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Day 0 to Affirmation

Now, in the first hundred days there six kind of key ways that you can interact with people you can do that in person, you can do it via mail. Yes, I know that old, archaic form of male. Yes, what in the world that is increasingly digital and focused on emails and tweets and status updates getting something in the mail this kind of unique, they know it costs you money, and they know with our post office here in the united states at least it's going to cost you more money as the months and years go on, they know that you've actually invested in them. You can still create some amazing experiences via mail. We have email right, which everyone uses, but again, because everyone's using it we may might not want that to be our primary method of connecting with people, something to think about. We have phone, right? Actually getting on that fun old device that we carry in our pocket all day and talking to our customers shock we could actually connect with them, ask them, how are we doing? Is t...

his working? Are you enjoying the product? Thanks for buying it. Thanks for putting food on my family's table. I really appreciate that I appreciate your business if you have any problems, I've called you from my personal cell phone she's saving your phone if you have ever any problem with my product hit, call back on that number and you'll have me directly, not an account rep, not a salesperson. Imagine how you'd blow your customers mines with that level of transparency in that level of openness, we have video, right? The wonderful technology of video and being able to send people these customized messages. It's basically free and yet very few people are using it and finally, presence surprises, gifts, bonuses, things that they weren't expecting right. Cathy j right now is freaking out in the studio audience is like I love presents. All right, quick inside, reed five love languages. All right, read the book, the five love languages it will tell you I trust learned in this moment I don't know if kathy's ever read the book or she's taken the test. My gut instinct is either number one or number two on her love languages is gifts and presents because she just reacted so emotionally to that. Guess what? Statistically twenty percent of your customers fall into that category. It's my favorite part of my business nine presence is always figuring out like what's the next, like cute president and, like what's, the little package, and I love that awesome, awesome. What you need to do is think of this is a ritual okay, a ritual is a religious or a solemn ceremony and I'm not trying to turn this into you know some conversation about god ok, but that level of reverence towards your customers is really useful it's really useful for you to think of what is this kind of solemn ceremony ofthe actions in a prescribed order that air performed with ritual? What does that create? It creates rabid fans it creates people that are insanely loyal, it creates people that will tune everything else out to focus on what you're talking about huge. So what are the results of this? Well, interestingly enough across all industries ah, five percent improvement in your retention rate, right? So if you can get five percent of the people who are leaving to stay in the typical business that increases profits by twenty five to one hundred percent. So for those of you that are like a charlie, this has been all emotional and thoughts and brain process here's the bottom line do you want your business to increase profits by twenty five to one hundred percent? Do this it's that simple? Okay? This is not the big a look at the sail more, more, more we're going to increase profits a billion percent no, these are my statistics right? This is the guy who wrote the book on net promoter score mckinsey and company agrees with this number. I mean, the top business consultants in the world will tell you this it's all about focusing on the first hundred days on what's really interesting is if you have some type of on boarding program, some type of first hundred days solution, you cut your attrition rates in half, let me be really clear about this statement in this statistic, any program doesn't matter if it's even good you just thinking about this? We'll get people to stay more now I know it sounds ridiculous, but we're actually going to dive deeper into it later in the course to show how this actually works in the numbers. So let's, talk about a couple first hundred days solutions, okay? Newsome case studies of existing cos I imagine some of you have heard of zappos, right? Ah, wonderful online companies sell shoes, bags, all kinds of stuff. Zappos is an absolutely fantastic company in the interest of full disclosure, they've been a client of mine for several years, I've done work with them wonderful business, but before I had the opportunity to start working with them, I needed a pair of sandals I was going to the beach and without any judgment cause some of the women are just like, oh my god, he bought those okay bear with me bear with me ladies okay? Not necessarily the best fashion sense but you know, this is a true story. This is not made up for the presentation I needed some sandals I said I think these would be fun sandal stone. So on day one I decided I'm going to buy these sandals from zappos and I got an email write one of those six ways that you can communicate in the first hundred days I got an email from them here but what's interesting is that the top it says, whoa, nelly, have we got a surprise for you? We're going to deliver your sandals faster than originally promised because for once in my life I was doing something a little ahead of schedule and I was okay with the free ground shipping I didn't need to overnight it like I have to do in a lot of areas of my life, right? So in this one there were like, guess what? We're going to go ahead and overnight it to you and we hope that's brightened your day a little bit well, guess what it had on day two in the mail, okay, I actually received the package from suppose and it says here powered by service powered by service like the energy that dr zappos is service, I flip the package over and it says packed with happiness whoa nelly is right packed with happiness are you kidding me now severance is based in las vegas I didn't know you could actually have biggest shipped to you now that you know online a lot more people are going to be buying from zappos okay it's packed with happiness I got the shoes and I was ecstatic what's really interesting is what happened a couple days later on day five I was talking to one of my friends about my zappos experience and he said well, you know the reason they're able to do that is because of their culture I said their culture what do you think this is a business culture what are you talking about there's a couple of years ago before culture was so the dish you're word of the day in the business circles right? He said they actually do a culture book every year where they asked their employees hey try me in tell us what you love the most about working at zappos for what you don't like about working at zappos etcetera, etcetera they edit for two things grammar and spelling that's it they don't censor it and then they publish it in a book and what's interesting is that book is available to all of you for free you go to this hapless website search culture book you can order the most recent book that they've published and the ship it to you for free because tony shade the ceo is that post believes in spreading the good news sharing the word so one day six after I order it I get a video and the video says while you wait for your book to arrive in the mail let's show you a video of us making the books how cool is that? You know there's that angel theory you don't want to see how the sausage is made but I'll look at how a book is made that's fine that's really cool on day one thousand ninety five again sorry for all the math here in segment one for those of you that are not math majors that's the three year anniversary okay the three year anniversary I get an email and it says celebrate today is your third anniversary is this hapless customer and I'll be honest I had for gotten I have one anniversary to remember it's my wedding anniversary I don't remember any other anniversaries okay? Zappos remembered thank you technology thanks for doing that what they say is guess what? We're inviting you to join the exclusive zappos v I p club so for now on anything you order will be shipped next day free that's a great anniversary gift that's not some b s coupon twenty percent off your next order a lot of you do that that's a gift for you stop doing that that's not a gift for your customers it's a gift for you to get them to give you more money free shipping next day ups that's a gift audibles some of you may be familiar with audible dot com you can listen to books on tape okay now as I mentioned earlier my lovely son lachlan is four and a half months old and for those of you in the studio audience that have children or for those of you watching at home or watching at work online you're probably familiar that with children especially young children under six months they take something from their parents that their parents used to have a lot of before they were born and now they have very little love okay anybody know what it is? Time sleep right sleep and so there was an author that decided to put together a book to address this issue. Now I'm not going to create a george carlin moment here but he wrote this book ok and what was really fascinating when I heard about the book I heard that the audio book is read by samuel l jackson oh my gosh this is saying that like seriously the best person to ever read that book okay and so I thought I am not an audiobook I but I thought I am going to buy this audiobook and I bought it and let me tell you folks it is brilliant I won't acknowledge whether I ever have said this to my son okay that would make me seem like a horrible father but let me just be a little transparent say the thought might have crossed my mind at four a m okay I'm just saying parents you've been there you understand how this works but what's really interesting about audible is they have a technology that lets them know when you've actually listen to the book it's a little creepy but also cool okay and it's cool because on day three they sent me an email and that e mail they knew I had listened to the book said if you liked this book you're gonna love these books wow guess right there right I did like that book and they had a pretty good idea that I used now we'll talk later about whether they could have known if I liked it or not but the fact that I used the product shows some level of engagement some level of by and most of you aren't even tracking that your customers are buying stuff they're buying products are buying services you don't even know if you use it audible does one other quick aside I want to say this is the e mail I got this is the exact same e mail and text for those of you sending emails please start to use pictures depending on this study you look at seventy percent of the people on the planet are visual learners first and yet this is what we're sending them read read more. Is there anyone sitting around going? Gosh, I wish I had more to read, not really, but looking a picture that age old phrase the pictures worth a thousand words there's a reason it's an age old phrase because its trail let's talk about apple. Okay, about a year and a half ago, I bought a new laptop all right, and on day three, I get an email from apple and the email looks like this now what's really interesting is apple combined four of the opening touchpoints into one communication. They haven't email here where they say hey, if you have any questions, click here to send us an email that asked us about your new computer they have in person where they're promoting some of the work shops they do over on the other side. They have video you can click and watch a video of how to use your new computer, and they even have phone that if you're on the apple care protection plan, you click here and it takes you to the phone number you can dial in now without being judgmental of apple, because, as I said earlier, I'm a big apple fan that's probably too many communications in the first volley, but they already knew I was crazy. They knew I was an apple fan, right? Because guess what? I had bought lots of stuff from them before, so they were comfortable kind of overwhelming will you with this let's talk about temperature alert real quick? Okay, another client of mine brilliant company out on the east coast, it tells a device that monitors how hot or cold it is in your space. This is really useful for server rooms, for example that you don't want to overheat if you have a vacation home and you're worried about the pipes freezing you put this device on, it measures the temperature gets too hot or too cold it calls you it sends you a text message and an email how super cool we can save thousands and thousands they have one of these in a meat locker to really fancy restaurant. The meat locker died on friday night at about three o'clock in the morning, and the general manager immediately knew so that when they came in the next day the meat wasn't spoiled. One device that cost three, ninety nine saved tens of thousands of dollars from a single use brilliant your insurance company might also even give you a discount if you use this device okay, I'm done plugging, you know, temperature alert, but one of the things they promote is that it's very easy to use, okay on day seven if you haven't plugged your device in right, they know when you plug your device in, it reaches out and it connects and it starts monitoring the temperature and shockingly enough, some people buy the product and never plug it in, but they look at their analytics, and they know that they know whether customers plugged in or not. And if by state seven they haven't plugged in, they get a video and that video is this it's the ceo plugging the device in and doing the setup and their promises ease of use, and they say they could do it in under one minute, it's them fumbling around and doing it with a running time stamp that he gets it done in a minute. We've been talking, we're actually gonna have, like the ups guy do what? One day to just prove that you don't have to be the ceo of a technology company to do it? How would this change the experience of your customers? It's not publicly shared until today for the first time, the number of people that actually then install it after getting this video greater than sixty percent at a twenty to fifty dollars a month monitoring fi think that video's worth it? Yeah. Ok, so it's all about focusing in on the first hundred days, okay, in the few remaining minutes we have in this segment and we're going to go about five minutes long in this segment because I want to jam the content in and really get it to you guys. This is the psychology of the first hundred days. I want to explain this a little bit, okay, we start on day zero with assessment. You're like, day zero. Joey, this is confusing. Well, the problem is the assessment stage where they're trying to do business with you and decide if you're the person they want to give their money to can be something from seconds, two months, right? When it comes lunchtime, when we walk outside were like where we're going to go to lunch today, we make the assessment really quick. I'm gonna walk across the street today and go to that restaurant. If we're buying a car, our assessment process is a little bit longer. If we're buying a house, our assessment process is a lot longer if we're trying to decide where to go to college or where to go to grad school, right? Depending on the decision, the assessment phase changes in time, then we moved to activation day one think of activation is the day they buy. And then we go through these other days and we're going to talk about these in a second, but the reason they had the little number sign there is those days air different for every business the speed at which you're business is moving someone through the cycle depends on your service and product offering we're going to break this down to apply to your specific business but that's, why those air kind of question marks, if you will or we're not sure what number of the day that actually it isthe so as we talked about the assessment day zero is them deciding now what's really interesting in this age is signs oh, I want to talk for each of these about three things number one signs that someone is in this face number two the duration of how long this phase may last are usually last and finally your opportunity. Okay, so for assessment, the signs of this someone's coming to your website they're requesting information or a portfolio from you or they're looking for some of your marketing materials or you have a conversation with someone and they said, well, can he emails me some stuff about what you d'oh flashing lights? This is the assessment stage, they're considering it, how long can this last is? I mentioned earlier it could be a couple seconds it could be several months it's really just depends on your business. Your opportunity in this moment is to set the expectation for what it's going to be like to do business with you instead of talking about the features instead of talking about the benefits, talk about what the experience is going to be. Imagine seeding those conversations while they're in the deciding process. It's brain mojo it's exciting! All right then we moved to activation when they actually say I'm going to buy. So what are the signs in this phase? Click on the buy button on your website, hand you a check, give you a credit card he and you cash I am activated I am here. How long does that last? I mean? It's instantaneous it's when it happens, they activate okay, what's your opportunity, your opportunities from the initial interaction to start to blow their minds, to say, well, first impressions are really important. My first impression is going to start right now and it's going to be cool and it's going to be amazing and it's going to be surprises and bonuses and things that they didn't even expect. They're going to be so blown out of the waters right from the beginning that they're going to leave that first interaction on day one going I made the right choice uh that buyer's remorse that psychology we can battle it from day one we really start to battle in the affirmation stage right so this stage is kind of when somebody goes from they taking the purchase decision but they're in that zone where they're still deciding whether it was a good decision or not okay for some of you that ship products or you sign on for a service and you're like well we're going to start off with the kickoff meeting and then you'll see the round one logo designs two weeks from now that affirmation stages two weeks for that person right it's what is the time period from the decision where they activated they said I'm in till they start to see stuff if you're shipping it it's when does it arrive so if you're doing neck say affirmation stages only a day you're shipping ground it maybe five to seven days it's different for every business that's what we have the little number sign there your opportunity in the affirmation stage is to counter their feelings of buyer's remorse to reassure them that they made a good decision there are lots of ways you can do this we'll talk about some later but I mean you can share case studies of people that have used it well you can give them videos that say look how easy it's going to be to set up and use this you can't even just say hey guess what I know you're probably nervous but you made the right choice and we have a money back guarantee so don't sweat it it's all good you're going to get time to try this and if you don't like it we'll give you back all your money oh okay I feel a little bit better about myself admission okay the way to think about the admission stage is like when you're admitted and when you start to come in toe like a school or a situation or admitted to a hospital it's like all right I'm in I'm one hundred percent and I have the stuff now what happens this is the learning stage this is the figuring it out this is you saying okay how do I actually get the customer to start using what it is that I've given them okay how do I admit them and wealth um in that's your opportunity then we get tau acclamation right and we talk about things we hear the phrase acclamation like acclimating toe altitude right? I live in colorado high and about like eight thousand feet on what people come to visit it's like how do you acclimated to your new surroundings? This is what your customers you're doing how are they acclimating to doing business with you? They may have shortness of breath like an altitude what are you doing to help them out? How you making them feel welcome your opportunity here is to hold their hand your opportunity is to guide them through the first couple of steps, then we come to assimilation, and when we talk about assimilating something we're talking about, okay, I'm in and I'm feeling it right. And as you pointed out, there's a lot of hayward's, they're hard to remember that's why they're all in your worksheet and your handouts write those p s you can download when with the assimilation stage, the opportunity is to get them to start thinking like us to get them to start acting like us to make this habitual, then we come to adoption, okay? The adoption stage is, you know, again not teo switch it out of a business context, but think about the stage ofthe adopting a child when you adopt a child, you're saying I am taking ownership for this. This little person, this being is mine. I am responsible for them, I'm gonna look out for them, I'm going to care for them. I am one hundred percent all in that's where we want to get our customer. Still, we want to get him to the point where they've adopted us, where they say I'm all in with your business. I'm one hundred percent there. I'm going to look out for a few guys who make a mistake or you kind of dropped the ball. I'm going to let you know I'm not gonna fire you, you know, if a child makes a mistake, I'm not gonna throw it out on the street. I'm going to say, hey, by the way, you made a mistake, here's, what happened? Let's? Make sure it doesn't happen again. How cool would it be if our customers treated us like that? How cool would it be if we were in an adoption relationship with them? Where, if there was an error a mistake, they give us a heads up, heads up instead of going to twitter or facebook and complaining if you built the other stages, right? That's, what happens at this point in the relationship? The reason people are flaming you online is because you haven't built the other stages you've just presumed hey, we're there, give me some referrals finally, advocacy. Okay? The signs of advocacy is when someone is actively reaching out to you and saying, I've got a friend that might be interested in this I really love what else do you guys have? That's a bison, right? What else do you have? What other products? What other services? How can we do business together? I've had the wonderful fortune of having some clients call me up at the end of the year because they used to live in d c into a lot of government contracting work they would call up, and they would say we have fifty thousand dollars to spend before the end of the year. We'd like to spend it with you. Can you just send us a proposal that says fifty thousand dollars? We'll figure out what the heck we're going to do next year now without a commentary on the government procreate chairman system and how that works, okay, that's where you want to be, you want to be an advocacy where they're like, let me give you my money, let me give you my time. I'm all in these are the faces we go through, okay from day one, we've got great opportunities, we've got opportunities to personalize and choreograph our message, you know, think back to the choose your own adventure books. This is what it's like it's, a business owner. You get to choose what the relationship is going to be it's so cool it's like in these books you'd be reading along it would be like oh I'm walking down the street and you get to the end of street and a spaceship lands and an alien comes out do you want to go up and shake the aliens hand or do you want to turn and run away how I want to go shake the aliens hand if you do turn to page forty eight that's the opportunity you have with your customers to build that kind of adventure of that kind of story you know it's kind of like that great scene in the disney movie beauty and the beast be ill guest be our guest put our service to the test imagine if that's the interaction your customers felt imagine if you treated them like guest instead of customers remember in that scene all the fanfare and the dancing and the music I'm not saying you necessarily do this in your business kay some of the people in the room are kind of looking me like joey seriously I do kettlebells this's a little much the same my crowd I get it I'm with you but this kind of emotion this kind of feeling because at the end of the day it's a dance right it's like the tango it's that given the take at times you're leading at times your customers leading what's the flow what's the motion we've got all these things to dio all these opportunities six different ways we can interact well spend the next three days talking about him so real quick any questions? I know we're running a little long on time so if not we can save those for the next period great, I'm gonna do real quick one hundred days in one minute everything I just talked about for the last ninety minutes in one minute so when you do an initial by the clock starts ticking in your customer immediately moves to a stage of buyer's remorse where they have fear, uncertainty and doubt about the decision they just made they jump on this roller coaster and they have no idea where it's going customers are leaving out the back door depending on your business. We're not sure how much but somewhere between twenty and fifty percent and frankly you're often making it worse by the person who brought them to the dance angle on the dance with him it's a problem the first hundred days or where it's that it's what you need to focus on instead of putting all your effort here on acquisition, marketing, driving the people in you need to switch and put over here how do we serve? How do we make them loyal? How do we make them feel welcome? You've got six interesting ways to do that all right, in person, male video, email, phone and presence. And across a wide range of industries, a five percent change equals twenty five to one hundred percent increase in profits. We gave you some examples of some of the big companies that are doing this, as well as some of the small companies that are doing this. People that are focusing on the first hundred days to make it happen. People that understand the evolution of the process of someone psychology and their interaction with your business. And they're focused all on making it wonderful from day one by walking him them in letting them know that they're a guest instead of a customer, by enjoying the dance with them back and forth. And by hopefully making sure that their face doesn't look like this when they do business with your company.