In business, it is easy to get focused on how to get someone to buy your stuff. That focus sometimes leads us to neglect the product itself. But it is so important to make your customer feel it was worth it once they buy.
Today we are going to talk about how to deliver your product or service in a way that will create successful fans.
If you’ve been watching this Money Flow Framework series you also probably watched other videos on internet marketing. There is a ton of information out there on how to do marketing and sales.
But so very often once you’ve got someone to buy, you forget about delivering the service.
The internet marketing crowd is the worst about this. They not only focus completely on how to get people to buy but they also actively tell you to spend the least amount of time possible actually producing the product.
They couple sales funnel strategies with the idea you’ll make the product when someone buys it.
Sigh, this is the worst.
What other industry considerers the actual product an afterthought?
Even when you do have a product focus, we often forget to make the process of getting that product special. Or we are so focused on the day to day of the product, we miss the importance of the first day.
Today I want to go over two areas of product delivery. Onboarding and Pedagogy.
Onboarding
Onboarding is the process a customer – or new employee – go through when they first start using your product. What is that experience like?
A lot of times in the information marketing and online education space, this is automated and dictated by the software you are using to deliver the product. No thought is given to how the customer perceives this.
There are two things you want to accomplish when bringing a new customer onboard. You want them to feel special and part of your tribe. And you want to get them started in the best possible way to succeed with your product.
Imagine your customer just bought your high dollar product. Then they get a form email saying you’ll let them know when it will be ready. Or they are dumped into a software backend that has a bunch of information with no clear organization.
This is what my friend calls, the pile of the crap method. Some guru has taken all their recorded webinars, or recorded live events, and just dumped it into a Learning Management System. Then to be extra generous they’ve added a bunch of other videos from other events. Then maybe even every ebook they’ve ever written.
Then the new member of the tribe gets dumped on a page that has a huge list of information they can use. As we’ll talk about in a minute, more information is a problem, not a solution.
Your heart may be in the right place, but your methodology is wrong. You are trying to be generous and over-deliver, but instead, you as just making what you are giving useless.
We’re going to talk about pedagogy -a fancy word for how you teach things -in a minute. The first thing you need to focus on is making them part of your tribe. You need to think of a ritual that takes them from being on the outside to being on the inside.
The concept of Tribe comes from Seth Godin’s book of the same name, and all of the best companies in the world do this.
When you buy a Tesla, for example, you aren’t just getting a great car. You are becoming a Tesla owner. You get a special walk-through of every feature of the car, but you also get Tesla swag so you can use it to show you are part of the tribe now.
That is the experience you want to create for your buyers.
I have a protege who runs a co-working space, and we talked about what special things she could do for people who become members. She documented how to get their new office ready for when they move in.
She made a plan for how to show them around and introduce them to all the features of the co-working space. There was logoed swag waiting for them and marking them as members.
While I haven’t seen anyone do it, you can do physical swag for a digital product. What if when someone bought your how to play a guitar course, you sent them a t-shirt with the course logo on it? Or a special logoed guitar pick?
Get creative here.
So you’ve now got a plan for making them part of the tribe. What should you do next?
You need to set them up for success. This comes down to how you get them started and how you teach the material. What I’m going to call Pedagogy because that is a cool word.
Pedagogy
The study of learning is a field you can get a Ph.D. in. So I’m not going to cover it much here. But you need to think about how they are going to learn the stuff you want to teach them.
The first thing most of us think about is how we present. How we actually say the stuff when we are teaching.
Then we think about what order we want to say stuff. What topics do they need to know and in what order.
Those are important things and shouldn’t be ignored. But we need to make a point of view change and ask, how will they learn it the best.
There is something I call “black belt syndrome”. I actually first noticed it in the social engineering communities of pick-up artists. Then I started hearing it from martial artists, which is where it got its name.
Pick up artists say all you need to do is “be confident.” Black Belts start talking about flow and forget about specific technique.
The problem is these people have forgotten what it was like to be a beginner.
The reason an experienced social engineer can relax and just be confident is because they stuggled through lots of openings. They said rote things over and over till they started feel natural. They had successes that built confidence.
White belts throw a thousand punches. They learned rote forms and moves. They did them over and over again until those moves begin to “naturally” flow out of them.
You can’t just tell people to be confident, or to flow, who don’t know the basics. Don’t make that mistake when teaching your information either.
Put yourself back in the mind of a beginner.
Remember how much you don’t know. Remember what you felt like. When you felt totally lost, what was it that moved your forward? What small things did you master that took you to the next level?
Teach those things. Doing this kind of thinking is the basics of pedagogy.
Another important aspect of helping people learn is realizing not everyone learns the same way. You need to provide multiple ways to experience your learning content.
Some people want to read it, others to listen to it. Some need to read a detailed description of how it works, others to see an example, and still, others to understand the reasons why it works.
Try and find multiple ways to teach your stuff. But of course be careful to present these different ways in a non-overwhelming manner.
That is just the beginning on how to deliver, but if you focus on making your buyers feel special and part of a tribe as soon as they buy, and then think deeply about how to teach them what you have, you’ll be miles ahead.
Then your customers will succeed. And they will want more of what you’ve got to sell. They’ll rave about you, and all their friends will want what you have to offer. It is delivery that creates raving fans. Not your great marketing.
Question of the Day: How do you onboard your customers?
