? I don’t know if I understand the question.

So, I wonder if you could give us an example of what this would look like, the specific words that people use and how it’s going to enlighten you in terms of their mental model and how they are thinking.

Sure. So understanding how people process information. Some people process information visually as a primary mode of learning. Some people auditorily and some people kinesthetically. So maybe if you’re speaking to someone, maybe they will say things like, oh, I see where you’re coming from. That gives you a great visual cue that that person processes information visually. The fact that they use the word, I see where you’re coming from.

Someone who processes information auditorily may say something like, oh, I hear you. You know, they’re processing, that gives you a clue that they’re using, that they process information auditorily. And someone who’s kinesthetic, they may say, I feel you. So you have three people saying the exact same thing, but they’re using different vernacular. So understanding that people use those three modalities, maybe that changes the types of words that you have on your website. You see, when you can use words and phrases that, that match the modality of your, of your prospect, you’re in a much better scenario.

So when you’re speaking to someone, it’s easy because you can, if I notice that someone’s visual, I may start using more visual rich words versus someone who’s auditory using auditory rich words. But when it comes to your website, understanding that sometimes if you do an audit of the messaging on your website, you may find that you don’t have a proper balance of those words. You may have the words that you’re using on your website may be extremely rich in regards to the person who created the content on your website.

So it may be a process of mixing up some of the phrases that you’re using so you’re not using messaging that’s just geared towards a visual audience or a kinesthetic audience. And we see that often. It just comes down to the writer not being aware that there are other modalities and you can improve the absorption of your message by understanding those three different modalities and mixing up the words and phrases accordingly.

Okay, so I thought this was actually deeper. So maybe it’s just an example that you gave, but I thought that NLP was a lot deeper. It wasn’t just about recognizing whether it’s visual, auditory, kinesthetic, but also to kind of use words to put people into the frame of mind of thinking about something, of visualizing something, and then desiring that thing. Maybe I overthought that.

So what happens is you can get into NLP is used for a lot of hypnotherapists. So there is an element of NLP that’s used in the hypnotherapy world. So there’s no question about that. You’re right on the money. But in the world of sales, it’s not about the hypnotherapy. It can go very, very deep. So there’s no question about it. But the elements of NLP that I brought to the world’s best buyer persona system, it’s really designed to help you be a better communicator. Not really designed.

There are some persuasion techniques, but there’s only so much that you can do with. I don’t even want to say there’s so much you can do. There are some persuasion techniques when you’re using phrases and vernacular that’s in alignment with your ideal customers because it helps them. The more that you can help them, the better off that you are. So NLP does go very deep. Like I stated, in the world of hypnotherapy, but in the world of sales, that would be or expects you when you get into digital, the digital space, it’s not as deep as it can be when you have a one-on-one scenario in a therapy session.

Okay, so our time is coming closer to the end, but before we wrap up, I want to ask you about your six-step inbound marketing methodology. So your call is all about inbound marketing, and what are the six steps and how do you execute them?

Yeah, so the six steps are, step number one, my book is called The World’s Best Buyer Persona System, and we believe that that’s the foundation to your marketing. The more information you have, the greater the understanding you have as it pertains to your ideal customers, the greater the impact you can have on the other five steps that I’m about to share with you. So buyer persona is number one, that has to be nailed down. From there, well now you can get into the world of driving traffic to your website.

And if you’re going to drive traffic, if you understand your buyer persona, well, now you have a method. You at least, it allows you to put a strategy in place to drive traffic from the people you want to do business with getting traffic for people that have no interest and no desire of doing business with you or the wrong traffic serves you no purpose. So having a buyer persona in place is a key first step before you think about driving traffic. From there, it comes to converting traffic. How do I convert that traffic into leads? And that’s important, right?

If you have quality traffic, it’s going to help you convert it into leads with your messaging. So converting traffic, then it comes into nurturing your leads. You know, when people visit your website, HubSpot did a study years ago back in 2015, and what they stated was, is that 96% of the people that visit your website have no interest in buying your goods and services today. They would be in the awareness and consideration stage. Only 4% of the visitors are in the decision stage.

So understanding that, understanding that you spent time, energy, and effort to drive this traffic to your website, and just because someone isn’t in the market for your goods and services today does not mean that they’re not valuable. So having a system in place to nurture these leads, so when they are ready, well, at least you’re in a good position to take advantage of it. From there you get customers. And one of the areas that can become a secret weapon is the customer delight area. Once you have customers, what are you doing to delight them, to make their experience with you incredible from the moment they write the check or they sign the contract or they give you the credit card.

What systems and processes do you have in place that’s designed to delight them, keep them happy so this way they write reviews and testimonials and more importantly they send you referrals. They stand on street corners singing you praises because you are awesome. When you have those systems in place then step number six it’s all about scaling for growth because now you have a scalable system that you can absolutely scale for growth. And if you scale for growth too early, well, that can be detrimental. You know, you start working on scaling for growth if you don’t have the other systems in place.

You spend a lot of time and you don’t generate the results.

Right. Absolutely.

Or you burn yourself in front of your target market and then you have to start from scratch or even worse.

Absolutely.

Okay, so understand the buyer persona, number one, then have a strategy to drive the traffic, then you convert the traffic, then you nurture the leads because 96% will not be ready. Yep. And then delight the customers. So that’s kind of not about the leads, it’s about building your reputation so that you are a great provider and reinforce with all the testimonials and referrals and then scaling for growth. So actually a number four is really followed by number six, isn’t it?

Convert traffic, nurture leads, customer delight, scale for growth. So no, we believe customer delight happens before scale for growth.

Okay. Because that’s the proof of the pudding basically.

Right. Because a customer delight, here’s how we break down customer delight. If I break it down even more, we think about customer delight. We have different categories. The first category is called wow. What are you doing to wow your customers once they decide to do business with you? Because think about this for just a moment. There is a missed opportunity with many businesses.

Once the customer gives you a check and they decide to do business with you, there’s a strong possibility that they were considering you and they were considering other competitors. There’s probably some fear, there’s some apprehension, there’s some tension. What are you doing to bring that tension down, you know what I mean, to wow them immediately, to give them the warm and fuzzy that they’ve done business with the right company.

If either the sooner you can do that, the better off you are and it helps prevent cancellations and it puts you on the right path to the next stage, which is the customer ladder, which also falls under customer delight. And the customer ladder is this. What are you doing to convert more of your customers and making them or turning them into clients, turning more of your clients into advocates of your brand and turning more advocates into raving fans? There’s a big difference between them. And they tend to be in many cases, your most productive employee, because they will send you the referrals. They’ll leave you the best testimonials. They’ll give you the best case studies.

So do you have a system in place that’s designed to help elevate more of your customers and the clients, more clients and advocates, more advocates and the rating fans? That leads to reviews and testimonials. How are you doing in the marketplace in regards to quantity and quality? What are people saying about you? And then what’s happening in terms of referrals. So we look at all those categories, that gives you the ability of measuring what’s happening in regards to your customer delight.

That makes a lot of sense. Okay. So buy a persona and then drive traffic, nurture, convert, nurture, delight, great recipe. So if someone would like to learn more about how you could maybe help them execute this because it’s very easy to talk about this on a podcast but to execute it day in day out and to make sure that you don’t drop the ball and still running the business with your other hand. It’s not a simple thing. So if someone wants to check it out and learn a bit more about your system, read your book, the world’s best buyer best buy a persona system. Where do they go? How do they link up with you?

The best place to go is outsmarttools.com. If you go to outsmarttools.com, I have resources and links for all sorts of goodies. There’s a link there where you can go to Amazon and buy a copy of the book. But there are links to the Yokel Local website. There’s a link to stormyandrews.com if you wanted me to come speak at your organization. But at the very, very top, there’s a free resource, which is called the marketing wheel. And I would recommend you take the marketing wheel exercise.

The marketing wheel exercise falls into the customer delight section, but in the other sections that we talked about, it allows you to do a self audit, a self assessment of where you stand in eight areas of your marketing. And you get to rate yourself on a scale of one to five and I will walk you through with a series of videos to help you rate yourself and then we’ll have additional tools and resources to help you improve that area of your business.

That’s amazing so you need to spin this marketing wheel and go on out smarttools.com it reminds me of CEO tools, all smart tools. Definitely check this out. Sounds like a great toolkit. And so thank you for coming to the show, Stormie, and bringing great information to our listeners. If you like this episode, please don’t forget to visit Apple Podcasts. Give us a rate and a review. Rate us and review us. Subscribe on YouTube. And stay tuned for the next episode next week. Stormie, thanks again for coming. It was fun talking to you.

Awesome, Steve, it was a pleasure being here.

 

Important Links:

This entry was posted in . Bookmark the permalink.