How To Close Sales Faster Using Customer Insights With Melissa Harstine

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Hey. Hey, today's guest, Melissa Harstine, is a customer insight strategist using her background in journalism, copywriting, and nonprofit leadership. She helps you say what your customers actually need to hear before they buy. Hey, Melissa, welcome to the show. Melissa: Hey, thanks for having me. It's a joy to be here. Diane: So let's start with an intro to you and a bit about your business journey. Melissa: Yeah. So my superpower is really being able to see and feel the world through someone else's eyes. And so that has shown up in different ways throughout my career. I started out as a journalist at this niche newspaper for the elderly. And so at that point in my life, you know, I'm like 22 trying to understand the world through someone who is like 60, 70, 80, 90. I think my first cover story was about a 97 year old woman who was still wearing high heels and coughing her hair every day and had a red sports car that she drove. Right. But I, I think what that really taught me was to like, Be able to step back and understand like not just my values, my perspective, what's important to me, but what's important to the other people around me. And so that is really kind of the core of what I do today as a customer insights strategist, where I kind of bridge the gap between what a business wants to say, what their vision, mission values are, how they're positioning and talking about their offer and what their a. Cares about what their audience needs to hear before they're ready to buy. And so I kind of stand in that middle bringing those two, those two groups of people together. Diane: It's kind of that classic, we wanna give them what they need. And so that's what we talk about and what they wanna buy for is what they actually want. And so those are two completely different conversations. So how do you actually do that? What does a customer insight strategist actually do? Melissa: Yeah, so there's kind of two aspects of my work. The first part is just getting an understanding of what's currently happening. With my clients, they tend to have group courses or programs of some sort, and we take a look [00:02:00] at all of their like marketing. For that offer. So, you know, whether it's a, some kind of an opt-in or a freebie on the front end, they get people's attention. Maybe there's some kind of like a live webinar masterclass, like sales event and kind of the middle of the funnel. And then typically, you know, a sales page or something at the end by looking at what they're currently saying and trying to understand who are you speaking to, who's your best customer you know, what messages are you putting out there in the world. We can then compare that with what their audience is actually telling me. Cuz that's part two of my work is I go out and I actually interview my client's customers to really hear straight from their own mouth, you know, what is it that they're saying that they want and need, and is that actually aligned with what the business is saying? And if not, we need to find some ways to kind of fix that misalignment and. You know, kind of where I come in as a strategist is helping people figure out, okay, this is, this is what you're saying. This is what your audience needs. Here's how you bridge the gap between those two so that you can increase and speed up your sales conversions and just make your marketing work a lot better for you without so much effort. Diane: And so who are the customers? So when you say customers, is it current customers, past customers, potential customers? What's, Melissa: all of the above. I think there's a lot of value in talking with not only your current customers, but especially like those people that inquired about your services or your offer, but they didn't actually buy it. Cuz those people are really a wealth of information as to, you know, what are, what is actually going through my prospect's mind kind of leading up to that moment of decision. Making assumptions about the value of the program, the outcomes, you know, that aren't actually true, and then that means I just need to go back and rewrite my messaging so that we can address those things earlier on. Or maybe there's this whole new subset of your audience that you're not even reaching that all of a sudden it's like, wow, we have this group of people that has this need that we'd never considered if. Speaking to that, in addition to what we're already doing, we can [00:04:00] increase our potential market for this service or this, this program. Diane: So we've all had that email that for some reason somebody taught at some point the why do you hate me email, it's the supposedly clickbait. To get you to open and inside is the survey of like, oh, I saw that you didn't buy, and I, was it something I said? Was it something I did like Hit reply or click here to tell me? Why is that not effective enough for us? I'm assuming that the interview supercharges that, right? Because you can actually have a conversation with someone. But what are we missing between those two element? Melissa: You know, Diane, I think what you said at the end there is spot on that it's a conversation. That's what an interview is with your customers. Whereas a survey is, Pe it's one-sided, and people, either they don't remember why they didn't buy. People don't write the same way that they speak, and they're probably just really surface level, like saying, oh, like it just wasn't the right time, or It was too much money. Well, why? Why wasn't it the right time? You know why? Why did it feel like it was too much money? Were there other investments you were considering around that time when you're actually having a one-to-one conversation with your customers? You can ask a lot of follow-up questions to really dig below the surface and understand like people's motivations and how just really what's going on in their head. You know, I, I think a lot of business owners focus. Demographics when they're creating an ideal client profile. So those external observable qualities, like my ideal client is a woman in her thirties and she drives a minivan and she shops a target and has a messy bun and yoga pants. Or you know, whatever Those things are, kind of those tropes, right? But where I really dig into is, Psychographics. So those are beliefs, desires, motivations, those in inward qualities you can't really observe. But those are, that's really where our, the seat of our decision making is, right. Like we make decisions with our head and our heart with emotion and logic. And when you can really understand both of those things from [00:06:00] your audience's perspective, not just your own assumptions that's where you get this information to help you make really strategic data informed decisions for your business to grow it. Diane: I have to say I'm a little shocked that people. Or even prepared to do the interview. So I get that like current customers who are still really liking me and actually probably current customers who maybe aren't so happy, are very excited to talk to you and past customers. You know, if they've had a good experience, I can get that. But like it's hard enough to get somebody to click that link of like, I didn't buy because of money time. You know? You can't even get them to select one thing. How do you get them to be like, sure, I would love to jump on a Zoom with you and talk about all of this. Melissa: But you know, there's a couple different ways. One is that I usually recommend talking with someone that you already have some kind of a relationship with, right? So it's not just a mass, you know, throw it out to your email list to everybody, throw it out to your entire social media audience. Like, Hey, who wants to hop on a call with me? But like being really intentional and saying, okay, is there someone that I did talk with, you know, We sent, we emailed back and forth, we chatted, you know, in, in the dms on social media. Let's, let's ask that person specifically. Kind of the second thing that I recommend is making the invitation in a way that really makes it clear that you're not trying to sell something. Cuz that's always what's in the back of someone's mind is like, oh, they're just gonna try to pull my leg and get me into this. Right. But then the other side of it too is just, you know, like helping them understand like the value of this, of like, Hey, I may have missed the mark in something, you know, and how I was talking about my offer, I just wanna make sure that I'm able to really help people in the future and not being annoying, like, can you help me do that? Sometimes it helps if you offer some kind of. An in an incentive, whether that's, you know, a gift card or, you know, a free coaching or consulting session. You know, sometimes people will offer a, to make a donation to a charity of someone's choice as a thank you for their time and, and having that interview conversation. But I, I really think people are willing to help if it feels very personalized. If it [00:08:00] feels like you're not gonna try to just sell them something if they feel like they're helping you and you know, if, if you just say thank you for their time, even if it's just like a handwritten thank you notes, that goes a long ways. Diane: Okay, so now we've got these people on the call and we're asking them questions. how different is this from your traditional kind of testimonial request? Where were you before? What was your experience? Where are you now? What would you tell someone? You know, we all have the, the template that we can send for testimonials. Are there a couple of other questions we should probably think about asking that we maybe never think? Melissa: Yeah, I love to ask questions that really give. Person I'm interviewing an opportunity to kind of talk out loud about what was going through their mind at any given point in time. So the first question that I always ask is, take me back to that day when you first started thinking about X, like joining this program, getting support with this specific problem in your business or your life. What was happening. And so, you know, usually if you ask someone like, well, why did you buy this? Like, they're like, I don't really know. Or, you know, just a really quick and short answer. But by phrasing your question in that way, people kind of say, oh, it started, you know, a really long time ago, like this thing was happening and then this thing was happening, and then this other thing happened, and then I heard about this thing and I thought about it. Right. You're really kind of. See and understand the entire customer journey, which as a business owner, that helps you kind of map out, you know, your marketing content to be able to meet people at, at different points along the way. The other question I love asking is, you know, What changed to make it a priority at that time? Because sometimes, you know, if someone could have been thinking about joining your program for, for years, for for weeks, whatever that period of time is, but something happened, there was an inciting moment. There was like a buying trigger that all of a sudden made them say, okay, like, enough's enough. I've gotta do this. I've gotta say yes. You know, and if, again, if you can figure out that and incorporate that into your messaging, it's gonna perform even better in the future. The third question I'd love to ask [00:10:00] was, was there anything that almost kept you from joining? Or another way of phrasing that is just like, talk me through what was going through your mind as you were deciding whether or not to actually join. Again, it's kind of digging deeper into the thought process behind why people make the decisions that they make. Diane: How easy is it for a business owner to. I guess get honest responses because you know, a lot of people don't like conflict, so they're not gonna wanna say, well I decided not to buy cuz you said this thing and I found it highly offensive. Or, you know, I didn't like the shirt you were wearing that day, so I didn't watch the final video or whatever it is. But also, I guess there's an element of, from the entrepreneur's side, the seller's side. Not coming across as defensive when you're getting this feedback. So do you find anyone has like been able to really successfully do this on their own? Or is this like a, this is something you have to hire for? Melissa: That's like such a great question. I think that people can do it on their own, but it's not going to, they're not gonna get the same depth of results as they do when working with an outsider, and that's for several reasons. One of which you already mentioned. You know that the person who's being interview. Maybe wants to keep the peace and is just gonna say something to make, you know, the business owner happy. Or, you know, if it's a customer, like someone you've already worked with, they may just assume that you already know these things, right? Like I specifically had a client hire me to interview her students who she'd already interviewed some of them twice herself at different points along the way, but she's like, I just have a hunch that they're gonna tell you something completely d. Then they tell me. And that was true. That's what ended up happening. Because I was an outsider, I didn't have all this knowledge in my head. You know, she was able to like start picking up on like, oh, my customers are really confused about this one point. And I had no idea because no one ever thought to tell me that. Diane: I'm [00:12:00] curious, so we've talked about like the mechanics of getting this done and some of the challenges that we face doing ourselves, but like, how wrong are we really? Because I think especially when we've been, you know, running a business for a while or had an offer for a while, we're pretty comfortable that we know what our people need to hear. Right. Do you have any, and you don't need to name names or even get specific, but like, how wrong do we get. Melissa: So I had a client a while back who had been running this funnel for a while to sell her her course where she teaches people how to become garden coaches and consultants. And when we were working together, she had this five day challenge on the front end was running, you know, cold traffic to it for Facebook ads. Thousands of people signing up, like people saying, yeah, this is exciting, this is great. And then. Like less than 3% of the people were actually showing up for the webinar. Very, very small number. But here's the interesting piece of those people that were signing up for the webinar, over 90%. Purchased and joined her program, right? Like there's something obviously disconnected there. And so she was just like, I don't know, like, what am I missing? What are we not seeing? Like we need to rewrite our entire funnel. That wasn't actually what was going on because when I got in there and was doing the interviews with her current customers and with even a couple members of her team that could see things that she couldn't I realized that her challenge was something. Create your first garden product in the next five days. But, and that was for beginners. That was for people that were just starting to dip their toes into this idea of like creating a full-time business, doing gardening. Whereas the, the course itself was for people that were wanting to make. A complete career change, like leave their jobs as teachers and become garden coaches and consultants, or maybe they have a landscaping business and they want to create this new revenue stream by adding gardening, you know, to it, right? So two completely different audiences that they were attracting on the front end. And on the backend, that's [00:14:00] why that disconnect was happening. That's why their, their, their conversion rate was so low from the challenge into the webinar and then really high from the webinar into the sales page. It makes sense on the surface, but when you're too close to it in your business, you can't see that objectively. And so I think that's really where the value comes. And having someone outside of yourself, outside of your business, look at it with a fresh set of eyes and start to see those things that are obvious once they're pointed out to you, but you just don't recognize it in the day-to-day of running your. Diane: I think also a lot of the time we're like testing funnels and trying something new and throwing some spaghetti at a wall. So when is somebody actually ready for you? Melissa: So there's really two steps to dialing in your message for better conversions. Step one is you have to have a validated offer. You have to know that someone is willing to pay money for what it is that you're selling. But once you've done that, there's a second step that a lot of people miss, which is finding market message fit, or what I call audience message fit, because it's kind of like, you know, As a business owner, we tend to niche down as we grow, right? We're, we're serving a more specific audience. We're, you know, making our brand about like maybe one or two different core distinctives. We need to do the same thing with what we're selling. And so a lot of times when clients are ready to work with me, they have that validated offer. They're like, okay, I'm ready to grow. I'm ready to like really like dial this in, take it to the next level, and to do. I need to niche down my audience and message so that the more the right people know, like this is for them, this is, this is what I need. And, and then what ends up happening is ideal. You're attracting more of your perfect fit students to your course or program. They're converting a lot faster because they can make that decision. Yes, it's for me, no it's not. Is it the right time for me to invest in this? Right. This is really a way to get better results with less effort. When you're at that point of like, okay, I'm ready to like grow. I'm ready to lean in here and, and just make it more [00:16:00] successful. Diane: And what sort of size is like your, is your ideal like data set? Are we talking 10 people? 20 people, 300 people? How many interviews? Do people need with you? Or if they're DIYing, how many interviews should they be thinking about doing to get a, a decent, I guess, spectrum of viewpoints? Melissa: Yeah, I always recommend doing at least 10 interviews. And so that's gonna be a kind of combination of, you know, maybe, maybe it's five current customers maybe three people who showed interest but didn't buy. And you know, maybe a couple of alumni as well. So you can kind of make those comparisons, like the ratio of how many you're doing changes. But I think that you need to have. 10 people to really be able to have a solid data set and not be making assumptions about what's going on that aren't actually there. Diane: So maybe if like a CEO is listening to this and they are super duper busy and they want to get 10 or 15 people, they could maybe just current customers, people who didn't buy, you know, or, or maybe they do current customers and past customers are one in a group and then one to one with why didn't you buy? Melissa: I think the downside to that approach can also be that there's groupthink happening where people are just like feeding off the energy and like feeding off what other people are saying. And again, going back to like telling you what they think you want to hear or just like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, this thing was great. And in the back of their mind they're like, no, I don't agree with that at all. Like that happened to me last week when I was. Speaking on this panel at this virtual summit. And I felt so awkward cuz I, I saw myself nodding my head and, you know, just pretending like, sure, like whatever. And then the whole time I'm just like, no, like, this is not good business strategy. Like, what are you doing with your. Diane: Oh dear. So we've covered a, like a really large range of parts of this pretty complex process. If you could only. Every business owner. One thing about customer insights or customer research, what [00:18:00] would that one thing. Melissa: Don't wait too long to get started with these insights. I think that it can be. A bottleneck in your growth that people don't realize is actually there. So what I mean by that is I found myself in this same place about nine months ago. You know, I, I, I preached this to others, you know, this is the thing that I'm passionate about, is understanding your audience. If you do this, you're gonna save time and money. But I wasn't doing that myself for nine months. I had been putting myself out there trying. Trying that, you know, I was being consistent. I was doing all of the right things, but I was still running up against a wall because I was trying to speak to too many people. You know, it's like I can help business strategists, I can help consultants, I can help people with courses and programs. I can help people that are, you know, doing services like all these potential people. I could help. And I knew, I knew my services would be valuable for them, but they didn't understand that. They didn't understand like the specific ways that my service was gonna help them because I. I wasn't clear and specific enough in my messaging, and so I finally was just like, I, I spent nine months doing this. This is not working. And so, since then I have gone. Having conversations with people about what I do, and they're like, oh, that's interesting. That's nice too. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. All of my clients need this. I know so many people, like, who can I introduce you to? Right? Like the difference in just that little bit of shift of, of specificity and clarity has gotten a completely different response from the, the conversations I'm having. And so, you know, I think if are at a point. Especially if your business is bringing in over 250 or $300,000 and you are thinking about growing from there, dialing in your audience, message fit is one of those foundations that has to be there for you to reach that next level of growth. Otherwise, you're just gonna be spinning your wheels, you're gonna be struggling and, and it's gonna take a lot more effort to get where you want to be. Like I saw that myself and my own business. Diane: [00:20:00] And you hate when you have to take your own. And it's, and it's never like on time, like you, you have that moment of like, oh, right. This is what I totally would've told a client to do. Yeah. Yeah. So awkward. So, to a finish up, I always ask my guests the same two questions. First of all, what is your number one lifestyle boundary for your business? Melissa: I intentionally create margin in my business because I have chronic illness. I need to be able to have the whites. Space in my days and in how my business has been in designed upfront so that I can kind of flex with whatever's happening. You know, yesterday I woke up, I was feeling great. I was writing my newsletter, and I just all of a sudden hit a wall. I just could not think clearly. And at first it was like frustrated, like, oh, I'm just not, you know, the words aren't coming to me. And then I realized, no, like brain fog sat in. And so I decided to go watch a movie for an hour and I went outside and I did some gardening and those types of things give me space to kind of. Rest and recover. My energy, my, my mental clarity. And then I came back and I did my work the rest of the day. And so, having that margin built in is just so important for me. Diane: Finally, what is the worst piece of cookie cutter advice you have been given as an entrepreneur? Melissa: Just be consistent. Just keep doing the, doing things. Just keep putting yourself out there and the results will come. No, like consistency is not how you get results. You have to be consistent with the right thing. Right? And that goes back to my why I'm so passionate about knowing who your best customer is and, and dialing in your message to speak to them. Because if you're. Throwing any old thing out there, you know, you're, you're showing up, you're doing visibility opportunities, you're creating content, right? You're being consistent. You're doing what you're said you're supposed to do. You're just spinning your wheels cuz people aren't gonna see it and respond. You're not gonna get the results you went want if you're just not talking to the right people in the right way. Diane: Oh yeah, [00:22:00] consistency. It's such a like cliched word now almost. ? And then people are beating themselves up. This ideal that isn't doing anything for them. this has been amazing. I'm so like, Ooh, data spreadsheets, the things I could build for this. So where can people find you on the socials or wherever to carry on the conversation with you? Melissa: Yeah, I love having one-to-one chats with people, so definitely send me a message on Instagram or LinkedIn at Melissa Hartstein Creative. You can also follow me or on my website, which is melissa hartstein.com. There's a button at the top that says freebie, but it's really just an opportunity to join my email list and to continue the conversation in our inboxes a couple times a month. Diane: Awesome. Thank you so much for. Melissa: it's been a pleasure to be here.