🔎 Unveiling the Customer Journey 👥
Mastering the customer journey is like conducting a symphony of touchpoints, harmonizing timing, and value to create an irresistible crescendo of engagement. For today’s episode, Sherell Slaise dissects the customer journey, uncovering the critical touchpoints that lay the foundation for successful communication and compelling offers. She confronts a common pitfall: offering products or services prematurely, akin to proposing on the first date. By dissecting these steps, Sherell shows how to determine the perfect moment to introduce the value we can provide. Join us as we explore the art of adding value to more individuals, creating a greater impact, and increasing your earning potential.
#impactfulentreprenurshow #guestinterview #CustomerJourney
✅ Connect with Sherell:
https://www.facebook.com/sherell.slaise
✅ Insert Here - Sherrell’s free gift for you:
https://sherell.krtra.com/t/yQaeRLN6CidT
✅ Audience Explosion Toolkit - Adrienne’s free gift for you:
https://www.socialsalesmachine.com/audience_explosion_toolkit
✅ Adrienne’s Entrepreneur Community on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/6.figure.strategy
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🔎 Unveiling the Customer Journey 👥
Dissecting The Customer's Journey
Did you know that offering your product or service before people have had enough exposure to your brand, your marketing, and the value that you offer, and offering it too soon is like asking someone to marry you on the first date? It's a little bit weird. The only way to work out of that vicious cycle of getting stuck in that is to understand your customer's journey. Understand the touchpoints they need to experience with you to get ready to hear about an offer. Understand what the breakdown of those steps looks like so that you know exactly when is the right time to let them know that you have something that could be helpful for them. If you've ever wanted to dissect the customer's journey and understand how to execute lists flawlessly, you are in the perfect place, my friend. That's what we're tackling in this episode. Let's do this.
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I’m Sherell Slaise. I'm going to talk to you about repeatable systems to generate leads. Why is this important? Don't we all want to simplify the work that we do? Don't we all want to streamline our work processes and make it simpler and easier to be able to bring in more people into our sphere of influence so that we can add more value to more people, make more impact, and make more money? I think that's what we all want. I have been in business now for over fifteen years, having completed a corporate career at the age of 30, working in the healthcare industry.
Don't we all want to streamline our work processes to be able to bring more people into our sphere of influence so that we you can add more value to more people, make more impact, and make more money?
I was consulting healthcare organizations and hospital organizations. I left that industry and decided to become an entrepreneur in real estate. I owned a real estate company for nine years and counting. I then got into network marketing probably about six years into my real estate career. With network marketing, I shot up to the top of the company. I became a top 1% earner and six-figure earner in the industry, and I hold that position today.
Half of my career in network marketing was following the traditional sales process that we are taught, which really isn’t a sales process. It was more about gathering names of people that you interface with every day. It was a friends and family approach. While that does work, and it did work during that period of time, I wanted to expand my business in a bigger way. I wanted to make more impact.
I wanted to expand outside of the city that I was living in, and outside of the 2 or 3 states that I was able to drive to, and physically meet with people. I wanted to have the exposure that was on a global scale. There was no way to do that following the friends and family approach unless I found the best approach, which became the most effective approach, which was online marketing. That is the smartest and most effective way to begin finding the right people for business.
I came across Entrepreneur magazine in 2017. I read it all the time. The article said that every business's existence is dependent upon sales to generate revenue and profits. It went on to say that if a business doesn't have a marketing plan in place to generate those sales, it's bound to fail. When I was reading that, I thought, “I don't have a marketing and sales process in place that my business can depend on.” I have friends and family, and that list is finite. When I meet other people that are interested in joining my business, they have a friends and family list, which is also finite.
When I started thinking about that, I thought, “How can anyone create a sustainable big business in today's time in network marketing if they don't have an online presence?” Having an online presence is the most effective way to get exposure and build a brand, and to get more leads taking a look at your offer. After reading that article, I then ended up hiring a coach who said repeatedly all the time, “If you master traffic and you master conversions, your business will never go hungry.”
I thought, “That's where business is.” I mastered that in my real estate business. We knew how to generate traffic on repeat. When I say traffic, I'm talking about people seeing you, your brand, and what it is that you have to offer. We mastered traffic in real estate by having a sales and marketing strategy. We mastered the conversion of that traffic by having a sales and marketing strategy.
Why wasn't I creating and perfecting a sales and marketing strategy for my network marketing business? I have no idea, but I woke up to that at whatever year was that about six years ago. I said, “If I can figure out a repeatable marketing system for my online network marketing business that would generate leads on repeat to me, then my business will never go hungry. I did that, and I'm going to share that with you all today.
Now, it's very difficult to build a sales and marketing strategy if you have no idea what experience your customer or your potential customer goes through when it comes to them making decisions to buy or to partner with you. Here's your customer's journey. This is a generic process that any customer goes through when they're thinking about making a decision to buy or partner. This is a short process, by the way. It continues, so I also have another continuum that after a customer makes a decision to partner or buy from you, then there's maintenance and retention. It goes on.
We're going to talk about right now how to get a suspect into your pipeline or into your sales funnel, and then how you help them make a decision. A customer goes from being unconcerned to becoming aware, to defining, to considering, and then to making a decision. I'll use one of my potential customers. One of the characteristics of my ideal customer is they are working moms with young children. They're currently in the working place from 9:00 to 5:00 with young kids. That's who I was when I found network marketing, so they're my ideal. They have the characteristic of my ideal customer.
This person though is probably unconcerned. They're hanging out on Facebook, which by the way is where I do most of my lead generating. They're not paying attention to what their problems are and what their challenges are. I call that person a suspect. Let's say my potential suspect is hanging out in a Facebook group and they're in a mom's group. They're in there talking about their 9:00 to 5:00, and how they don't feel like they have enough money. They wish they had more freedom with their children, their spouse, their personal life, and their friends.
Although they are talking about their issues or problems, they're not concerned about it. They're just saying that's what it is. At this point, this potential suspect doesn't even know that I exist. If you've hung out with me before, you know that I talk a lot about personal branding. You have to be very clear on your vision, where you're going, what your message is, and what your offer is. Being your brand in personal branding, you have an opportunity to interface with this unconcerned suspect inside of this group.
If we've worked together before, you've done such good work on your personal brand, you're able to go and create an activation within this community where you're putting valuable posts in front of all of these unconcerned suspects around the fact that you have found a solution to work at home so that you have more time for your kids. You have found a solution to create residual income so that you can leave your 9:00 to 5:00 and have more flexibility and free time for your family and for your personal life. You've got complete autonomy. You're independent. You've got some control over your money.
You're making these posts about your experience and you're answering people's questions. What ends up happening is that an unconcerned person is interfacing with your brand for the first time. They're finding out that you exist. Now all of a sudden, they're aware. Not only are they aware that they have a problem but they're actually seeing themselves in your valuable posts. You're talking and you're being so transparent in your posts that the suspect is saying, “This person understands exactly what I'm going through. I want some of what she has.”
They're able to become aware of their issues and problems because they're reading your social posts. Maybe it's a podcast you post. Maybe it's a blog that they're reading. You're going to even make some call to action in your post where this suspect is saying, "I can see myself in the stories that are being told from her post. I want to take action and I want to have a conversation with this person. I want to download this person's resource. She seems like she has the answer to this new problem I'm realizing that I have and that I'm thinking I might want to do something about it."
Through your social post or your podcast, you're giving a call to action, which is leading that person into a community that you own. Maybe it's an email that you are nurturing or a blog platform that you're hosting, and you start to cultivate this individual. By the way, this individual who was a suspect has now become aware that they have an issue who's now interested in your brand and the valuable posts that you're putting up, who is now opting into your community, into your ecosystem, and into your world.
You are now able to generate and cultivate a relationship and experience with this person. They're no longer a suspect. They are now a bonafide prospect. They're in the process of defining how deep they want to go on the topics that you're talking about. What are the benefits of the solutions that this expert is talking about? They're going through this defining stage, trying to learn more about how sharp this needle they're sitting on that hurts so bad. Do they want to do something about it?
Customer Journey: The bona fide prospect is when they’re in the process of defining how deep they want to go on the topics that you're talking about.
From time to time, your brand is going to start making offers. Your brand is going to make offers in your Facebook community, in your blog posts, or in emails. When that happens, this suspect begins to seriously consider evaluating the offer that you're making. They're saying, “I've been hanging out with your brand for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 5 days, or however long. Am I going to do something about this?” They start considering the opportunity to work with you.
That's why it's so important when you're at this stage when you have a customer or a potential suspect who has become a prospect and is now considering becoming a potential customer. When you have someone going through this continuum, it's so important for you to make offers regularly because you don't know if you are generating traffic on a regular basis. You don't know what stage all of your customers are at.
Different Stages And Different Times
They're all at different stages because it takes time and various times for customers to move through their customer journey. Your suspects, prospects, leads, customers, and potential business partners will pop up at different points in time. You always want to be making some call to action. You always want to be making some sales offer so that you can help the pop.
The customer then makes a decision. There's some final decision that they're going to make. Maybe they make that decision through you giving a product demonstration. Maybe you're giving them a mini offer for them to experience. Maybe you give them a free consultation call because you're in the service industry. That would be a mini offer where they can experience what it's like working with you.
The bottom line is this is the point of entry to your sales system. Always see suspects as potentials, and that's basically anybody. You don't know where or when they're going to hop into journeys of your funnel. I'm calling it a repeatable system right now, point into your system. Over here on the left is the entry place. Let's continue to talk about this. When it comes to developing this, you need to think about where you are taking people.
Now that you're clear on what the customer's path is, how can your brand interface with this customer journey process? How can your brand interface at each of these stages? That's what you want to think about. I want you to go through this. I teach this with my students, so I want you to know that there's going to be work after this. I want you to develop this for yourself, and you can write this out on paper.
Here's a staircase. You're going to be taking a person from point A to point Z. Point A, unconcerned is over here. Here they have some awareness. Point A is awareness. They understand there are some problems and pain they're experiencing, and they want to do something about it. You need to define what that is. In my example, I spoke of a mom who has young children who is working from 9:00 to 5:00 and wants to spend more time with her children or wants to have more free time. She wants to be at home.
That’s the problem. That's the pain. She's not getting enough of that right now. The 9:00 to 5:00 is in the way. She's stressed out at work. The ultimate result is to have independence and freedom. That is her ultimate result. You want to ask this question for yourself. Where are your people today? Where is it that they want to go? What is their ultimate desire? Once you figure that out, you can also begin to write out, “In order for them to get from point A to point Z, what would need to happen to get them there?” We're going to go ahead and call her Jessica because that is my ideal customer. I need to think about what's going to get Jessica from point A to point Z. What are the many steps that she needs to take in order to get there?
Once you figure that out, you're thinking through your customer's journey. What is it that Jessica needs to go through in order to get to financial independence and time freedom? I'm going to give you an example. If I were leading Jessica to a network marketing business as my ultimate offer, because I'm saying network marketing is the thing that's going to help you get to your desired result, then I need to think about what I can provide Jessica with along this pathway such that at the end of her customer journey, I can then say to her, “At the decision point, you should consider network marketing partner with me.”
Network marketing is the thing that's going to help you get your desired result.
Point A, remember she's coming from awareness. Now she's in the awareness phase. She's aware, and I am going to give her an invitation to my Facebook community. Maybe I'm going to give her a free resource, which is called a freebie. Maybe I'll give her a book or an audio tape to listen to. Maybe I'll give her something digital to listen to that will help her think about this painful needle she's sitting on or this problem that she has that she gets to solve.
I’m going to think about, “If I want to move her from being unresponsive to being aware to defining, perhaps the next stage, once I offer this to her and she absorbed it, I'll reach back out to her and see if she liked what I shared with her. Maybe I'll invite her to my Facebook community where she can learn more about what it is that I teach so she can get more value from me. Maybe I'm going to get on a discovery call with her for fifteen minutes. We'll have a chat to discuss what she learned here and learn where she wants to go next. Perhaps I will invite her to a webinar or a presentation.
These are just some examples of different breadcrumbs that I'm laying for her so that Jessica can experience my brand and my value. At the same time, I'm taking her through her customer journey of helping her to get to a decision. The idea here is to make certain that your suspect who's turned into a prospect is getting enough experiences with you and how great your brand is that they can't help but see and talk to you again because they keep learning from you.
You want them to keep having all of these yes decisions with you. “If I gave you this book, would you be interested in it?” “Yes.” “If I invite you to this Facebook community where I teach how to transition from corporate into working from home, would you be interested in that?” “Yes. Add me to your Facebook community.” “Would you like to get on a fifteen-minute phone call with me to talk about how I transitioned out of corporate and started my own business from home?” Jessica's like, “Yes. Tell me more.”
The Biggest Mistake
I'm moving her up the staircase and I'm getting her closer to asking her to either experience my product or to experience working with me on my team. I'm not making my big offer yet. I'm giving her all of these many opportunities to interface with my brand. The biggest mistake that network marketers do is they meet Jessica being unresponsive, and we immediately show her our business opportunity. We're like, “You need this. Try my product.” She's like, “I have no idea who you are. You've never given me value. We’ve never interfaced before. I'm not even aware that I have a problem. If I am aware of the problem, I'm not even sure if I want to even do anything about it.” That’s part of the problem, so you need this continuum.
If you have a coaching business, it's the same thing. You want to know what the issue is. Let’s use Jessica as an example again. Jessica is saying, “I want to work from home, and I don't know how to make the transition. I need to be home. I need more freedom. I need more independence.” Perhaps I know that if I coach her on personal leadership and help her define her unique message, and I coach her to become resourceful and think about ways outside of the typical 9:00 to 5:00 way to make money, I might be able to help her get into business for herself.
I'm going to do the same thing. It's the same process. I'm going to share something free with her that she can receive value from, and then I'm going to maybe invite her to my Facebook group where I'm going to give her more knowledge, which increases my credibility and my authority. Maybe I'll invite her to my email list, which will allow me to nurture her, give her more knowledge, and increase my credibility and authority. It's the same thing. I'm going to take her through a process where she gets to experience more value from me, more experience from my brand, getting her to say yes all along the way to me making my big offer to her, which might be my coaching program, so I can help her get what it is that she wants.
Now, it's your turn. I hope this is sticking with you. I want you to think about point A where your ideal customer is. They're unresponsive right now and don't even know that you exist, but you want to get them to this first stair. You want them saying, "I got an issue. This is my issue." What is that issue? It may be ten different things. I gave you one characteristic that Jessica is experiencing. Jessica has 5 to 8 different things that she's trying to overcome. You want to write those things down. You want to answer the question, where does your Jessica ultimately want to end up? Start thinking about B through Y, what you will lead them through in order to get them from their point A to their point Z. That's your exercise.
By now, you should have a map of your customer's journey so you can identify the customer's touchpoints with your brand. You should have that. That's your assignment. By now, you should have also developed your repeatable system to generate leads into your funnel, and how to move them through your funnel.
Customer Journey: By now, you should have a map of your customer's journey, so you can identify the customer's touchpoints with your brand.
I hope this was helpful. I talk a lot about these repeatable lead generation processes, but it does you no good if you don't know what your brand is or if you haven't done the work to find out what is it about you that makes you unique and sets you apart from everybody else that's offering what you're offering. If you haven't done that work, then I want to invite you a step further to take a look at my Discover Your Personal Brand Worksheet, which will be available to you after you do your homework.
I also want you to get access to the Discover Your Personal Brand worksheet. After sitting down and going through the worksheet, you will be much more clear on what makes you unique, what makes you stand out, and what you can do to package all of that into a 30-second elevator pitch, or 1 or 2-sentence brand statement. When you do go to talk to the unresponsive suspects that are out there online, you can say, “I am an expert at this and I can help you with this.” It'll help you to be much clearer.
Helpful links:
✅ Connect with Sherell:
https://www.facebook.com/sherell.slaise
✅ Insert Here - Sherrell’s free gift for you:
https://sherell.krtra.com/t/yQaeRLN6CidT
✅ Audience Explosion Toolkit - Adrienne’s free gift for you:
https://www.socialsalesmachine.com/audience_explosion_toolkit
✅ Adrienne’s Entrepreneur Community on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/6.figure.strategy
About Sherell Slaise
Sherell is an entrepreneur and owns several businesses today in online and network marketing and real estate. She is a business mentor to 1000's of home-based business entrepreneurs supporting them in the industries where she dwells. Sherell’s authentic communication and inspirational messages of personal leadership creates strong connections with all who are mentored and led by her. These attributes have piloted her accomplishments in network marketing where she holds accolades as a top 1% rank, a 6-figure income earner, and she leads a community of over 4 thousand business owners seeking knowledge to grow an online audience and find the right people for their businesses. As the former owner of the largest certified minority and women- owned real estate business in Chicago, Sherell, continues to reside there with her husband and 3 school-aged children.