Create a Product Plan & Grow Your Standout Business


Lesson Info

Identify What You Want To Learn

So what do you wanna learn? What do you wanna learn? These are five different questions that might be the thing you wanna learn next. Your question might not be up here. Feel free to come up with it on your own, if there's something that you're really curious about when it comes to your audience. The first one is, how have they tried to solve their problem in the past? You might need to know how your customer has tried to solve their problem in the past so you can do better market analysis. Maybe when you were looking at that chart of market analysis that we did early on in the class you were like, "aw man, "I know what my direct competitors are, "but I don't know all the other things "they might have tried to solve their problem. "I just, I don't have a good read on that". That's a great opportunity for using a survey. You might also want to know further on that question, what was wrong with those other things? What were their complaints? Remember I said, "One of the ways "that you ca...

n find your opportunity in the market "is by looking at the complaints people have about the other offers". It's not that those other offers are bad they're just not right for everybody, or maybe they weren't right for that particular problem. And so that's another thing that you can look at here, is what are those complaints, why didn't those things work? Another question that you might ask is what problem is top of mind for them? In other words, what is that pain point that they're immediately focused on? Quite often when I work with business owners, when I see members in our community trying to struggle through crafting marketing, crafting new products. They're trying to solve a problem that is deep and very necessary to solve, but their customer doesn't know they have that problem. Instead their customer has this other problem that's top of mind, and it's the only thing they can think of. When you have a stuffy nose you know that you may have a bigger problem. You might have a cold, you might have some sort of other infection, you might just have allergies, but what do you really care about? Being able to breathe through your nose. And so the same exact thing happens with your customers. If your customers can't breathe through their nose they are not willing to listen to you about what other problems might be going on in whatever body we're talking about here. Some of us that applies very directly to, others it's a little bit more metaphorical, but that's really important to keep in mind. And so this is a great question, if you don't know what problem is immediately top of mind for your customers I'd highly recommend starting there. For instance, I know with my customers the problem that is always top of mind is marketing. It is not the real problem, but it is always the thing people are asking about, it's always the thing people feel stressed about, so I'm gonna start any conversation I have with my customer about something having to do with marketing, and then I can diagnose other problems, but I'm gonna address that issue first, because I know that until I can alleviate that symptom, or until I can at least say, "Hey, "I understand that your nose is stuffy, "let's fix it from the inside out." They're not gonna pay attention, because all they care about is that stuffy nose, and so I need to care about that problem too. Another question I might ask, or another thing I might wanna learn is what outcome is most important to my customers? What outcome is most important to my customers? Remember earlier we talked about key valuable outcomes, and one of the ones that I said is so cliche, but so important, is making more money. There may be other outcomes that my customers want. They wanna make an impact in the world, they wanna create a sense of community, they wanna give people therapeutic value, they want to help them achieve self actualization. All of these different elements of value that are part and parcel with owning a business, but for my customers, for my members, what they really want, most important outcome is to make more money. And so it's really important that whatever it is that you're selling, whoever your audience or potential customer base is, that you understand which outcome is most important to them. And so that's another thing you might want to learn. Another thing you might wanna learn is why they don't take action, or why they stopped taking action. In other words, is there a roadblock in their way? Is there something they don't understand? A pain point like a stuffy nose that keeps them from taking their vitamins or their allergy medication, or whatever it might be? What is that thing, that obstacle that's in their way that either prevents them from taking action in the first place or stops them from taking action. Because again, if I can't remove that obstacle either through my product or through a complimentary offer, they're not gonna buy, they're not gonna get results either, and so I'm not gonna get referrals, I'm not gonna get that beautiful cycle that we're gonna see a little bit later on where my business becomes sort of a self perpetuating machine. So that's another piece that I wanna know, and then I also wanna know, what is their end goal? What is that ultimate end state they wanna end up in? What's their ideal? Who are they trying to become? What is it that they're ultimately trying to accomplish? Not just what do they wanna know or be by the end of this month, not just what they wanna have changed by the end of this year, but when they look into the future, when they see out ten years from now, twenty years from now, when they think about their deathbed, what do they want to have accomplished? Who do they want to have become? I wanna know what that is, so that I can take my offer, I can take all my marketing, I can take all of my sales conversations and point them in that direction. Because our customers desperately wanna know that the tools that we're providing them with are helping them along that journey. It's not just an extra, it's not just a thing that maybe could help a little bit here and there, or take the edge off. It's actually a key tool they can use to get further on that journey. Do you guys have any other things you'd want to learn about your customers? What are you curious about right now when it comes to your customers? Jennifer, what are you curious about? Well, it's sort of in there, but I wrote it in, what's your biggest challenge at this point in your career as an artist? Yeah. Where do you want to go with your art career and your art business? And what do you struggle with ? Great. You know those are the things that I'm thinking and to answer the question of how can I help you? Yeah. How can I get you where you wanna go? And I don't know, I was thinking about the idea of describe where you wanna be 5, 10, 15 years from now, and then what are also your other current income streams? Because some people as artists are looking at teaching or doing other kinds of venues and do you want to grow your studio team? Yeah. I love it, great. So those are what I was thinking about. And I also wanna point out, you brought up a great point. Instead of asking how can I help you, the questions that you are posing there are so much better. So often I see surveys that are, what can I do for you? What course can I create for you? What service can I offer you to help you reach your goal? Customers are terrible at telling you what they want. You remember that quote from Ryan Levesque, he makes that incredibly clear in all of his work around his ask method. Customers are terrible at telling you what they want. Steve Jobs said it, Henry Ford said it, they're terrible. Don't ask them what they want, ask them what their problem is. Ask them what the challenge, the obstacle is, ask them where they wanna end up, but don't ask them how you can help them. Please do not do it, don't do it. Good, we're clear? Aleia, what do you wanna know? Your questions were actually pretty spot on. I was thinking of who my audience is and the things that we talk about, and this is really helpful when I come to drill down my services and my courses even, because it helps me know where their biggest pain points are, Yeah. and those are the things I should be talking about the most. Yes, it doesn't necessarily dictate what tool you're offering them, but it dictates how you're talking about it. And it's gonna help you further refine the value proposition that we did yesterday, the unique selling proposition that you have. And so that's gonna help you get a better idea then also of what the product needs to look like to address their needs. It doesn't necessarily change what the product is, but it might change how you present that tool, what kind of structure you give it, what kind of systems you put around it. Yeah, like in the last class I was telling you about my system school thing with five different areas, and you were helping me drill in and talk about certain ones. And these are the kinds of questions that would help me identify, and of course similar to your audience, usually marketing is top of mind, but just in case, these are the kind of questions that would help me drill in to figure out which things are on people's minds and so I can spend my time talking about those things. Beautiful. Anybody else? Yeah, Aiela So I currently ask when someone joins my general email list, I ask them a series of three questions, one being, what's your biggest struggle or question about your child's learning? And then another being, what are your current favorite resources from me? And what words come to mind? So those two questions drove me to the resource that I've created, the answers to those questions. And then of course, I ask them, what do you wanna see from me next, and sometimes it's really useful, and sometimes it's not at all. And for me it was just kind of useful to see what on earth people could come up with. But I think another, I think more specifically, obviously with this from the people who've actually purchased my product, or who are thinking about, or who have just started with my product, I'd love to know, certainly, what their struggles are specifically, because they are going to inform how I answer those questions. And then also I think, the kind of learning, how they like to learn, do they like to learn in a multi-modal way, do they like to watch videos, do they like to listen to something, do they like to read text? Because I deal with parents who have very young children and may not be able to sit through an entire 20 minute video. They may love to do that, but they may know themselves enough to know that that's just not in their lifestyle right now. So that kind of how do you like to learn with maybe a multi-choice. Yes, yeah. Is probably a good thing for me. Awesome. I want you to focus on one new learning and one new iteration, in other words, don't change more than one thing at a time. So you learn something new, you make a change to test and make sure, was that right? Did I really interpret that correctly and then you do it again. And again, remember I had said yesterday, I'd said in the first half of this class, "one of the biggest mistakes people make "is not sticking with that core offer long enough." not actually giving it a chance. And one reason that happens is because it is a slow burn to get these things right, but if you go and you start learning all of this stuff, and then changing all of this stuff, if you make a mistake somewhere in there, you're not gonna know it. You're not going to have the experience that you need to say, "oh, that one thing right there, "that was the mistake". If you make five changes and you realize something went wrong, which one is responsible for that? It's really, really hard to know. So try to take this very iterative approach of both learning and product development as slowly as possible. Now sometimes that's easier to say than it is to do, but please try, try for me, to focus on one thing at a time. Yeah, Greg? I've got a question 'cause you're talking about surveys, and as I look at it, it's talking about product, and my wheels are spinning, I'm sitting here thinking, "Okay, "I wanna go a little bit deeper, "I wanna find out a little bit more "about the people that are coming in "let's say to take a course, "I want them to succeed, "so I wanna know what motivates them, "I wanna know what they know already, "I wanna know where they're at or a point and a time. When it comes to actually talking to people or surveying the people, do you tend to separate your surveys and think, okay, this is about product, this is about user over here, you know what I'm getting at? Yeah, yeah. Because I wouldn't want to muddy that, and I could see they could be separated, but you do wanna know something about the people that are coming in. Yes, absolutely. So in an intake process, or an onboarding process, surveys are really awesome too. And so I think what you're getting at and the way I would approach thinking through that is sometimes I'm surveying my full perspective audience, like the people who could buy this thing, and sometimes I'm surveying just people who have purchased, because when you can segment just purchasers off, you're actually getting, generally getting better data, not 100% of the time, but let's say like 99% of the time you're getting better data, more helpful data for the future, because there are people who have whatever problem it was, or whatever goal it was, enough, feel it urgently enough, to pull the trigger. And then you can use that information to refine what that problem really is, how they talk about it, and what you might need to deliver to them. It's also really helpful, if you're in the process of really still prototyping, where the product, yesterday we talked about where do you start, how do you even get the ball rolling? If you can work surveying into the intake process in the prototyping phase, in other words, when the product maybe isn't even completely built yet, then you can actually adjust the product development on the fly, based on who purchased, and that can be, if you wanna speed things up that's the easiest way to speed things up. You can also survey those same purchasers in the off-boarding phase as well. So as the program is completing, or as the course is completing, or even a coaching package as it's completing, you wanna gather, you can gather data there as well. What were the specific changes that you made? How was this different than you thought it was going to be? What part's met your expectations? What parts exceeded your expectations? What parts didn't meet your expectations? And you can adjust the product there. The other really nice thing about surveying or gathering feedback from purchasers is that they're much more forgiving with how much time it's going to take to do a survey. So here as we start getting into actually creating a survey, we're gonna look at a really short sweet, three minutes and you're done kind of survey. Purchasers on the other hand, and definitely at the end of a program will do a lot more work for you and give you a lot more information so that's another really good way to think about it too. Does that kinda answer your question? It does, and the reason I was bringing it up, 'cause I'm working with a client right now, and they're almost teeter-tottering a little bit. They're thinking, okay, they've found out that the reason that some of their people are not going through the program is because they just didn't want to put in any more work. Okay. It had nothing to do with the products, so at some point they had to get really clear and say, "Okay, the information "I'm getting back on the product "is not what's goin on here. Yeah. "The data I really need has to do with the learner and their motivation, and what gets them through it", so I was just wondering how you separate those two, and if you treat them differently. Yeah, I mean just for that specific scenario, if I'm understanding it correctly, one way you might use that data is to say, "did the product itself "actually bite off more than it could chew?" and does the product need to be a quarter of the length or half of the length? And actually work toward a separate outcome, and actually focus on that particular outcome, and then offer the second half of the program as a follow-up offer, which is where we're headed with this whole thing, is understanding what the follow-up offer is. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, absolutely.


But what can you offer your customers to grow your business?










