I know, your knee jerk reaction to that statement may be “are you nuts?!” but bear with me.
I was having a conversation with one of my clients yesterday and she was telling me about this freebie that she wanted to get out to her audience. On the face of it the freebie was amazing and I have every confidence it will be transformative for her people, but I asked her a very important question before I gave me 2 cents. I asked her this:
“What happens after they opt in? What is the next step in their customer journey?”
She looked at me through her webcam and went, shoot, I see your point. So here’s my question to you, do you see the point I was sharing with her?
Let me break it down with my favorite thing, an analogy.
Some business owners are just concerned with the initial conversion. This is the equivalent to eating a bag of chips. However, if you think about the long game of chess you might ask yourself what happens after I eat this bag of chips. Is it making me feel good in the moment or is it getting me closer or farther from my goals of being fit.
The same is true for your business. If you are just trying to get people on your list or the next sale, you are missing a HUGE opportunity and here’s why.
It is, I would argue, 90% easier and less costly to sell someone who has already either bought or engaged with your business before. If you are only thinking about the initial conversion and not like a chess master asking yourself how can I serve my customer or client next you are for all intents and purposes, leaving money on the table.
It really isn’t about the conversion…it’s about the long game, not the initial end result.
When I work with clients one of the #1 reason their businesses are stuck at a certain revenue point is because they are “leaving” their clients rather than “leading them.”
What I mean more specifically is this. They are so focused on the first conversion (prospective client to current client) that they are not able to see the long game and have a journey for that client or customer to go on that results in a long and mutually fruitful relationship.
This boils down to most business owners solving a problem and forgetting to serve a purpose.
If you are only focused on only solving a problem then you will be in a constant state of churn. We all know that it is much easier and more impactful to continue a relationship with a current client or customer than it is to cultivate a brand new one, so that begs the question, how clear are you on your customer journey?
If your customer journey is fuzzy or even worse non existent or piecemeal, please for the love of all things good, take some time and get it sorted out.
Even if you have multiple services, they should all connect. For example. At GKP one of our customer journeys is all about strategy.
It starts with a quarterly review white paper (free), then most people who go through the quarterly review on their own want to pick my brain and better understand their results so they book a debrief call (paid) which generally leads to either a business tune up or full on full potential strategy engagement because the really want to get their business in order, which then goes to alchemy quarterly or a retainer for long term support as their trusted advisor.
Now that might seem like a lot of steps but the magic in it is that it allows the people who want to go fast to go fast, and the people that want to go slow to meander.
What it also allows us to do is cross pollinate because, more often than not, our business tune up or full potential strategy engagements lead them to our full potential team service.
Do you see how it is one happy ecosystem that serves the client first? Like a yellow brick road of business.
It is also important to point out that our custom journey is set but fluid. Sometimes we add services in because we realize there is a need, other times we cut some out because we realize that even though the clients love them, it doesn’t serve the long term goals of them, my team, the company – website design being a prime example.
Alright, so let’s wrap this up… the biggest takeaway I have for you is to not think of conversions (free or paid) as one-offs, but rather ask yourself where do I where is the most value for them and what do those different points look like.
Remember, this isn’t just going to positively impact your bottom line and make revenue more predictable, more importantly it is going to better serve your customers and clients for the long term, and as my good friend Deb Gabor says, make them irrationally loyal!
Please share your biggest takeaway below and as always, if you need help scaling your business more simply, efficiently, and profitable, please get in touch.
