Marketing podcast, PreneurCast, is for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. Each week, author and marketer Pete Williams and digital media producer Dom Goucher discuss entrepreneurship, business, internet marketing and productivity.
This week, Pete and Dom discuss the problems your clients might face if you forget that you have knowledge that they don’t. They give some simple tips on how you can help your clients to feel at ease with you, and the products and services you provide.
Pete and Dom discuss problems your clients may face and how to make them feel comfortable
Transcript:
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Episode 097:
The Problem with Being an Expert
Pete Williams: Dom Goucher?
Dom Goucher: Oh, oh, you’re starting this week? Okay, great, fine.
Pete: Well, you said last week that we’ve got to mix it up a little bit and change it, so I thought I would jump in early. Clearly, it didn’t work.
Dom: I had one of my big words ready for it. And I’ll save it for next week. Never mind.
Pete: Oh, interesting. How are you, buddy?
Dom: Pretty good, pretty good. Because you forgot the formal intro there, Mr. Williams, I’ll just introduce myself. This is Dom Goucher and Mr. Pete Williams. This is PreneurCast. Welcome, everybody.
Pete: Absolutely. It’s good. It’s back to you and me this week. We have had a couple of episodes where I have been talking to the rich and famous of the world, I guess, authors. Probably not rich really, are they? But this week, it’s back to you and me.
Dom: Yeah. Excellent. I have a little soapbox topic of my own to talk about this week.
Pete: Fantastic.
Dom: So how’s your week going?
Pete: Lots going on. I’ve been dabbling in some new projects that I have hinted at in the last few episodes. Hopefully, some stuff will be released and shared in the next few days, almost, which is just super exciting.
So for those who are part of the Preneur Community, on the e-mail lists and the newsletter lists, keep an eye out in your inbox for something really cool coming out shortly. I’m working on some video stuff. I’m part of Video Superhero Summit, with a whole bunch of other [presenters].
Dom: Yeah, folks, you have to look at that, okay? You have to look at this Video Superhero Summit that Pete’s in, if only to see the artwork. That’s all I’m going to say. That’s all I’m going to say.
Pete: I feel like a bit of a fraud. It should probably be you up there more than me talking about video stuff, mate. But I’ll represent us as best I can.
Dom: You will do a sterling job, sir. You will do a sterling job. It’s an excellent little project you have got going on there. Because I have been a little bit AWOL recently, and I will talk about that a little bit in a minute. All members of the Preneur Community keep an eye out for the new projects. Pete has got some stuff. And I’ve got some stuff coming along soon as well.
It’s got a little bit put to the side from recent events, but back on track now. And yeah, we’ve got some great things. Just little projects to show you what we’ve been doing. And anybody in the inner circle will also be able to see behind the scenes of those projects, which is quite exciting.
Pete: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s jump into this week’s episode, mate.
Dom: Okay, so not wanting to go into too much detail about the reasons why, but I had very first-hand experience recently of the dark side of being an expert. Now, this is something that I have been talking about for years. Years and years, and years. Even before, Pete; even before I met you, when I was a trainer.
We always used to talk about the difficulty and the downside of being a subject-matter expert. And it is more obvious when you are a trainer or you write technical documentation, training documentation, or you try and transfer some knowledge to somebody. As an expert, you tend to skip over the basics.
But recently, it came to light in a really, really solid example of why this is even more vital as a business owner and as somebody talking to a client. As I say, it’s obvious in a training environment. But when you’re facing a client, you don’t maybe see the situation that way.
Now, please excuse the very left-field example, but it really is quite a stark one. Very recently, I had to deal with a funeral director. Now, a funeral director is one of those things that you hope you never have to deal with yourself. And if you do, you’ve got no way of having any knowledge or any prior experience, any understanding whatsoever of what is going to happen.
And this is really where this is coming from. Because if you are a business owner, let’s say you are a tradesperson, which is a good classic thing and we have talked previously about tradespeople in the context of the 7 Levers. If you’re a tradesperson and somebody wants your services, they have some understanding of what it is that you’re going to do.
If you’re a plumber, they’ve got a rough idea of what you’re going to do. If you’re a builder, they’ve got a rough idea of what you’re going to do. So this example of this funeral director really stood out to me because I walked in there, and I literally had no idea. And there was no way I would have an idea.
I had got no reason in my past to ever know what a funeral director does, what the sequence of events is, or anything. And so, the onus was on the business owner as it were, strange to say it again in this context. But it was on the person representing that business to communicate to me, and help me through this process.
I have to say, they didn’t do a great job and this is why it really, really stood out. Not only because of the extreme. There’s no way I was ever going to know what the process was going to be, but also because of the massive amounts of stress and all those other emotions that you’re feeling at the time you have to go through this that could have been alleviated if this person had communicated a little bit better.
Just simple things like what the normal sequence of events might be and what all the options mean. What it means if you do or don’t take this option. All these things. Again, this is a really extreme example. But it really stood out to me and really resonated with me because I thought in certain circumstances, even in a simple business transaction like with a tradesperson like a plumber or a builder.
You’re, as the tradesperson, you’re the expert. You have all the knowledge, you do this everyday. But the person that has called you in, it may be really, really stressful for them. It may be really difficult for them. They may not have a real understanding of what you’re going to do.
And this loops back to something, Pete, that you talk about a lot. When we talk about the 7 Levers of Business, about when you’re putting your proposals and that conversion stage. The more you can communicate with a client, the more that you can help them understand what the process is going to be, and how things are going to happen, and what each part of the process means or whatever.
The more you can build that relationship with that client and make them feel better. Not only for the initial conversion, but later on building a relationship. Again, I have no reason to have an ongoing relationship, thankfully, with a funeral director. But in a more normal everyday circumstances, this is a really big thing.
Not only for that conversion stage, but that ongoing relationship. So Pete, I don’t know. I have gone on a little bit about this. But as I say, it’s a really extreme example. But it’s a really important one where, as a tradesperson, a business owner, somebody communicating with a client.
That duty of care is with you to educate your client, to make sure that you are speaking at the right level and that you don’t miss things out so that that client doesn’t feel stress or difficulty. Or it doesn’t just get lost with what it is you’re trying to get across. Pete, what do you think about that?
Pete: No, absolutely. I completely agree. There’s so much in this marketing space that talk about educating before the sale. You want to educate your prospect, and have them understand what it is you’re offering before they come to meet the salesperson to make their conversion easier. And all that jazz.
And that’s very, very important. We have definitely touched on it in previous episodes here on the PreneurCast. But educating after the sale, educating throughout the implementation, throughout the delivery is just as important, if not in some circumstances, more important.
It’s that repeat business that you are after at that stage, trying to work on that particular lever. So you want to make sure the experience the person has is what they expect. And you’re managing expectations. There’s a lot of things to talk around this.
So hopefully I’m not going to go in too many directions. But let me touch on a few things really quickly. The managing expectations, that’s one of the biggest things. That is what controls customer’s expectations, customer experience, and whether they are going to refer you or come back themselves.
Dom: That referral is a really big thing there because we talked about the ongoing. But in all cases whether it’s an ongoing or a referral, it’s equally important, right?
Pete: Absolutely. And it’s all about managing expectations. This is something we talk about in our business, in the telco business so often. We have to manage, not only your staff and your manager’s expectations, but the client’s expectations. They come into some transaction with an expectation, and you need to be able to manage that.
One of the best ways to manage that is to educate them on what the process is going to be. Something we’re maybe talking about testing inside of telco is almost like a welcome pack. So if someone agrees to buy a phone system from us, a welcome pack with a, ‘this is what’s going to happen from now on.’
You’re going to get a phone call from one of our technicians to do a data collection. In that data collection, they’re going to ask you these questions, so be prepared. Then they’re going to come out and do a site inspection, and check out your location.
Is there going to be cabling required? Is there going to be additional power points needed? What is required on site to ensure the phone system installation can go smoothly? Then we’re going to come out and do the installation. There’s obviously a whole bunch of steps that we know internally because it’s just our process.
But the client’s being educated about what that process is. They’re none the wiser and they have their own expectation. And if their expectation isn’t what you’re going to deliver, there’s going to be a huge disconnect there in satisfaction.
Dom: And that’s a fantastic example. I love that one. If you’ve been following along with the 7 Levers of Business framework that we talk about, all these things are almost already in place internally. Aren’t they, Pete? Because you say you said this is your process.
This is what your team already are going to do. This is the way they do it every time they do it because you have documented your processes. So all you’re doing is taking that internal process, flipping it around, and showing it to the client in advance.
Pete: Yeah. That’s all you need to do and it’s not a hard thing really. If you’ve got the documentation already done, it’s just tweaking it a little bit to make it a little bit prettier and nicer, and appealing to the client. And that’s your welcome pack. As a really quick sidestep; if you’re doing something technical as in the delivery of the actual solution that you’re selling, then also having a whole bunch of FAQs or these steps in there.
It also acts as a protection for you. Because if the client turns around at some point and says, “Oh, I didn’t know that was going to be the case,” or, “You didn’t tell me that. That’s not what I expected,” and then they try and delay payment, or ask for an additional solution or support or service, whatever it might be.
That happens so often in that style of business where you’re delivering a service over time. It’s not transactional. Then, that document can help protect you as well as a business owner. So there’s some additional auxiliary benefits of having these welcome pack documents when people come along to use the service that is delivered over time.
In a transactional business, this can still apply. If you look at the e-com sites that we have and other transactional places; you have probably experienced this when you go on to an e-commerce website and you have made a purchase. There’s going to be a delivery of that item at some point in the future.
Quite often, the very first e-mail you get is an expectation management e-mail, it’s what I’ll refer to it as. It just says thanks for your order. This is what’s going to happen now. You will receive a tracking note in two days’ time when your goods are dispatched.
You should receive that in four or five days after. If you find a delay, the first thing you should do is grab this tracking number, go to this website and track it that way because it’s going to be with a third-party courier company that we can unfortunately not be in control of.
So your best place to track your goods once you have that tracking number is here. Then if there’s a refund issue, go here. So you’re basically setting out the expectations and setting that context as soon as the transaction is made because it will give that customer peace of mind.
It will have their expectations on the same page of what you’re going to deliver, which obviously helps that customer’s satisfaction. And also, it could potentially help you as a business owner and your team reduce the amount of resources that it needed to support silly or stupid questions.
Dom: Yeah. Just to bring this back to the opening point that I made about the down side of expert knowledge; those two things you talked about there are absolute classics of things that people do everyday. But they don’t think to tell somebody that’s what’s going to happen in advance.
It’s a huge disconnect between a service provider or any business and the customer. And if you can bridge that gap just by thinking it through; it really doesn’t have to be step-by-step granular detail. It can be as simple as, and this is an example I think we talked about when we were talking about the 7 Levers of Business applied to tradies.
It can be as simple as just elaborating and explaining to people that your process includes laying down dust sheets, for example. Again, you can get further apart. But in the same space of time, I’ve had to go through dealing with the funeral directors and a number of local government agencies, registering a death, etcetera, etcetera. None of which went well.
All of which were examples of people knowing what they were doing, but not telling me and putting me under an awful lot of stress. On the flipside, at almost exactly the same time, I was dealing with a local tradesman who was a painter and decorator. They’re just literally poles apart. The way that these two groups of people dealt with it, again, was poles apart.
The guy turned up, I said, “I have never had any painting or decorating done.” It was an equally level playing field when the two circumstances. But the guy came in and he said, “Okay, well, this is what I’m going to do,” in terms of the actual understanding the painting and the decorating part.
“And the first thing I will do is I will cover the carpets. I will tape up this. I will prepare the paintwork. I will…” and so on, and so on. He literally talked me through everything that he was going to do. Not in the ultimate finite detail, but just in enough detail that two things happened.
One, basically every question I could possibly have thought of upfront like, is he going to get paint on the carpet, things like that. This is your FAQ example that you gave there. All those were answered. But another very interesting thing happened.
I didn’t realize it until after the fact, not on purpose, but he had subconsciously justified his price because he was explaining to me that he wasn’t just going to come in with a tin of paint and a brush, and slap paint on the doors.
He was describing the process, describing the detail, the quality, the level of care he was going to take, and the steps it took to do the job. Not making a big deal out of it, but just by simply stepping me through that, I felt I was getting value.
Pete: Now on that point, let me ask you a question, Dom. Did you find in hindsight now, thinking back on it, that some stuff he said he was going to do, that initially impressed you and thought, this guy obviously is unique, is worth the money. He’s all those various terms. But in hindsight, did you realize it’s probably stuff that every painter does and you just didn’t realize it until after the fact?
Dom: Well, it was about 50/50. As I said, some of the things he said were, answered questions I had already got in my head like, ‘Are you going to put down drop cloths? How are you going to cover things up?’ That stuff. And that I expected or wanted to hear.
But the parts of the process that I wasn’t aware of like he had to prepare the paintwork, or prepare the doors as they were in this case. He had to prepare them before he could paint. There was a step, an extra step to the process that as a non-expert it was valuable to me to be aware of.
But yes, I would hope that every professional painter and decorator would go through those steps. That again stood out to me that I’m sure they all do it. But he pointed it out to me that he was going to do it.
Pete: Well, this reminds me of the Schlitz beer story, which probably some listeners are probably familiar with. This is back from the early 1900s when Claude Hopkins, I’m pretty sure it was, the copywriter advertising person at the time, he was assigned to do some advertising and marketing of Schlitz beer.
And all he did, to make a long story short, when he was doing the campaign to market the beer was he just went out and advertised the process that Schlitz beer used to make the beer. Things like, ‘we wash every bottle three times. We take the best hops and we do A, B and C with it.’
The actual company directors at the time were like, “But that’s nothing unique. We don’t do anything unique with our beer. That is just the normal process of making beer.” He turned around to them and said, “Does your customer know that? Do they understand that?” And he took Schlitz beer from ninth in America to Number One or Two or Three; really high up.
Just by making a campaign educating the actual audience and the customer base about the process, even if it was just normal. The point in that is that your customers are naive. They’re coming to you as an expert because they can’t do it themselves.
So even telling them about the basic normal process steps that you’re going to do that everyone else does will quite often lead to some aha moments to your prospect. And to your client, that makes you look better than everybody else because they weren’t aware that is a standard feature.
Communicating the basic [steps] you’re going to do is a good marketing tactic in its own right to increase customer satisfaction, impress and go beyond customer expectations. It also then helps build that or plant that seed of repeat or referral business.
Dom: Absolutely. In the middle of all this; just to bring it all together and just to highlight the key points that we’re trying to get across because as I opened with, I gave a pretty extreme example. That might have made people miss a few steps in their run this week or drop the dog lead, or whatever.
But what we’re talking about here is the fact that whether you feel that what you do is unique or complicated, or challenging or not, isn’t the issue. This is also an ongoing message that I will roll out time and time again. You are not your client. And Pete, you used a word there which was naive.
But you used it in the proper sense of the word, in that they genuinely don’t know. They genuinely don’t have any experience or knowledge, and they are looking to you as an expert. You might be a plumber, a builder, a painter and decorator. You might feel that you’re good, competent, or you might feel very positively about your work.
You might not think of yourself as an expert, but you are to your client. You are called in and you are asked to do your best. But there’s this situation; and the key points here are, first of all, that you’ve got this naive client situation. You need to educate them, just to make them feel better, just to make them like you, to build that rapport. And this can be a pre-sale thing.
Or it can be during the operations, and it could be post-sale. It can be all the way through that transaction, this idea that you can make people feel better. But then Pete, your example of heading problems off at the pass. Informing them in advance to avoid questions. If what you do is standard, especially if it’s in a computerized system. Your e-commerce example was great, Pete.
One of my favorite online examples is MOO Cards, who are a digital printing company who prints really excellent cards and other promotional materials. They have exactly the process you described. An automated system which follows the same steps. It’s a computer, not a human. Mails you out, steps you through, draws graphics and shows you pictures and talks to you in a very human way about what’s going to happen next.
So you don’t have these questions because you know. So you’re herding these questions off. And then that final thing again, Pete, from your example of just being clear; it’s like an informal contract really. If you’re clear with your client about this is what’s going to happen, you’re avoiding the problem of, ‘I was expecting this,’ or, ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’
Pete: Yeah. I think any business owner who has had that conversation with a client more than three times knows how frustrating and annoying that is because you have followed your process, but it’s the client’s expectations that are at the other end of the football field. And that doesn’t help.
Dom: Yeah. So those are the three things. There are different parts of the process and different things involved in it. But all of it comes down to the same thing, which is that you are the expert. But there is a downside to being the expert, which is that you can overlook this basic knowledge transfer.
And I’d just like to pull out an example from something that you were talking about, Pete, because I think it’s just fabulous and it’s a great example. Something that I do in some of my businesses and in the middle of a sentence, you just whizzed past and I just want to pull it out because it’s a great example.
Again back to my recent problem. The exact opposite happened to me. You said that one of the things you say is someone will call you and ask you these questions. So have the answers ready. Now that is a fabulous, fabulous thing that you can do for anybody. Tell them upfront, “I’m going to need this from you.
I’m going to ask you these questions. If you call us for these reasons, if you called us for a reason, have this.” You’ll see it sometimes, you do see it on government forms and official communications. It’s very subtle. It says ‘our reference,’ and it will give you a reference number.
But sometimes they will write out, “If you call us, have this number ready. We’re going to ask you for it.” It’s a little tiny difference, but it makes a huge difference to the person when they call. Pete, you probably don’t have this. But I have certainly had it recently where I have gone through that process.
I have had to ring a complete stranger. I’ve had to ring a government agency I have never dealt with. No idea, no reason to ever have called them before. And I ring them up and the lady asks me, “Can you tell me this.” And because the letter that I had got said, “When you call us, have this ready. We will ask you.
I could very easily and happily just say, “Yes, it’s this.” My tension was lowered. It got the process off to an easy start. And it’s a simple, simple little thing. And this is relevant to a project that I’m working on at the moment that we’ll be talking about soon.
Say you’re building a website for somebody. This might be the topic of one of our little ‘If I Was A…’ episodes one week. But if you’re building a website for somebody, say it’s your business; there’s going to be some standard things that you are going to want.
You’re going to want their logo in a particular format maybe. You’re going to want the name of the company. You might want a secondary tagline or description. You may want artwork for a product. And all these things might be in a certain format and a certain size.
If you do this about five times a week; if you write all that down and have it in a lovely formatted PDF or a standard e-mail; maybe using that you could fill it out quickly using one of our super tools like TextExpander where you just type a couple of keys and the program fills it out for you.
There’s things like that on Windows as well as on Mac. TextExpander is a Mac thing. Whatever it is, wherever, however you have it. Even if it’s a piece of paper that’s printed out that you stick in an envelope and post to your client, you’re helping them get started.
You’re getting them over that hurdle and you come across every time you do this, every time, the difference, literally, to me. On the one side, I had the funeral director and the government, the local government agencies. And I felt stressed, I felt agitated, I felt unsupported. I also felt stupid. I don’t know about you, Pete, but I personally wouldn’t class myself as in the lower intelligence group.
Pete: Not at all, mate.
Dom: Under any circumstances. But I felt stupid because I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I didn’t have the answers, I didn’t have the questions or anything. So that caused me a lot of stress. Whereas, on the other side, just having that knowledge, having that reference number and knowing I was going to be asked for it.
Knowing what the painter and decorator was going to do, those people made me feel happy. They made my life easier on that day. And I was going through a lot of stuff. It can often be just that little tiny thing that you do where you think a little bit in front, a little bit more about your client and what they’re going to be going through. And you help them that one extra step, and it makes a huge difference to them.
Pete: Something that popped up as you were saying that to me. I don’t know how relevant this is; this is maybe a bit of a long bridge I’m building. But if you’re in a business where you have a lot of clients who agree to something then don’t follow through.
You may be selling some service or solution that needs clients to be involved once they give you the green light. There are some businesses that we have been involved in over the years that have that requirement. Someone signs up, then they have to be involved in the process of delivery.
And quite often, it’s quite hard to get people to stick through that delivery process. You still have a lot of slippage where people sign up but don’t fulfill the end solution, so you can’t charge them anything.
Dom: Very common in Web design.
Pete: Absolutely, yeah. A perfect example there. Something that you just mentioned, that you felt stupid; if you think about it, most people’s reaction when they feel stupid or overwhelmed is fight or flight. You’ll get some clients who get really agitated and really voice their opinions.
You would deal with the squeaky wheel, and you would deliver their solution. But there’s going to be some people who will feel intimidated or stupid because they don’t understand the process. So what will they do? They’ll just ignore the whole process altogether and go somewhere else.
If you’re in that industry where you are finding people who don’t always follow through as a client on their own promises, and their own commitment and consistency when they say yes, we’ll do this and don’t follow through; it’s probably because they are embarrassed or they feel stupid quite a good percentage of the time.
Dom: That is an excellent point.
Pete: So if you can do this pre-education process at the start of the actual delivery or implementation of the service you’re offering, you’ll help make that client more educated, feel smarter, more involved. It will help you increase your stick rate, so to speak. It’s a very subtle thing that people don’t probably think about, but it’s a very good stick strategy.
I know in information courses, I know one of the things that they suggest you do quite a bit is if you have a very large course that you’re delivering to your customer in terms of education and you’re overwhelming them with a lot of information; one of the first things you want to do is give them a bit of a ‘how to go through this course’ guide.
The very first thing they’re meant to read and consume is, “This course is huge. This is where you should start. This is how you should tackle this course. Because if you tackle it any other way, you’re going to feel overwhelmed, you’re going to feel distracted and confused, stupid. And you’re going to ask for a refund, which is not good for anybody.
So this is the best way to consume this course, consume this content.” If you’re in the information marketing game, having that welcome document of how to go about consuming the education on the course can help reduce your refund rates, which obviously is improving your stick rate.
Dom: Yeah. It’s funny, sometimes you say this is going to be a long bridge and I think you’re right. But that’s right on the money, absolutely right on the money. It’s another example of you spend however long it is where you have designed this training course.
And it’s if it’s like the material that I produce or my company produces that is online-based, video-based delivery, maybe PDFs and transcripts and things along with it or audio; but it’s not something that’s delivered one to one. You’re not getting that direct feedback from your client, then you do need that extra step.
It’s an example of what I was just saying, of thinking through what they’re going to go through. And yeah, they’re going to look at this huge pile of stuff and you might get them thinking, “I’ll go through it lineally.” But they may just look at it and go, “Argh!”
Yeah, you’ll get a refund. And it’s, again, a tiny little thing. Maybe if you spend two minutes or five minutes extra out of the whole time you have spent building this training course; spend five extra minutes, record a little video. It doesn’t have to be special or anything.
Or a little audio, or write a PDF that just says ‘start here, do this.’ And maybe even, ‘Don’t try and do X, don’t feel bad if Y.’ ‘This is how we advise you to go through it,’ etcetera, etcetera. Just reach out to them. Just give them a little helping hand. Because as you say, it’s a great frame for that. But it is that fight or flight thing.
The two things you’ll experience, especially the closer you are to the client, is the fight or flight. You’ll either experience the running away, which I think you really identify very well there; this idea that people feel stupid, don’t know the answers to the questions, can’t deliver on their path. So they run away, they hide.
But the other thing that you talked about earlier is this fight; this thing where if they feel stupid, if they feel that they weren’t informed, then it becomes a fight. Literally. They will start arguing with you or start arguing about the invoice. They’ll start saying you didn’t deliver what you said you were going to.
Or you did something you didn’t say and you’re charging them for it. All these things I’m sure a lot of people have experienced in the past. So that fight or flight is another good way to look at it. And it’s all about this communication. It’s all about stepping back from your knowledge and realizing that you are an expert out in the real world to the everyday customer.
And that you can help them with your knowledge. You can help them achieve their goals. And it applies in so many examples. Hopefully, my two extremes of the funeral director, and the painter and decorator have really shown that in this little conversation.
Pete: Yeah. So let’s get tactical really, really quickly before we wrap up this episode if you don’t mind.
Dom: Cool. No, I love it.
Pete: I want to talk about some tactics and ways that people can build this education into their business and their process. One great way is obviously to just grab your iPhone and do an FAQ-type video. Just if one of you would go, “Hey, guys. Thanks for taking on our plumbing services educational course.”
Whatever it might be. “This is what’s going to happen from now on in,” and just talk to the camera for four or five minutes and explain the process. That’s one very granular, very easy way to have that done. Upload it to Vimeo or YouTube and embed it on your website.
And then when people transact, send them the link. Very, very easy. You’ll go, “Check out this video. I’ll walk you through and talk you through the process of what happens next.” It’s the ‘what happens next’ video. That’s definitely one way of doing it.
Dom: Very good.
Pete: To create this documentation, if you want to do it as a PDF-type document; think of something like ScreenSteps. It’s a tool we have spoken about numerous times on this show which I absolutely love where you can create documentation. That’s exactly what it’s designed to do.
Step one, here it is. Step two, here it is. So you could either take photos of the process and embed photos extremely easily into the actual ScreenSteps documentation. If it’s a Web-based, online service you offer, do those ScreenSteps. If you have an e-commerce store, write that welcome e-mail.
Look at what e-mail gets sent out as a receipt or at the end of a transaction, and tweak that with, “These are the next four things that are going to happen. Refund policy process. Delivery. Tracking.” What are some of the headaches you get?
How can you communicate those early on to relieve those headaches later on in the process? Dom, what other things can you think of tactically that you can put in place to get this result we’re talking about on today’s episode?
Dom: You gave some great examples there, the ‘what’s going to happen next’ video or audio using your iPhone or smart phone; and using software, clever software like ScreenSteps. If the steps, the process they’re going through, walking somebody through a process needs that complexity.
But to me, it is just about what do you do? If you do nothing else, sit down and think about the ‘what happens next.’ That’s probably the best thing. Sit down with a piece of paper and say to yourself, what happens next? And write it down. And then that’s what you send, in whatever format works.
Whether it’s written. Whether you say it to the person if they’re on the phone. Whether you make a video or an audio. Whether you use a PDF or have a diagram drawn. The most important thing for me is that what happens next? After that, there’s lots of other opportunities that we have talked about.
Like your FAQ, your Frequently Asked Questions, which you will see on people’s websites. But you could also have it as a printed-out thing that you would put in with your quotes, for example. If you post quotes out to people or you hand deliver quotes, you could have your FAQ, what happens next written out in there.
But to me, it is that what happens next or what does an X, Y, Z normally look like? For me, and I’ll just come back to my extreme example again, because this hopefully will highlight to people that if you’re a painter and decorator or you’re a plumber, you think it’s an everyday trade.
But you could have somebody feel the same way that I did with my funeral director because I got to the day before the funeral and I said I had to ring them up and say to them, “Can you tell me what happens during a funeral?”
Pete: They obviously have this, because they do it three times a day. They have this expectation that everyone knows what it is because that’s their worldview. And the thing is that your worldview, your client’s worldview, you as a client and your worldview is often completely different. And you need to manage that expectation.
Dom: That’s absolutely probably the best summary I could have given if I had scripted it. And that, it is, it’s about we might call it a frame. But I think worldview is a really good way of saying it. And that’s it. It’s, the difference between your worldview and your client’s worldview.
The thing that you do everyday three times a day or whatever, whatever it is that you do or sell or whatever your business is. Whatever a normal day is for you is absolutely not going to be normal for your client.
Anything that you can do, whether it’s frequently asked questions that you write out or a ‘this is what normally happens in these circumstances.’ Anything that you can do to bridge that gap so that your client doesn’t feel that you being an expert is a bad thing.
Pete: Yeah. So on that note, shall we wrap up this little episode with a nice little bow and catch everyone next week for another edition of PreneurCast?
Dom: Absolutely. And as always, folks, we really do value your feedback and especially on the slightly off-the-wall topics like this week’s. Drop us a line. Visit us at PreneurMedia.tv where you can get all of the replays and transcripts for all of our shows, and you can download them.
You can always reach us on iTunes and leave us a comment there. We love those comments. Or send us an e-mail to preneurcast [at] preneurgroup [dot] com. And with that said, thanks to everyone for listening. And we’ll see you all soon.
Pete: See you guys then.
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Previous PreneurCast Episodes:
Episode 052 – 7 Levers of Business Redux
Episode 091 – If I Was A… Tradie
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