Beyond Features: How to Sell with Emotional Benefits and Boost Your Brand

Do you know that there is a huge chasm between your business and your potential customers? In an era where attention is the new currency, countless businesses find themselves shouting into the void, struggling to not only capture but hold the fleeting attention of their ideal prospects. It's so interesting. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And today, my guest is the Business Growth Strategist Carmen Reid Gilkinson. And today, we will be delving into the art and science of emotionally resonating with our audience to transform casual observers into dedicated clients. We're going to be unpacking the strategies that will not only stop the scroll but will forge a deep lasting connection that accelerates the journey from prospect to a loyal customer. So, stay with us. In your marketplace where everyone is trying to get noticed, businesses face a huge challenge. It's not just about getting people to see your ads and your posts. The real test is making that real connection with the people that you want to buy from you, from your customers. This means talking to your audience in a way that goes deeper than just trying to sell something. Nobody wants to be sold. It's about being real and understanding what they really want and need, not just what they say they want. And is there a difference? Well, that's what we're going to be talking about. We're talking about making genuine connections. And so, that brings me to our Question of the Day. So, have you ever thought that maybe turning people who look at your stuff into loyal buyers is difficult because of not what you're selling, or how much it costs, or what other companies are doing. But because you haven't figured out how to make a real emotional connection with them. Are you really talking their language? Hitting on what they deeply care about in a way that makes them feel understood and important? I'd love for you to share your experiences and your ideas Feel free to share this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and put your comments down. I would really love for you to be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, my guest for this episode is an Online Business Manager and a Whole Person Certified Coach. And I have the absolute wrong intro on the bottom of the screen. Don't you just hate when that happens? I'm sorry about that, Carmen.

No problem.

Carmen Reid Gilkinson is someone who knows all about making businesses shine. She's got over 25 years of experience in marketing and has helped lots of people take their businesses to the next level. She's one of the brains behind Encore Empire, where she teaches women how to grow their businesses without getting lost in the crowd. It's really the most authentic way to give them a voice. She believes that the real secret to selling more isn't just about what you're selling but how you make the real connection with the customers. Carmen, welcome to the show. It is so brilliant to have you today.

Thank you. I'm so delighted to be here.

So really interesting about how you serve your clients. Maybe we could start off a little bit about telling us how you serve your clients.

Yeah, so at Encore Empire, it's so important to us to get to know our clients. And that's going to be a theme in this whole conversation today. And to customize to what matters to them. We could have 5 health coaches as clients, and each and every one of them has a different angle, a different spin on things, a different way that they coach, a different audience perhaps. And they're struggling with different things in their business. So it's important to us to make sure that we customize everything. So when we bring a client on, we do a thorough onboarding. We find out what's important to them. What is their next year's goal? What is their goal 2 or 3 years out? And let's reverse engineer back from that, taking a look at what they've got going so far currently, what's working, what's not, and we create a strategy for them. We find that even clients that come to us who have been in business for 30 years or so, a lot of them do not have a foundational business strategy. And that's what we focus on. We want to make sure that our clients understand What it takes to assess their business, assess opportunities, assess the direction that they should go. What if they want to pivot? What if they want to do this, do that? It's not just a matter of saying, well, I want to make this change. It's like, well, let's look at how to do that, why to do that, and even assess should we do that. And that all comes down to strategy. So, that's what we focus on.

Nice, nice. And how important is that? I mean, Coming out of COVID you said that you and your partner formed your company during COVID which is always exciting because of course, businesses that come together in crisis actually thrive post-crisis, which is amazing.

Yeah.

And to your point, that whole thing with strategy, the people who fell the furthest were the people who didn't have a strategy and really were kind of flying by the seat of their pants. Today, we're obviously talking about this idea of connecting with prospects. connecting with our audience, connecting with our customers. Can you describe the common challenges that you see businesses face when trying to connect with their audience, especially online?

Sure. What happens is you are the expert in your field, in your industry. You're leading people. So, your expertise is way up here. Your knowledge level is way up here. Your audience is way down here. But as we go through day to day, the more you learn, the more you do, the more easily it is for you to fall into speaking jargon that is industry jargon that goes way over the head of your audience. And while what you're saying might be 100% true, accurate, and you are showing your expertise, it is— it's missing the mark for your audience. We have to get to the audience's level. Gallup did a poll that 70% of buying decisions are made with emotion. And so, that's why we talk about connecting on an emotional level. We justify. The 30% is justification and going through. But emotion is what drives us. And if you think about what people really want, anybody anywhere, whether we're talking about business or not, people want to be heard. They want to be understood. They want to be seen, right? And so that's what we need to do with our messaging. And my business partner, Deirdre, she's a CPA. So when she creates a training on accounting or finance or anything like that, she runs it by me. We run it by our clients because it's very easy for her to get into accountant speak and it goes right over our heads. And, you know, I love spreadsheets and all that, but she can create these spreadsheets that are like, I think you're going to lose them here. So we have to get out of that. And it's, it's just hard as As the experts, it's hard for us to see when we're doing that because that's our world. But we have to step out of our world and we have to step into the shoes of our audience.

Yeah, yeah. And we forget, I think, what it was like when we didn't know something. We forget what it was like when we were entering into the space of expertise. I mean, some of us did it through university. And at some point, we had to look at a new concept and go, I don't get it.

Yes.

But then, at some point, we do get it. And to your point, then it's like, well, look how smart we are because we get it and we can talk at this higher level. So, what you're saying is that we're not necessarily looking at talking differently about what we do. We're just— you're just suggesting that we take a look at our language.

The language and the lens. So, if you're looking at it from your point of view, it's going to be completely different than if you're looking at it from the client's point of view. And so, what we want to do is we actually help our clients and teach our clients to collect ideal client language. We want to know their exact words. And sometimes when we go through this exercise, what happens is People will collect their words and then they'll go, what I think she means is... And it's like, don't do that. Don't change what you think someone means. We want to say the exact words, not synthesize it then down into what we think. And I think what happens is with marketing and messaging, it can be really overwhelming. And we think we have to know the tricks and the secrets and what do we do to make a sale. And The biggest best trick, which is not a trick at all, is just to get to know who your ideal client is by collecting their language and then by using that language in your messaging.

So, would you say then one of the biggest mistakes that companies make when they're attempting to speak to their prospect is that they don't know the language? They haven't taken the time out to actually sit down with their customers and figure out what it is that How people are talking about it.

Well, yeah, and I'll share a story. So, I came from corporate America where I was a proposal manager in construction. And I ran the proposal department and I was there for 20-some-odd years. And so, we're winning these high contracts. But watching the process and what happened when you're not really making that many wins to when you are, The difference was what we were doing wrong was we were sharing about us. We were sharing about how good we were, our equipment, how we can do this, how we can do that. But what you do when you receive an RFP in that situation is your client, the potential client, is telling you exactly what they want. So, once we started taking pieces from that and crafting our proposal to answer those needs and make it obvious, Well, they were like, oh my gosh, you guys have the best proposals. We totally get you. You get us. They want to know that you understand them. And when you're going in as, I have to sell myself, you're doing it wrong because you don't have to sell yourself. You want to make sure that you're meeting their needs. They need to know that you're meeting their needs. And that starts with understanding and restating their needs. So, that's where that comes in.

It's so interesting because as you were saying that, a story popped into my head about Febreze. when they first launched Febreze, they couldn't sell it because they were saying that Febreze will help make your house fresher and fresher smelling. And people didn't know that their house stank. And so, they didn't use it. And so, they came up with this whole big thing about being nose blind.

Yeah.

But that actually happened after their first adjustment. The first adjustment to their marketing was that they started kind of watching people as they clean. And it actually, because they were actually watching their customers, the customer would spray their room with Febreze as she stepped out and go, well, why'd you do that? She goes, it's the last thing I do when I clean. And so then, that became the big marketing thing at that point is Febreze, the last thing you do when you clean, right?

Right.

And so, the sales started going up. But it wasn't until they started defining nose blindness That just really took off because now, they were talking to people in a language they could understand because we've all been there. We've all had the family that has the dog in the house and it's like, you don't smell your dog? It's like, it's really—

right?

And so, that whole— and that's how they took off. They were able now to talk to their clients based on what the clients needed, not what they wanted.

That's right. And that's really important too. You have to kind of— you have to— we like to say you tell them what they want to hear, but you give them what they need. Because let's talk about if we're gonna sell our program, which is business consulting, you know, strategy coaching, and we say, um, we're gonna teach you how to do X, Y, and Z. Well, they don't even know why do they need to know X, Y, and Z. You have to start with Are you struggling with making sales? Are you struggling with reaching your goals? We have to find out what is it that they're struggling with and we have to bring that into conversation. Just like the nose blind thing I love. I just absolutely the humor in that is great. The big giant socks, smelly socks that they do. But it's like that is what you do. You relate to them and what that does as well, what Febreze is doing there is they're educating people to become aware that, oh my gosh, I might have this problem. Because like you said, we don't know. We have dogs. We don't smell our own dogs, right? And so, it's like, oh no, I don't want people to walk in my house and smell dirty socks, or dogs, or whatever it is. So, it's an educational component as well.

Yes. And to your point, it also builds on that emotional thing of, I don't want that. I don't want people to judge me. I don't want to be fearful of Right? And so, that's my insurance policy. Added to that, this idea that people are always talking like about the same things. Like, you were mentioning about kind of the language that we use as marketers. And I was speaking to a group of moving companies. And I went to their websites and they all had the same words. We're family-owned. We're X number of years in business and la-di-da-di-da-di. And actually, when you went through it, the one thing that really kind of choked their chicken when it came down to their clients was their clients would pick up the phone and say, yeah, I want to move to Connecticut. How much? And so, it wasn't about how well are you going to take care of my stuff. It was all price was the differentiator. And so, my point with them was if we talk the same and we're all saying the same thing, what is our only point of differentiation? We are now a commodity item because we haven't made any kind of connection.

Exactly!

And when I was doing my roof, of my house, I was shopping for roofers. And I find that there was a roofer here that actually twice a year will donate a free roof to somebody in need. And they publish the stories on their website. Well, who do you think I'm going to buy my roof from?

Yeah.

Right? Were they a little bit more expensive? Yes. But their story, the narrative of being of service to somebody else matched my values and my value system. And we knew that just mere fact that they did pictures, that they're above board, and that they do this for their community. It's like, wow! This is to me. This was the emotional connection I needed to turn around and say, you're who I'd like to do my roof.

That's right. And your example of the moving companies, when they say, we're family-owned. We've been in business since 1857, or whatever it is.

Whatever.

People don't really care. But if we look at what they're trying to say, Family-owned, we're trustworthy, right? We're not a big corporation that you're gonna get lost. You're just gonna be a number. So, if we look at what they're trying to say and then we talk to the clients and say, well, what is important to you? I want custom service. I want to be able to call Judy and talk to her every time. I want to know that they have the experience. That's why they put some of those things on the ads. But when every single person like you talked about every company is listing the same thing, then yeah, you are reduced down to, well, who can give me the thing cheaper? And that's what we don't want to do.

Yeah, yeah. And to your point, it's so funny. And I see this with businesses all the time. Like a franchise will say, oh, independent businesses have it made because they can do anything they want. They can pivot instantly. And then independent businesses turn around and go, oh, franchises have it made because they have all these resources. Right? And so, we always have the two sides of the coin. Because to your point, a corporation will advertise how trustworthy they are. They're established. They're not going to go out of business. We're not going— we have all the insurance we need. A family-owned business is going to say, hey, we're not a big corporation. We're not going to— we're not in it for the profit. We're in it to— but they're both connecting with different words ultimately because they're trying to pull on that emotional string.

That's right. Well, and it reminds me of car dealerships now. Every single car dealership ad now says something like, one price. We list one price, you know, and we'll be done in 2 hours. Well, that used to be a thing for about a minute, right? Like one car dealership did it and it's the one price guarantee. And so, it's a genius thing because they kind of reduce haggling a little bit by doing that.

Yeah.

But now everyone says the same thing on their commercials and they act like they're the only ones, you know, come in here because we give you this. And it's like, Just like the other 3 commercials I just saw.

And I just published a blog post about Canada's Huggable Car Dealer. So, Google it because he talks completely differently about how he stands up in his community as far as what he does. And he doesn't talk about selling cars.

Yeah.

Right? And he is so successful. He's been successful now the last 10 years since he's kind of changed how he talks to to clients. And people will talk to him all the time in his community because they love his commercials. Because it's all about this idea of what does it take to become a huggable person.

Yeah.

Right? Well, and to that point, we had Michelin. Like when you think about Michelin and we had one episode with Rob Lelacher talking about the whole story behind Michelin. The whole Michelin star thing. It wasn't about being experts in food. At the time that they did it in the 1920s, it was how do we get people in their cars to go and travel so that they wear out their tires?

Really? That is interesting. I'll have to look at that one.

Yeah, look up the Michelin story. So, we've kind of shuffled around all sorts of things here. This idea of creating this emotional connection, is it fair to say then that a lack of emotional connection leads to A weaker brand loyalty among customers?

Sure.

Or does it just put you on the same plane? It's not weaker. It's not stronger. But it's just like everybody else.

I would say that it makes it weaker because the whole point of emotional connection, how connected does your audience feel to you? Who is your audience? How connected do they feel to you? How do they think of you as that huggable car salesman guy where they're like, oh my gosh, I love what they talk about. Because why do they love that guy? Because he comes down to a real human level. That's the other thing. We all know we can go to any car dealership and they're all 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. They're about the same. You want to get whatever model you want. But if that guy now, he comes down and talks on an emotional level to people about his things and what he's doing, he connects with them. So, people want— they're excited to do business with them. They can tell their friends, ooh, I got to go buy a car from that guy. It becomes something that's more fun. So, when you don't use their language, they don't feel seen, heard, understood, interested because you're just creating static. We all have enough static. And that's when we get back to that attention level and how to stop the scroll. I don't know what the statistics are right now but something like we all see 4,000 ads a day or something like that. I can't remember what it is.

Yeah.

If you're looking online, there's ads everywhere. Well, Our brains are learning how to tune stuff out. But what do they— what they don't tune out is what matters to us. And that's what we're getting at here. So when you can understand, and you understand by getting into discussions with your ideal client— if you don't have clients yet, you, you know, get into prospect— who your ideal client you believe is. We get into discussions with them about what are their challenges, what are their goals, what are their aspirations, what are they struggling with, what do they want most. What's most important to them? And we collect that language. And then, in a business, when you can build that into your business model, for instance, we have at Encore Empire an online learning platform where our clients go through this. Or if we run a workshop or anything, any of our products that we sell or offers have this where they can answer questions. Well, we are strategic about the questions that we ask. We want them to get help, but we also want to know more about that. Who do you serve? You know, all this stuff. What struggles? What have you tried before that didn't work? What have you tried that did? Um, those kind of things, so we can understand better after collecting enough data what the general message is that will work for our clients. And that's because we look for patterns in those kind of things.

Mm-hmm.

So when you can build in feedback loops somehow, whether it's through surveys, it's through questions and answers, it's through comments under a video like this, it's through any of that. And we pay attention to what people are saying. We realize that was valuable because of this. Oh, I love that when they said this. Oh, this is— that's me. I always struggle with this. We start looking at those things, the feedback that we get, and we start using— we collect the exact language. We put it in a language bank. It's an Excel spreadsheet. And then, we can use that when we're doing a sales page, or we're sending an email, or we're just posting on social media. Whatever it is, we want to make sure that because people are going to be like, oh my gosh, it's like she's in my head. It's like they know what I'm— they know me. And that's what we're after here.

I love that. And it just makes so much sense. I'd love to dig into some more strategies and especially on how one can get started because it could sound, it does sound a little bit like it could be overwhelming. And I'd like to get to that right after this.

When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star with a new book, Lights! Camera! Action!, Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater by Marc Haine. Marc uses his Business and acting experience to help you see your business like a live show so you can create a performance your customers will never forget. Buy Lights! Camera! Action! today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com.

Welcome back! I am speaking with the business growth strategist Carmen Reid Gilkinson. And I'm just loving this conversation because it just seems to make so much sense. But yet, we know that there's so many horrible practices out there with people just trying to throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks. And of course, in the meantime, they're just getting ignored. So, what would you recommend are the first steps a business should take to start forming this stronger emotional connection with their audience? You mentioned something about doing market research.

Yeah. And the word— words market research make people's eyes glaze over. It doesn't sound fun.

I believe it does. It's not sexy.

It's not sexy. But if you look at it, a lot of the things in business are mindset. And if you look at it as let's shift that to let's get curious about our audience, that when you get curious, that creates market research right there because you're wanting to know. I want to know what makes them tick. So, if you can take something that sounds bland, boring, and clinical like market research and turn it into, well, I'm going to put on my Sherlock Holmes hat here and I'm going to start looking at and examining and exploring what makes our audience tick. And so, who is our audience? Well, in order to really know that, you have to get into conversation with them. We like to say there are different— there's low-touch and high-touch methods for collecting ideal client language. High touch is getting into conversations. That's the best because you're getting it straight from the horse's mouth. And you can, you can ask your questions that, that help lead the person to give you the kind of information that you want, such as things that I mentioned before. What have you tried before that didn't work? What have you tried that did work? What are you struggling with most? What are your, what are your dreams? And all of this is in relation to whatever industry you're in.

Mm-hmm.

And if you're doing business-to-business and it's corporation-to-corporation, you'll want to find out from your connections there. They hired you for a reason. And during that onboarding process or prospecting process, they told you what their problems were. So, if for some reason you don't have a clear idea, and a lot of times we get all excited because, oh, I made a sale. And so, we don't really stop to look at, well, What? So this is what happens. I made a sale, so now I'm going to help them. But we don't take time to pause and really analyze what is it that they really need. And when we don't do that, we can make a misstep and we can lose a client because you start assuming that, well, I have the answer. I have the answer. You're so excited about it. You want to sell your answer, but you have to really know, like I mentioned earlier with our, with our company and the way we work with our clients. We know I could have five health coaches, and I know each and every one of them is completely different. So I cannot just blanket a solution across five different clients because it's not going to work out very well for us. We might hit the nail on the head with one, but not with the other. So what happens when you start doing this and you really start listening, and you even and they will appreciate it too. You can you know you can do check-ins if you have an annual contract with someone or you're servicing them in some manner that. Goes on for a while. Do monthly or quarterly check-ins, and when you do the check-ins, it's not just about how are we doing servicing you; it's what what are you finding? How are we moving the needle forward for you? Is there anything that we're missing the mark on? I mean, you really want to find out what's going on and how have things changed over the last thirty days since you've been working with us? How have things changed over the last six months? We want to get those words and. And be willing to hear the things that aren't so good because that's where you're going to find the areas that you can improve. So, you know, let them know, I want your honest feedback. I want to make sure that what we are delivering for you is exactly what you need. And I don't want to make any assumptions. So please, if we're missing the mark on something, let us know. So that's a more formal way. And then when we're talking about if you're in a smaller online business, Um, even the larger business can do this, but you go onto forums or groups or anything like that, discussions, um, under podcast episodes, whatever it is, topics that you, uh, that matter to you and your company and your, your audience, and you look at what are people saying about that. Um, reviews are a great one. So market research, we, we like to look at what's happening with our competitors as well, only to the extent to see, um, what are people saying about them? How are they serving? Are they doing something different? Can we do something different? Where— how do we differentiate ourselves? And so we look at reviews. Well, this was great except— and book reviews are a great way to get this kind of information as well. If you're looking for sales, if someone's— you're helping people with sales and you look up on Amazon sales books about sales and you look at the reviews and they say This was really good because they dove into this. This was good, but I wish they talked about this. That's the low-touch method, right? It's looking on social media. It's looking online for discussions happening and pulling out those things. And it can sound overwhelming, but what starts to happen is when you start paying attention, you start picking up on those things. And you'll be maybe out at a restaurant and someone's having a conversation next to you and they say something and your ear pick. perks up, right? And so, you can have an app on your phone. I mean, jot these things down wherever you go. But have one centralized location because then, you'll start seeing patterns and commonalities that you can address.

I love that. Once you put yourself, and I tell people this all the time, that once you put yourself in the mindset, all of a sudden, all the opportunities will perk up and be there. And as you were talking, you talked about the high-touch method. I do imagine that there's businesses out there and they don't know how to get in touch with their prospects. They might be a new business or they might have a business that's established. But it's like, hey, I run a restaurant or I have a welding shop or whatever. And I'm setting up but I don't have a customer yet that I can talk to. How do I go ahead and do market research in that case?

Yeah, so let's take the example of a restaurant. You're starting out. You have an idea of what your, your niche is, right? What is your menu? What are you doing? So then as you go, you start and then you start getting feedback from your clients. If they're saying, oh my gosh, I love this. Oh my gosh, I love that. And you can ask as people come in, here's our menu for today. We're really interested to make sure that we are offering what you guys want, what our clients want. We value our customers. Is there anything on here that's missing? Now, I give a caveat with this kind of thing because You can talk to 100 people, 100 people can tell you 100 different things, and you're not going to change your menu and add 100 different things to it. So you want to just get a general consensus of what are people looking for. Are they looking for more health-conscious meals? Are they looking for, you know, easy to go? What is it? You know, for a welder, you'll have to— if you're a welder and depending on what industry you're in, in your niche, you know what services you want to provide. So who is already purchasing those kind of services? And this is where in the beginning it is a lot harder. It's more legwork to get out there and become known. But through these conversations, that's how you start collecting that language. And it's not like you have to sit there and write down right in front of them. You could either record something or just take high-level notes. Or when you're done with a meeting, go into your car and make notes. So that you remember what's going on, so you aren't, you know, maybe jotting things down right in front of them. But that's how it starts, and then it just builds from there. And so then when you start getting these— you— and you always have a way to have reviews. We should always have a way to have reviews. So if it's a Google review, a Yelp review, or whatever review, ask for the feedback. You can send out surveys. You can do so many different things. You just want to make sure that you craft the questions on surveys in a manner that the answers you receive are going to help you understand what's going on.

Right. And really, you're not talking about checking boxes. You're asking people for, give me your feedback, and let them write in their own language.

That's right. That's right. And so, you do for a survey, you want to have some You want to make it easy for them, so you don't want to have it too writing intensive. You do want to have some options for them to check, but I'll give you an example that happened just the other day. I posted in our Facebook group about lead magnets. What are the three things? I gave three options in a poll. What are the out of these three things? What do you struggle with most? And the the interesting thing that's coming out of this was for me is that people are struggling with creating it more than. the idea or knowing what to do. And I never would have guessed that. This is what— this just shows the importance of that. Because if I go forward thinking, okay, I know that my audience needs to create lead magnets and here's what I think they struggle with, and I don't ever check in with them, well, I'm going to miss that, that piece. So if I wanted to create a product to solve a lead magnet creation problem, I need to focus on the right thing. And it's turning out to be something different than what I thought. And so, it's in all manners of ways can you do this. If you have a blog post, if you have a social media presence, ask questions, post polls. People love to engage. And when you can share your story, like you had some great examples, Marc, of companies that share their stories. The huggable guy, the one, the roofing company who gives back. What do you stand for? People want to know. People want to gravitate to someone that they like. We want to like people, right? But we can't be generic in the way we describe our business or ourselves, or there's nothing for people to grab onto. So if you're in your industry, if you see something that people do or that's missing and you can fill that gap, we always look for the things where can we fill the gap. And so For Encore Empire, one of the gaps we fill is access to the experts. If you go into the online world and you buy coaching programs, a lot of times you're just thrown into a learning platform and you have 5,000 hours of video to watch. And good luck and hopefully you'll learn something. Well, we don't do it that way. We do it— we are high touch. And that's a gap in the market. So, look for the gap in the market. If you're a welder and you see that everyone welds this one way, but you know that if I do it this way, we get 10x the strength or whatever it is. Speak to that. People need to know. They need to know what differentiates you. So, you have to start talking to that. And then, that will help them gravitate towards you. And that helps get that engagement to where when you ask those questions, you're getting the answers that matter. And so, in the beginning, it's all testing. When you're starting out, you don't have a big audience yet. You're going to have to gather the information and run with it. And keep testing and keep asking. And pretty soon, it gets fine-tuned and you're off to the races.

Love it!

And it all makes so much sense. This has been brilliant. Could you let everybody know how they can get in touch with you if this is resonating with them?

Sure, yeah. They can go into our websites. The best way, encorempire.com is where we're at.

So, we've been talking a lot about the language and stuff. In terms of features versus benefits, Like when I talked about the moving company, a lot of what they were talking about were features. That they had the big trucks. And they had all their definitions of what they thought made them a differentiation. How should businesses frame their messaging to highlight the emotional benefits and the value of their offer versus just talking about the features?

Sure. So, if we look at a car dealership for instance, Cars, we can talk about the features. It's got all-wheel drive. It's got a sunroof. It's got heated seats. It's got all those things. Those things are great. But what are the benefits of all this? All-wheel drive is something that adds considerable safety. You know, you buy a new car, you buy a used car, you buy a car that is, you know, Subaru or Toyota or whatever, whoever it is that says we have the highway transportation safety rating of 5 stars and above, right? Or we've been JD Power and Associates for this and that. And that speaks to the safety of it. The benefits are you feel safe and secure. You know that if the weather changes, you have all-wheel drive and you can make it home in time, you know, with— or in a home safely. You have enough room to bring all of your family with you in one go. You know, you talk about the benefits to them. It's better gas mileage. It's It's better this. It's better that. Instead of just saying that we've got 4 doors versus 2, all-wheel drive versus 2-wheel drive, that kind of stuff. We want to speak to what matters to them. We get your kids to and from school safely. You can pick up your— when you're picking up your parents to take them somewhere, you don't have to worry about this, that kind of thing. So, we want to speak to what matters to them.

Yeah, it's interesting because as you were saying that, I flashed back to— was either an Audi commercial or Subaru commercial that they talked about the safety of your family.

Yeah.

Right? And so, they say that. And they said something like, accidents will happen. And if you're in an accident, you want to be in a Subaru. Right? And they had a crash test dummy, whatever. Right? And it's like, how powerful is that when you're saying, well geez, I have my little kids in the back in the seats. And I definitely want them to be safe. Well, now it's not about how fast a car goes or whether or not it's got That's right, exactly. I love it. And again, it all makes perfect sense. I'd love to get into some cautionaries and some pitfalls to be aware of when changing our marketing messages. And we'll get to that right after this.

Pro Speaker Presentation Speech Timer app. No more checking your watch or calling for time. The Pro Speaker Presentation Speech Timer app keeps you on track with easy-to-see timers, even changing color for visual prompts during your speech. And you can set audio cues to practice or set it to vibrate so you don't even have to look. Be the pro you know you are. Download the app at speakerpresentationtimer.com.

Welcome back. I hope you are getting a I hope you got a ton of value from today's episode. As you can tell, Carmen and I are on a mission to support businesses just like yours. So, if you belong to an organization that could use our help, or if you or someone you know might be planning a leadership retreat or a conference, go ahead and drop us a line. We'd love to explore how we could be of service to you and your people. Carmen, this has just been such a fabulous— I can't believe how quickly the time is just flying. When people want to make adjustments, my fear is always that we look for band-aids first. And then, it becomes kind of the policy of the month or it becomes the, oh my goodness, we have to do this. And then, it peters off just like January 1st fitness promises, right?

That's right.

By February, it's like, I can't be bothered to go to the gym. Are there any cautionaries or pitfalls when people are starting to adapt kind of this new mindset of speaking, getting the language, speaking more emotionally to their clients? What should we be on the lookout for?

I think the biggest one is to not change the client's language. So, we're going to collect ideal client language and it may seem rough, right? It may seem like, well, I wouldn't use that in my marketing copy because we give it to our copywriter. Our copywriter polishes it up. Everything can be polished, but we want to say the exact language of the clients in there. So for instance, if we're doing a sales page and we're talking about how to overcome something, we want to say, we want to— here's how you feel now. And these are exactly their challenges. And then if you know what their goals are, here's what using our product will do. It gets you to these goals. And we want to list those in the exact client language. The rest of the sales page or marketing copy can be polish, and that's fine. But when we're talking about collecting this language, we're not collecting it to then polish it up. We want to actually use it because those are the words, those are the layman's terms, those are the ways they see it, that's the way that they feel. And so I gave that example earlier. We had a workshop where a gal came through and we asked, what are, you know, some of the main complaints that you get or the main challenges that your ideal audience Uh, has. And so she listed about 2 or 3, and she said, what I think they mean is— and it's like, no, no, no, don't do that. Because I, I really think the biggest thing is we get— we want to show our expertise, and that's like pushing in the background. Show that you're the expert. Show that you're the expert. And when you can, but we have to connect with them first, and then you can be the expert after they become the client, right? We want to show that we understand them. So, we understand them. We give them what they want. And then, when they become the client, we give them what they need. And so, that's the biggest thing. It's like, make sure that you aren't taking things and tweaking what they say. Use their exact language.

So now that you have the exact language, how important is narrative and storytelling in kind of what you're developing?

Well, so you have the exact language. Let's say you Someone, let's say it's a mom who cannot get their 2-year-old to sleep. And so, and she's a high-level executive and she's burnt out and she can't hardly make it through the day, right? So if you're a sleep consultant and you say, are you struggling with your high-powered job because your 2-year-old's keeping you up at night? I mean, that right there is a story. So they say, I'm struggling, I can't, I'm struggling to make it to work because my 2-year-old keeps me awake. So you take that and you just turn it into the question or the comment or the statement that is kind of a story. And that paints the picture for them. And they're like, yes, that's me, right? That's how they know, oh my gosh, it's like she's in my head. You know, if you say, are you struggling to make those meetings that you have to run are falling apart because your 2-year-old's keeping you up at night? And they're like, oh my gosh, yes, because maybe their boss has been on them or whatever because their performance is lacking. And so then it's like, well, let, you know, come to us. We're the sleep consultants. Here's what we can do. We can help you regain your much-needed sleep by helping your baby get the sleep that they need. The whole family will feel better. You know, you start talking about— so it's really from that, that one sentence or that one piece of ideal client language that you get, you can build a story around that. You can imagine it. And I think that's the, the beauty of it and the power behind it is When we're taking the exact words, those exact words kind of tell a story. But when we sit back and we try to come up with, well, why do people want to get— why would they want to come to me? I'm a sleep consultant. Well, I have bags under my— you have bags under your eyes. You're tired. You're not able to work out. I mean, you can come up with things, but until you can take the ideal language, which actually is a piece of the story and then build a story around that, that's how you do that. And if we're just assuming, I think that's the second big pitfall is don't assume you know, just like my story of the lead magnet thing. I just asked a question. What I got out of that was I never would have imagined that I got out of that what I did. And it's showing a whole different area. It's like, huh, that's so interesting. And so that's where that Sherlock Holmes hat is, right? You put that on, you're curious about things, you ask these questions, you get this information, And it paints a picture right there. So now, I can go in and take that information and I can create something that I know people want and need.

What I really took away from that is the importance as well of really defining your prospect's persona. Because to your point, the sleep consultant in that particular story would be looking at people who have young kids at home.

That's right.

But then, they might have another market of people who are young professionals that have no kids, who are going to have completely different issues than somebody who's got family. And so, they might actually create different messages targeting different niche prospect personas.

Definitely, yep. That's exactly right.

Is there any fear that by doing this, you become inauthentic?

I don't believe so. I think that by tapping into and getting to know your audience better, and that's the best way to be authentic. You're connecting with them on an emotional level. You're understanding them. I mean, that's the whole point of this. The point of this is to let's get to know who our ideal client is instead of assuming a whole bunch of stuff. Instead of knowing that here I am, I'm in this industry and this industry sells 100,000 widgets a year on average. So, my goal is to sell 150,000 widgets a year. And so, here's how I'm going to do it without ever talking to a person, right? When we do that, we're taking the emotion out of it. And again, I turn our attention back to that Gallup poll that says that 70% of buying decisions, and this is buying decisions for anything, are emotional.

Right.

And so, if you are looking at things You know, I'm all about data and I love to do that. And you need to collect data. You need to look at things and see how things are working so that you know how to tweak things. But if we're not connecting on an emotional level and we only get that analytical side of our brain going, we don't get into the emotion. We're missing the biggest part. And that's why you could have a program or a product or a service that is 100% fantastic and it will get your clients the results they want. But if you can't explain it in a way that connects with them on an emotional level, they're not going to do it. Just like the Febreze analogy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brilliant, brilliant. Carmen, could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Yeah, so you can go to our website. But we also would like to invite them to our on-demand marketing methodology workshop. We have a special link just for your listeners. It is encorempire.com/ /M for Marc, H for Haine, and L for live.

Love it! Thank you so much for doing that for the audience. That's brilliant.

Thank you.

As we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

I think that we can remind people that people buy from people. So, even if you're a corporation, you want to connect on an emotional level, right? We want to get down to the human level here. We don't want to be Cold. People buy from people. So get to know your audience, get to know your ideal client, and be able to connect with them, not only with their pain points and goals and aspirations, but with who you are as well. Right? Your analogy of that, or your story of the roofer, you know, he, he gives back. How do you give back? How do you make a difference? What matters to you? We like to talk about hope, conviction, and how-to marketing. We need to have a nice mix of all of it. We want to give our ideal audience hope. We want to give our convictions. I stand for this or I don't stand for that. And how-to, we want to mix a little bit of a how-to so they get quick wins in there.

Love it! Love it! And I can absolutely say that what you've been talking about today is what I modeled when I started working in a casino way back when. I started working where food and beverage in a casino was just a loss leader. And we had to do this huge $6 million renovation. And I had to go to my clients to find out what is it they wanted. And one of the things I found out was I had 2 groups of patrons. One who wanted, I want to have something quick. I want to go from my slot machine. I want to grab something really quick. I want to get back to my slot machine and keep on going. I had other customers who wanted to make dining part of their overall experience. So, 2 completely different demographics. And so, by listening to the clients, we were able to design the food and beverage offering at the casino to cater to that. And the end result was after 4 years, after from the renovation onwards, we went from $178,000 in food and beverage revenue to $4 million.

Wow!

Because we took time to listen to what the clients wanted.

Exactly! What a great story that is.

So, this has been such an enthralling conversation, Carmen. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge, your passion, and your expertise with us today. And thank you so much for that special offer. I hope people go to the link down below and click that link. Can you give it to me one more time what that link is?

Yep, it's www.encoreempire.com/mhl.

Thank you again. This has been wonderful. Thank you, Carmen.

Thank you so much.

If you have any questions about today's episode, or you would like a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is down below at meetwith.marchaine.com. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, why don't you go ahead Subscribe to this podcast. That way, you get notification whenever I bring you fresh new content each and every week. Thank you for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.