045. How to Design Your Client Journey and Why

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Well, hello, my friends. How are you? I hope you're having a fabulous start to your week or whatever day you're listening to this, but I'm having a great start to my week. I'm actually recording this on a Monday, and I know that that's normally the day the podcast gets released. So I feel like I'm right in sync with you if you are one of those that listens to the podcast the same day that it comes out. But so I wish you a fabulous week and hope you had a great weekend. We had a very good weekend. It was all about, like, just getting stuff done at home. It was nice to be home. The kids are back in school. They had their first week of school last week. Everybody survived, but it's always a little exhausting, right? Like getting used to a new schedule and just getting back in that school year routine. So we're kind of in a little time of transition, but we're doing well. And so it was nice to have kind of a down weekend. The kids were social, got to see friends and stuff. So that was good. And now I am back at it, back at the desk and ready to roll. I really just want to say I love this time of year after the kids get back to school. School. I feel like June and July for me is. Is, you know, I'm working and whatever, but I feel like it's just a little bit of a looser schedule and it's loosey goosey. And I'm wanting to do summer things and hang out. And so this time of year rolls around and I'm like, all fired up because this last five months of the year is generally very active and busy for me and lots of things happening. So. And this year will be no different. So I'm really excited to just jump right into that. And I feel like if you are feeling that lull, just think about there's still like four and a half months left. Well, I. When this comes out, maybe four, four months left in the year. And for a lot of us, this is the busiest and most profitable time of year. So. So let's just dig in and step in. And so what I have for you today is going to help you to really nurture and grow relationships in your business. That will turn into revenue for you. So it's really important to understand your client journey. And so I want to talk about that today because I work with my clients a lot on this and I work on it in my own business continually. I'm always tweaking this and making it easier and better and smoother. And I get compliments on my client journey from people that come into my sphere. So I wanted to share this with you because I do get asked a lot of times about how my marketing is set up and like, what's your funnel, what's the technology that you use, who sets it up, who's this like magic team or vendor or software that you use and how can I get all of that? And so I'm going to take you under the hood, behind the scenes, whatever, and answer all those questions. But what I want to first highlight is that when we think those or when we ask those kinds of questions, sometimes what it signals to me is that people think that it's that how I have my marketing set up is why I've been able to build a six figure coaching business. And that's partially true. The truth is yes and no. But it's not just the marketing system, right? It is about the thoughts behind the setup. I have created the system around growing relationships and trust with all the people in my audience, in my orbit, and creating relationships with every single one of them. And I think about how I want to be showing up and how I can create a system that is manageable for me. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. And like I said, this is work that I do with many of my clients to help them set up a unique to them and unique to their clients journey that has the greatest chance of providing value, growing and ultimately bringing in growing relationships, I should say, and ultimately bringing in new clients and revenue. So the way I've created my system may not be the best for you. And that's something that we could talk about, right? So if you want to know the best way to set up yours, obviously listen to the rest of this podcast because I'm going to show you, or show you, talk to you, tell you how to do it, share with you how to do it, and how you can apply the same concepts that I use to build my system, to build your own, that leads your clients through a very comfortable, welcoming, fun journey, getting to know you and trust you. Right? So how we do this is number one. Think about the client. We start with the client or the potential client. The our best fit client, we start thinking about her, right? So my business is not built around a funnel. It's built around the person, the woman that I seek to serve, which, as you know, is women that are starting building and scaling their businesses. Then I think about how I want to connect with her, how I want to show up for her, how. And then I design her a client journey. Or basically it's just the steps of a relationship, which is all the ways I can start and build and nurture this relationship with her. And then if and when it's right for both of us, ultimately, we end up working together, right? And so I like to think about this, that clients come one at a time, right? Some come fast and some come slower. So I like to think about it like my tomato garden. So you plant all your seeds and the little plants grow, and the little tomatoes grow on the vines, and first they're green, but they all turn red at different times and different speeds. But every day I'm still out there watering, fertilizing, you know, taking care of those plants. And even though. In nurturing those plants, even though some of them will mature and ripen faster than others. So. So I like to think about one woman at a time and her journey to learning about me, helping her understand exactly who I am, what I do, how I could help her, and then helping her in all the ways that she needs and wants with the value that I put out and in her own time and on her own terms, right? Like, I'm not gonna force and convince or cajole or pressure. That's not how I like to work. I'm going to give you all the value, and then you get to decide when you want to work with me or when you think it might benefit you and your business to work with me, right? And so that's what I think about. So I'm always putting out the value, and I don't hold anything back. Like, whatever I put out here on the podcast or in my emails on social media is the same stuff that I work with my clients on. It's like the container, you know, of free value is. It's just. It's not all put together and personalized for you and your business. And then obviously my paying clients get that personal attention, but all the value is similar, right? So I think I like to think about all the ways that I start out by thinking in designing a client journey is to first think about all the ways that my best fit client learns about me. And then what you can do is you can even like take a piece of paper or a whiteboard, however you like to, like, draw and think and write and think about all the ways that your best fit client learns about you and write those across the top of your paper. So maybe it's by referral or maybe it's by networking, or maybe it's on social media or through your blog or your podcast. So that's how people that have never met or known you before get to know you or, you know, find out that you exist, right? So that's like step one in the relationship. They find out that we exist. So we want to know all those different ways and you know, the major ways, right? So then the next step is to think about, for each one of those ways that someone learns about you, what is their next step? So, for example, take networking, okay? So you go to a networking event and you meet someone and you want to keep in touch with them. You want to invite them into your audience, your orbit. So what is the next step? What do you do? And so you plan that out. So maybe it's you exchange business cards or, you know, find each other on LinkedIn or whatever. But you have to have already thought about how am I going to connect with people at this networking event and get in touch with them in the future, right? So I like to have business cards. So I have business cards. But not, not everybody has business cards. So if they don't have business cards, we'll find each other on LinkedIn or we will, you know, give each other our text and text each other or whatever. So just having thought ahead, like, how am I going to exchange information so that we can remain in contact? And then, so the next step in the process is then ask yourself, so what is the next step in your process of growing the relationship and building trust? So in this example of networking, you meet them, you exchange business cards. So then what's your next step? You're going to reach out to them maybe via email and say, it was nice to meet you, let's get together for coffee. I'd love to learn more about you and your business so that I can refer business to you. No selling at this point, right? We're just growing and beginning the relationship. And then you could also invite them to connect with you on social media. Let's get to know each other on LinkedIn or whatever. And then say you, you could also invite them to join your email list if you have one. So then say you meet for coffee. That's like the next step, right? So you're drawing all these out on your piece of paper or your whiteboard for each one of the ways that people come into your orbit, right? So in this example for networking, your next step is meeting for coffee. And so say you meet for coffee and then you always want to have and be thinking about like what will be the next step in the relationship, right? So maybe. And what I have always found to be the most effective is being more of a giver than an asker. Like, don't ask anybody for anything, right? Offer something to them. Offer them value. Offer them, you know, ask them how can I support you? You can, you know, maybe come up with an idea for a collaboration or think of a client or a contact that you want to connect them with. Or you could invite them to another networking group. You know, if that's something they're interested in. Just think about how can I offer value to them in, you know, in this situation? And so some relationships will need to be nurtured. Like I was talking about with the tomatoes for a long time. Like I have clients now that have, I've known for years and years, right? And now they have become clients, but it's taken years and years and not. And I was, you know, never actively selling to them. But it's just years of developing that relationship. And then other clients, they like, find out about you, they see you on Facebook, they reach out and they, you know, want to have a meeting to discuss working together and they sign up right away. And that's just the way business is. So what we need to be thinking about is how can we accommodate both of those fast and slow clients opportunities in our marketing. And so when we do that, we create a very balanced streams of marketing. We have a system where we are bringing in people that want to work with us now. And then we have a system where we're bringing in people that want to work with us later. So it creates that continual, consistent business coming in, right? So you also want to think about someone comes to you or messages you on Facebook and says, I want to know how I can work with you or I'm interested in working with you. What's our next steps? Then you want to be able to have a good next step, right? So for me it's, I send them a link to my calendar and say, let's get on a call and get to know each other. And so think about what that is for you. And you have your, your client journey and you are going to fill that out, right. Of each step so they reach out to you. Via direct message on social media. What's the next step? You invite them to a call with you or you know, whatever it is your process, you get to create it. And so what I want us to be thinking about for each one of these steps is like what is the next logical, comfortable, non pushy, non salesy step? And a step that feels very natural, right? And I joke sometimes that it's like you know, building a romantic relationship where if someone comes on too strong or they're like after a coffee date they want to go away for a weekend and you're like wait, no, no, no, no, that's too much too soon. So it's similar. We want to kind of be thinking about this in a similar way. Like we don't want to come on too strong. We want to respect and honor the other person and, and honor what will be comfortable for them. And the next step of getting to know you, like you and trust you, right? And like I said, it could take years. And so this is why it is important to have a mechanism where you can reach out to people and keep in touch with people. So for example, like an email system, right? So you'd want to be sending out regular emails. So folks that have, you know, you maybe have connection with have in this instance of networking, have gone on a coffee date with and they have agreed that you could, you know, had asked you to put them on your email list, then you're emailing them and keeping in touch with them that way and maybe you give them a call every month or couple weeks or whatever just to check in and say hi and just think about what are all the ways that you are building relationships with people and keeping in touch with them. And so I want you to think about going back to list that your list of all the different ways that people find out about you having that step by step relationship outlined for each one of those methods and then think about what is the system that I need to support that. So in this networking event, right, we've got to have business cards if we decide that's how we're going to give and receive information, right? So we've got to have business cards and we have to have a system to get those business cards into some sort of tracking so we know who we've connected with and who we haven't. And then an opportunity for them to, you know, be able to sign up for our email list. So we need to have an email service provider so we can be sending out emails regularly and keeping in touch with people and Building those relationships. So do that for every one of those ways that people learn about you. And when you have done that, you will have a very clean and clear client journey. And so then step by step, begin adding and building out the pieces of that that you need. And keep it really simple at first, right? So in the example of the networking, you know, you've got to get business cards. That's really not that hard. It's pretty simple, right? You can design them yourself on vistaprint or Canva. I did mine on Canva and I and my team helped me. We designed them ourselves and they print them and mail them to you from Canva. It's great. So then we're getting business cards coming in. What are we going to do with those? So I used to use, I no longer use it, but I used to use just a spreadsheet in Google, a Google sheet. And I would have the person's name and I would have, you know, the date that I met them, where we met, and you know, maybe a little note, and maybe a note of that I emailed them or whatever just in the spreadsheet. It was super simple. And then I would, you know, when people became clients, I would like highlight them in green and I could see that. So then I could kind of get an idea of how many people I need to meet before a client comes along. Right? And so you could even get. Use. Use some technology. For example, use Google contacts or use your I. If you use iPhone or Apple, you can use contacts through there where you can take notes and keep track of people's information. There are business card scanning apps, so you can scan business cards and just have that information preloaded into your, your contacts. So just think about that system for each one of those steps in the relationship, right? And draw it out. And I know it can sound overwhelming, but just take it step by step and say, how could I make this super simple right now with the tools that I already have? And then maybe later on down the road you want to add something like a CRM system. I just added a CRM system myself a while back. And I use it. I don't feel like I used it to its full capacity, but I do use it. And I'm learning little by little and step by step how to use it more and how to use it better. And so that's, it's all part of the process, right? Like I didn't, you know, put my business on hold for a month so I could go get training on my CRM. Like, no, that's not gonna bring in money. So we have to be smart about supporting our business and keeping business coming in, even if we want to have some of this support with technology. So the CRM system I use is pipedrive and I like it and it has a business card scanner app, so that's nice. For email marketing, I use personally, I use Kajabi and I use that really for the entire back end of my business. If you have any questions about that, feel free to reach out to me. Usually when I mention Kajabi, people have lots of questions and I love it. So I'm a a good case study for Kajabi. But you could use a much simpler email standalone email service provider like Mailchimp. I've implemented and helped lots of my clients use Mailchimp. There's also ConvertKit, which I'm not as familiar with. I've used Constant Contact in the past and that is fine. So any of those work? And they are, I don't know how much ConvertKit costs. I know Mailchimp and Constant Contact are relatively low cost, so it's not a huge investment for you. So just to recap, you're going to go through each way that people find out about you for your client journey and then you're going to within each one of those ways, you're going to think about all the steps, each next easy step in building the relationship. And then you're going to put the system in place that supports each one of those steps and then make the invitations right and inviting people to go from step to step and building those relationships with them. And this is meant not to be very rigid and like formulaic, but it's meant to support you in building relationships. So create something that feels natural and feels easy and feels like you know where the relationship is going so that when you, you know, meet for coffee. And I've done this a hundred times myself, so I can say it because I know it happens. So you don't get up from having a really great coffee conversation and just go your separate ways and never see the person again, right? And then for me it would be like I'd get to my car and I'd be like, oh, shoot, why didn't I, you know, offer to, you know, invite this person to this other networking thing? Or, oh, I gotta put this person in contact with somebody else. And so having intention is all we're doing with this process, right? Like, not making it too rigid, but thinking about how can I grow these relationships in a way that feels really great to me. Feels like there's intention behind it and it makes the other person feel special, right? It because it kind of just feels awkward when you like, have a really great conversation with someone and then you get up from the table and you're like, okay, see you. Bye. So. So just really be in tune with and you can change your process on the fly, right? So just really be in tune with what's happening in the conversation, what feels natural, and go with it. And just know that you have this system in place where you're gonna keep in touch with this person in the future. And whether they work with you right now or not, they're all special, wonderful, worthy contacts and connections. And so that's what I like to think about. Like, I just love connecting with people and whether we decide to ever work together or not, it doesn't matter. Like, I just really enjoy getting to know people and offering them value as much as I can. So that's what I have for you today. And if you have any questions, please reach out to me about setting up your own client journey and setting up in a way that is going to help you to create relationships and build your business. I would love to help you. This is one of my superpowers and something that I think has really served me in my business and that I get compliments on a lot. So that's what I have for you today, my friends. I hope you have a great week and I will see you next time. Bye. If you like this podcast, then you have got to sign up for my free on demand video training Grow youw Sales Doing what yout Love Where I teach you in depth my simple process that you can implement right away to harness your mindset and your skills to grow your sales to whatever level you want. So go grab that now. The link is in the show notes and I'll see you next time. Time.