How to Start a Customer Journey?

Customer Journey: How do you start?

[00:00:00] Sarah Noel Block: All right, so now you know what a customer journey is. Now you need to know where do you start. Even the largest companies have a really hard time defining their customer journey. You're at an advantage being a small business because large companies, they do have. very, think of a chart where you're graphed by dots and [ scatter plot. The word I was looking for was SCATTER PLOT] there's just dots all over the place.

[00:00:28] Sarah Noel Block: That is how a customer journey can be for a really big company, but for small businesses it's a little bit more linear and a little easier to handle. So let's get into the three questions you need to have the answers to. as far as your customer, when you begin identifying the customer journey, one, who needs my service?

[00:00:54] Sarah Noel Block: Who is my ideal customer? What problem do I solve? And who has this problem? [00:01:00] What problem do they have? I literally just said this, but you need to think about the challenges that they have in their everyday. , why they have them and how that affects their lives, both their work lives and their personal lives.

[00:01:18] Sarah Noel Block: And even philosophically, if you follow the story, brand script, philosophical reasons behind the pain of a problem matter just as much as I don't have enough time, and it means that I don't have enough time to complete other tasks because I'm doing the task that you do things like that.

[00:01:42] Sarah Noel Block: Or I could be spending less money because I'm, spending money on multiple freelancers when I could in fact be using a tech tool to solve this problem. Things like that, those are surface level problem. , but you'd also wanna dig a little bit deeper. What is their fear [00:02:00] behind those problems? What could happen to them?

[00:02:02] Sarah Noel Block: Their livelihood? The whole hierarchy of needs. Think of it in that terms, the philosophical problem that they have behind the problem you solve. There is something on that what is it? Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They risk losing if they don't solve that problem. So you need to understand that deeply how their problem is affecting their lives and what does success look like to them.

[00:02:35] Sarah Noel Block: Make sure to ask this in every sales call that you have, what does success look like? And sometimes you need to dig a little bit deeper because they might think that success looks like streamlining their processes, but maybe success looks. getting off of work at 3:00 PM so they're home in time for their kids.

[00:02:57] Sarah Noel Block: Success can [00:03:00] also have a surface level depth to it, and then, a deeper actual meaning behind it. Yes, I wanna save time, but the reason I wanna save time is because I wanna be home when my kids get home. Something along those lines. What does success look like to them? You can simply just ask, just make sure to dig in a little bit so you can fully understand their answer.

[00:03:24] Sarah Noel Block: How do you solve this problem uniquely? So you know the solution that you have. It's your business. You know better than anyone, your solution, but what makes your solution different than your competitors? You really need to understand your differentiator. What makes you unique? It could be your process, it could be the experience of working with you.

[00:03:45] Sarah Noel Block: It could be your unique background. Maybe you. Really in-depth subject matter expertise that your competitors don't have, but make sure that whatever makes you unique and different than your competitors [00:04:00] is upfront in your messaging. How does this customer avatar typically discover your business? This is huge.

[00:04:09] Sarah Noel Block: This is a question you are going to need an answer to understand the first phase of their customer. . So to find the answer to this question, you're gonna want a survey. You survey your entire email list. Survey. If you can afford to, you can do a more mass survey using SurveyMonkey. You can actually purchase audiences so you can have a better idea of, how that customer avatar discovers your business.

[00:04:40] Sarah Noel Block: And go on social media, share your survey there, try and. A large number of people within that customer avatar to answer this question. When possible, interview them. Make sure it's part of your discovery call questionnaire. So you're gathering that information right away. [00:05:00] But this is super important to understand is what is their process?

[00:05:05] Sarah Noel Block: How do they find businesses that they wanna work?

[00:05:07] Sarah Noel Block: it's likely that you discovered the an answers during the customer avatar. Part of our course, but if you didn't make sure to take the time and answer them now.