Do you know how someone goes from being a complete stranger to a loyal customer in your business?
Recently I was having a conversation with a colleague and we were talking about this very subject. She was thriving in her business, had happy clients, but when it came time for her to start thinking about where the next lead or income opportunity was coming from she had no idea.
That’s where the customer journey comes in. Some people call this journey mapping, others call it their success path. Whatever you want to call it, it’s the process by which you guide your prospects to learn about you and build know, like and trust, and eventually buy from you (hopefully more than once).
I have my own spin on this as I see it as a two layer cake and that is how I teach it to clients. As a starting point, building an understanding of lifecycle marketing is critical. We don’t just start the conversation with Buy My Stuff! We have to create a process of building relationships. Getting our name out there in front of the right eyeballs allows a prospective buyer to build rapport with us, so that when the time comes to make an offer, they are ready to take action.
Next we look at the buyer journey specifically. I encourage clients to always be thinking about how replicable something is. It’s worth noting that this kind of teaching is something I had to learn the hard way. If you’re sending out custom proposals and building custom tailored offerings for each individual client, you’ll find it can be very difficult to forecast or create any sort of predictable strategy. As we look at creating productized services, this means building offerings that can be easily replicated (which even thinking about it feels like a weight has been lifted!). Productized services means standardized services sold like products with clearly defined parameters and pricing. Productizing your services accomplishes many things, but here are three to just get you thinking:
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Time Saver – Create a few products out of your services, set your pricing and then write it out. Build it once and then share it often.
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Establish yourself as the leader and expert – The client is hiring you because you’re supposed to know more than they do. If they are driving, you might very well be missing opportunities to be of greater service.
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Scalability – When you know how you offer your services, you are better able to estimate your time, energy and other resources.
As you’re thinking about your buyer’s journey, one thing that I have found value in, in the last few years, is giving people more than one way to work with me. Below is a fun graphic that is exactly what I imagine when I think about my buyer’s journey. That’s me, driving the bus, picking up customers at each stop. I have a free offer that is a great way to generate leads, and begin giving them a way to learn about Confluence Business Solutions. Then we move along to my introductory offer, which is getting started with Keap. Our next stop along the journey is Business Automation in a Box, my newest program. For those that continue along the road, there’s 1:1 support where we are the marketing team helping set strategy and implementing. There’s something for everyone. Whether you’re looking to ride along for free and do the heavy lifting, or you’re ready for some sophistication and complexity, maybe just some learning, or more, we offer it all..
So now it’s your turn. As you’re busy supporting your customers, are you working in a way that’s sustainable that allows you to plan for the future and even grow if you want? We love helping clients create this kind of reality for themselves and their clients, let us know if you want to learn more!
