Lisa Larter (00:01):
Welcome to She Talks Business. If you’re an entrepreneur, business owner or aspiring mogul, chances are you want to learn more about marketing, and mastering and monetizing your business. She Talks Business is where you’ll learn all of that and more. My name is Lisa Larter and I’m an entrepreneur, high school dropout, wiener dog enthusiast and your host. Let’s get started.

Lisa Larter (00:24):
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to today’s show. We are going to talk about my favorite thing to talk about today. It is something that makes some people squirm with fear and discomfort, it creates sweaty palms and sleepless nights, and I love it. We’re going to talk about sales. Specifically, we are going to talk about the second sale strategy.

Lisa Larter (00:46):
But before we dive into that, I know I’m going to give you a minute, let your heart slow down, let you grab like a little towel to wipe your hands, so you don’t have to get all worried about things. I want to just send a shout out to Ashley for being my first hot seat podcast guest last week. She was fantastic. And if you didn’t listen to that show, I highly recommend you go back and listen to episode nine. I think that the conversation that Ashley and I had about her business was really, really powerful. So powerful it has actually prompted me to write a blog post around whether or not you want to be an influencer, or an expert with influence and how the two are not the same.

Lisa Larter (01:33):
I also want to send out a special thank you to Sabrina. She sent me a voice message on Instagram this week and told me how impactful a previous show had been for her. And one of the things that she mentioned in that voice message was hearing me talk about the work that I do with my clients felt like a non-pushy way to sell what you do. And I told her, that’s called seeding, my friend. When you seed what you do and you tell stories and you let other people see how you help people in your business, you are kind of soft selling. You are seeding. And what happens when you plant a seed in the ground, and you water it and you take care of it? Well, that seed eventually grows into something of value. So thank you, Sabrina for reaching out and specifically telling me what it was that you enjoyed about that episode.

Lisa Larter (02:36):
So today we’re going to do something new. I have invited Stephanie back. And one of the reasons that I invited Stephanie back, because you may not know this, but the last episode I recorded all by myself, God, done is better than perfect. But sometimes the perfectionist in me rears its ugly head and I recorded that show four times before I was happy with it. So this week, Stephanie is back and we’re going to try a different approach. So if you don’t know Stephanie, Stephanie Rainey has been a client of mine for, oh my gosh, it’s got to be like six, seven, eight years. I don’t even remember the year we started. When she starts to jump in, maybe she can tell us, but she’s really done the whole A to Z gamut with me and started at A again. She started working with me and I helped her build her business and exit her business by selling it, which was always the end goal.

Lisa Larter (03:36):
And the reason that I asked her to come back today is she’s more, it’s like she’s more aware of my content and my teachings than I am. And she’s got a knack for asking me really, really great questions. And I wanted to try a different approach with this episode to see if it’s easier to pull the information out of me in a verbal way, versus me looking at my show notes and trying to riff on things. So this is an experiment of sorts that we are going to have with you. She’s going to be asking me all about the second sale strategy and picking my brain on all the things that I do to help grow sales in a way that is not threatening and makes it easy for you to do as well.

Lisa Larter (04:26):
So before we get into all of that, I want to talk to you about the problem with one sale buyers, or one and done buyers; those people that buy once and then that’s it, they’re gone. Well, Stephanie found this article on Bluecore with some really, really amazing stats that we’re going to talk about. And I’m going to talk to you about that. And after we talk about those one sale buyers, we’re going to get into the whole second sale strategy concept. And there might even be a third sale in there that you want to hear about. We’re going to talk about things like the buyer’s journey and why the buyer’s journey might not be exactly what you think it is. And then we’re going to talk about three tenets of a second sale strategy, which include lead attraction, the loss leader methodology, and the second sale approach. So we’ve got some really juicy stuff here for you today so I hope you stick around and this is why you should stick around.

Lisa Larter (05:32):
So according to this Bluecore article, in retail, it has been found that 79.4% of first time buyers become one time only buyers. That means they never purchase from you again. That means that 80% of the people that you sell to like they… It’s like a first date. That’s all, they never come back. But if a person does buy a second time, there is 130% increase in the lifetime value of that client. People say this over and over and over again, stop trying to get new clients and instead focus on the clients you have. When you’re always, always, always trying to get new clients, you are working so much harder than you need to. If you can adopt the second sale strategy, the second sale mindset in terms of how you bring people into your business, if you can incorporate it into that buyer’s journey, you can make the growth in your business a lot easier to execute on.

Lisa Larter (06:49):
But most people, they don’t even think about the second sale. And the reason that they don’t think about the second sale is they’re too obsessed with acquisition. They’re constantly looking for new, new, new, new, new. So their attention is always focused on just closing the first sale and they’re not spending enough time thinking about, or anticipating what their customer might need next, and then after that, and then after that. They are short sighted in their sales approach. And today we’re going to teach you how to start to think long-term. Now, I’m going to pass things over to Stephanie. And like I said, she knows my content better than I know it myself. She probably even knows the year that she started working with me. And we’re going to talk about this whole second sale strategy thing. Stephanie, thank you for helping me make this easier to do.

Stephanie Rainey (07:49):
No problem Lisa, I’m always happy to hop on and look at all these ideas, especially all this stuff that’s in your head. It’s my favorite thing to do, is kind of pull out what you mean by all of this genius stuff. Because sometimes it gets complex or we make it complex because we don’t understand some of these principles. I think one of the coolest things about you is that you read so much that you’re always introducing these new ideas to us as business owners, that we normally would not have the time to ingest and you make it so simple to follow them. So I’m excited about diving into this one because when I read this article that was on your website, this blog article about the second sale, I thought, oh my gosh, what a great way to look at things.

Lisa Larter (08:30):
Yeah, thank you. I’m surprised you hadn’t read it before. I thought you read everything I did. Like, I thought you just like cemented it into your brain.

Stephanie Rainey (08:38):
I thought I did too, but we go back sometimes, and I totally was not in the head space to know this stuff, I think when I read this article, when it came out. So the second sale strategy really is dependent on the buyer’s journey and this was something I had never heard of or thought of. And what I love about that is it takes the big picture approach to sales and thinking about acquiring a sale, rather than that narrow microscopic look at just how do I get that first sale? So can you explain what the buyer’s journey is? Just so that I’m sure that I have that down pat.

Lisa Larter (09:12):
Yeah, for sure. So from my perspective, the buyer’s journey is really the journey that a customer is on, or a buyer is on, seeking a solution to a problem they have. And so it starts with aware … It starts with curiosity about something, and then it lends itself to awareness of who you are in your business or what your business is that solves the problem that they’re looking for help with. And it typically culminates in some type of a sale, but the problem is most people stop the journey there. And I think that you have to look at the journey beyond the first sale. You have to look at what does the buyer need next? What do they need after that? What is the lifetime value of a buyer and how do you attract people on the journey in the right stage so that they can do business with you longer and you can provide value to them longer term.

Stephanie Rainey (10:17):
Okay, awesome. I remember the Florida mastermind, I think you sent us this book and we were to study it ahead of arriving, and it dealt with the buyer’s journey. Is that right? Do you remember the title of that book?

Lisa Larter (10:29):
Yeah, it was Never Lose A Customer Again by Joey Coleman. And it’s a great book. I mean, he talks about the experience that a buyer has from the time they step into your bricks and mortar establishment, or they pick up the phone to talk to you, and how that journey can lead that buyer to eventually referring other business to you. It’s a fantastic book.

Stephanie Rainey (10:51):
Awesome. Yes, that’s right. Now I remember, it’s starting to come back. So the second sale strategy, what is the difference between an upsell and a second sale?

Lisa Larter (11:02):
That’s a great question. So if you ever worked in retail when you were a kid, you would have been taught to add on, add on, add on. That is an upsell. So if we think about a grocery store, for example, you get a flyer in the mail and when you get that flyer in the mail, there is typically some type of a promo. Let’s call it eggs. They’re on sale for 69 cents. And so off you go to the grocery store because you’re going to buy eggs because eggs are on sale. But when you walk through the grocery store, you see the chocolate and the potato chips and oh, you see milk. I need that. Oh I need yogurt. Oh, maybe I need some new hand cream. And you are literally upselling yourself because of the flyer that you received in the mail. So that would be an example of an upsell.

Lisa Larter (11:53):
When you think about a second sale, I want you to think about a bank. When you go to a bank, they are willing to bet the firm on you, they are willing to give you all of this stuff when you create a new bank account with them. Well, why do you think they want to put money in your bank account? Why do you think banks are giving you money to set up an account? It’s not because they’re generous. Like let’s be real. The reason that a bank is doing that is because they’re after the second, third, fourth, and fifth sale, because the first sale is just getting you to set up your account. The second sale is the fees that they make from your account. The third sale is the credit card that you get through the bank. The fourth one is probably the mortgage or the bank loan.

Lisa Larter (12:36):
A bank knows that the first sale, they can lose money on it. Just like the grocery store may lose money on the eggs. A bank is willing to lose money on that first interaction. The difference is the journey with the bank is typically many, many years long, and there are many different types of sales. Whereas the grocery store, you may go into a grocery store once and you may buy a whole bunch of things because that one item drew you in, but you may never go back to that same store.

Stephanie Rainey (13:07):
Wow. I had two ahas when you were talking about those two examples. Number one is the first thing about the upsell. And I’m thinking about when I head into a grocery store, for whatever I picked up, whatever I want to pick up that’s in the flyer. I bring my kids with me and then not only are they upselling to me, they are upselling to my kids because when I go through the cash, there’s all this delicious stuff that my kids want. And they’re asking me for it, especially when they were small. So that was like, wow, it’s not just one upsell, it’s several.

Stephanie Rainey (13:40):
And then the second part is the second sale. And the bank, think about this. They have not only thought about my life cycle as a client. They’ve thought about my kids, because one of the things they do in the stages is they send you out this information about this cute little account. You can start for your kids called the lion account or something. And my kids, all four of them have had lion accounts. And now they are customers of the Royal Bank simply by default. That blows my mind.

Lisa Larter (14:12):
Absolutely, absolutely. And when you do a good job on that second sale, when you do a good job about thinking about the life cycle of your buyer and you continue to nurture the relationship long-term, it makes all those second sales easy to do. It’s when you are distracted by the acquisition of the next buyer, and you start to drop balls with the initial buyer that you run the risk of not getting the second sale.

Stephanie Rainey (14:40):
Yes. That makes a lot of sense. So that kind of leads us to tenet one, which is the lead attraction process. So talking about lead generation. Can you explain that part?

Lisa Larter (14:50):
Yeah, absolutely. So lead generation is really how do you attract leads into your business and there’s different ways for you to do that. But what most marketers are telling you to do is build your list, they’re not really telling you how to attract leads. What they’re telling you to do is create some free download, put it on your website, get people to download it, add them to the list because the list is what’s going to sell and it’s not effective because it’s transactional. It’s not relational in nature. And so you’ve got to go beyond the download. You’ve got to really think about your website and what is the most wanted action when somebody goes to your website. Do you really want them to download that free thing? Or do you want them to buy something? Or do you want them to schedule a call with you? When you think about your lead attraction process, it really should be in parallel to what your buyer’s journey is going to be.

Lisa Larter (15:55):
So you can’t do a really good job at your lead generation approach if you’re not clear on what the buyer’s journey looks like. And if you are focusing on first sales only, then you’re not cultivating any type of relational journey with the buyer. And so everything you do from a marketing perspective is really to attract people to your business, but all leads are not created equal. Just because I subscribed to your mailing list, or I downloaded a thing doesn’t mean that I’m ready to buy. I’ve just introduced this new program that is starting in June called The Strategy Lab. And one of the members of the program that reached out to me or one of the new founding members reached out to me, and in her email to me, she said to me that she has been listening to my podcast and she’s been on my email list for years, but this is the first time she’s bought something.

Lisa Larter (16:59):
And so you have to recognize that list building is great, but sometimes it takes years for people to pull the trigger. And so you’ve got to be clear about what it is you want people to do and who that right person is, and is that most wanted action that you want them to take when they arrive on your website, the right thing, given the journey you want them to go on?

Lisa Larter (17:24):
The last thing that I would say is business or sales, a little bit like an avocado. An avocado, it’s either too early to eat it, it’s the perfect time or it’s too late. And when you think about selling, people are either selling too soon or they’re stuck when it’s the perfect time to ask for the sale or they lack urgency and responsiveness, and they end up being too late to close the deal. So it’s really about understanding the perfect timing and the perfect amount of responsiveness when your buyer starts on that journey so that you can make a great first impression. But if you try to sell too soon or you try to sell too much too soon, you can actually blow up the whole journey.

Stephanie Rainey (18:20):
Wow. Such a careful curation for your sales journey. It’s awesome to pay so much attention to each step along the way.

Lisa Larter (18:28):
Let me stop you for a second there. I think you need to pay attention, but I don’t think you need to obsess. I think what you need to obsess about is what is that journey for your buyer? Like in writing my book, AJ Harper said to me, “Who are you writing this for?” And I think that that question is such a powerful question, because most people think about writing a book as “I’m going to write a book about topic A” and the problem with most business owners is they do the same thing. They go “I’m going to build a business about this” and they make it topical to the business, instead of really thinking about who it is that they’re trying to serve and what that person needs along the way. It’s not that complicated if you just step back and think about who it is you want to serve.
Stephanie Rainey (19:18):
Yeah. That makes sense. That’s much, much simpler. It reminds me too when you were talking about, when you end up with a huge list and people are not necessarily buying from that list. It reminded me of quite a few entrepreneurs who over the years came into the mastermind. And one of their biggest problems was, is that they had this great concept, they had this great idea, they had a huge list, they had big communities on Facebook and nobody, when they put something forward would purchase it. So it’s kind of like the emphasis is on a completely different spot. They’re so worried about traffic, that they’re not thinking about that first and second sale.

Lisa Larter (20:03):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And because they’re putting their energy into the wrong thing, I mean, I’ve got a business that does over seven figures a year and it has for years now. And I have a small mailing list because I’m not focused on the list building transaction. Am I focused on, do I want to grow my mailing list? Absolutely. But not at any cost. It’s interesting. My next guest on my next show is Sue Zimmerman and we’re talking about betting it all on Instagram. And Sue has been very upfront about the fact that she worked with me a few years ago. And when she worked with me, one of the things that we diagnosed in her business at that particular time, and this was years ago, is that she did have a really big following, but she had the wrong following. She had a following that was cheerleaders, they weren’t buyers. And so it’s important that when you are thinking about the buyer’s journey or you’re thinking about the lead attraction process, that you’re not attracting a bunch of cheerleaders, but rather you’re attracting people who are buyers, that are serious about doing business with you.

Stephanie Rainey (21:12):
Awesome. Now we’re moving into the second tenet, number two. So the loss leader sale. So can you explain that?

Lisa Larter (21:20):
Yeah. So I talked about it a little bit earlier. Loss leader, grocery stores are notorious for loss leaders. They put something on sale at a loss, and that item leads you into the grocery store and down a path of impulsively buying other things. And so they make back the loss. I’m always asking people, do you know what the cost of acquisition is for a new client? Would you be willing to pay $5,000 for a new client? And most of the time when I ask that question, people look at me and go, no, are you kidding? I would never pay $5,000 for new client. But then I say, but what if the lifetime value of that client was $500,000? Would you pay 5,000 then? So a loss leader is really a calculated gamble. It’s knowing the lifetime value of a client and knowing how much you can afford to lose on the first sale or how much profit you’re prepared to compromise on the first sale in order to either get the upsell or the second sale.

Lisa Larter (22:30):
So in my business, for example, a strategy session with me, when I am creating a strategic roadmap for someone is what I would consider a loss leader. If somebody wants to just spend half a day with me to work on their business, we’re side by side, working together, I charge the same thing as I typically charge to do a strategic marketing roadmap for someone. But when I do a strategic marketing roadmap, it takes me significantly, it probably takes me four to five times the amount of effort and time for myself. Plus it costs me, I’m going to say 20 to 30 hours of working time with my team to put together this amazing marketing roadmap for people.

Lisa Larter (23:19):
But here’s the thing. At the end of that roadmap, when I give them priorities and I show them how our team can help them to execute on those priorities, we have a 95% conversion rate. So we can afford to take the strategy session as a loss leader because we know what the success rate is on the other end. We know what the second, third and fourth sale is with that customer. And so we’re not afraid to do that. And I think that that is an area people are too shortsighted. Again, they’re too transactional instead of relational.

Lisa Larter (23:59):
A book comes to mind that I read years ago, I think it’s called The Naked Consultant by Patrick Lencioni. And it’s all about rolling up your sleeves and acting as if, acting as if the buyer is already your buyer, even though they haven’t made a buying decision yet. Like when you get invested in the relationship and you start to talk to your buyer about things that you’re going to do down the road with them, you are really laying the groundwork or the foundation for them to work with you for a long period of time. I have clients that have worked with me for a decade, 10 years. If I had looked at the first sale as the value of that relationship, how shortsighted would that have been? It would have been ridiculous.

Stephanie Rainey (24:43):
It really takes those two key things, which is to deliver excellence in the first sale, like exactly what you were talking about on that strategy session. And the second is clearly understand what your buyer wants to do next.

Lisa Larter (24:55):
Absolutely, absolutely. When you deliver excellence right upfront. And I mean, here’s a couple of other examples. So in the Strategy Lab, for example, one of the things that I’m putting in there is what I call a make back lab. Because I want to show people how to make their money back fast. When people coach with me privately, I always want to help them get wins right away. Because when you deliver excellence in that first experience, then people are going to stick with you longer because they’ve had a great win. Think about it. If you go to a restaurant and it’s supposed to be an outstanding restaurant and you go in and you order this beautiful meal and you take your first bite and you’re like, meh tastes a little, not great. It’s okay, but it’s not great. And then you go home and suddenly realize you have food poisoning. You’re never going back to that restaurant. That first impression did not deliver excellence. Therefore you’re not going back.

Lisa Larter (25:50):
But if you go to that restaurant for dinner, once a month for five years, and one night you get sick. If that restaurant has delivered a great experience for five years, and you really feel invested in the people that work there, and you’ve had lots of great memories, you’ll look at it as a one-off. But if it happens before the good stuff, it’s a write off.

Stephanie Rainey (26:12):
That totally makes sense. So tenet three is the actual second sale. So having that second sale. Can you explain that part?

Lisa Larter (26:20):
Yeah, the second sale is when the buyer is committing to doing business with you again. And if we look at that stat, 80% of people never move forward after the first sale. So when your buyer commits to a longer lasting relationship with you, a couple of things happen. They’re investing in the long-term. And if they are investing in something that is, I don’t know, repeatable in nature, then you are building basically recurring repeatable revenue in your business, which is a beautiful thing. When your buyer starts to get really great results from the work that you’re doing, then they’re going to stick around longer. So when I look at my … I start to see the second sale with my year long coaching clients, as soon as they start, because I tell them that most of my coaching clients work with me for two to three years at minimum, it’s not just about the first year. It’s very, very, very rare for people to only work with me for a year.

Lisa Larter (27:25):
So when you know that, and you know the average length of time that a customer stays with you, you can actually predict and anticipate the revenues in your business. So let’s just pretend that currently I am charging $25,000 a year for my private coaching program. So let’s just pretend that I have 10 people that just decided to start coaching with me today. So that’s $250,000 base right there. But if I know that on average, 90% of people work with me for three years, it’s not a $250,000 opportunity. It’s a $750,000 opportunity. So this is what I’m talking about, when you think about the second sale, and you think about the continuation of doing business with people, I think the wins are way more than the 130% in that article. At least I think they are in my business.

Lisa Larter (28:24):
And then the other thing that starts to happen when people are working with you is they start to tell other people about you and the work that you do and the experience that they’re having. And that feeds tenet one, which is the lead attraction process and makes all of your marketing efforts a whole lot easier because more people are learning about you, but they’re learning about you, not because you are shoving marketing materials down their throat. They’re learning about you because other people are talking about the great stuff that you’re doing. And so to me, that’s like the beauty of the second sale thinking because the next sale, let’s call it the third sale is the referral sale, and everybody wants to attract inbound leads. But the best inbound leads are leads that come from other people who are singing your praises. Those are the easiest pieces of business to close, but you don’t get the opportunity to get those inbound leads unless you do great work with your buyers.

Stephanie Rainey (29:27):
It reminds me of that story that you tell about Nabil. Do you want to tell that story? And we worked together for seven years by the way.

Lisa Larter (29:34):
Oh yeah, seven years. There you go and you’re still hanging around.

Stephanie Rainey (29:38):
I know. And I thought I was for sure, I told you, oh, I won’t work with you any more than two years.

Lisa Larter (29:42):
Oh yeah. Yes, I remember that conversation. I just want you to know I’m going to work with you for one more year and I want to learn this and then I’m done. You were very matter of fact about it. And I’m like, okay, that’s great which kind of leads into the story with Nabil. I always tell my clients that someday we’re going to break up and it’s okay. Someday, they’re going to want to work with a different business coach or strategist and that that is okay. The relationship will always be there, they don’t need to feel awkward about coming to me to say, look, I want to take a break or look, I want to go work with somebody new. It is okay for you to outgrow a coaching relationship and want to work with someone new. And so Nabil says to me, well, I don’t agree. And I was like, why don’t you agree?

Lisa Larter (30:25):
He’s like, because you’re constantly learning. And he said, so as long as you continue to invest in your learning, I feel like I’m always trying to keep up with you. And so he said, I don’t think that I’m going away anytime soon, because every time I have a conversation with you, you are adding new value and that is why I’m sticking around. And so I think that’s a powerful thing. When you think about the longevity or the life cycle of a client. If you can continue to add new value, you can keep your clients longer. And we’ve talked about this a little bit earlier Stephanie. People are afraid to sell.

Lisa Larter (31:05):
So last week, no … A couple of weeks ago, a client of mine reached out and asked if somebody on my team could interview one of his buyers, and get a testimonial, and write a case study about the work that they have done with that particular buyer. And so we’d been coordinating the logistics around, making that happen. And then another client of mine is working on some positioning stuff. And I was like, oh, I bet you, this would be really valuable to them. So I reached out to them and I said we’re doing this work for this other person. And it made me think about what you’re trying to do in your business right now. And I wasn’t sure if this would be something that would be helpful for you or not. Within minutes, this person replied and said, yes, that’s exactly what I need to do. Let’s do it.

Lisa Larter (31:52):
Now, if I had been afraid to share, if I’d been afraid to say, hey, I have an idea that might be helpful to you. Because I didn’t want to be too pushy. I didn’t want to be too salesy then I would have missed the opportunity to help that other buyer. We’ve got to get over our fear of selling. The only time you should feel uncomfortable about selling is when you’re trying to manipulate somebody into buying something that really isn’t what they need. If you have a product or a service or a methodology that can really transform somebody’s life, business, etc., you’re doing them a disservice by not letting them know that that option is available.

Lisa Larter (32:34):
What you really need to do though, is you need to shelter your fragile ego and stop being attached to the outcome of the buying decision. And I talked earlier about the person who is joining The Strategy Lab and how they said they’d been reading my, my newsletter for years, years. Well guess what? I didn’t take it personally over the last few years when I have emailed about opportunities and they haven’t bought. I don’t take that stuff personally because I believe when the time is right, the time is right. And when you try to force the time, it’s like you’re trying to force that avocado that’s rock hard to be ready to make guacamole. It’s not ready. You can’t make that avocado mushy. It’s not time. So the timing of selling and the timing of showing up and adding value is just so incredibly important.

Stephanie Rainey (33:25):
And when you do a really good job with someone, especially over a long term, it’s funny that you kind of keep that avocado ripe. I’m so going to remember that image now, because they’re so right for these other opportunities and exactly what you were talking about with Nabil, you’re moving forward and he wants to move forward with you as you learn. And then what you did is you looked sideways to see if somebody else wanted something from you in the other direction, in that parallel to what one client is needing at one time. Maybe another client needs that as well. And that’s really why I worked with you for seven years was that you had so many silos of expertise that when I thought I was finished with one silo, you said, oh yeah, the other problem that you’re having in your business, I know a lot about that too. And then you stepped up and showed me all of these things and helped me with these huge problems that were a headache at the time. And it just kept going.

Lisa Larter (34:20):
It just kept going. That’s right. It’s a journey, it’s a journey. There’s so many different layers that go into building a business. And I think that good business owners, good entrepreneurs are lifelong learners and they’re always looking for ways to improve. And a business cannot exist without a customer. If you don’t have a customer, if you don’t have somebody who’s actually giving you money, you don’t have a real business yet. So you’ve got to get over your discomfort with selling and really look at how you can make selling a natural thing that isn’t awkward or uncomfortable for you. I mean, when you go to McDonald’s and you order a burger, and the kid behind the counter says, would you like fries with that? They don’t sweat about it. They don’t lose sleep at night because they have to ask somebody if they want fries, because they know most people want fries with their burger. So we’ve got to stop making assumptions about our buyers.

Lisa Larter (35:17):
So I’m going to wrap up with that. So first of all, Stephanie, thank you for asking me questions. I find it so much easier and this is the first time we’ve done this so it might have been a little bit bumpy for the listeners. I’m not sure, but I would love your feedback. I’m Lisa Larter at Instagram. If you enjoyed the show, tell me, tell me what you liked about it, tell me what we could do better.
Lisa Larter (35:39):
So couple things next up. Sue Zimmerman is going to be on the show. And we are going to talk about basically going all in on Instagram and how she made that decision years ago when no one was using Instagram and how betting everything on Instagram has helped her build a million dollar business. So we’re going to talk about that. We’re to talk about numbers on that show as well. It’s not just about being an influencer with a bunch of followers. It’s about building a really successful and really profitable business. So that’s something that you can look for on the next show.

Lisa Larter (36:16):
I encourage you to go away and map out your buyer’s journey. I encourage you to sit down and interview a couple of your best clients and literally map out the steps. What were they thinking of when they found you? How did they find you? What was the first thing they did? The second thing they did? And really look at that journey and see if you can figure out what that looks like.

Lisa Larter (36:39):
And then this is the final thought that I want to leave you with. There are two things that you should not put limitations on when it comes to your buyer’s journey or that your buyers experience with you. These are two things where I see people make mistakes and get tripped up all the time. One, never assume how much money someone has, or how much they’re willing to invest in their own personal or professional growth and development. I have seen those assumptions prove wrong over and over and over again with clients of mine. Not because I’ve made the assumption, but in stories that they have told me related to pricing, where they’ve been afraid to raise prices. And then all of a sudden they raise prices and people that they thought would say, no, for sure said yes. And then said yes again and again. So never assume you know what somebody is willing to spend.

Lisa Larter (37:31):
And then the last thing that I would say is never assume how long they will continue to do business with you. I said, the average person works with me for two to three years. Stephanie worked with me for seven. I have another client that’s been with me, I think I have 1 client, 10, 11 years. And when I interviewed Dan Sullivan for Thought Readers a awhile ago, I think he said something about clients that he’s had around for 30 years. It was a pretty crazy number. So never underestimate how long you can keep a buyer, if you can keep giving them value.

Lisa Larter (38:12):
So that’s it. Thank you for listening to the show. Check out the show notes on my website and I’d love to hear from you. If you’ve written a review, thank you, thank you, thank you. We really appreciate it. And Stephanie, thank you for helping me with this. You are amazing.

Stephanie Rainey (38:27):
Thanks so much for having me. I love being on your show.

Lisa Larter (38:31):
It’s awesome. I love having you on my show. You pick my brain well.

Stephanie Rainey (38:35):
Good. Good.

Lisa Larter (38:36):
Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening.

Lisa Larter (38:39):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of She Talks Business. If you enjoyed the show, you know the drill, leave us a review, tell someone about it and join the conversation on social media. Thanks for listening and until next time remember, done is always better than perfect.