Streamline your customer service operations with a pipeline funnel for customer service

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foreign so let me ask you a question by a show of hand how many of you already know what you'll be having for dinner tonight all right about half the room how many of you already know that you will be having dinner tonight all right so that's pretty much everybody now that may seem like a little bit of a silly question but I want you to actually think about the significance of that because chances are there are very few people in this room if any that have ever had to wonder about that question where is my next meal coming from and the fact that we don't have to worry about that allows us to do a lot of things that much more productively because if you had to be concerned about that question you probably couldn't do that day job quite as well all of a sudden a lot of the intricacies and details you put into your work do not become as important now I want you to contrast that though to our ancestors go back about ten thousand years everybody's still in 100 gallery or Society and in those societies though every day when you woke up you would spend 70 to 90 percent of every waking moment just trying to find that next meal you had to go out kill an antelope gather up some nuts and berries whatever it was you had to do it that day and if the herds got up and moved on then that meant so did you and your tribe or your group of people that you moved around with and that was life and that will survival day in and day out now I see the looks on some of your faces and some of you are saying what does any of this have to do with business it's a nice history lesson but what's the connection but the reality is this is exactly the way a lot of us operate our businesses today we operate them in survival mode and the majority of small businesses we all know the stats fail within five years because they can't find enough customers they're always wondering where does that next customer come from where does my next paycheck come from imagine though if people did not have to do that or if it was a very very low item on the priority list if you could focus the rest of your attention to places other than just finding that next customer what could you do in your business how could you make it grow how could you improve it this is the question I want to pose today and the things that I have to share with you in this talk cultivating customers they're not really anything new and in only about 20 25 minutes there's really nothing that I could tell you that's going to fundamentally change your business and and you're going to walk away and be oh my gosh this was amazing what I do hope to do though is just to give you an idea just to give you a model for thinking about a lot of the things that we do in business and a lot of the things that we're faced with every day at small business owners the reason I came up with this is that there are a few broken models out there when we think about the things that are happening in small businesses here we go people are out there hunting just to survive whether if they would think about farming in their business if they would think about this idea of cultivating customers you can move from just surviving into this idea of being able to thrive and grow and develop because our ancestors when they started to farm when they figured out this idea that they could produce food on a regular basis on a predictable cycle and system they didn't have to get up and follow the herds around anymore and that meant that they could settle in one place and that meant that they could form Villages That Grew into towns that grew into cities that grew into civilization and now even today civilization is based on the fact that we don't have to go out and find our next meal that's the ability to thrive so what does that mean in business so here's some of the analogies we think about when we think about sales and developing business finding our next customers everybody can recognize this maybe what is this all right so it's a pipeline how many of you have heard this analogy before in business where's your pipeline really only a few of us your sales pipeline we've used that it's probably been around for about 30 40 years in common vernacular where are they at in the pipeline and we know that and we use that analogy because people said you know this doesn't happen immediately anymore you've probably all seen or many of you have seen The Wolf of Wall Street and you'll see him pick up the phone and he makes a big sale in one call but the reality is that doesn't happen very often I don't know how many of us would be able to say that that happens on a daily basis maybe every once in a while but the reality is is that it's a process and so they came up with this analogy of a pipeline how do we move people down the pipeline but this is problematic because it's very narrow so then they came out with the funnel so where is your sales or your marketing funnel how do you catch all these people and be able to funnel them into your business but here's the problem with these two analogies the main beef that I have with them I have never bought a piece of pipe or a funnel where I expected things to fall out of them if I buy a funnel and I pour something into it I want everything I pour in that funnel to come out the other end and unfortunately that just doesn't happen what's the problem with the funnel if people are falling out of it and it's a false expectation and so then we go and we hire marketing companies that we say are going to be able to bring us all these leads and all of those leads are going to turn into customers and it's going to be fantastic but that never ever happens and so what I wanna what I want you all to think about today are all of the things that are out there all the things that you've been presented with all the things that you've seen all the things that you've done research with to be able to grow your business think about all the things that are out there you've got promotional products you've got SEO you've got your web design you've got logo design email marketing social media marketing you've got every other type of marketing ad placement and lead generation technique that you can possibly think of to drive leads into your business but do all those things cost money all of those things cost money so here's the problem if all of those things cost money how do you choose as a small business owner where do you place these things where do they fit inside your business inside that process of Business Development because how many of you have a website all right most of us have a website how many of you are using email marketing anybody paying for SEO services anybody still doing Direct Mail all of these things are good things all of these things can work in your business but the question that a lot of small business owners ask me is what do I do first and how do I line these things up because if you're sending out Direct Mail trying to drive them to a website and your website is not very well developed it's not going to function very well and so I've seen this many many times over the last four years working with small business owners and eventually I had mentors come back and say just go back to what you know if you can explain this in a way that you know how would you do it and many of you have already figured out by listening to me talk but I'm not originally from Miami I grew up on a farm just north of uh here not just North about six hours north of here just north of Gainesville and so I went back and I thought about all those lessons that I learned up growing on the farm and how do those apply back to business and this is where the model comes in and so I want you to think about this process and I want you to think about if you were going to plant a garden because we don't all have Farms down here but if you were just going to plant a garden with your kids in the backyard how would you go about that I want you to actually take a moment at your table I'm going to give you about one minute and I want you all to come up with a process that you all can agree upon what is the basic fundamental process that you would use to grow a garden what are the steps in that process does that make sense can everybody do that at your tape take one minute go ahead and stop so let's see what you've come up with and we'll still we'll still wait and see if uh we can get the projector back on but what is the first step if you're going to plant a garden what's the first step pick the location all right what else all right before that you've got to think about what you're going to plant all right you got to make a plan and all these things are going to go into it every year about December January or so on my family farm we would start thinking about what what we were going to plan so we're just going to be squash Tomatoes beans that year what are we going to plant and then where are we going to plant it because different areas of the farm had different environmental conditions somewhere wetter than others some drier some sandier some more some had better uh nutrition in the soil more fertile in the soil so where are you going to plant it at and then here's the key question when do you want to harvest it not when do you want to plant it but when do you want to harvest it for example we would grow watermelons we knew that we had to plant watermelons back in February because if we didn't those watermelons would not come into season Before Memorial Day which is when prices were at their Peak and if we waited until after Memorial Day the rest of the Watermelons up the Southeast coast would come in and prices continue to drop that was planning on when we wanted to harvest it think about this in your business instead of thinking about a growing season though think about campaigns a lot of us are out there just every day let me go see who I can meet or we're using some type of marketing but we're really not trying to farm with that we're trying to go fishing right we're just putting something out there and hoping people call in or hoping people walk through the door but think about it as a campaign so if you're thinking about when do you want this item to close does it need to happen around a season does something need to happen just before school comes back in does something need to happen before the holiday shopping season how long will that take and work backwards from there if you can work backwards from there you can start to develop the rest of the pieces so beyond that now we have a plan in place we know what we're going to plant or know what we're going to sell who do we want to sell it to where are we going to sell it and when do we want it to close now what's the next thing go back to the gardening analogy what's the next piece you've got to till the soil we'll say you've got to prepare the fields what do you do that makes your prospective customers more receptive to the message that you have to offer not just come up into their face and I'm sure this doesn't happen here but I'm sure you've been to other networking events where you walk into the network event and all of a sudden there's that guy that before he even looks you in the eye has put a business card in your hand and expects you to want to call him for some reason what do you do to build that credibility to gain that visibility to build trust with folks this is branding out of that big list of things all those things that you do just to get out in front of the market think about placing them here so if you're talking about web design yes your web site can generate sales for you maybe it communicates that message but before anything marks from niglia what does your website have to do has to help convince people it's part of The Branding process Mark by the way is a great website designer does that a lot for legal firms helps them to establish that credibility as soon as people land on that home page it builds credibility so now you've tilled the soil you've made them more receptive to your message so now in the gardening process you prepare the soil then what do you have to do you have to plant the seeds so planting the seeds how do you do that in business development all these other processes that are out there all of the direct mail all the social media all of these other things how do you plant the seed how do you make that initiation of the opportunity do you put it in the right order if you are trying to close business or try to talk about doing business before someone trusts you or trust your company or trust your brand it is not going to be effective it's just like casting seeds out on the ground where anyone may or may not take root so are you doing the work ahead of time to then be able to plant that seed and are you doing it effectively what is your unique selling proposition what is that unique value that you bring that people should do business with you can you communicate that very quickly that's not just that networking events that's on those pieces of direct mail that are going out right how many pieces of direct mail do you see that come because as as a person in the industry you're kind of a Critic of it right you get the pieces coming in you're like ah it's garbage it's terrible we should have done that a lot better right we could have done that a lot better it happens all the time people don't communicate what their value is why people should call them and don't ask them to do it they don't give them that next step so where is the marketing there so think about this in terms of the process we prepare the fields and then we plant the seeds but then what do you have to do in the garden what's next you've got a water not only water what else water fertilize and depending on what you're growing it could be a very long process this is the process of cultivation because a lot of us go around and we find those contacts and maybe they like us well enough but then we fail at the follow-up and we're not continuing to stay in front of those prospective customers and you can do that in a lot of different ways James Shulman over here runs a company with his wife Kristen and they do social media marketing and other things they're my social media marketing company so I invited him here today because I know he's going to put out a lot of great things about this talk on social media but that's one of the ways we stay in front of customers that's one of the ways that we connect them and so it sounds a lot like the rest of the branding and marketing that you're doing but now it's very very focused not for a general audience but for people who have put their hand up and people who you know have at least an interest in doing business with you how do you keep them alive how do you keep that process going this is the nurture process and if you continue to do that for some people longer than others remember if you're growing wheatgrass in a tray you can turn that around in about two weeks if you're trying to grow mangoes in your backyard that could take three to five years but then it continues to go on and on and on it's different business models so nurture all the way to the end so you get ready to go to the Harvest but before you do that though there's still one other step Next Step maybe not what else do you have to do during that process between the time that you've planted and the time that you're there we go the Harvest you've got to figure out how to manage those pests so think about in a garden three big types of pests in a garden you've got weeds you've got disease and then you have all those little critters trying to eat your stuff so in business it's very much the same way the weeds are all those distractions that you have all those other things that you've got going on that keep you from following up the way you should how can you eliminate those the disease that's your screw-ups those things that you do that give people a bad impression of you or those things that you have done that turn around in bad word of mouth marketing maybe somebody goes on Yelp and so now there is in addition to that whole list we saw at the front there's this whole another industry coming up called reputation management how do you manage your reputation online how do you get better reviews on Yelp and it's becoming a service that's added on to it but if you're not out there if it's not good for your business doesn't make sense to do so we've got to manage the disease and then finally your competition now I know it would be fun if we could just like grab a bottle of bug spray and spray our competition away that may be nice but it's not going to happen so think about some other things how can you exclude your competition from that process how can you continue to strengthen that relationship with your prospective customer so they see the value that you add that no one else can if you can do that this relationship continues to grow and eventually we get to the point that we all want to get to which is the point where we Harvest how do you bring it home now on the farm there was a saying that my dad used to have very uh he didn't have to say it very often but sometimes I not want to get up that early in the morning and you come to the bedroom and he would say son that field is not going to pick itself we had to get out there and we have to do it this is the other big mistake I see with a lot of small business owners they believe just because they've spent the money on branding just because they spent the money on marketing just because they've shown up at the networking events that they are somehow now entitled to the business but unfortunately that rarely happens you have got to get out there and make it close you have to ask for the order you have to have something in place to be able to say is it now time to do business you don't want to do it too early because if you've ever bitten into a green tomato you know that's not a very good experience you won't let things get to that point where they're ready but how do you tell that you have systems and processes in place to be able to know are your clients ready to do business is the timing right now and then once you do have that timing in place do you have a process in your industry is that a formal proposal do you have to do a presentation for some type of a board what is it that's going to make that happen develop it down into a process and figure out the best way to bring it home and to close that business now some of us might think that that is the end right you plan a garden and you want to be able to harvest you get those Tomatoes but that's really not the end because what should you do next all right you got to clean up a little bit but before that even if you've ever taken an apple or I know I have some friends that grow heirloom tomatoes in their backyards every time they harvest one of those Tomatoes they don't just cut it up and eat it and throw away the the scraps they're always saving the seeds they're always looking to propagate so in your business what do you have in place what systems are in place to be able to generate those repeat sales do you have a subscription model in your business or is there some process that you know you can upsell to the next service into the next service and continue to have those processes in place and some of us we just have a transactional business it's not going to be that type of model and so then propagation comes in the form of referrals you can still have a referral based program something to have your customers who are already pleased with your service bring them back to you again this is not a new idea but it has to fall in the place if you are not doing well in sales yourself if you're not having the rest of these things lead up to it having a referral program may not be the best thing because the last thing you want is a customer to send somebody to you and you have no process to take that referral up to the point where you can provide them service so this is that cycle brand Market nurture have some sales and some way to generate repeats and referrals it is a farming process and if you think about it how many of you know of a hunter-gatherer Society anywhere remotely close to here six seven seven billion people on the face of the Earth and a very very small fraction still live like that the reality is our species have become farming and agriculture based so when will our businesses start to do that now there are a few other considerations here this process that I just described it can be applied to a particular sale you can set up and say I have one particular Prospect and I know I'm going to take them through this entire Prosper this entire process but you could also put that down for a large campaign sending out so many prospects if you're doing direct mail or eddm you're going to send it out to a large group of individuals trying to get them all to that in the process in Harvest but it can also be the basis of your entire business don't just think about one campaign think about how these campaigns stack and so when you're starting out you may not be able to afford any of these projects of these services that people provide you still have to get out there and you're still hunting for the business but if you understand how to manage your money how to manage those profits you then begin to reinvest those back into branding back into marketing back into the other processes that are going to make these things happen faster and at greater scale this is how a hunter becomes a small farmer becomes a big farmer and eventually a big estate with land around everywhere this is the same process for business growth find a small process repeat it grow it and it becomes an upward and upward spiral next thing about sustainability though and there's some key things with sustainability things adapt over time this is another reason I like this farming model model versus a pipeline or a funnel because pipelines and funnels are pretty static all they can do is just kind of like rust the deteriorate but a farm is a very dynamic system and the things that change out in the market are also very dynamic I mean how many of you have seen and had to change your marketing techniques in the last five years much less 15 years right several others so if you're not changing and adapting over time you're going to be left behind but then the next thing what works in the short term could kill you in the long term so there are several ways that I can go out and kill weeds if there are weeds in the garden you can spray a lot of different things on them to kill them take diesel or gas for example you could go salt the Earth and it'll kill the weeds it'll get the job done but then it is killed the whole productivity of that spot of ground same thing can happen in marketing and we see this a lot people come in and they use black hat marketing techniques or they use really hard sales techniques to be able to come in and generate business very quickly and they will generate business very quickly in the short term but then we all know what happens in that story they develop a bad reputation and before long no one is doing business with them anymore so think about the techniques that you're using just because somebody tries to sell you something and says they can generate immediate results think about long term and what that's going to do for your brand and then lastly it's about profit a lot of the services that we use to generate business for our companies they are expensive and they can generate great results but remember the goal of your business is not the top line revenue so just because something can send you tens or hundreds or thousands of potential customers and you may even be able to close them if the cost of doing that rise in proportion you're not really that much better off in fact you may be worse off because even though it's proportional in the amount of expense monetarily the expound the amount of expense in your energy and your time is also going to increase and how much is that worth and so I thank you for your time and your attention being here today and for the ability to come in and share this idea share a little bit of a model with you hopefully it's useful for you