The Conversation You Should Be Having With Your Future Customers (Pod)

Today, I want to hit you with one of those clichés that I tend to pull out from time to time when I’m working with brand new clients.  For most of the clients that I work with, I’m the first marketing dude they’ve ever dealt with. So normally, I have to find a way to get across marketing stuff.

One of the clichés that I use, it’s kind of a sideways cliché, but it’s just how I talk, is Your customers really don’t care what’s in the gumbo. They just want you to spoon them up a big old bowl and push it across.

I don’t know why I got hooked on the gumbo for that particular cliché. It probably has something to do with me hanging out in Louisiana thanks to my rich Uncle Sam.

By the way, If you’ve never been to Louisiana, I highly suggest you take a little time and wander down there. It’s a different kind of place. I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s not like the rest of the United States. I’ll just leave it at that.

Clients Aren’t Here To Buy Your Credentials

Anyway, the thing that’s most important to get across, the thing that I used to have to work the hardest with, is to get my clients to take off their technicians hat and then put on their marketers hat.

What I mean by that is if you tend to be good at doing a thing, you tend to be focused on that and think that everyone else is focused on that. So if you’re a massage therapist, hairstylist, esthetician, whatever, all that stuff that you did to get good at that, that’s your focus. It’s very easy to think that your clients are focused on that too.

And they’re not. They’re 100% not.

They want you to be focused on that, but that’s not what they’re there for. Not at all.  They’re there for what, all of that goodness that you have cumulated all that knowledge they are there for what’s on the other side of it for them.

They’re not there for what you do, they’re there for what you do does for them. That’s an interesting little concept to get across to people.

You’re Not Marketing to Yourself

I was working with an esthetician when I first got started, back in the day working on websites. She had a radio frequency skin tightening service that she provided.  She was all about that machine. She wanted it featured on her website. I didn’t know any better. I do now.

I said, give me the link to your manufacturer. I went there and realized that every bit of information that was on that website was all about having a conversation with estheticians.  Nothing on that website was about here’s the information that you can use to talk to your clients because your clients don’t care about this piece of machinery.

So over time I realized, oh, there’s this thing going on here.  I had to get her off of the concept of selling the benefits of using this machine and talk about what the machine does. We eventually got there, but that was an eye opening experience. I’ve found that I run into it myself from time to time.

Most of the people that I work with, I have to get that across.  It’s not the hardest thing in the world to do, but sometimes it takes a little bit to go,

“Hey! What you think is important, isn’t what your clients think is important. Even though you’re kind of talking about the exact same thing”.

You Can Never Have Too Many Whys…

Let’s say I’m working with an aesthetician and they do facials. I mean, it’s the aesthetician. In addition, they do a few other things to include permanent makeup or, Microblading, not quite the same thing, but you know where I’m going with this.

I would say, “Hey, what is the problem that your best customer wants you to solve?”

First of all, it narrows down who we’re talking about because you know, somebody who wants Microblading may not want some of these other services. It narrows that down.

So they’ll say my best customer wants Permanent Makeup. Cool. Now I started with the why’s.

• The first question. Why?Because they want their eyebrows to be nice and neat and pretty.

• Cool. Why?Because they don’t want to be walking around with crunchy looking eyebrows or something to that effect. I’m paraphrasing.

• Okay, cool. Why?Because… I could say something like, because they don’t like getting up in the morning and having to deal with that every day. There could be a bunch of things.

At some point, if you keep asking why, you’re going to get to that emotional why. The emotional why is what I refer to as the underlying Why?  That’s the conversation that you need to be having.  That’s the marketing point.  That’s the part that the people are coming, looking for.

That is the conversation you need to be having. That’s the frequency you need to be transmitting on.

The Moment It All Starts to Make Sense

Once, you know the conversation that you’re supposed to be having, everything else starts to make sense.

What you do on social media, what you put on your blog, if you’re going to be blogging, everything that you do.  All of your marketing. The words that you use. The things that you talk about.

All of that hinges on what is that underlying Why?  Because that’s what people who are looking for you are listening for. That’s how they get to, “Oh, this person gets me.”

So the question is, what is the conversation that you should be having? Once you have it start having it as much as possible.

Can you have two or three different conversations?  You absolutely can. You may have two or three different audiences depending on what your services are. What’s most important is that you understand that’s the conversation you’re supposed to be having.

One of the things we keep hearing me talk about is building your list.

Well, at some point, the people that you bump into online are going to end up at your website.You can’t have a disjointed conversation. What you start to talk about out there online needs to continue when they get onto your website. Otherwise, they’re not going to join your list because you broke the conversation.

So, everything from the content on your website, your social media, even the stuff that shows up in your reviews.  All of that needs to be aligned along this one conversation that you’re trying to have.Once you get that done, then all kinds of things wonderful happened for you.

If you need a little help…

All right. I think that’s what I really wanted to hit you about. Make sure you understand this conversation. Now, if you don’t quite get how I said that or you need a little bit more syllables from me, give me a call (702) 582-6708 or hit me up at https://chriscarter.net/appointments.

We can kick the Willie Bobo just a little bit longer and really dive into this because the conversation you have is very important and it’s important that you get it right. And I am here for it.

So if you need my help, you got it.

Now, before I bounce out of here, let me say one more time. Thank you very much for throwing your attention in my direction. You could be throwing your attention anywhere in the world, anywhere else at all, but for this short period of time, you’re throwing it at me and I do appreciate it.

So thank you. Go forth and do good things. I’ll talk to you next time.