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Customer Development Arc

So I want to talk to you about customer development and why customers don't always buy right away different customers, different kinds of customers by a different times. Okay, so when you release a brand new product, there is a special group of customers we call early adopters early adopters by because something is new and different, an innovative they buy cause they're excited. The good news is there are early adopters in every single field. There are early adopters in the business space. There are early adopters in the health space. There are early adopters in the personal development space. There are even early adopters in the children's gift space or in the family heirloom jewelry space, right? There aren't really adopters in every single market, people who essentially collect things, they collect new stuff. So we're used to hearing this term in the tech market, right? You're an early adopter if you stood in line for the very first iphone, right? Um, you yeah, so I'll get back to t...

hat example, but that's where we're used to seeing early adopters. The problem I see is that when the small group of earlier doctors buys someone's program or product or offer service, people assume that because it was just that small group right? And they're looking at numbers not thinking early adopters but they assume that means something was wrong there's something wrong with the message there's something wrong with the product? Probably they think there's something wrong with them all right, but that's not the case I'm gonna draw a pretty picture for you. Uh it kind of looks like the, uh, content life art but it's more like this early adopters star this part of the mark market so if this is your whole customer base the people who are going to buy from you over the lifetime of a product early adopters are that much of your market? Okay that's why on ly a few people buy at the beginning not just the beginning of a launch, but the first time you sell something right when the iphone first was released not nearly as many people bought it then as well by the six when it comes out this fall right then there are two other groups that constitutes a majority of the buyers you will have over the lifetime of a product there's the early majority and there's the late majority and these two different groups by for different reasons from each other and they buy for different reasons than the early adopters. Like I said, early adopters buy something because it's new and innovative and different and that's great for you because that's a really easy marketing message to create hey it's no and they kind of like to find out what the features of a product are what problem you're solving that's never been solved before and why you decided to solve that problem bacon bacon respond really well to personal six cess stories you're not goingto have clients success stories at this point most of the time to sell too early adopters early adopters just want to know why this is the hot new thing okay that's, why they buy and they are in your market now early majority buyers buy because they want to achieve a goal they're most interested in the after so the more you can paint a picture of success of um joy of out of achievement, the more this group is going to respond the late majority is more interested in solving problems, okay? They're often motive it more motivated by fear or pain all right in other words, these are the people who really need you to acknowledge and understand what's wrong now. And so if you can create messaging that focuses on what's wrong now and offers a solution to that, you're going to get more of this audience buying and then back here we have the long tail and these air say the people who are just buying the iphone now like they needed to wait six generations of consistency and excellence to make sure this was the right product for them sometimes they're just new to you and your product is is long god is not long god but it has been on the market for quite a while and so they're people who they buy not just motivated by consistency but consistency is a big value for them right or a proven track record is something that they're really really looking for they might be motivated by their goals they might be motivated by pain but mostly what they really value is just something that's tried and true and proven ok proven track record so if you're launching a brand new product mostly you're going to be selling to the early adopters brand new product or program or service or whatever kind of offer you're making these are the people who are going to say it's new great so if you are launching something that's new and great, make sure you're thinking about those early adopters and what might be motivating to them within your field within your industry but we don't just launch something when a product is brand new we often create additional sales cycles for a product we create a different launch conversation jean marie's great example of ah pre orders and the opportunity to create two different sale cycles there who buys pre orders early adopters who buys a product after it's been released after it's already out there the early majority these people are going to buy in your first sales cycle after it's new all right now this is kind of like a simplification of this of course your people by all sorts of different times but this is kind of your general understanding of who's going to buy went okay so you release a brand new product early adopters by you run a sales cycle again you have a new launch conversation early majority is going to buy your late majority is going to buy maybe in the second or third sales cycle all right they're looking for more testimonials more clients studies they want to make sure not only that you say you can solve their problem but that you've solved their problem they you've solved that problem for other people okay that's what they're going to respond to here and so you really do kind of need to be in the second or third sales cycle to really leverage that kind of customer client feedback yes you can use it here yes you can use it here but by the time you're launching something for the third or fourth time you're going tohave boatloads of testimonials you're gonna have lots people showing off their bracelets right or you're gonna have lots of people saying I don't fear rejection anymore you're gonna love lots of people saying I feel turned on I mean empowered sex kitten right these so as you get those stories in your better and better able to serve the late majority and then finally you can kind of mash all of these things together with the well at least all of these things together to serve the long tail by this point, this is when you're really going to understand exactly what message is going to convert most buyers or is going to resonate with most buyers on dso you know, just in terms of like product information products or programs and services as well, this is often when products go what we call evergreen so that they're always available so you might run a coaching program, run a coaching program, run a coaching program, turn it into a self study okay? Or you might run of course course course then it you know, with a start date in an end date and then here it's an e book okay or it's you know it's a video siri's that people just download on their own you still wantto have sales cycles for it because newsflash things just sitting on a shelf don't but don't sell right? But you want teo but but you can still sell it in a home study evergreen kind of way okay? Or they might be, you know, the jewels, the necklaces that there they might be your best sellers from five years back, and they still sell really well so you don't really need aa big merchandizing push around them. You don't need to create a new lookbook or have a new runway show right? Because they're going to sell regardless. So this is the customer development are questions about this whitney? I'm curious to know to what extent you can use the motivation of fear and pain that the late majority feels and to some extent the long tail fields to message look at how many other people have already bought this and they're already ahead and you're not. Yeah, I mean, I think that would depend on the audience. Some audiences would be turned off by that kind of messaging. Other audiences would be crazy turned on by any kind of messaging, so it might be something that you play with. You could play with it just like we talked about playing on social media yesterday you totally play with that kind of messaging on social media first and see, give them give people some data say I've I've run one hundred people through this program this person's gotten this job, this person's gotten this promotion, this person's gotten this kind of pay raise where could you be six months from now? Okay, that would be that would be hot I think but it wouldn't work with every audience jessica so with our collective anxiety about bugging our list I'm just thinking third sales cycle people who have been on since before the product like I have to sit through all of her thing again yeah great question here's the thing the people who have just sat on your list that whole time aren't engaged anymore so they aren't sitting through this again this is why list building is so hugely important if you're essentially not turning your list over every six months you are running yourself into a rut it's essentially like your list is shrinking because your engagement over time will shrink so the more you build up your list the mohr the more likely you are to sell more but you're also like you're just not talking to me like it's hard to explain because these yes those late majority people will actually decide to buy after having seen a launch cycle three times like think about say marie for leo's launch with b school I would I would bet money that at least twenty to thirty percent of her sails fromthe last launch were people who had seen the launch before but they didn't buy for some reason the first time and they bought for some reason the second time or the third time it's probably even a higher percentage of that although the affiliate marketing puts a little bit of ah ah a chink in it, but but yeah, so I think you'd really be shocked how many times someone has to see something and consider something before they purchase it they're not thinking oh this again they're actually the ones that are going to buy are actually engaged in what you're doing, the ones that aren't going to buy the they're not thinking that because they're just not engaged, they don't see what's going on okay? Does that make sense? Yeah, slight nuance so I'm thinking people who but the early adopters of the people who bought in the sail first sale cycle, do you sort of move them to a different list so they don't have to be pitched to it so I wouldn't necessarily move them to a different list, but you are going to have a different relationship with them after that point, so they should be on some sort of customer list and they're probably receiving a tte leased, regular, fairly sporadic communication with you on a regular basis. Here's the other thing, the way we're going to build out thes content launch these launch conversations is that you're to be delivering really good stuff to people the whole time, so even people who bought in the first sales cycle will still get something out of the content you're putting in the third sale cycle and the other the other really nice thing about having a clear this is when the product is released this is when it closes or this is what I'm going to stop e mailing you about it is that people are really smart actually and so if you tell them it opens today you have until this date to buy they know that your next three or four emails are going to be about the product that they may open them they may not but they're not going to check out and they're not going to unsubscribe I'm not going to say you're not going to get on subscribes you all you want unsubscribe but the right people aren't going to unsubscribe they're going to just stick it out because it's not that much in the same of banks I mean we archive or don't read emails all the time because we know what's in them and it's not relevant to us. So if you put on thank you you know is is the revolutionized our relationship to discipline program right for you people who've already bought it or not going to read that email it's and its fine your not bothering them it just is one little piece of email okay? Tiffany well, I think what that question and this conversation is brought up to is that we're the sales conversation that we're having is going to be constantly evolving so finished actually so the first time I release a product brand new, oh, my god, I'm so excited to do this after I've run, say, a group coaching program once I'm gonna have a whole new set of insight to be able to shift that conversation for the next sale cycle and like, right, right, exactly early adopters, I often don't do a public launch. I do an eighty biddy private launch where I will say you, you, you, you and you like all email people straight up and say, I've been thinking about you, I'm developing this thing is this something that you're interested in, and if you do it right, you will be shocked at how well that converts I mean, I am talking eighty five to ninety five percent jamboree that actually relates to a question we have fernando souza saurus from brazil, he says, he's launching a new business, but I cannot tell my audience yet what it is about otherwise my competitors would take the idea straight and implement it away into their business. How can I create this mo mentum without revealing exactly what my product is? Is it similar to that one on one conversation that that you're that you're speaking of right now, is there? Different strategy yes so that would be absolutely one way that you could handle it. Fernando is having private conversations with people who could be ideal customers or clients another way that you can handle it is talking about ah launch event instead of talking about the product so you're still building anticipation, but you're not releasing what the actual product is yet so you're building up towards something that's related to it but not the same thing. Um, what I'm talking about here is actually going out and making a direct sales pitch to people who you think are the most likely to buy you know that exercise of thinking about who's most likely to buy is not just hypothetical it is riel you could come up with ten people who are likely to buy your next offer and you are probably in contact with those ten people already and if you said hey, I'd like to I'd like to offer you this I'm gonna give it to you to introductory price. Are you interested almost to a to a number eighty to ninety percent of the time? They will tell you? Yes, and it is awesome because those are the kind of business is that we're all building were all building relationship based, content based businesses and when you have those kind of relationships with your perspective customers when you make an offer to them that is an offer they can't refuse they won't refuse it where they'll refuse it for other reasons yeah, so um actually moneymaking millennials has another question about in terms of a book siri's I'm assuming the late adopters could be people who buy your first book years afterward when you launch book six for example exactly exactly so if you is going back to the harry potter example, if you don't think we sold a whole heck of a book one two, three, four and five that day to you'd be kidding yourself so absolutely as your building these sales cycles oh are as you're building out new products or as you're launching over and over again, people are coming back and they're buying the back end of what you're offering as well and ideally in a great business model, these things are all layered on top of each other so that you're able to capitalize on that. So there's one thing you want to think about as you're thinking about your product spread what you're actually offering how can one launch actually build back sales for all these other things when I launched ten thousand feet, I also get a bump in enquiries for one on one coaching and membership and kickstart labs that's a business model right? Those air offers that make sense together and people khun self select but my content the conversation that I'm having is relevant to not all of my offers but it's relevant in that it gets people thinking about working with me it demonstrates the value of what I have to offer all right questions sasha would you combine those personal outreach offers with then saying we'll be offering this to the list later or do you think that yes, you would just say, oh, I'm offering this to first you get priority before yeah, yeah, yeah yeah actually I did on interview for a case study for this and it didn't make it it into the launch content, but that's how molly may hard launched her elevate mastermind, which she actually went out and presold the mastermind to former clients or people who were wanting to take a next step with her who her smaller her smaller offers didn't land for but that she knew there was something else that they wanted from her and so she craft she talked to them, then she craft that something. Then she went back to them and pre sold it and she was over half sold out before for she released it to her list so that when she released it to the list in the early adopter phase, she didn't need this many people to buy she needed like six people to buy by which for her audience is a just a minute number so that can work really, really beautifully okay, yes, karen so it sounds like you don't need to have an extremely large list if you're targeting just the few people who matter most exactly quite far strategy bigger isn't better that's extremely empowering absolutely yes you do not need a big listo launched early adopters ifyou're if the people that you know would be early adopters for you right there are there are people you can create an offer that makes sense to the early adopters thatyou know that also meets your needs in your business. So you know for karen for you that might mean thinking about the ten people who would actually like to work with you on a personalized one on one you again yoga program all right and maybe that's ah six hundred dollar offer instead of a sixty dollar offer and that meets your expenses for how many months or it or it seeds it gives you working capital for a bigger launch or for a rebrand of the other you again yoga program or it sets the stage for a bigger and bigger personalized offer some good and definitely yeah good yes big list not needed that's I mean and that's for anything that we're talking about today big list not needed it's most important to know who is most likely to buy now if you know that you can build from there you can start with the launched early adopters and then you can build your list with their help to get into the early adopter and late early majority and late majority space. But I do want you to look, this arc is like this for a reason. This is how many people are going to buy in your second or third or fourth sales cycle. This is how many people are going to buy the first time you offer a product. So if you offer a product for the first time and you know you don't, you get sales, but you don't get a lot of sails don't freak out it's that lets like that for a reason. And now it's your job to capitalize on the opportunity of selling to this much bigger segment of your audience. Yes, so I'm planning like the programme that I'm working on right now is a year long program, so what I'm planning on doing is doing the initial lodge, but then reopening it a couple of times through the year, like, could that kind of fit into the same model? So it doesn't have to be a brand new a start date. Okay, great. Absolutely. Yeah, that totally worked for that.