Keep It Simple Stupid

And we're back this week with a solo episode. And I want to talk about simplicity. And why do I want to talk about simplicity? Well, a lot of this comes from experience over the years of running my own agency and working with clients. And, you know, we tend to see tools and find tools, and they can practice and promise all these great things, automate this and do that. You should be having multiple funnels and all this kind of stuff. And the reality is, what I found is that The more you put into place, obviously the more complicated it becomes, but it also becomes extremely hard to manage it, but also set the expectation from, you know, the client's user experience. So if you can't easily explain what your customer journey is, what that process is to somebody who doesn't understand your business, it's too complicated. Right now you're in your business and you spend time working with your, with your team. Your team members and you're developing content and you're developing processes, and it may be easy for you to say, okay, we've got this 5-step process, but if they do this, then they go to here and they go to there. But try to explain that to your grandmother, right? If she can't understand it, or your grandfather, if he can't understand it, in my opinion, it's too complicated. Now I'm going to tell you a real-life story that happened, you know, in the last couple weeks. So I have a retainer client that's in the financial space, and they have, you know, Over the years, we're working together, they've tried different angles. They've tried different visual approaches. But they didn't really have an actual step-by-step process or journey in which their clients went through. And that was up until 2 weeks ago when they developed an initial evaluation, let's say. It's a scorecard that helps people understand where they are currently in their business financially.. And you know, we sourced out a really great tool that allows them to give away a really complex but simple to understand report. And you know, the app is called ScoreApp. If you go to that, if you're looking for anything like that, scoreapp.com. You know what? In years of using quizzes and tools and evaluation technologies, I've not seen something that it was so easy to use from a user interface for us to set up and customize, and also from the user who takes the quiz for them to get the results and get that PDF. The second part, it also integrates with their CRM, their marketing automation system, so there's follow-up that happens after they complete it, which is in my mind awesome. Okay, so that's step one. Now this client is actually going out, and their main content offer is to be a guest on podcasts. They also have their own podcast, which I'm a huge fan of, but they're going out to be a guest on other podcasts to start talking about their circle of influence, their zone of genius, all that kind of stuff that they are really good at. And their main angle is, "Hey, you know what? We've got this great scorecard. Go to this website and get it." Now, I'm not going to tell you what the website is because it's not launched yet. But they send them there. They get the scorecard. And then, they have a secondary online group, small group information session, hour and a half. And people can sign up for them. You know, they're not evergreen, they're live. And that's the next step in the process is once you've done the scorecard, you're then going to get invited to go to one of these completely free at this time, completely free. They may charge for them down the road, but you want to make sure that you get the kinks out of it before you start charging for something. Once they do that, then the third step is their program, their year-long program that they work with these, these clients for the whole year to help them really amp up the financial side of their business. 3 steps, really easy. Scorecard, small group session, year-long program. Simple as that. Right? Think about your business. Is it that simple? Can you explain what you do in those terms? Now, what happens in between? Right? When we look at this from a, from a marketing side and how we can put automation in place, you know, you have a website you're driving them to, you know, make sure that whatever that is, that domain is easy to understand, something that could be verbally received, right? There's not misspellings, right? They originally were thinking of something with entrepreneur in it, but guaranteed there are so many people out there that will misspell entrepreneur, don't know how to spell entrepreneur, not the best domain name to use. So you want to make sure that you pick something that works really well. Now, if you're using a, a like survey tool, you know, they give you, you know, a URL, but it's not a, a vanity or nice looking URL. So you can always just buy one for a couple bucks. Online and redirect over to that so that you have that name that you can utilize very well verbally. And also, if you're doing any kind of print or online advertising, it'll visually look well, look good for you as well. So that's the first thing, is to do that. And then, you know, they go through that quiz. Now, what if they start the quiz and they don't finish it? Well, there should be some quiz abandonment process there that notifies them. Now, this tool that they're using it does have that built in, so that's taken care of. Now they complete it. What do you want to do? Well, on the thank you page, it's going to promote these small group sessions, but guarantee not everybody's going to be converting 100% through that. What about the ones that complete the quiz but don't actually do it? That's where their CRM comes into play, and we build out a nurture sequence that will start to, to warm them up to the idea of joining one of these sessions. You'll do that for some time, and then if they don't actually convert, then they can go into what we call a high-value nurture. And this is just drip content that will go out to them almost every 2 weeks for a year. And then after that, you can decide, do you want to extend it past that, or do you just want to call them a dead lead and then clean them out yearly or even monthly out of your database, depending on the volume that you have coming through. But if they do then go to that small group session, Right? They register. Now you want to have automation that comes out to them up until the date of it that will actually make them feel good about their decision. Set the expectations of what this is because you want them to have a great experience, especially if you're going to be pitching them into a year-long program after that, right? Which may be a big jump from an hour and a half to 12 months, right? Obviously a bigger price point. So you really need to make them feel warm and fuzzy and good about their decision. And that's going to be key. And you do that in the nurture from when they take action to when they actually show up. Now, same thing that happened when they came out of the quiz going into that small group session, when they come out of that, if they don't actually buy into the program, you want to start to educate them and nurture them even more about the benefits of the program. After said period of time, which you can determine, you would then drop them into that high-value nurture, right? And then keep them in there for a year because I guarantee people that are— it may not be the right time for them to do whatever it is that you have in your business or your process, doesn't mean in 2 months, 6 months, 9 months down the road the time may be right then. But if you just gave up on them at that point and didn't stay in touch with just giving them resources, maybe it's just blog posts or podcast episodes or whatever it is, uh, that you have. If you're not coming into their inbox or coming into life when that time is right, they're not going to think of you because you weren't there. And I guarantee if you have a process set up like this, you're going to start to reclaim some of that business that that you later or earlier had felt, you know, was a lost lead because they didn't buy right away, right? People give up so much on that. Salespeople give up so many times, you know, call people back twice and give up, right? It's not like the 7th or 10th time that they actually make the sale if they are persistent in their follow-up. So that's what I want you to take away from this episode is think about your process, your sales process, your journey through your whole business, And what is it that you do that can be extremely simplified and explained to the most basic person that is not in your business, right? I challenge you to do that. Think about that today. Think about that tonight. Think about that tomorrow in the shower. What are you overcomplicating that doesn't need to be so, so that you can have a simplified process that more people will understand.