Success Secrets Exposed - Insights to tap into your customers emotions

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Welcome to Success Secrets Exposed with Sally A. Curtis, where we share stories of challenge, success, and inspiration along with practical tips and strategies to move you forward to your your success. And now here's your host, Sally A. Curtis.

Good evening and good morning to all. Welcome to another great show. It's our monthly Marketing Magic with Celeste and I today, and we're going to be talking about customer insights, customer emotional insights today. So a little bit of an interesting deep dive into emotions and attracting customers, etc. So for those that are new to the show, I'm a marketing strategist and business strategist for speakers, coaches, and consultants, very much specializing in content repurposing and LinkedIn conversations. And it's my role to help you amplify your voice, your message, and your impact. And I'll pass you over to my co-host Celeste.

Hello, good evening or good morning depending on where you're listening to us. I'm Celeste, and like Sally, I'm a marketing strategist, but I specialize in service providers with end-to-end marketing strategy and implementation. It's great to be here, especially talking about this topic, which Sally knows I love.

Yes, yes, it's definitely Celeste's wheelhouse. So I'm going to kick off by asking a great question, and the first one is, why are customer Emotion insights so important as it relates to service-based businesses or businesses?

Yeah, and, and I think you're right, it's business in general. And it's— so we like to think that we make purchase choices based on rational. We really need this because of X, Y, and Z, and this is— I need it for my house and/or for my life. But we are emotional beings. Every human being makes decisions and is driven by emotions. It's scientifically proven. That's how we operate. So decisions are actually made by our emotions. And then what we do is tap into a rational reasoning for that.

Mm-hmm.

Just to justify, just to tick that box and say, when other humans ask me, I'll give them a very rational answer on why I hired X, Y, and Z, why I had this service in my house, and why I made that choice on where I'll spend my money. So having an understanding, first of all, accepting that your customers make emotional decisions, that's a big tick. And then this is why it's so important to tap into their emotions. So we'll talk throughout the show a little bit of that combination between the emotional and the rational, because you have to tick the 2 boxes. But the journey is I make my decision based on emotions, and then I look for the rational, the numbers, the data, the, you know, other people like me have bought it and benefited from it kind of thing, to just tick that box and say, okay. my emotions stepped, I'm making that purchase.

Absolutely. And I've just had flashbacks to buying a red notebook binder thing, a very special looking one for a very special interview that I had to go to years ago. So I brought it purely and emotively because it was red and I liked it. But I justified it by saying that it was going to help me build my credibility. And I was going for the for interviews and those sorts of things with clients. And we were going through that process. So it was going to leverage my status and credibility. So there's the justification. So I bought it purely emotively because it was red, but I was able to justify it to whoever I needed to at the time. And so that just gives you a bit of an insight that we do it all the time, ladies. We do it all the time. So beautiful. What I find too, and I'm going to talk about the content repurposing and tapping into the emotion as well as LinkedIn strategy. And one of the big things we're seeing at LinkedIn at the moment is lots of people are conversing on LinkedIn, but everyone's going, is it a robot? Is it not a robot? So that hinky feeling is coming in. So that indicates that there's no emotional connection. So they're suspicious straight away. So we'll talk about more about that as we go through as well today. And one of the other questions that I really wanted to ask today is In what ways do tapping into the emotions really help give business owners the edge in business? So let's talk about that as it relates to both of our client audiences.

Cool. So I will just— and I'm not getting into the insights part yet, we're just gonna talk about specifically the emotion bit. So think about this, if we're telling you that humans make decisions, purchase decisions based on their emotions. Understanding what triggers the emotions are going to allow your business to make more, more sales. So there's a very direct and straightforward black and white connection. So if I understand what triggers my customers to, or my potential customers, or my ideal customers to click that button, add to cart, or to make that phone call and hire me? So in my case, like if I'm an architect, a lawyer, an accountant, an engineer, what's gonna make them call and choose me?

Hmm.

I mean, understanding those triggers, understanding the words that make them tick, understanding what are the main values that drive them. And if I may, just going back one little step and going back to the importance of having a brand, And I think Sally and I did a couple shows ago, and if you haven't heard that show, I don't quite remember the exact title, but go back on the episodes and I think it's really worth, um, watching again and listening about the brand personality.

Yeah.

So going back and thinking of your brand as a person with a voice, with a tone, with words that you use, um, does that connect with that ideal customer? Do they— do you speak the same language? Do you speak— and I don't mean language as a as a, you know, is it Portuguese or is it English? I mean, you use the same kind of tone, uh, the same kind of words. And then I think, Sally, if you could then take on that, how that is going to drive your content and how that's gonna drive, um, how you put yourself out in the world to really trigger, okay, come and have a look at my website, join my mailing list, You and I talk the same language. It's all emotional.

Yeah, very much.

It's all emotional. It's all an emotional connection.

And I love the, one of the examples you said yesterday about the difference in, so just going, picking up on the word tonation, that when you tell your, the littlest child to pick up their stuff in their room versus the big child, pick up your stuff in your room, the tonation is actually quite different. So understanding that level of tonation becomes very important. A very typical example of that that I see a lot, particularly when I'm working with clients' VAs who are repurposing content and creating content— for some reason, virtual assistants and business support people love to use capital, all capital letters on tiles and promotional material. And for us that are reading it, that's actually yelling. And it still reads the same way, but emotionally straight away, there's a little bit of a tiny, tiny, tiny hiccup. Because people's perception is all capitals is yelling. And so there's just those sorts of tiny little tweaks that really make a difference as to how somebody is going to respond emotionally to it. One of the other things that as it relates to joining the brand essence and the brand identity to the content that you create, if your brand is bright colors and it's energetically light, and then you suddenly produce tiles that are gray and black and they don't look the same and they feel a bit drab, you've actually created an emotional mismatch. disconnect between the audience that knows, likes, and loves you for your brightness and your color to going, oh, is she in a really bad mood? What's going on? This doesn't feel right. And they check out so they don't continue on the journey or the quest with you. They bail.

Absolutely. And I mean, I love that you mentioned colors and look and feel because they're such a big part of our— what triggers our emotions. So I really recommend everyone just go on Google and kind of look at the psychology behind behind the colors. And there's a reason why certain brands use certain colors. It's not like, oh, I just like pink and that happens to be my brand color. There's a psychology, uh, behind of which kind of people get attracted to that pink color. And what that soft pink that I choose for my brand, what does that trigger in you in the human brain? What does that bring to your human brain? So it's, it's all psychology, it's all emotion, it's all human brain operating and taking charge of some of our decisions. And that's what happens. And I think that's why it's so important for business to understand that you're dealing with human beings.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter if you're B2B, business to business. So my clients are mostly business to business. And one of the things that I often tell them is that I know you're dealing with a company, but there's still a human being behind it making that decision on whether they will purchase from you or not. It's a human being and they work for that company, yes, but a company is a person. It doesn't matter if you have 100 employees, 1, or 1,000.

Yeah, very true. And I think that's one of the things also that I see in my industry, particularly as it relates to people conversing with other people on LinkedIn. They suddenly get so stiff and so formal, and they start, you know, doing reach out or connection messages or requesting to connect with somebody, and they get all very formal. And it's sort of like, that's just really boring. And they wonder why people aren't connecting with them. Whereas in reality, a conversation on LinkedIn is not a boardroom standing up the front, you know, pitch. It's a, hi, let's have coffee, let me get to know you. It's chatty. And when people take that difference and go for it, go into that more of a chatty style, it becomes more personal. It's easier for people to connect with them. They're not doing the This is giving me a hinky feeling. Are they trying to sell me something? It comes back to that human, very natural human connection element.

And that goes to the emails as well, Sally. Just like LinkedIn, when people send emails and use email marketing, their emails is like, oh, this is not an email, this is a brochure. It's almost like they copied and pasted a blurb on their website and put it there, or there. I feel like I'm reading a brochure.

Yeah.

So there needs to be a conversation, even the way you start and finish that email. Uh, you know, I always finish my, my things like, you know, for email marketing and automations, forget the kind regards kind of thing. Like I always say, chat soon, or, you know, have a great weekend, which is how I would talk if I'm talking to you. And I'm like, oh, have a great— I send the email on a Friday. I'm gonna say have a great weekend, enjoy your loved ones, uh, chat soon.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because I'm a human talking to a human who's got a life. And, um, you know, and if you're aligned with what kind of lifestyle and, and things, which we'll talk about the inside side of things and how it relates to, to what we're saying, then you kind of have a feel for what their life looks like, and you can bring that to the copy as well.

Yeah, very much so. And understanding what's going on in people's worlds right now. And as an example in my world of that is during COVID obviously lots of people went to LinkedIn to continue doing business, to network, to meet people, etc. But there was a lot of automations going on at the time with those conversations, lots and lots of AI and automated bots, etc. So I found it interesting where there was clearly a bit of a slowdown in connection acceptances. And so I, in mine, and I got some of my clients to do the same, we would say, hey, there's no bots here, baby. It's a real person. So we talked about the elephant in the room, which created such a great response because people went, haha, that's so good. I'm really glad. I wasn't sure. I'm getting so many at the moment. I'm getting inundated. So we understood what was going on in their world and was able to highlight it, you know, talk about the elephant in the room. And that straight away made people go, ha, have a laugh, and then we could get into a really good conversation about it. So it does make a huge difference in the interactions and the responses that you do get from your clients wherever they're coming from.

Absolutely. And if I may, That just goes back to the insights as well. So, and I'm, I'm just going to make sure that everybody understands what an insight is, and it's very different than a fact. So certain parts of the, the customer research that you're gonna do to build your customer avatar are facts. I'm a female in my 40s. That's a fact. That's not an insight. But then when you dig deeper to really understand me, if I'm your potential client, then I'm a mom, I'm a full-time business owner mom, and then I have, you know, I live in this place, I like to travel, I like these kind of things. So these are insights. The insights are those deeper, more meaningful understanding of who I am. Mm-hmm. And with the LinkedIn, just going back, because I, I'm loving kind of the, the references here, is that, you know, I'm the owner of a marketing agency and I'm getting bombarded on LinkedIn by these messages offering me marketing services.

Yep, me too.

So there was absolutely no— so that's when you see someone who doesn't use any insights. So what they did was that I'm looking for a female who owns a business and is in this age bracket, right, in more of a senior position. So they, they use the age more to tailor for how senior you could be in, in a job. So that's as far as they went, and then they went blast.

Yeah, bang, bang, bang, bang.

You need someone to manage your social media? Do you need someone to do your website? Do you know? And I'm thinking, these are all services I offer. Why? And, and the conversation wasn't even, would you like to contract me to do the service for your agents? That would be a different conversation.

Hmm.

So there was absolutely a complete disregard for my situation, a complete, like, mismatch in the solutions they offer versus my pain points and the things I'm looking for. And then it's, it's game over. There's never going to be an alignment there. And I think what you need to understand is that we often do that with our businesses as well, with our clients. We get highly annoyed when someone does that to us here.

Hmm.

But we go out to market and we're not using insights to actually make that conversation meaningful for the client because we're so caught up in making the sale. This is my sales pitch, I've memorized it. And the conversation is me, me, me, me, me. There's no insights into who's that other person, uh, and what they're looking for. So I'm sure you have more examples and things on, on the LinkedIn area, but the LinkedIn is just an example. It's happening on Instagram, it's happening on Facebook, it's happening everywhere, on emails that we get, uh, blasted off, isn't it?

Yeah, very much so. And, um, I've got some dear friends that I'm conversing with just over varying different matters. Um, um, a couple of them as doctors and scientists, and they send me responses back, but their responses— and this is just personal stuff— but their responses are like 2 pages worth. And I look at that and go, can you just tell me the nuts and bolts? I don't want the whole lot. I just want the, you know, the the little bit. So I think, um, being conscious and understanding that your clients or your potential clients are feeling time poor. Now I say feeling time poor because we've all got the same amount of time. It depends on how we use it and how we prioritize it. I get that. Um, but the sense in the world is I'm running out of time, I'm busy, I don't have a lot of time to spare. So if you're going to create a LinkedIn conversation or an email and it's thousands and thousands of words long, it's going to be ticked and flicked very, very quickly. So if you're going to treat them in a tick and flick manner— let me just blast out stuff— then expect the same sort of response. So if you want to connect with somebody, do it in a very human manner. Brevity works, and you'll find the right people when you have the right tone and you understand what's going on in their world. They will appreciate that and they will reward you with their loyalty.

And understanding what goes on in their world is insights. This is exactly how we're making that connection between the customer emotional emotions and identifying those insights so you can use that for business. There's nothing wrong, and that's what I say to my client, there's nothing wrong in saying, sending emails or DMing people or having LinkedIn messages. These are great new ways of doing business, of finding great customers. And I don't think anybody gets annoyed with getting a DM.

No.

I think the annoyance is getting a DM that means absolutely nothing to me because you couldn't bother doing a 5-minute research and identifying a couple of insights about me, not just the fact that I'm a female, and that I'm in my 40s and I own a business, that's fact. That's not insight. Being a female is not an insight at all. I'm, I'm looking— and that's when we go back to the customer persona. Your customer persona can't just be males or females.

Hmm.

Because then there's no insights that you can do further to that to really understand what are they going through. Are they moms? Are they mums with the children who are grown up? Because the circumstance, even being a mum, is it a mum in a school with kids at school, or is it a mum of a grandchild? These are different as well. So yeah, keep understanding these are all gonna come with the insights.

Yeah, and another insight example around that is obviously with the children scenario, You know, don't bug them when they're doing school drop-off or school pickup or it's tea time. You know, it's some of the— if you want to really annoy people, get them at their worst possible time-related issue at the time. So that is more of an insight, but it's also understanding that and being able to converse around that. So in Celeste's example, and then in my example with working with the coaches and consultants saying, hey, I know you get lots of these messages. I just wanted to touch base with you because of blah, blah, blah. Understanding that yes, they get lots of those messages, letting them know that you know that they get lots of those messages, but you are different and you do want to be different. You do actually really want to connect with them. It all comes down to having those really meaningful conversations that don't feel like you're ticking and flicking. They don't feel transactional. They actually feel like they're going to help somebody. When it feels right, it then becomes transformational for them and people become much more receptive.

And can I just add that we are like humans like connection. So the problem is not the person doesn't want to connect. You're just not hitting the mark in understanding what kind of human being they are. And also, reaching out for the ones who are aligned with your brand and with what you're providing.

Yeah.

Not everybody's a good match. Not every female is a good match for you. Not every 40-year-old is a good match for you. And I always say, like, you know, email less, but with insights into what you're doing, with intelligence in what you're doing, with meaning in what you're doing. So blasting off 1,000 emails that will mean nothing and to anyone because you haven't added those little spices and like, oh, hi Celeste. Oh, I know that it's been really hard being a mom and running your business. So we have these automations that might help you so you free some time to spend with your son in school activities. Bling, bling, bling, bling, bling.

It

will automatically speak to me.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think too, you've just touched on something there. It's understanding the client insights. And something else that I really noticed as it relates to copy, whether that be email or when people are trying to start conversations with people through direct messages, is they go into fact-telling. So here's, as you said, off the website, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, this, this, this, this, versus having a conversation, asking a great question, and coming with stories. So stories and questions are a great way to interact with somebody to enable them to go, wow, they actually do care. So tapping into those emotions as well. Do you have anything to add on that? And then we might hit—

Yeah, it's just going through what we said in the beginning. It all starts with emotion. The facts are extremely important and you need them. You need to back yourself up, but the emotion is going to come first. So I need to engage with you. I need to connect first and then I'm going I'm gonna go check the facts, then I'm gonna go and kind of do my little research whether it justifies me doing business with you and me paying for what you, your services or your product.

Beautiful, thank you for that. So what we'll just do very quickly is just go to a quick commercial break and then we will come back and add some more information for you.

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So thank you for, um, joining, joining us back again. Just wanted to now touch on some of the emotional insights. And I'm going to dive into one of the articles that you actually shared with me, Celeste, as it relates to the perceptions and feelings that influence customer thinking and also motivate their buying behavior. And I loved the bit of a list that was put out by the New Science of Customer Emotions, and I just was going to share those with the audience today. That was standing out from the crowd, having confidence in the future, enjoying a sense of well-being, the feeling of— feel a sense of freedom, feel a sense of thrill, feel a sense of belonging, protect the environment, be the person that you want to be, feel secure, and succeed in life. So when I looked at that list, I sort of went, oh yeah, my clients want that one, and they want that one, and they want that one. Yeah. However, They support clients that want that one, that want that one, and that want that one. So I've found that a really, really good list and really wanted to share that list with people today. Because if you can understand what is the driver, or what one of those are drivers for your clients, it will help you have much more appropriate sort of conversations by tapping into that level of insights. Can I ask you to expand on that at all? Please.

Yeah, and I think that what we gotta understand with the digital world is that we have so many different channels and platforms to really start that conversation, right? So it's the same just touching on social media in general, and I always talk about treating your social media as a cocktail party, not as a sales pitch. And I think that's that, is identifying what really— so all of these things in that list are triggers. So it's where I wanna be. So I'm your potential client, you need to understand where I'm at, but also where I wanna be, and how do you fit into that journey. So I, I— how is your product or service or your brand gonna help me get there? And then from there, you're building the content appropriately. But then there's a second thing that you need to appreciate, which is the different parts of the journey I'm in.

Yes.

So it's like when Sally made the analogy of the toddler versus the teenager. So identifying that journey, so these are the steps of that journey. Sally is still in the toddler age, she just learned about my brand. The conversation is different than Celeste who has purchased from me before. I want her to purchase again. She's in this part of the journey. She's my teenager. She does give me a little bit more work because I need to keep adding extra value to her journey, but they're both very valuable. And then what happens is that they also become a great example for me to use of how do I find more Sallys out there? How do I find more Celestes out there who have the same lot, like the same life kind of style. They, they're roughly in the same insights, um, share similar insights. How do I find more of them? But I use their experience to bring those people in. And then when we talk about us listening to other humans and wanting to have that validation, me reading Sally's review about your product, it's fact-checking. It's, it's me doing the fact-check. I already have the emotional connection with you. My emotions, my gut feel says I should purchase. Then I go and read Sally's review about your product, who's describing her experience, and I'm thinking, oh my God, that's exactly what I'm going through, and that's exactly where I wanna be.

Yeah.

And she is my fact-check.

So what really, really highlights there is the difference between having a transactional conversation or a transactional journey versus helping people see their transformational journey and the steps that they can take because others have taken it before them. And when, when you address it in that manner, you actually are tapping also into The human's emotional connection to storytelling. Even though you may not be telling a story, you are helping them see and read their story into what's actually going on, into what the steps are. They will make their version of their story up around that as well as their fact-checking, which then evidence stacks the story that they've just told themselves, which then helps them go from that emotional connection to the

just Yes, so use customer feedback as a great insight, make notice, but also on the flip side of that, if you're having negative feedback from clients, don't get disheartened, don't take it personally, and take it as a learning experience. So your customers are, you know, telling you something that you need to listen and you need to adjust, adapt, change, Because if something is not hitting the mark, they're not having a go at you, actually providing— and I always tell that, and people roll their eyes when I say it, but someone writing negative feedback, they're actually helping your business.

Yeah.

They're not trying to destroy you. What can destroy a business is people who don't say anything and they just disappear.

Yeah,

this is what kills businesses because they give you nothing. You don't understand, you have no insights into why am I not connecting, why the— my emotional, um, alignment is not there. Uh, so the negative gives you as much as the positive, but the ones that don't give you anything are the ones I worry about.

Yes. Yeah, I'm just also going to tap touch on a couple of extra things there as it relates to— because you triggered something, um, as it relates to testimonies and as it also relates to feedback from customers. One of the greatest ways that you can leverage credit, the credibility of yourself and the testimonial firstly, is instead of just having written ones on your website which people go, yeah, I reckon that's just their friends or they've just potentially made those up, is actually have video testimonials of the person, of the person actually saying it, um, and/or using, um, your LinkedIn recommendations on your websites with the link underneath. So the actual testimony but the link underneath, because from an evidence stacking, on an evidence ticking tick box scenario, people are going to go, if it's real, it's going to be more real if it's a video, obviously. And it's going to be more real if it's a LinkedIn recommendation because somebody else has actually had to write it.

Yeah.

There may be some coaching involved and there may have been a bit of toing and froing, but it's in their words, not somebody's made-up words.

Yeah, that's great.

The other thing, just touching on that too, is if you're wanting to respond to a customer and you actually can't, you actually can't respond to them via phone, for example, You can do audio responses and video responses. And the reason I say that is because in an audio response, they can hear the tonation. They can hear that you're concerned. They can hear that you are genuine. And in a video, obviously, they can then see and hear that. That often comes across better than a typed response because sometimes if the person's in a bad— had a bad day or is already in a bad mood, the way they can interpret it can be quite different. So just a couple of things tapping into that emotional element of customers and how best to support them.

Yeah. Can I just— I just want to give 2 good examples of big brands that everybody's going to know and understand who really used insights to scale and to become who they are today. So Netflix, uh, if you haven't read the book, so that's a book called, uh, This Is Never Gonna Work or something like that, which was the beginning of Netflix and people telling him this is never gonna work, your concept is just not, not, uh, not gonna hit the mark. So we know who's laughing now. But Netflix from the beginning they've used insights to every decision they made. So every decision they made from the beginning were about what the clients are telling us, um, either by telling us or through their behaviors.

Yeah.

Which becomes an insight. So they've adjusted a lot, and I don't know if lots of people know that. Those who read the book will know. But, um, they started as, uh, so obviously when they started, Blockbuster was the thing. That's how you watch videos. You go, you get your videos. There was a whole experience attached to it. And they started as a video delivery, so you could actually not have to go to the Blockbusters. You could just go online, pick your videos, get them dropped to your house. After certain days, you had to post them back. And obviously they kept adjusting and to the insights, and became to a point where people like, I don't want to go to the post office and Um, and then it became all digital. They started investing in their things. But the other thing that they always use insights to, to this day, is what shows goes on Netflix. Hmm. So you'll see very often that, you know, this show got canceled on season 1, or that show got canceled on season 2, or— and this is all based on people's insights. How many people are watching? Are people are not watching for 5 minutes and then turning it off. And they then make a decision whether your show is going to continue or not. You always have your first, uh, season as a pilot, but the customer insights are what going to define whether you're still on or not. And the other one was Nike. Nike started, um, like the, the founder of Nike was loved running and was just not good enough to be a runner, uh, to be an athlete. He, he wanted to be an athlete and never really got there, but he still wanted to feel like an athlete. So he wanted to develop a product that made him— runners, um, feel like athletes.

Hmm.

So the whole beginning of of Nike wasn't tailoring athletes. That became— that was tailoring the normal person. But then insights in the market start telling actually the athletes need a level up in their shoes. So he went and started developing more appropriate shoes for the proper professional athletes. So these are all insights. What I'd like to say just based on that with business owners is that I know that you have this idea and you started your business, and this is really important for you to listen. You need to allow customer insight to make you shift your business if you have to. Nike started as running shoes for non-athletes. They listened to the market and identified that athletes actually also needed better shoes, and it allowed them to scale to that point. Netflix started as, uh, you could order your videos online and don't have to physically go to the shop, but you're still getting your tapes, your videos. And they listen to the customer and they adapted the entire business model. So if you're at a place and you don't feel that you're making enough sales Get customer insight to tell you, do you need to adapt your product? Do you need to change it slightly? Do you need to offer something else? And be okay with that. It doesn't mean you did wrong back then. It just means that you need to keep evolving. And I think that's really important. And I think business owners struggle with that.

And I think that leads into a really good opportunity to share around asking asking great questions. Because I think business owners get so stuck and they get confused about what should I do next, how can I pivot, how can I adapt. Whereas the best place or the best people to ask that question to is your customers because they will actually help you. As in the Nike example, as well as the Netflix example, the adaption came through the insights from the customers and the gaps or what gaps are in the marketplace. So I'm just going to share a couple of minutes just talking around asking great questions. So I would suggest, and this was actually just a challenge that's been reiterated to me from a past coach who actually got me to do this 10 years ago, and I'm going through the process again now, but really write down a series of really great questions. And I don't mean just questions. I mean really great questions to ask your customers, because aren't you in conversations with your customers every day? You are. So if you can take— ask 1 or 2 questions to a client every day and gather that intel, it might— will make a significant difference and give you the natural ability to adapt and fill gaps. So if your customers say things trigger trigger words like, I wish you did that. I really love what you do here, but could you do X? An example in my own case was, um, I do content repurposing. I've had a number of people ask me, could you teach my VA how to do this? So as a result of that, there's clearly a gap in the marketplace. So we're creating a product around that coming up. Um, but some of the great— the difference between a good question and a great question. So what can I do for you today? Versus what, what has— what got you out of bed? What enabled you to— what created the reason for you to drive across town and spend some time with me discussing your business? What are you hoping to actually get out of today? And what drove you to connect with me to make a difference in your business? Then shut up. And let them think about that question because you're gonna— they're gonna need a moment because it's an unusually deep question. Then the follow-up question to that was, that's great. Can you tell me a little bit more specifically about whatever they've said? And you're actually getting in, going from the surface level reason why they think they're there to the actual real reason, the emotional reason why they're there, the motive as to what they're wanting to achieve, their deep, deeper desires and their deeper goals. So asking great questions can really make a difference. Also asking, why didn't that work for you? What was it? What were the elements that were easy in it? What was the elements that made it difficult? Why didn't it quite work for you? What have you tried before? Great. What's— what specifically did you try? Did, did you do all of the process? Did you do only 1 or 2 steps of the process? Because that gives you insights into, you know, are they somebody that's going to follow a 7-step process? Or does it need to be a 3-step process? Yeah. They're all habits and behaviors. Because one of the things that came out when I was listening to you was that people have behaviors, obviously, and they will tell us things if we shut up and listen. And so that was something I really wanted to just touch on there around the great questions. The other thing is you can use tools such as creating diagnostics or scorecards. I'm not going to say the word surveys, but you can create tools that actually help your clients move forward by asking questions. It also is a great way to prequalify people before they come, come to you. So I think customer insights come from leveling up the way in which you ask questions.

Absolutely. And just further to that, listen and take note. Yes, listen and share with your staff. Listen and have a telly, um, to build rapport on what was the feedback, what did we do about it, because you also need to be made accountable for Okay, what's next? Nothing annoys a person more than you taking my time for feedback and then getting on with your day.

Yes.

Or I just wasted my time. I put some thought into it. I want your business to succeed. You ask me what's working, what isn't. I took an hour of my day, went for coffee with you, and told you crickets.

Hmm.

So there needs to be a process. Yes, sit down, listen, take note, and act on it. The action that follows could be as little or as big as you can fit within your business model. Of course, it doesn't mean that, you know, whatever clients tell me I'm gonna do, but also follow up on me saying, look, thanks for your feedback on X, Y, and Z, this is what we're doing about it. Because that's really important.

Important as well. So following up with that customer, I think it's equally as important to actually record— that was record, write down and record what your client has said. I had a really interesting SMS from a client the other day who's got a— we've got a mutual client, and I got the message to say, oh my God, they asked me the same question again. It's sort of like I've answered that question so many times already.

Yes.

That becomes really frustrating. That indicates that you are not listening and that you do not care. And so that's a bit of a, a bit of a no-no. So make sure if you're going to ask a great question, or if you're going to ask a question to a client, that you actually are recording it as well as acting on it and letting them know where the progress has been as well.

Absolutely.

Yeah, beautiful. So just as a bit of a wrap-up and a bit of a lead-in to to next week. I'll just give you a bit of an insight as to what's happening next week. We have Barbara Ellis coming on who's going to be talking about clarity in communications. Now she is a Personality Pro expert, so she's going to be sharing with us by understanding your client's personality, which fits into their, uh, ticks, quirks, and behaviors like we're talking about today, and how you can actually Um, influence, um, and create greater impacts when you understand who you're conversing with, and then you can converse in a manner that suits them, that helps them have greater and faster understanding and forward movement faster. Um, so her phrase is, to increase your influence, impact, and income, you need to be a great communicator, and that starts with understanding. who's across the table from you. So a little bit of insights as to what's happening next week. So any last comments as it relates to customer emotion insights today, Celeste?

No, I think it's, it's just keeping track. It's all part of the journey. Like I said, go back to the episode about your brand personality and yeah, and connect with us if you want to continue this conversation. Both Sally and I are very active on LinkedIn. So yeah, just find us there.

Beautiful. And my last closing thoughts were, you already have and know enough. It's already inside you. Ask questions, be more human, and connect and listen more. Thank you very much. We look forward to seeing you next week, and Celeste and I next month, the beginning of the month. And we'll see you all soon. Have a great weekend as it comes up. Thank you very much.

Bye. That's it for this week's episode. Thank you so much for joining us. I trust you got some inspirational tips to move you forward. See you next Thursday at 7 PM Eastern for more Success Secrets Exposed.