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Analyze System Needs & Solve Customer Problems

Lesson 24 from: Turn Your Service Into a Product

Tara McMullin

Analyze System Needs & Solve Customer Problems

Lesson 24 from: Turn Your Service Into a Product

Tara McMullin

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Lesson Info

24. Analyze System Needs & Solve Customer Problems

Lesson Info

Analyze System Needs & Solve Customer Problems

So let's jump into some analysis like I said, analyze is one of my favorite words I'm a spreadsheet girl at heart I gave you tables instead of spreadsheets I hope that's okay when everyone so the question ultimately here is how we know what our customers need to dio I hate to break it to you guys you can't force them to do it you can't force them teo use your product you can't force them to take the fascination assessment you can't force them to clear a space in their workspace you can't make them do anything. So how do we help our customers do the things that they need to do in order to succeed? Because remember learning which is what on boarding is hint almost everything in business comes backto learning. Learning is about helping people to choose a different behavior than they could have chosen before. How can we help our customers to do the things they need to dio to be successful? Well, fortunately, researchers have come up with a formula for that this's not a mathematical formula...

. There are no numbers involved here, but this is a formula from a researcher named bj fog and it basically says that be his behavior is equal to you m eighty motivation ability and a trigger so what bj fog is found through his research is that if you want a behavior you need to come up with the magic combination of motivation, ability and a trigger, and the way he describes it with is with a chart that looks something like this, so we have motivation on this side motivation goes from low to high ability also goes from low to high, and then the trigger is the event that would prompt you to try the behavior. So the trigger happened somewhere over here, okay, so what this says is that if your motivation is high enough, you can do things that you have low ability, you khun do hard things if you have high motivation also, if even if you don't have a lot of motivation, you could do easy things, right? You may don't want teo, but if the right trigger occurs, when you have low motivation, you could do something that's easy, what you can't d'oh is if you get a trigger over here somewhere and it's something that is well, you have a relatively high motivation, but relatively the low ability and where those two things intersect is not in the green you're not going to be you're not going to do it there's not going to do it same thing over here, you know, if you could, you could do something if you have the motivation for it and you have the ability, no problem this is the sweet spot like this is really easy but where it gets challenging is in figuring out how motivated our people to do this and do they have the ability is it easy or hard for them to dio now here's the thing that complicates things a little bit we can't create motivation we can't make people be highly motivated so they could do the hard things cory can't make someone be motivated to sign up for an email management system if he could life would be so much easier if you could make someone be highly motivated for a task that they have low ability to do you'd be golden when you are highly motivated you khun do things that are hard for you but when you're not motivated you can't or more often you just won't you won't try so if you can't create motivation and you mean tohave motivation to do things that are challenging where does that leave us where does that leave you and trying on board someone to do something that's going to be chill it's new right they've never presumably done this before where does that leave us? Well fortunately bj fog has an answer for us and he says do hard things when you are motivated that make future things easier do hard things when you're currently highly motivated that make future things easier the example he gives of that is say that you really want to get fit you are highly motivate maybe your pants don't fit or you've got a wedding coming up you are highly highly motivated to get in shape what what what's the first thing that you usually do when you're motivated teo like start working out what what's your normal first step anyone go lift heavy things you just like you start like working it out, right? Yeah anyone else have anything else to do? Are you I buy like new running shoes and a new outfit to wear? Tio yeah on that's actually the example that pj fox gives he says that's what people do they go in there like I'm going to start running? I am so motivated like they were just read born to run or something like I'm so motivated to become a runner and they go and buy new running shoes and he says what a waste of perfectly good motivation because I don't know michele I don't think you need to be too motivated to shop theo on the ability chart ability was, you know, something low you didn't need to be highly motivated yeah to be able to go shop. And so what bj fog says is according to this principle of when you're highly motivated, you can do things that are hard for you he says what you should dio ifyou're really motivated to get fit is to go and pay for six months with a personal trainer who's going to come to your house every morning at eight am that is a very hard thing to do but if you're motivated you khun do something hard like that and booking that paying for an advance and getting him scheduled to come to your house every morning makes future behavior easier because it's actually it's actually harder to call and cancel then to just get it over with and like do the work out yeah rollout of bad toss on those you know that new outfit with the new shoes and just get it over with so that's an example of where you do something hard when you're highly motivated that could make future things easier so how do we apply this well pop quiz for you guys when do you think your customers are most motivated? The moment of purchase is the highest motivation that your customers will experience because buying itself is a very hard decision buying itself is a very hard decision because there's actually psychologist when you give something away that's actually psychological really hard to get even worse with your giving away physical money paying in cash is harder in your brain and paying with something on plastic yeah yesterday we talked about pricing and one of the factors that I asked people to consider in terms of pricing was what investment people need to make to get best results from your product on dh I'm wondering if price and the motivation that comes from buying something is like is relatives so the hot maury the more you charge for something the more motivated your customers are going to be after they purchase it yeah, it is definitely relatives so what? You know ah, one hundred dollar investment to person a and in one thousand dollar person into investment be might require the same relative level of of motivation because of their personal position in life or what have you but what is really interesting about that this is a problem with free free is a problem because people are not motivated to take advantage of free and so you know, at a very baseline level free contradicts the principle of do hard things when you're most highly motivated and that's why people don't complete things that are free, they don't do anything with the stuff that's free because they didn't have to be motivated to get in the first place they just hit a button. How hard is that? So you going to answer your question? It depends on the audience and does I talk about relative levels of pain in purchasing and how often the right price is the one that's just a little bit painful for your buyer? You don't want it to be feeling so comfortable because of the motivation question you want people who want the results you promised you want people who are highly motivated by what you have to offer so yeah definitely ah higher price point is going to take advantage of the higher most we can't create it but it's a filter where you only get the more highly motivated people when you do that yeah good question so if your customers our most highly motivated right after the body they buy we can't create motivation but we sure as heck can take advantage of it that's what we're going to do and I'm actually going to invite us to do ah hot seat here we're going to go through when we're going to fill in some of those table items that you guys came up with so do I have into your corey yeah we're going to talk about those hard hard email management thing's all right all right and I have fancy sticky notes here that I am going to use so corey I know who you are but in case someone's just tuning and they haven't had a chance to meet you before ones you just remind everyone you know what what you're all about and also what what products you want to be thinking about on boarding people for sure I'm cory huff and I I'm cory huff and run the abundant artist dot com we teach artists how to sell their art and the product that we're thinking about today is our how to sell your art online course which was talking about earlier cool. So tell me a little bit both some of the hard things that people have two d'oh in order to be successful. Sure. Where did they get what they get stuck? Well, I mentioned the email management tool already. They have a hard time using that. Um another one is feeling comfortable talking about themselves. Other places that they get stuck where you feel like a good way to think of the getting stuff. Question is, where do you have to pull people along? You have to really cokes, thumb or remind them right? Another one would be, uh, we encourage them to go and research market places where they can put put up their art. Yeah. That's a good one. I'm curious about that one. Uh, what is it? Do you think that makes the research process hard? There's? Too many options. There's. Too many off there's. Three hundred plus web sites that sell original are okay. So the second part to that question change colors in my sticky notes here is how do you think you could make something like that easier for them? Well, we have a spreadsheet with all of those websites together along with their relative traffic according to compete, dot com and some other criteria, um so we put that spreadsheet together and then the problem they still run into is you know, they look at the top five or whatever and they and they can't decide which one's the best fit for there are and they can't decide like and then and then they run into the sinai problem again they can't figure out how to get there art uploaded it sounds really simple, but it's actually kind of complicated because it's like proportions and resolution and stuff so all that stuff that artists have to worry about s o yeah, they run into in tow on boarding problems with other people's websites, right? And that's that that's actually really big challenges if you're using other systems so in in the master class I'm using a system called slack to run the community and if you've never used black before then there's there's a bit of a hump there you never used it you don't know how to sign up it's just a friendly solution yeah, I mean it's pretty easy, but that that doesn't mean that it's easy for me doesn't mean it's gonna be easy for them, right when we run into that with a quiet power strategy with google docks, you know my biases that everyone uses google docks and I'm constantly shocked how few people d'oh yeah that's that's a good example we know that pain okay, so that spreadsheet here is one way that you try and make this researching markets easier. What are some other ways that you could try and make that if the spread she isn't really making it easy? Hear how else could you make it easier for them? Well, I suppose that we could put together like a list of the file types that they might need tohave necessary along with resolution and sizing different sites have different criteria for that s o I could I could have my team, uh, add that to the list. We could also put together like a guide on how to photograph your art. That sounds like a whole other product. S o that maybe is too much for you for this but a flow chart instead of a spreadsheet because you mentioned people have a hard time figuring out what the right fit is for their art. So if your argument this kind of are here to make this kind of are going pretty good idea, yeah, good decision tree. Yeah, basically. So there I'll back up a second. The reason that we have them research these markets is because one of the things we want artist to do is to get quick winds we want them to experience actually making a sale relatively quickly so rather than go through the whole process of building a website and trying to get traffic to your website you take advantage of somebody else's traffic to get a sailor too so you can validate that people like your s o what I what I guess what I was trying to say there is um maybe making that hole like this is the reason you're doing it so you can get a sale maybe we could make that more explicit and say uh if you want to get a sail by the end of next week, don't do this and that that speaks to this idea of motivation, which is when we figure out how we're going to meet these needs what we're goingto what we're gonna find out is the question off where do people get stuck is best answered by what is their level of motivation? So let's just you let's do this example a swell talking about you're talking about yourself let's talk about how some ways that you could make it easier for people to talk about themselves? Sure so I was telling terror this yesterday when we first in the class the class was just learned howto blogged use email on social media and the challenge when it ran into was all the artists had no idea what to block about and so I said, well, you know why do you make the art you make and suddenly blah blah blah blah blah, blah eso but but there are some artists who have a really challenge with that they don't have a conscious thought process when it comes to making art on dso for them we have writing exercise is that push them to sort of plumb the depths and and figure out why they make some of the art that they make uh but even there the problem that we run into is they end up talking all about the technical process so I late I laid on some guest so and then I I chose this yellow color and then I chose this red color and then I used a palette knife and there's no wyatt all right? And then and then I have to go I have to like tend them their homework back and say do it again yeah eso it would be great if we could figure out a way to get them to talk about not the technique but talk about the why they make the work question do you ask give me an example of one the questions you say we give them prompts right? What you asked I say, well, stop at some point when you're making your are like after you've been painting for a couple of hours and say okay, what am I feeling right now? What is the emotional and physical feeling in my body it from the art that I'm making? Why am I feeling that on dh that works for some artists and other others it might be why did you choose to create like what is the subject matter for that inspiration? Why did you choose that subject matter? Um you noticed the wise right? We talked earlier about the question why and what might be useful for you is to not just ask why once but to find a way to say when you think about the answer you just gave then ask the second level why? Because that first level why is always going to be on the surface that when you can say you know, think about this in a different way that you can get them to go deeper, you probably will start to tease out deeper things. One thing I'm curious though in talk mother says you can give them prompts is that enough to get them comfortable talking about themselves? No, because a lot of them don't understand why they need to talk about themselves. Okay, yeah, they like it so I just make the search and I just give it to the world and I don't you know there's no there's, no deeper meaning and there's always deeper, meaning there's always deeper meaning in every piece of art where that camera is and the since you're asking so we asked him to talk about themselves because for an artist the brand of your art business is you people buy are not necessary, like sometimes you just see a piece of our and you're like, oh, I love that. But most of the time when you sell a piece of our it's because they've gotten to know the artist a little bit, they have an idea of of the meaning behind the piece of art, like the general lei person looks at a at a piece of modern art in the moment and goes, I don't understand that, but then you start hearing about why the artist made those choices, and all the sudden the art is a lot more interesting. So we want the artist talk about themselves so that they can help the potential collector understand and emotionally connect with the art that the artist is making, what I'm hearing and that is that there's a disconnect in some some ways between the story and when it might be relevant to use that story. Interesting, right? Because it's one thing to know to be able to talk about yourself but it's another thing to be able to say, I know when to talk about myself. I know what might it's kind of knowing what your opening is, you know, in your opening line, like I prepared. My first line for when I got up there, I knew how I was going to start and then I was going to be okay. And I wonder if there's a house with that where they do this work and I'm sure you explain why did why they do it, but there's still not comfortable talking about themselves. It may be that there's a gap between the what and the when I wonder if we rearrange the order of some of the lessons because right now this is one of the first the learned to talk about yourself is one of the first lessons on we did that because people weren't able to complete the blogging assignments, but I wonder if we introduce if we introduce the blogging assignment and then people either do it or don't do it and then and then if they are having a hard time, the next lesson might be learn to talk about yourself and then that will help them actually go back and complete that previous lesson. Yeah, that's something that that's really interesting. When we think about how to organize things, does everyone need to go through the same process? Something right in the example I gave earlier, as I said, that press was really interesting to me and the in the coach's counsel on that was one of the things they put me in a stream where we get that extra information that probably you know I can't say for sure whether that was right so I think what you're saying is like the class is pretty big it's an eight week class um I wonder if it would make sense for during the on boarding process for people raise their hand and say I'm most interested in this ok go here and do this first we could probably do that we have some automation tools in place the other thing that you can do is instead of getting people to talk about themselves change the language asked them to introduce themselves right and I'm sure you already do that community but what you can do that is with thes prompts or thie other thing that we had talked about was you know, answering helping them to answer the question of when they would use that information to my sticky note is when they're talking about themselves to go back to that introduction that they made and kind of do a reflective thing how did you introduce yourself to these other artists? What made you interesting because when we introduced ourselves to a community of our peers we don't talk the same when we talked to our customers we actually are a lot more interesting often when we talked to our peers because we cut through all the fluff blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and like your peers don't like you usually say that as a passing mention in fact, in the facebook group for this community we've seen that happen already right? People say what they do but then they go into you know, do they have a family? Where do they live? That sort of thing that opens up a dialogue? And I think that's the other thing that people struggle with when they're doing the talk about themselves piece is once I've started talking about myself, where do I go from there like that's that when peace again, how do I use this to be really powerful and useful and so showing people one by one of the favorite things I used to do some speaking coaching as well I'm one of them my favorite things was I said to people, it's not you talking at people you're having a dialog with a silent partner, right? Basically you're you're michelle agrees with me, so I guess I'm on the money but there's the same kind of thing if you can encourage people to instead of about it's not talking about yourself it's talking with others, they're having a dialogue with collectors yeah that's interesting so we could change it from uh, learning tio learning to talk about the why behind your arto learning to have a dialogue with collectors just that language change often it's the really subtle changes like just changing language that makes a big difference yeah that's interesting I want you to stay up here okay because we're gonna come back and do another half to this hotsy okay. Okay. So the question you know, just teo make sure that we're all on the same page here was what were some of the hard things that's that first column in that table and then what could you or they do to help make them easier? One thing that it was really interesting to me we didn't plan this but it worked out really well is you'll notice the idea of researching the marketplaces you could have the spreadsheet you could give them info or what terrorist suggestion was could you just give them a flow chart? Could you do the decision making process for them but they still have to go through the box and say yes or no to the questions but could you do it for them? How much of it can you do it for them? Ah lot of on boarding can be made a lot simpler if you just start doing stuff for them right? We did this in quiet power strategy where instead of trying to get people to join the google plus community we just added them like how much easier is that fruit for them weak on r r and it's not that hard is a checklist item to make sure we add them that's one weighs what can you do for them? And then the second piece is what can you help them do for themselves? How can you make it easier that's the motivation piece right? How can get them to do something hard start to talk about themselves? Maybe they do a sound dialogue maybe they write that introduction makes future things easier because then they can go back to that in the future when they get to those future assignments. So you're going to stay up here because we're gonna come back to the other half of this equation to remember doing hard things was only half of the challenge. The other half of the stuff we came up with the previous lesson was the things that you know they need to dio so if motivation was the answer to the things that are hard then habits are the solution to things that you know they need to do so on that chart remember we talked about what they need to do and what the frequency of those things is. If the frequency is they just need to do it once no then just treat it like we did here. How can I make it easier for them to do or how can I just do it for them that's a motivation activity if they only need to do it once the others things though the things that happen regularly or more than once or repeatedly for that we're going to use habit formation and what the science of habit formacion tells us is that habit is a three step process forming habit is a three step process and we're not going to go super deep on this today but there is actually another creative live course by neary alcalde hooked and it goes deep into creating processed products that hook you and keep you coming back but for our purposes today a habit has three pieces has a trigger, then it has the behavior and then it has a reward so the trigger is the thing that causes the behavior the behavior is the thing you want them to do and the reward is why they feel good about having done it so let's do an example and then we'll talk about some triggers for corey step but let's talk about that social media example we talked about before and how we all check it multiple times a day. What is the trigger that causes you to check facebook what's the trigger for your facebook have it cory's laughing I want to know what your trigger for your facebook habit is I realize I have a phone in my pocket, right? Yeah, every couple of months I've removed facebook from my phone because it's a real problem yeah yeah yeah but it's it's like I see my phone like that's literally on my speaker knows for my slides that was one of the examples gives oh, I see my phone I should check facebook that's a trigger what? What else might be a trigger for checking any social media? I get a notification on my os you know, because you have facebook notification yeah that's dangerous I've turned it off after that. Fine it's very it's very limited but yeah yeah, I still get it for some things yeah, when you're bored that can be a trigger any feeling of loneliness or frustration? Yeah, yeah, those are all triggers that prompt us to take a behavior to check facebook but that's why there's a little notification icon on it, right? That little red thing that yells at you and says, check me check me check me and then the reward that you get from that I mean there's a dopamine hit in your brain your brain literally gets happy juice what you check facebook but there's also social connection on social bonding and seeing that someone's talking about you yeah it's true right that's viral people tagged me today people like my clothes exactly how many people like my papa but it's it's things like social like we think you've seen reward here and we think have to reward my people you don't have to like make it really complicated like making someone feel welcome or like, hey, thumbs up, you did really good, like we all want someone to say you were awesome, right? We're making someone feel like they're part of a community or like they're being paid attention to we talk about that feeling of confidence that we want our people to tow have we want them to feel like you're paying attention to me? I want to be a name, not a number, right? That's what we want to be creating whenever we have someone that when we have something that our people need to do more than once, we want tohave a trigger that's going to cause them to do the behavior behavior over here so they can get those dopamine hits and those feel good rewards. So, corey, what were some examples of the things that you said that people need to do more than once in order to be able to get the most out of your product, right? Well, one thing and I just wrote down was communicate with their audience, yeah, uh, artists do this thing where they sit in their studio for hours or weeks or months and make stuff, and then they suddenly emerge, having never spoken about it, and then they suddenly go, hey, I made all this stuff do you guys want this, uh, and then they don't understand that they have to like warm up the audience and talk to them and create a dialogue with them before they can actually sell not just artists you know it's not just artists that's right? How often I mean how often would you want them to be communicating with their audience with the frequency here? Well, ideally I think it would be what I tell artist is regularly on dh what that means is a tte least monthly uh but preferably a couple times a week on, you know, if it's a combination of different channels daily so as as little as monthly and as frequently as daily okay, so what would be a trigger that you could help that artist create that would remind them it's time to communicate with my audience every time you finish a piece of art, make sure that you tell your audio it's about it and actually I would probably break it down even more than that. I would probably say, uh, because because I one of the lessons is like how to create a social media post around a work in progress. So we'll do. We'll have them take multiple pictures of the peace and so if it's a larger piece, you can create multiple posts out of that if it's a small piece it's maybe just one but uh yeah, so you break that down into every couple of hours or every day take a picture of your work in progress and share that so I wonder if the trigger is, you know, finishing if he's air getting to a certain point in the piece, but I wonder if the trigger is actually getting them to make sure that they have their phone in their studio near their workspace where they'll see it to take the picture interesting, right? Because think about facebook definitely just assumed that all artists would have their phone within three feet of them like me, but maybe so maybe it's telling them have your phone on on a sunni to get into studio what started work session put it in camera mode open up the camera so triggers work on and after so after you do x, then do you watch the trigger happens and then the behavior so after you go into your studio to start a work session, put your phone besides you and put it into into the camera app yeah time limit like that the end of the day like you in the studio you've got take a picture what you've done even though you don't know quite know what you're gonna do with that photo it's a really good idea after you clean your brushes or whatever that from an artist and a part of your studio ritually exactly shares a lot of money so well thanks on instagram and facebook and twitter um I have essentially a practice of any time I come to a stopping place like I mean I take a breath I take a step back time to take a picture and share it yeah and what's interesting about that is so we want you know the trigger you might not be there for the trigger that's the hardest part in this on boarding process you might not be there for the trigger so what you wanted teo is help people to do the hard thing that makes future things easier, which is give them the instruction, pull your phone, put it into camera mode or set a timer or after you clean your brushes like actually at your you know if you have ah, you know you have a station where you do all your cleaning like get them to have a sign made for them that they print out and they stick their station right take that one to the bank, right? But we're trying to create the trigger and make the trigger as easy to use as possible, so give them the trigger so that they can use it and then the reward is its own reward but what you want to do is help people recognize the reward that you've given them, so what would be an example so you know they you could have got that sign they're going to go clean up and they see oh right, I'm supposed to take a picture of my work at this point what's the reward for doing that? Uh so obviously the best reward is somebody contacts them and says I want by that uh, words have to be immediate have it well then it's likes and shares and comments on social media one of the things that bj fog says is that if you can't think of a good reward, get them to dio yes like literally just do that you know is right and you conclude that on your sign, right? Take a picture and then cheer for years like it feels really ridiculous but take a pic sharon power pose yeah do happy dads do whatever feels good and authentic to you that khun b the reward so I like this I'm just gonna say you're you're you're, uh trigger is to have some kind of sign in their world that reminds them do this and then their reward is, uh, celebration because awesome also it's just feeling good about yourself, my feeling accomplished like I actually did it that's all this could be really simple stuff yeah, I already highlight people from my community who like complete certain portions of the homework or who are more active in our facebook groups so like we can do a hashtag have them have them hashtag when they submit something on social media and then we could do a round up of weekly post like yeah, yeah, public acknowledgment great reward, especially for artists who the whole thing is about being seen I mean, that's why they're taking this program if that's their reward that's also is going to motivate them right there. We can't create motivation, but we know that that taps into their intrinsic motivation to be seen that's a really effective way of doing that. I like that. Uh just an example, you know, maybe you're thinking I don't wantto print helps create signs for my people to print out a really good trigger that while people are in your program, you could be using this is probably going to go for everyone with the best triggers, you can use his email, send them an email and remind them that when they see an email from you that's their trigger to do the behavior that gives him a reward, this is what we do in q p s that's great larry. Yeah, they already get a daily email reminding them about the day's lessons so I can just be p s did you take a picture and share it today, yeah. Yeah, we do that in quite power strategy. It's weekly, right? The behavior is weekly, the baby, or is check your all your lesson to do your homework every week? And so we send an email that's the trigger, which prompts the behavior, which is, click through and listen to the audio, and the reward is hopefully a sense of accomplishment. A sense of I've learned something new about myself in my business today. Trigger behavior, reward with frequency, right, something we want them to do weekly. We make sure the trigger happens weekly. We want them to be doing it daily. We make sure the trigger is something that they will experience. Really. All right, thank you very much, cory. You can go have a seat round applause for cory.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

The Observation Engine - Multimedia Pack
Intro to How to Thing Like a Marketer - HD.mp4
How to Think Like a Marketer: The Who - HD.mp4
How to Think Like a Marketer: The What - HD.mp4
How to Think Like a Marketer: The How - HD.mp4
Create a Product That Resonates Workbook
Turn Your Service Into a Product Workbook

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Ever wondered about the roadmap to creating VALUE in your products? This Creative Live houses that roadmap. I just finished three full days doing this training and can say that it's Tara's best yet, and that my business in 2016 will not be the same because of it. We will be better connected to our customers needs, we'll have content that transforms their lives (for free), and as business owners we now have the toolkit to sell our products more consistently. Thank you CL and Tara Gentile for this gift. You make small business dreams come true.

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It was a great experience, thank you Tara! I have watched and own other classes. This feels to me like some kind of broadening of knowledge every time with you. It has been very inspiring 3 days. My service is not a product yet but on the way to become. Great people in studio, too.

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