Transitional Moments
Episode 25: Transitional Moments, with Erik Jensen
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Transitional Moments, a podcast with Erik Jensen. Learn about the proper steps in identifying milestones during transitional moments.
Transitional moments in the business are always exciting! Erik Jensen is an owner and Chief Strategy Officer at Predictive ROI, a strategic digital marketing agency focused on helping agencies, coaches, and consultants build and monetize an authority position.
If you have ever been told you need to be creating and sharing all sorts of content with your audience, but no one has shown you how it becomes one of the transitional moments for your business – PROI is here to share in full transparency the ways we’ve seen our prospects consume and engage with our content – and how that has turned prospects into clients.
Erik is all about helping business owners build more stable, profitable, and scalable businesses, not by shouting directions from below, but by helping shoulder owners’ burdens and hike up the mountain alongside them.
What you will learn in this episode is about transitional moments:
- How we define transitional moments
- What are some milestones to identify before designing the transition process
- Erik’s insights into building the right content strategy for nurturing leads and prospects
- How agencies, coaches, and consultants can navigate the path of transitional moments
- The value of taking intentional steps in evolving the status of relationships with right-fit clients
Resources:
- Download the FREE transitional moments worksheet here
- Website: https://predictiveroi.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erik-jensen-b9946068/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PredictiveROI/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/predictive_roi
- Learn more about transitional moments and building the HERO offer with Erik Jensen
Transitional Moments: Full Episode Transcript
Welcome to the Sell with Authority podcast. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and my team and I, we created this podcast specifically for you. So if you’re an agency owner, a business coach, or a strategic consultant and looking to grow a thriving, profitable business that you can weather the constant change that seems to be our world’s reality, well then you’re in the right place.
Do you want proven strategies for attracting a steady stream of well-prepared, right-fit prospects into your sales pipeline? Yep. We’re going to cover that. You want to learn how to step away from the sea of competitors so you can stand out. Yeah, we’re going to cover that. Do you want to futureproof your business so you can actually navigate the next challenges that come your way?
Absolutely. We’ll help you there too. I promise you each episode of this podcast will contain valuable insights and tangible examples of best practices, not theory, from thought leaders, experts, and owners who have done exactly what you’re working hard to do. So, I want you to think practical and tactical. Never any fluff. Each of our guests has built a position of authority and then monetized that position by claiming their ground, by growing their audience, by nurturing leads, and, yes, by converting sales.
But all the while they did it by being helpful. So every time someone from their audience turned around there, they were given a helpful answer to an important question. So their prospects never, ever, ever felt like they were a prospect. I also promise you every strategy we discuss, and every tool we recommend will be shared in full transparency in each episode so you can plant your flag of authority, you can claim your ground that we talked about, and so you can fill your sales pipeline with a steady stream of right fit clients who never, ever were made to feel like one of your prospects.
Download the Transitional Moments by Predictive ROI for free!
Transitional Moments: Erik Jensen’s Introduction
Okay, I’m super excited for you to meet our very special guest expert today, Erik Jensen. So if you’re meeting Erik for the first time, as you may have heard back in episode, I think 12 or 13, he is my business partner here, Predictive ROI and we’ve worked alongside each other for the last well, let’s call it ten plus years.
So Erik has a depth of expertise in helping agency owners, business coaches, and strategic consultants, just like you go deep into their niche and then build the right content strategy that helps them grow their audience, that helps them nurture leads. And yes, just like I said a minute or two ago, that helps them increase sales without a prospect ever being made to feel like they were one of your prospects because that makes them feel that way, that feels yucky.
So one of the best tactics for helping your prospects move closer and closer to you and then eventually raise their hands so that you can help them at the same time, help them see what it would be like for them to step into a working relationship with you is what Erik and I like to call the transitional moment.
During this conversation, Erik and I will explain the why behind a transitional moment, discuss how to build your own transitional moment, and help you think through what to do downstream after your transitional moment is complete so that you can create rock-solid, awesome wins for your prospects and, of course, for your business.
Transitional moments, when built out correctly, will begin to move from having a dry sales pipeline to having a steady stream of well-prepared right fit prospects flowing into your business. Because when you do that, that’s how you build and scale profits early and predictably. So, without further ado, welcome to the Sell with Authority podcast, my partner.
Transitional Moments: What It Is and Why It’s So Important?
Welcome, Erik. Well, I’m glad to be here. It’s always fun. I mean, I know that the listeners aren’t going to get this, but you and I were talking for like an hour before this about every topic under the sun that has to do with the business and strategy and things along those lines. So obviously having a chance to chat with you more, I’m always game for, well, so completely behind the curtain here everyone Erik and I today’s Wednesday which means it’s L10 day or because we follow the attraction process here inside Predictive ROI, and so we had our leadership team meeting today and so we spent 90 minutes this afternoon going through, you know, quarterly rocks and doing all of our progress against those rocks and all of that kind of stuff, which, you know, if you own a business and you have a partner in your business, then sometimes, you know, that can be feel like ships passing in the night. So Erik and I, treasure the Wednesday afternoon when we can have 90 minutes to just ourselves, if you will, to be able to get some cool stuff done.
So then we get to do the podcast interview. So yay for that. Right? It’s a win. I like it. I like it, too. Although over the next couple of weeks, you might be entirely sick of me since we’re traveling for like two weeks with maybe a couple of days break in between. But anyway, so you’re probably going to be a wild ride these next couple of weeks until we get so so when we think about it I know if I were just to say, hey Erik, why transitional moments?
I know there’s a lot to unpack and a lot for us to slice and dice. So, before we even start thinking about a transitional moment, are there some things that somebody needs to think about before we even get to that? What is the path leading up to that?
And then we’ll get into the Weepies. Anything comes to mind first about that? Yeah, absolutely. So the thing that you need to think about before you really get into designing a specific transitional moment is this idea about kind of milestones. And a good way to kind of think about this is just to imagine that your task was to get to the top of a series of peaks, an amount.
Transitional Moments: Make Things Happen By Taking Control
We love to talk about mountains because that’s our model for growth and things along those lines. So I apologize if that seems like a weird analogy, but you can use anything, but let’s say you needed to go to pick one and two and take three. It doesn’t matter how someone gets to pick or care if you hike their drive there, get dropped off in a helicopter there, get picked up by a giant eagle and dropped off.
It doesn’t matter, okay? As long as you get to that particular milestone and destination. Those destinations are where the transitional moment is going to happen. It’s important to identify those particular destinations that you want to have because you don’t control how your clients interact with you across all of your media channels.
Okay. What you can control is the destination that you’re trying to get them to go to, Right? And so I think sometimes as marketers, as businesses, which one to micromanage every step of that process and exactly how someone is interacting, where they’re interacting. Sometimes, we overthink it a little bit, and we try to craft this perfect plan in our heads.
As long as they do this and then they do this, and then they do this, and then they do this, it’ll be perfect. It’ll be exactly the way that we want it to be. And people very rarely follow plants, let alone our customers, following plans or prospects, following plans about exactly how they’re going to interact with us.
So stop and think about the times in your business when there are milestones that you need that you want to see happen. Many of those milestones include things like I want them to go from an unknown entity to someone who is on my email list. Yep, I want someone to go from someone who’s on my email list to someone who’s having a conversation with me.
Transitional Moments: The Process On How It’s Being Executed
I want them to go from having a conversation with me to asking me specifically about the products and services that we offer and how I think we can help them. I want someone to be at the point where they’re requesting a statement of work or a proposal, right? So we all have these milestones, and they might be different for each person and for each organization.
But the ones that I gave you are pretty typical ones in those moments. So we call those transitional moments, those peaks, like when you know, something has to happen where they’re going to go from one state to another state. That’s the transitional moment. Okay. So let me give this back to you because I just wrote down not necessarily the transitional moment but sort of the behavior, if you will, with the audience.
So here’s what I mean. You have to be addressable, in fact. Okay. So let’s say this one through five here: The travel background, number one being the UN addressable audience, right? They’re not on the list of addressable. They’re out there lurking, consuming your content. You have no idea who they are. Yeah, they know you exist, right?
But you only see them as a metric on your Google Analytics, like there was a visitor, right? But you don’t know who they are specifically. Got it. Okay, so step number one is sort of like going through five on addressable. Step two is they got it on the list. Step three is now they’re having a conversation with you. Step four is they’re actually asking, Hey, how could you help me here with this?
Step five is to request your proposal. So I think what I’m hearing you say is in between each of these things. So in between going from an unaddressed able member of the audience to being on the list inside or like in the middle, there is the transitional moment. Right? Right. There’s something that happens between each one of these states or at the moment that they are making that transition.
So when we think about the very first one, when we go from addressable to addressable, that’s them deciding to give up some form of contact information, typically an email address, in exchange for something else. Okay. What that transitional moment indicates is that it might have taken a day, or it might have taken a decade.
Transitional Moments: When You’re Being Considered By The Prospect
I know, I know that we use that term a lot right? But they might have been addressable for a very long time. Right. Okay. We have examples of that even within our own community. Right. So Sandra listened to 500 podcast episodes. So Erik is referring to Sandy Martini, owner of the Martini Way, who during early on conversations before she stepped into our million-dollar Roadmap program and then Sprint, she said to me, you know, I listened to 500 episodes before I opted in for a thing on your list.
Like what? So sorry to interrupt. Just sort of a suitable context. Right? So, here’s someone who again, has 500 pieces of content. None of those were small pieces of content. Okay. But that’s how long it took for her to be able to look at it and go, you know what, I get enough value from this on a regular basis.
There’s this thing where I’m going to exchange my contact information for this downloadable asset. Okay. Now, for some people, that might be exposure to one piece of content. In Sandy’s case, that was 500 pieces of content. Okay, fair enough. But whatever that is, there’s something that changed in their mind where they said, I believe you are someone that I can trust, and then I think that you’re bringing a value to the table that is worthwhile for me to take this next step in the relationship, because a transitional moment is a change or an increase in the relationship.
Okay, so in that case, you went from addressable to addressable. All right. And so that would be like getting to the top of the peak. One is we don’t we didn’t it wouldn’t have mattered whether Sandy had read 500 blogs, listened to 500 podcast episodes, followed us on Twitter, or been all over the stuff that we’ve posted on LinkedIn. It could have been any of those or a combination of all of those we knew if we wanted to be able to get her to go from unaddressed all to addressable.
And so we needed to craft a transitional moment that could facilitate that. Yep. Right. And a common one. And just because something is familiar doesn’t mean that it’s terrible, right? So a common one is just to have something of value that’s available for download. Yep. Right. You don’t have to overthink a lot of transitional moments. You don’t have to create something that no one has ever heard of, but it has to serve the purpose that’s appropriate for that peak.
Transitional Moments: How To Engage a Client After They Sign Up
The first peak is we need to make sure that they are addressable. Now, if they decide that, skip that one and all of a sudden jump to something else, that’s great. But it’s unlikely to happen in part because most of what we’re talking about in all of these situations like putting out podcast episodes and putting out social media, when we’re putting out blogs, we’re not directing people to come and buy from us, we’re not directing people to say, Hey, how would you go and ask us for a proposal?
We’re not saying, Hey, how would you come and just talk to us? What we’re always doing is we’re always saying, Hey, here’s a thing that requires an exchange of information to receive. So we have a variety of transitional moments that are designed to take someone from unaddressed, able to addressable, and they’re going to attract a different group of people.
They’re going to be helpful to a different group of people, but they’re all sitting on top of the same mountain peak, which is peak one. We need to get contact information. Interesting. Through this conversation, I was kind of rewinding in my head, Well, what was it? What was the transitional one? Sandy was in it as she learned about the Q&A.
She learned about power Q&A on Wednesdays, typically every Wednesday. And whether it was through the website or if she heard a promo or something like that mid-role in the Onward Nation episode. She found out about it some way because obviously she wasn’t on our list so she could get an email announcing it but anyway right in she stepped into the Q&A and that was such a powerful proof point for her because literally two weeks after that, she decided to join our Million dollar Roadmap program, then called Assume or authority sales machine, now called Million Dollar Roadmap.
And when she and I talked about that, and she probably shared this with you, too, it was a it was vital for her to go from the onward Nation episodes in hearing Stephen’s voice to then stepping into a live open Mike Q&A with Erik and Stephen to then decide in her mind, are these guys who I really think that they are right.
It’s really interesting about that our Q&A could be really easily confused as having one transitional moment or actually two. Okay. Okay. So the first transitional moment is the registration process. Okay. Sure. That is the exchanging of information for something of value. Right. So that’s the change in relationship from addressable to addressable.
Transitional Moments: What To Do If the Prospect Didn’t Show Up
Okay. But it doesn’t require them to show up. True. They might not. Okay. But that initial transitional moment still took place. Sure. All right. And it might be that something came up. That’s fine. It might be that they’re just like, You know what? I got a busy day and I got to cut something for my day. Guess what’s getting caught?
Yep. Right. So that’s fine. But what it tells you is if they don’t show up, then there’s still some work to be done between Transition Moment one. We got your contact information for the transition moment to now. We’re having a conversation with you. Right? So in the case of the Q&A, the second transitional moment is actually being there.
It’s not the registration process. Okay. Show up and engage in the conversation because until we get them to do that next step and get onto that next mountain peak, it doesn’t matter. Right? Yep. Because until they have a conversation with us, until they get a chance to spend time with us and the community and prove to themselves that you’re exactly who you say that you are, you walk the walk, you talk the talk, you eat your own dog food, all these different terms that we use to do that.
There’s a level of trust building that can’t take place. So we know that one of the levels of trust building and the levels of change in a relationship that has to happen is to meet us. Is this interesting you say that because like you and I experienced that proof point in May at the Build a Better Agency Summit that Drew McLellan from Agency Management Institute was hosting.
Transitional Moments: How To Make Clients Remember You
And we met some of our clients who we hadn’t met in person because they’re relatively new clients and that kind of stuff for whatever. And one of our clients came up to you and said, my gosh, Stephen actually does talk like that like he does a wholly bananas and rock solid, awesome. And onward with gusto and like all that stuff.
I mean, like Jacob came up to you and said, he really does talk like that. And you were like, okay for him at Baba as well because you thought everything was rock and fantastic and everything was holy bananas and everything was one word with gusto because you’re so excited to be in the room, which is a whole different thing.
But absolutely, like a case in point, right? You really are who you say you are. It’s not putting on a front if this is what you are. This is what you believe, and it’s important to be able to showcase that. So again, when we think about that within our own organization, we have multiple places where someone can move from just an addressable audience to actually meeting and talking with us.
The Q&A is certainly one example of that right? But we have multiple sessions that we’re doing webinars, we’re inviting people to teach in the US, we’ve got quarterly sessions where we’re doing deep dives on stuff like we’re constantly putting out other ways for people to move from addressable to. Now I get to talk to you. This is so, so good.
Transitional Moments: How To Become an Expert in Your Field
Okay. Before we know, I’m thinking about our listeners right now as they’re hearing you’re sort of navigating them down this path of a transitional moment. I’m thinking that it might also feel a bit heavy. It might feel like, my gosh, you know, she’s like, I have to do all those things and all of that. So let’s start thinking about, okay, how might somebody step into doing this?
Because somebody might also say, yeah, Predictive, that’s really easy for you to say you’ve been doing or you’ve been doing weekly Q&A for two years now, so you’ve done it 100 times, but you know what? You might not also understand that the first time that Erik and I did it, we had two people, right? I was going to say, I understand that mentality of all other people who have been doing it.
It must be easy for them. I’ll tell you, it takes time out of calendars because it does. It is a choice. It is a dedication to do these things. I will admit we do more than most other organizations do. Most of their agencies, coaches or consultants do because we are big believers in eating your own dog food and we’re constantly running experiments therefore we need many of these avenues to be able to see which one is going to work best, why they work best, which situations they work best in, how to leverage them best once the transitional moment is taking place, etc.
Right? So, yeah, okay, we’ve been doing tons for two days. We’ve learned a lot of what to do and what not to do within Q&A, right? All right. So that way, we can teach that. So I think for anybody who is stepping through this, it’s one to identify those mountain peaks, identify where the transitional moment needs to live.
You might use the ones that we just laid out right from addressable to addressable. Does that intersection between the two, when you change from one relationship status to the next, that’s the transitional moment? So, identify where those are for your organization. They are probably going to be what we already laid out. Okay. But if you come, if you’re thinking in your head, no, we have different transitional moments.
Cool the matter, it’s still, all this still applies. And the next thing is to figure out what you can actually do that solves a business problem for someone at the transitional moment. Ooh, nice. Okay. Okay. So again, we’re just going to use the really simple, and we’re going to go with the thing that most people do, and we’re going to say, okay, go from unaddressed, able to addressable.
Transitional Moments: Helping Agencies Find Solutions To Their Problems
Okay, now let’s say you are in your shop, okay? Like we help organizations dominate when it comes to SEO, okay, It’s a pretty broad niche, but let’s just say that’s your niche. Okay? What I would say is why do they care about solving SEO? Why do your clients care about solving SEO? Because he is the tactic. Sure, it’s not a business problem.
So, what business problem are they looking to solve with SEO? Right. Well, it may be. What business issue are they trying to solve? And then you’re going to help architect a solution that might include SEO, right? Or it might not. Right. Okay. But it’s solving the problem, right? Which is, hey, if you’re struggling with traffic, you’ve spent a ton of money on your website.
It’s great content. And those people who visit it—man, your conversion rates are awesome, but you get 100 site visits a month. Okay, so let me give that back to you. Let’s follow the traffic path. Right? Right. That’s the business problem. So a CMO or director of sales or a VP of business development, whatever she might be thinking, my sales team is all over me because that’s what I’m giving to them.
As a sales-qualified lead, they say it is junk. They say that the lead quality is terrible, that we’re buying, you know, our traffic from various sources that whatever granular to this business problem by the way, rate the more granular and get with a business problem, the better. Hey man we’re buying or buying our traffic sources, paid traffic, whatever, and that is converting into low-quality leads.
Transitional Moments: The Best Approach To Working With Your Clients
Low quality equals low-quality skills. My sales team is hounding me about how we can possibly make our quarterly numbers or annual numbers or whatever with a poor lead flow, Right? And let’s say this SEO company, this theoretical SEO company is like, we are so good at solving that problem. Like when a client comes through the door with that problem, we’re like, Yeah, that’s right.
We’re rubbing our hands together with glee because we’re so on top of it. So then what we do is we say, okay, if this is the problem that your clients, prospects, or leads have, great. What can you teach them? What thing of value can you put at that transitional moment that basically says, look, this is worth it for you to increase your relationship?
Okay, so we can put this as a really simple example. I know that we use dates as a common example for doing this. Right. So if somebody comes up to you and says, hey, coffee. Yeah. And you’re like, one, I don’t know you two. That was a weird way. Should I not have said yes right away?
I feel they said, Mountain Dew. You would say you add three. It’s a little bit like for what? Like, I don’t understand what we’re doing here with this. Right. It’s just a random task. Whereas if somebody says, like, hey, we work together, we have this commonality together, I would love to be able to you know, I notice that you’ve got this particular problem at work.
If you want to get coffee, we can talk about that because I think I might have a really great solution for you. Now all of a sudden, that conversation totally changes, and it gets a lot more comfortable to say, Yeah, we should totally do that. There’s value in that conversation now. So you want to have value at each one of the transitional moments.
Transitional Moments: Providing Value Through Teaching
Yes. Relationship context, right? Right. Totally. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And so the same thing. And every one of these transitional moments. I’m not asking you to come up with a slew. The things I’m asking you to come up with one saying, okay, but let’s go back to, in my opinion, a very important point that you said. You said, what can you teach them?
Yes, we’re big believers in teaching that that isn’t. Let’s have a 60-minute, completely not dynamic slide deck webinar where we lecture for 60 minutes, and it’s basically a capabilities presentation. You’re saying, No, no, no, no, identify the business issue and challenge, and then what? Can you teach them about it? Yeah, you want to help them overcome the business problem because, at every transitional moment, they’re the ones who are taking the first step in changing the state of the relationship.
Nice. They’re the ones who are putting themselves out on a limb, so to speak. Okay. And so you need to treat that with respect for what that is. If I’m putting myself out on a limb, and I know it’s not much of a limb giving you my email address, but if the only thing that I get from you is spam mail, I’m going to quickly go, Well, I’m not going to put myself out on a limb anymore for that particular company or person or whatever it happens to be.
I did it once I got burned. I’m good. Okay. So when someone does take that step and these transitional moments, do you absolutely need to make sure you’re providing value? We think the best way to provide value is by teaching. Okay, There are other ways to provide value. All right. You could just plain old solve the problem for them, Right?
This is totally viable. I mean, that’s where things like free audits and assessments come in, right? If you’re unsure where the holes are in your business, we can find out in 20 minutes and present you with a weather map of all the holes in your business. Okay? Right. So that’s solving the problem directly. Great.
Transitional Moments: Brainstorm Any Business Issues Your Clients Might Have
There’s nuance in that, and whether that’s too much or too soon, be careful with that. But with the right offer that doesn’t feel like, you know, you’re just going to pitch them or that the whole reason that you’re helping them is to be able to craft your sales pitch better or just do data gathering on them or things along those lines.
It’s different. So as a common example, people love to do discovery calls. Yeah. Hey, sign up for a 30-minute discovery call. Yeah. And they don’t actually talk about what they’re going to do in the Discovery call. It’s just vague. We’ll talk for 30 minutes and most people gravitate towards thinking like, so it’s going to be a 30-minute sales pitch, right?
It’s going to be like a timeshare sales pitch, Go pass. I have no desire to sign up for that. Right. But if on the other hand, you do something like a discovery call, you say, hey, this is a discovery call specifically for people who are facing this problem, this business problem, and we’re looking for this sort of outcome.
We can do that in 30 minutes and help you solve that. Okay. So let me give this back to you in sort of like three kinds of micro steps. I know there are more like sub steps and that kind of stuff or whatever. Yeah, but if somebody wants to start thinking through how to build out their own transitional moment, step one Brainstorm the top three business issues, the challenges that you know that your audience and your prospects are struggling with, and also that you can help them solve like something completely unrelated to you is not going to have influence over it.
Right? For sure. So, you know, so brainstorm the top three business issues and challenges that you can then also help them solve. Step two is what can you teach them about each of those in a very generous way? Like you and I, we subscribe to the ten truths of what makes somebody in authority, right? Right. In chapter two of the book.
So, authority, right? Step three is actually teaching it in full transparency. Yeah. And really, there’s one more step in the very front of that. Again, that’s just identifying where you need to have this transitional perfection. Great. So like that because you might need three. You might need one, and you might do a five. Right.
Transitional Moments: Making Follow-Ups After Your Session
So depending on what, how many transitional moments you need, that also gives you an idea of how many of these things do I need to teach? Okay. Then you can think about, again, the level of relationship in each one of these kinds of your first transitional moments when you give and you teach. They’re going out in a small limb.
They’re giving you contact information, you’re going out on a small limb, and you’re providing them with the asset that they requested or the assets that they requested. You don’t want to have them go out on a small limb, and say, hey, I want this thing, I need to go. Awesome. Let’s schedule seven-hour-long weekly calls.
I’ll have my people reach out to you, and we’ll get those all schedules, and we’re going to dive through everything along those lines. Yeah, because that feels like, Boy, did you have fun at the movie tonight? Yeah. Did you like that? Was dinner great? Yeah, it was awesome. Hey, what do you do next Saturday? Nothing. What?
Transitional Moments: Citing An Example That’s Appropriate in A Business Context
Did you get an idea? Yeah, I was thinking, how about we get married, right? Like it? So that feels goofy and yucky and way too fast in a social situation. And, of course, it feels that same way. Like what? You’re. I know you’re giving us a ludicrous example, but some people do it, and it feels goofy, yucky, and inappropriate in a business context, too.
Well, what it feels like if you overgive at each one of those stages is what Drew talks about, Drew McLellan from Marketing Agency. Agency Institute is that your clients, your prospects, and your leads are like deer in the woods. Yeah. Okay. And imagine you put out food every day, which by the way, is consistent, which is something else that we’re big fans of.
Okay, well, let’s see. You’re putting out food every day right at the edge of the wood line and eventually a deer comes out and you eat some of the food. Yup. Sometimes what business owners do, especially if they’re in the throes of needing to close business, is they try to tackle the deer, which I know that’s not how you have deer, but that’s the way that the analogy works to suspend disbelief.
So they try to tackle deer. Obviously, the deer runs away. The deer is not coming back to that food now, nor has it done okay. Whereas if you have these transition moments where you move the food further and further and further from the wood line and eventually the deer is eating out of your hands. Right. Because there’s been so much trust developed over the consistency of what’s being done, it works.
Transitional Moments: Creating An Opportunity to Increase Relationships and Trust
So you have to make sure you throttle how you deliver the asset with what’s appropriate for the transitional moment as well. Okay. So that ties up really the next piece here and okay, Erik, if I’m not supposed to run after the deer that I that I, that I wanted to have come into my yard. Hey, now, like I said, I still want to trade.
Not only did I want one beer, there were eight in there. All of the stuff that I put out and we need the full sales pipeline. So, if I’m honest, how much money I put into putting out that pizza right. And I’ve been teaching a lot and they’re there. So if I’m not supposed to run after the deer, what am I supposed to do downstream so that I can create the win-win, you know, both for our prospect because I don’t want them to feel like a prospect?
I truly want them to raise their hand and say, can you help me solve this problem? But how might you go about that? So what should I do downstream so I don’t make them feel like I’m running at them, but I have a business to run. Create moments where you give them the opportunity to increase relationships and trust.
Okay, Again, you’re not. You’re not tackling them saying, Deer, eat out of my hand. Okay? What you’re saying is, all right, I’m going to test right? I’m going to give it a chance instead of eating out of my hand. And you say like, okay, what if I put the food five feet away from me? Whereas before, I wasn’t even around.
Transitional Moments: Find Ways to Make Your Client Have a Talk with You
Okay, what if I’m at least there where the food is? Okay, okay. And you’re going to have to adjust this a little bit, right? Can you be within five feet of food? Maybe not. Maybe it’s too close. Maybe that’s too big of a transition for those deer to me. Maybe it’s that I can be in the field that’s as close as I can be, as I can be in the field.
That’s as much as they’re willing to do or to change in our relationship status right now is to go from I will eat when you’re not around to I will eat when you’re around. All right. And then you’re going to go, okay, so once that is good. What about food? That’s a whole lot closer to me.
Okay. And so all the deer don’t move is just a herd where they go from one to the next, the next they’re going to do different things, right? Some of them are going to hang back in the woods longer. Some of them are going to come out happily. That first food went away. By the way, people get really frustrated by that because they’re like, they’re tired kickers.
It’s fine. You don’t know when they’re going to be ready to move forward. You need to design the opportunity for them to do so. And then the next pile. So it’s going to be a lot closer. So again, when we’re talking about more concrete examples, right? So that’s why for us, we have a couple of different ways for someone to commit to talking to get a chance to meet us.
Transitional Moments: Deepen The Relationship by Getting Your Client Out of The Comfort Zone
Why do we use a weekly Q&A? Why don’t we set up 30 minute calls with everybody that wants to be able to talk to us? Well, are you asking me or where does it go? This was a rhetorical, rhetorical question I asked myself because. Because you and I have talked about one. There’s the practical case. There are scalability issues like I think I know the answer to stress.
I know you do. Right. Because we talked about this a lot, the scalability issue is fine. That’s one of the things. But the other thing is that someone can come into the Q&A and be a fly on the wall. They don’t actually have to be super, super comfortable right away with that transitional moment because they can hide amongst the crowd.
And that happens every week, actually, and it happens every week. Yes. And it’ll sometimes be four or five times that someone is on one of these things before they finally go, Hey, I got a question. Yes. Okay. So again, all we’ve done is we’ve given the opportunity. We’ve created the space for this transitional moment to happen.
That’s it. That’s what you’re looking to do. Create the opportunity for that transitional moment when you want to deepen the relationship. Yep. You know, you can’t force someone to change the relationship. That is their choice, not yours. They’re the ones that have to take the first step. So all you can do is give them the opportunities to do so.
And every time they take that step, you cannot pounce on them. You have to make sure that you’re helpful because that makes them more comfortable continuing the steps they’re going to take. They’re going to take the following steps faster than the initial steps, which feels counterintuitive, but that’s the way it works.
Transitional Moments: Do Some A/B Testing to Understand What Your Client Is Comfortable With
Okay. That’s why I thought leadership was tied to shorter sales cycles. Yep. Okay. So you have to be helpful in each one of those ways. You’ve got to teach something each one of those times and not try to jump on them because again, they have to be the one that initiates that. Now, again, you can talk about things.
It doesn’t mean that you get to abdicate your role in sales, but when you send out a sales email like 5130 or something along those lines, you’re saying, Hey, we’re looking for a few people who want to do this thing within this timeframe. Emails back if you’re interested in taking part again, that’s opening the opportunity. That’s not to say that they have to do it.
And unless they respond, we’re not hounding them to say, Hey, did you see that? Are you sure you can see that email? You should really talk to us about that email because you should probably be doing this right? It’s an opportunity. Yeah, it’s so let’s take that. As ridiculous as this might sound, continuing with the deer analogy is See, hey, I’ve got some extra special yummy food where I think that I can be really, really helpful to your dear tummy.
Would any of you like that? So just raise your hand and come get the extra special yummy eating the deer like raising their hooves, and so that’s that’s ridiculous of course. But that’s the point. So, like when you say the 5130, meaning we’re looking for five people who want to accomplish one thing in the next 30 days, and then when five people raise their hand and say, Yeah, I fit those criteria, I trust you, I’ve been lurking maybe or asking questions in your Q&A or participated in whatever transitional moment it is.
Maybe it’s not a Q&A, maybe it’s something different, you know, whatever. But then they raise their hand and say, Yeah, I’d like to chat with you about that. But that’s them saying, Yeah, I’d like to chat with you about that. So then that conversation truly is just a conversation about how you might be helpful. You ask a lot of questions and then it doesn’t feel like a quote-unquote sales call at all because it’s not.
It doesn’t. And here’s where it gets really cool is because when you think about these transitional moments and these changes in a relationship now, instead of making your communications about trying to get someone to do anything or everything at once, which doesn’t work, they’re not going to each stage of your communications funnel has a different goal. So you know that website, your podcast, you’re on addressable media content, right?
Transitional Moments: Using The Right Call-To-Action
All the calls to action on that need to be going towards the first peak in the mountain. That first transitional moment shouldn’t be talking about other stuff, right? Or if it does, it should be like once right? And I get it some somebody would argue, well hey, clients prospects and addressable folks listen to the podcast that could be any of those right That’s fine.
But what’s the purpose of the podcast? What’s the purpose of the media that you’re putting out that should tell you which transitional moment is leading to now once you have their email address, what’s the thing that you should be trying to lead them to? Right. Well, it should be leading them to, hey, join the Q&A, join the webinars, join the teaching do’s, join the things.
And then once someone has shown up for those, then again, you change your communication to them and you say, Hey, maybe now go to one-on-one communications, or you’re like, Hey, I hope that was really useful. But we talked about any problems that you had. If there are any questions that you have, be happy.
Transitional Moments: Taking A Leap of Faith for Your Client
So we have to walk you through that if you need one-on-one time to be able to solve this problem. Right. All of those things become options. But again, is it appropriate to where? So that way, again, you’re not asking to get married because that would be weird. Yes. For the stage of the relationship. And so sometimes we treat all of our audience as kind of one audience and that they’re all going to be ready for the exact same transitional moment because we as a business owner want them to make that one transitional moment right now.
And, you know, we’ll sometimes, will someone on occasion go from one all the way to five? Yeah, right. And we call those lucky strike extras. Right. But you could find a deer that actually domesticated the family for the first five years of its life and it’s like awesome people, I’m going to go eat corn.
Right? That it could happen. All right, raise it. Thank you for continuing with my ridiculous example there. Yeah, I’ve just again, I’m still imagining it with this little cuff going like, well, will the deer be driving at some point? Because we were watching Madagascar three episodes earlier. We were. That’s okay. But what do these guys actually get done in their day?
Transitional Moments: Final Thoughts on The Subject Matter
I don’t understand it in all seriousness, though, I think this is actually going to turn into a great graphic or illustration. I can’t wait to get this Alex and her team, because this moving from one relationship status to the next that you talked about in outlined it, you know, basically like five different pieces and I know that those are just initial pieces, a way to kind of get the juices flowing and that kind of stuff.
And then and then what happens downstream? But that could be a really cool thing that we’ll put in the resource library and that the people can download and I think find helpful, just like last time we’re running out of time. So Sam, through the hourglass we do need to come in for a landing, but this has been extremely helpful.
I’m like, I don’t know, seriously, why did it take six years to think, You know, you really should invite your business partner onto the show because that my gosh, seriously. Okay, this has really been great. And just like the last one we’re going to do this as we promised our audience. We’re going to be doing this on a consistent basis where Erik is going to be joining us every 4 to 6 weeks or so on the show.
And this is just going to continue to be a lot of fun. So before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, please tell everyone the best way to connect with you. Okay. So to connect with me directly, if somebody really wants to, it probably is email just Erik. Erik at PredictiveROI.com you can absolutely connect with me on LinkedIn, but I will be the first one to admit I don’t spend a ton of time on there, so you’ll have to bear with me on that.
Transitional Moments: Grabbing An Amazing Offer
If you want to get a chance to meet us in person, which is again something I think is awesome. You can register for the Q&A. Again, just registering is the transitional moment. One showing up as a transitional moment too. So you know that that’s always a great opportunity if you’re new to what it is that we talk about and what it is that we teach.
And even aside from getting a hold of me or, you know, us as an organization, I would actually say and go download a free copy of a book because if you want to get inundated in our philosophies and things along those lines and get a really solid framework, that’s the way to do it. And that’s just predictable. Through icon, forward slash free dash book.
So it truly is free because we don’t charge for it. There’s not some hidden shipping and handling fee or whatever. So then, for the Q&A, it’s just a predictable outcome for it’s okay because we keep things really complicated. So yeah, I think those are all good options depending on where someone is at and kind of a learning curve and whether they want to meet us, the community or just learn more about what it is that we do.
Remember that. Okay, everyone, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and relisten to Erik’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take what he so generously shared with you, how he broke down transitional moments and how he gave you the flow, the before, the after the why, Everything downstream, and everything in between.
Take it and apply it. Do an experiment. Do it once. Create a thing. But the key pieces are remembering business issues and as Erik said, what can you teach them about that? And being able to step in front of your audience with generosity and full transparency is the key. And Erik, thanks again for saying yes. Thank you for taking the time out of your compressed schedule to come on the show, to be our mentor and guide and help everyone move their businesses onward to the next level.
Thank you so much, my partner. You bet. Anybody who has met me knows I am more than happy to nerd out on this stuff for way longer than I probably should be able to do. So this is fun and I’m looking forward to the next one too.
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The Sell with Authority Podcast is for agency owners, business coaches, and strategic consultants who are looking to grow a thriving, profitable business that can weather the constant change that seems to be our world’s reality.