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About the podcast
The Digital Utopia Podcast is for SMB Marketers and Business Leaders looking to align their Marketing, Sales, and Service departments so they’re part of one powerhouse growth team.
Each episode will dive into the strategies, philosophies, and tools that will change your approach to organizational growth, give you renewed focus and clarity, and allow you to build a brand that not only helps you stand out—but win.
The Digital Utopia Podcast is produced by Digitopia and hosted by Frank Cowell and Joseph Freeman.
Episode transcription
Frank
We've become so "collaborative" in how we do business these days that people can't make a decision on their own. We do so much cohort decision making, that it slows down the sales process. In fact, it's estimated that sales process today takes 22% longer than it did even five years ago.
Joe
You're listening to the digital utopia podcast, a resource dedicated to helping b2b leadership and executives gain clarity and focus in a chaotic place.
Frank
Hey, gang, welcome to Episode Four of the digital utopia podcast. I'm your host, Frank Cowell. and I'm joined by my co host,
Joe
Joseph Freeman.
Frank
Joe, are you ready for this this morning?
Joe
I am so ready for this. Yeah,
Frank
we're on one this morning. We're fired up. We had I wish the the audio was recording a few minutes ago. Maybe not. There's some definitely conversations we don't want.
Joe
Yeah,
Frank
captured for eternity on the interwebs
Joe
safer than it wasn't.
Frank
Yeah.
Joe
Yeah. So today, we are going to be talking about core philosophy number three from the digital utopia methodology. And that is slowing down to speed up. So Frank, what does it mean to slow down to speed
Frank
up? Yeah. So if you think about relationships, right, which ultimately, that's what we're talking about when we're talking about implementing a framework into your business that, you know, is a digital growth framework that we call the digital utopia methodology. As you mentioned, we're talking about how do you develop right relationships digitally? How do you do this before you get to a one to one conversation, because that's ultimately what we're all trying to do in business, especially in b2b, right? We're trying to create that holy grail one to one ideal sales conversation. But But the reality is, there's an entire portion of the marketplace that isn't ready for that one to one conversation, okay, they're just not fact the majority of your target audience isn't ready for that. So during that whole journey that they're on, how can you be there as a resource for them? How can you be there with content and offers that allow them to engage your brand that seemingly might look like you're putting things in front of the sales conversation, and you're putting off the sales conversation, but in reality, what you're doing is you're giving more people the opportunity to engage with your brand. Therefore, it ultimately speeds up your pipeline overall, on a one for one basis, it may look like it's slowing down. But at large, when you look at it, it's actually speeding up your entire pipeline. In the beginning, sure, a lot of your activities will build into contacts and leads in your database that seemingly aren't doing anything. And you might feel like, wow, this, this isn't working. But in the long run, what you'll find is, if you're consistent with that, you'll have a model for engaging people across their entire journey, which ultimately speeds things up for your, your business at large.
Joe
Yeah, you know, what we see a lot is, as people start getting into digital marketing, they start getting into funnel building.
Frank
So I'm gonna, let's, I want to be very clear with our audience, though, like that word digital marketing. Like, I want to make sure our audience knows like, this is not a digital marketing podcast, right? Like, digital marketing is such a small lens on what we're talking about. And in certainly, digital marketing gets a real bad rap. And justifiably so with what a lot of you know, my digital marketing friends and associates in our industry have done in terms of the reputation that digital marketers have. So just want to be really clear, the lens we're talking about is really like digital growth across marketing, sales and service. So go on,
Joe
yeah, no, good point. Very good point. However, it does start for most companies with digital marketing, right. So we if we talk about the relationship and the different levels, that somebody goes through, almost all of the meets you at the start of the marketing part of it. So what we see people doing a lot is they will start to get into funnel building, they'll start getting into, you know, content creation, both very good things. We're gonna be talking more about those in later episodes. But as they get into them, they get really excited that they put up a PDF that we're excited that they put up a case study that's downloadable. And as people start to download those, they get their sales people to jump on it. which kind of makes sense, right? It kind of makes sense that you got somebody in your database, you've now got their maybe their phone number, but for sure, their email, you've got their name, why not call them and see if they want to buy from you. I think we both know that's not a great idea. Let's talk about that. Why is that not a great idea to pounce on the very first opportunity that comes across your doorstep?
Frank
So I think it just depends on you know what mode you're in. If you're in desperation mode, then yeah, you're calling everybody, right, including the ebook downloaders. But if you have a business that's not in desperation mode, and by the way, if you're in desperation mode, you definitely need to be like, leave no stone unturned like this, this particular podcast that we're doing is not for the desperate people. Let's get that really clear right now. So if you're here today, and you're listening, and you're like, I need sales tomorrow, your problem started long ago. And what we're talking about today is not going to fix them. As you go knock on doors, you need to go knock on doors, do not go to that go that networking group that you absolutely despise going to like, you need to call people, you need to email people, you need to like leave no stone unturned, if you're desperate, and you have to make payroll, right? We're not talking about that. We're talking about building a healthy business, and a business that's going to scale and a business that's going to go to the next level once you reach a plateau. that's ultimately what we're talking about. Okay? And I liken this to, to dating, so why don't you pounce on the E book downloaders? Let's take a look at dating. For example. Let's say you're in the market. And let's say you aren't desperate, right? In the dating example, you're not just looking to hook up, right? Let's say, you genuinely want to find someone that that you could settle down with? Well, if that's your goal, and you're looking for something solid and healthy and long term, and let's say you're out in some social situation, let's say you meet somebody, visually, first find them attractive, they're, you know, it's what it's what you're looking for, you get to talking to them, you'd like what you hear the conversations going great, right? Both are locked in on each other. This, the energy's there, right. If your next thing at the end of that conversation is to recommend marriage, you're going to crash and burn quickly, right? Because it's completely out of context. It doesn't follow natural relationship progression. And so it doesn't work. Instead, what do you do you say, you know, what, would love to continue this? You available for coffee? Tomorrow? Yeah, can we you know, just just meet up and continue chatting. And it's, it's a small ask, right? Because that's how we're built as humans, you have to establish trust, for you can get to deeper, more intimate types of arrangements. That's no different in business. Right? Like the fact that someone's going to entrust you with 1000s and 1000s of dollars. That's a very intimate thing. And it requires a relationship to form. And this can be done digitally, by the way, until you have the opportunity to do it one to one. And so that's why like pouncing on the E book downloader is not a great idea. It's the equivalent to having that great conversation with that person who's just putting a twinkle in your eye and then recommending marriage, you just like, you know, proposing marriage right away. And it's, it's too much too fast. Instead, you know, the approaches that you want to take are a couple of things. One, you want to make sure that your your funnel, your business model matches the journey of what your customers are going through, even before they do business with you. So your model needs to match that. And if your model only has, hey, we put out ads, and you can do business with us. And that's it. Like you're missing a very, you're missing critical components to your business model. Again, that to my point A moment ago, this is less about digital marketing. This is about how do you build a healthier business model? And when you lack those things, then yeah, all you have to resort to is they download our ebook, let's jump on the horn and see if they're ready for a quote, that doesn't work. Most ebook downloaders are not ready for a quote, they're still in the early stages of their journey.
Joe
Yeah, gotcha. So, you know, one thing that I know we see a lot is we see people nodding their heads and understanding this as we talk about this philosophy with, you know, our clients and our, our friends or colleagues or prospects. Everybody, regardless of the relationship we have with them, they kind of they understand this, as we talk about it. As we start to get into implementing it, that's usually seems to be a little bit of a different story, right? You get this this philosophy again, philosophically, but when it goes to actually implement it, it's hard to slow down, it's actually hard to stop doing what you've been used to doing, which is, you know, fighting to get that conversation and then fighting to make that sale. What would you say to business owners or marketers or sales leads, you know, that have been for so long in this mode of just grinding, grinding, you know, pouncing on whatever comes in? How do you actually tactically slow down? How do you get yourself to stop take a breath and say, This is okay. It's okay, that we're not trying to push us forward too quickly.
Frank
You know, ultimately, we're talking about building brand here. And so while we may be developing in helping people employ a framework, a framework that helps marketing sales and service, ultimately we're talking about building brand now, I'm not suggesting you go out and do what's traditionally been looked at as brand advertising where you know, you put your logo up on a billboard with a slogan, that's old school brand advertising. That's not for most businesses. But the way you build brand, is by giving value in the marketplace. And you do that consistently. And when you do that long enough, the brand starts to work really hard for you. Okay, of course, you should have calls to action along the way that are appropriate for each type of content and message and offer that you put out. But ultimately, that consistency over long term will build the brand, the brand starts to work for you, leads become easier, your sales conversations become easier, your margins get better. Okay, so that's ultimately what we're talking about. You can look at many companies, you don't have to listen to me, you can look at many companies as examples. Okay, Apple, everyone loves to use Apple as an example. And I know they're a b2c example. But let's roll with it. Because it's easy for people to grasp, right? It's an example everyone can, can familiarize yourself with. If you look at Apple, during the first I want to say it was a decade plus maybe like 17 years, I believe, if I remember the, the timeline, right, they really didn't achieve anything of any sort of meteoric, you know, success, you know, the kind of flailed along, but they had to get money to be bailed out, because they were in jeopardy of going under. And it wasn't until they stumbled across their, you know, opportunity with iPod. And even then, if you look at the history of what went on there, they didn't fully realize, you know, what, what they had, you know, I remember hearing stories that Steve Jobs himself was kind of against this idea of, you know, an app store, and letting you know, the general marketplace contribute to the apps that are on the iPhone, he had to be convinced of that. And so if we look at that history of a brand we all know, many people love and they're well known. They took time, that didn't happen overnight, and nothing of magnitude happens overnight, nothing of significant success ever happens overnight doesn't happen in 90 days, you know, I often refer to this period of time that individuals and businesses go through called the triangle of pain. And if you, if you read my book, building your digital utopia, I talked about this. And what I, what I show the triangle of pain is that period of time where even if you're consistently putting out high quality, high effort over a period of time, you're just going to be ROI negative, like you can do some amazing work. And you can be consistent in what you're trying to do. In your effort. Whatever your effort is, is aimed at doesn't matter. It could be business growth, brand positioning, it could be fitness, it could be a relationship goal, you can have high effort. And you could do that for a week, two weeks, a month, two months, six months, and you might not see the goal that you're after, or the objective that you set. And you might not see it, it takes time. And so during that period of time, where you're putting in the work, and you're like I'm doing the right things I don't understand, I call that time the triangle of pain. And the reason I call the triangle is because if you were to graph it out, you know, high effort over a long period of time, and your ROI starts at the bottom, you know it's negative and it eventually gets up to the top right where it's highly positive viewer draw a line at the neutral and connect the bottom portion there, that becomes a triangle.
Joe
You lost me at math.
Frank
Yeah, sorry. Visual thinker here, right. And so that triangle of pain is the area that everyone's trying to avoid. But that the newsflash is you can't avoid it. If you want anything of any significance, I mean, think about it. Just think about your own, like, relationships, you know, if you're in a long term relationship, marriage, what have you. You're kind of go through periods of time where, you know, it's like, this isn't the funnest thing in the world, right? Like, relationships take work. But you get to a point over time, if you're committed and you're doing the right things, where things get easier. Okay? Those petty things just don't seem to bother me anymore. Those those petty arguments just don't seem to happen as much anymore, right? Things get easier. Right? And that's, you know, we talked about one of the previous episodes, this idea of a magic elixir. Look, magic elixir happens, you know, if there's any any bit of it out there, it's, it's when you have, you know, high level of commitment over a long period of time. That's why people don't do it. To get to finally answer your question. That's why people don't do it. is everyone's too used to like, I need it here. I need it right now. Right? If you if you're trying to like hire in someone to help improve your your growth, you're trying to like, employ projects that help improve your brand's growth and your market share. And you're desperate. Sorry, you're too late. You're too late. So any anything you're going to do to try to build something long term, something sustainable? It's not going to happen within the timeframe you want. That's why people fail, is because they don't they want the long term, but they're desperate.
Joe
Hmm.
Frank
Okay. So my suggestion is recognize that put efforts into your short term stuff, knock on the doors, bang away on the phone. Send out the emails, reach out to people on LinkedIn, do whatever you have to do. But you better damn well be investing in the long term. Because if you don't, you're going to constantly be on that that treadmill.
Joe
Yeah, I think that's a great point, too. I don't think any of these philosophies that turn into tactics necessarily negate the need to just do whatever it takes to make a sale, right? There are moments where maybe you should be cold calling I know, from the Harvard Business Review, we, you know, we know that 91% of cold calling doesn't actually work. But there is that 9%, that will work in there, right, and you will get a couple wins in there. But it's not really the long term sustainable growth. You know, you're kind of throwing high dollars at the top to get a few little golden nuggets out. It's not really what you can build a business around. It's what you can, I think you mentioned earlier, it's what you can kind of pay today's bills with, but it's not really building the long term business. So
Frank
you know, and here's the thing look on cold calling. Yeah, some of it can work. But every single business is marketplaces getting smaller and smaller. Why? Because more competitors are coming in, that effectively shrinks your pool, right? More people vying for the same number of opportunities means you in effect have less opportunities. So with a shrinking marketplace for you, and a finite number of contacts that you could be calling and calling on that are right for you. You're going to burn through contacts, possibly piss them off, possibly burn bridges, just to pick up a few wins now. So again, by all means, if you're in desperation mode, you got to do what you got to do. But if you're not, you have to play the smart game, right? Because it's one year from now. It's two years from now, we're going to wish you would have been taking a much more strategic approach. And so that's my suggestion is you today. If you're listening today, many of you probably wish you were already doing this for a year or two. You'd be in a much better place today. Huh?
Joe
Yeah. And, you know, on that note, we know that sales is relationship based. So getting those quick wins can be okay. But I think maybe back to the dating analogy, just like you know, a relationship that progresses too quickly. Not always, but often ends kind of disaster, right? You kind of get some of the the immediate highs, and you get some of that arrows love going real early on, and then it just
Frank
What kind of love is that?
Joe
go look it up in the Greek. You get that fizzling out real quick later, right? The relationship wasn't there, the building blocks for a strong long term relationship that really results in long term ROI just isn't there. And that can be exciting and fun. And that can that can feel like a real win at first. But you can burn out doing that over and over and over again. Right?
Frank
Yeah, yeah.
Joe
So absolutely. So I think everyone knows the sales process has changed, right? We hear this from all kinds of authorities out there, we all experience it. If you've been selling for even 10 years, you've seen changes happen. Let's talk about some of those changes. here. And let's talk about kind of some of the biggest shifts you're seeing in the marketplace here even in you know, 2020 and a whole new decade, what's happening here.
Frank
So I think there's two major things at play one technology, okay, so technology has given people the ability to do a lot of research and information digging and really take control the buying process, into their own hands. So they no longer need to engage with sales people to educate and consider options for solving their problems. That used to happen. Right, in fact, according to HubSpot, you know, anywhere from 60 to 80% of b2b buyers come into that sales conversation with their mind already made up, you know, 60 to 80% of that decision, it's already done. So, when you look at that, that's because of technology, we have access to information like never before. So that's one dynamic that's going on. The other dynamic is this is just this is going to be a personal condemnation, on leadership in general. We've become so quote unquote, collaborative, in how we do business these days, that people can't make a decision on their own. We do so much cohort decision making, that it slows down the sales process. In fact, it's estimated that sales process today takes 22% longer than it did even five years ago. And my my take on that is we've got people who do cohort decision making, because nobody wants to make a darn decision and like and own it. You know, everyone's afraid. And to me, that is a lack of leadership that we see in business today. And so if you're listening today, I would say that fear of making the wrong decision which causes you to like, get four or five people involved in meetings upon meetings upon meetings to make simple decisions, I would encourage you to stop doing that make decisions, know that there are going to be some mistakes along the way. But the habit of making decisions and taking action regularly is what's going to improve your organization. So that's a little bit of a tangent. But those are, those are the two dynamics that I see as to how the sales process has changed. And those two, those two dynamics radically changed for how sales people are feeling, the sales process and the experiences they're having in the sales process, right. And so you get longer sales cycles, you get, you know, having to figure out how to satisfy multiple people in a cohort, you get a lot of that. And again, buyers already pre informed. So they come with, you know, they come quote, unquote, educated, for better or for worse, by the way, right? And that's why it's so important that you're there engaging people in the marketplace digitally. Because Would you rather have those people educated by your competitors? Or would you like to have the opportunity to educate them? From your brand's point of view?
Joe
Right, you control the conversation, right? That right?
Frank
Yeah, I mean, PR terms that right? It's called controlling the narrative, right? When the narrative, obviously, we suggest everyone who uses these powers for good, right? But but that's essentially what we're talking about. Do you want to control the narrative? Or do you want the marketplace to control the narrative for your prospects? Right? Simple question.
Joe
So when we think about the entire, you know, growing the organization across marketing, and sales and service, let's start at service right service kind of has relationship built in, it's kind of baked in, because whether or not you're a b2b selling actual services, or you're selling products that are repeat buyers, if you don't have a good relationship with the customer, they're not going to come back and buy, they're not going to continue to keep there, whatever it is a subscription or their ongoing relationship with you. That's pretty obvious. Sales, I think, was pretty good. I
Frank
want to talk about ServiceNow for a minute. Because what I think what also needs to change with service is it's no longer like building relationships is no longer just about like, let's take bill out to the golf club. And that's how we're going to build relationships with Bill right? To me, the way you build in service into service, and relationships into the service side of the business, is you think about the entire customer, not just what's on your invoice. You know, I've said for many years, it's what's not on the invoice that builds your brand and your fans. Right, the things that appear in your expenses section, not your cost of goods sold, the things that appear in expenses are what builds your brand and builds the fans. And so I'm encouraging businesses to think about pillars of your offering, where the thing that you actually sell that's on the invoice is one pillar. But what about the support pillar? I don't mean just like reactionary customer support, right? And then what about the education pillar? Right? What about those kinds of things, and it doesn't have to be those three. But the point being that, if you think about the total customer, that you just providing the service is just one aspect of what they need. They need to be supported, they need to be educated, maybe they need to be elevated with their knowledge. Maybe they need community. So I would suggest that if you want to truly build relationships, yes, do the golf thing and get the tickets to the ball game and the you know, the trips to Hawaii, like that's fine. But think about the whole customer and how you can build your offering to build relationships, because it's just part of your business model. Not because like you've got you've got funds earmarked to spend a certain amount on wining and dining.
Frank
Yeah, that's a good point, you know, going one step back from service, we go back into the sales part of the relationship. I think that's pretty obvious why that's relationship driven, right? You can't really make a sale, if you don't have the relationship there.
Frank
And oh, by the way, I just wanna say on the service side, that the word I used elevate, that is the job. Right? Your aim, your mission is to elevate that person. And you don't do that by just simply providing what you sold. Right? Right. You think about the entire customer. That's how you elevate them. And again, the ballgames and the golfing that's, that's nice, you can do that stuff. But the way you elevate them is when you think about the whole customer. So go on. Now we're gonna talk about sales, right? Well,
Joe
I think sales is a little bit. It's kind of self explanatory. There's a relationship that has to be had there. It doesn't work without it. We can dive more into sales later. But let's take it down to marketing, which I think is not as obvious. How do you build a relationship in marketing when you're trying to slow down to speed up so you can build that relationship? What does that look like?
Frank
Yeah, so I like to say that, you know, in that funnel, there are different missions along the way, different stage, what's funnel you talking? So I'm talking about like, when you build, like, everyone knows what a funnel is, right? Like the my view of a funnel is that it's relationship oriented. And so the different stages in the funnel that you know I teach and preach is where at the very bottom where "marketing", gets involved, is your job is to educate, right? That's, that's the bulk of what you're trying to do is you're trying to educate, you're trying to educate around specific pain points for specific people. Okay, that's hyper specificity that we talked about in a past episode. So you're trying to educate, the next thing you're doing to build in the next relationship level up, is you're trying to empower them. So what does that mean? So in terms of marketing, that means I've now educated you on topic x, I need to now give you a tool or resource or something that helps you take action on what you just learned, I'm going to empower you. So this is why ebooks don't serve as great lead magnets as that first, you know, in your opportunity to get you in the database, quote, unquote, because it doesn't advance your relationship, it doesn't advance the activity of that contact, you know, it's just more education. So once you've educated somebody, you have to give them the ability to take the next step. And that's not get on the phone with you, you need to empower them, so that maybe they can start taking some action on their own. So that's the thing, if you can get people to start taking action on their own, because you've equipped them with a tool or resource. Now you're developing that relationship, you're the brand that gave them that tool that gave them that resource that's helping them take action, perform that evaluation, use the template, use the checklist, and so on.
Joe
Okay, so we're slowing down, because rather than marketing, saying, Hey, this is our brand, do you want to talk to a salesperson, we're saying, this is a pain point that we know you have? Here's a little tool to help you fix it, here's a little something to help you go deeper with that. And once you take yourself deeper, you kind of naturally find yourself wanting to talk to a salesperson, right?
Frank
Yeah, because look, marketing needs to think of themselves as a customer service organization, you're servicing people that don't yet realize that they're your customers. Hmm. That's, that's the big paradigm shift that marketing and sales organizations need to make. And so when you do that, and you wake up to serve them, you're almost like creating mini products that don't cost money. They just cost their information and attention.
Joe
Gotcha. Okay. So, Frank, you've talked about a funnel, you mentioned that a couple of times, you talked about elevating relationship levels? Can you talk a little bit about what a funnel is in your mind? And is it different than a traditional marketing funnel?
Frank
You may think, generally, it's, it's a funnel, right? Okay, I just get a little bit more specific about it being relationship driven. And I take the view that it's an ascension ladder, not a top down thing where, you know, the top is your strangers and the bottom are your customers. I flip that, to meet at the bottom is a stranger relationship. And the very top is your fan.
Joe
So if we were to look at this visually, you would actually be flipped upside down in your mind. Yeah, it's a ladder.
Frank
Okay? It's, you know, series of stages of relationship stages that are stacked, like a ladder. And so at the very bottom, that's why I say top down optimization. When I talk about that, if you've ever heard me talk about that,
Joe
I actually think we're talking about a whole episode next.
Frank
Awesome
Joe
next week.
Frank
Yeah. So when we talk about that, it's the idea that, you know, you optimize your business from, you know, your fan level and your customer level, and then work backwards, right. And we'll, we'll get into that. But at the very bottom, your job is to educate people. And that's your mission. First and foremost, that's the first stage, educate them. That's the key word in what you're wanting to do is help them solve a particular pain point, hopefully, for a very specific type of person. And get you get really specific there, we talked about hyper specificity of one of our last episodes. And so when you do that, you're able to connect it to the next relationship level, which is empower and empower stage, what you're aiming to do there is empower them and help them take action. And the way you're going to do that is you're gonna give them some sort of tool or resource, not another thing to educate themselves on not an E book, not not something to continue to read or, or consume, right, you want to give them a tool to help them take action. The reason this is important, because now you can connect those two relationship stages with a natural sentence. Here's some information on how to help you understand your problem. And here's a tool to help you take action. And so those two levels I call a one two punch, right, those two need to work in tandem together, one helps the other one tees up the other. So if you properly educate, you get hyper specific on a particular person and pain point. And you teach them something about their problem, not promote, but truly teach them something you can naturally say in that piece of content. And here's a tool to help you take action on what you've learned.
Joe
So to make this a little bit more tangible, when you say tool, what do you mean by tool? Is that something you are actually sending them? What What is that?
Frank
I'll give you an example. Let's say you're a business that serves people who are trying to figure out why they have cost overruns in their product production? Let's say that's what you do. Okay. It's part of what you do. It's part of your overall solution. And let's say that's a major pain point for people, is they have these these things that are hidden in their process that caused cost overruns. I'm making this up, by the way. Let's say that's that's the issue. So you would have a piece of content that educates them on the common pitfalls of what creates cost overruns. And you would even teach them how to analyze and figure out what is causing the cost overrun. What you would then do is say, oh, by the way, if you liked this process, we just taught you, by the way, we're talking about, like, you literally teach the process on how to like, figure out the
Joe
cost overrun, like if they wanted to do it, they can do it on their own.
Frank
Yeah, absolutely. And so then what you do is you say, by the way, if you want this analysis to be even easier, you should get this spreadsheet, because we've already put together all the calculations and the input in the formulas. So I have to do is input the numbers, once you go through this analysis. And you know, it'll tell you where your cost overruns are coming from or where your bottlenecks are, whatever it might be. So now you can just naturally through that piece of content, say, Hey, here's the problem, you're having we understand it, I've dealt with it, solved it, here's how you're going to go about doing ABC 123, boom, boom, boom. And if you'd like this to be easier, here's a tool to help you take action. That is a one two punch. And where most people go wrong in their funnel, is they have all of this random content. And then they're like, get our ebook, random content, get our checklist, random content, Hey, how about talk to us, it's not connected, right? You need it to be a one two punch, they have to work together in tandem. Okay, it's the setup. And so that's your first two levels. And then the next two levels, you have inspire and engage. So now that someone's done those things, your job is to move to inspiring them. And the way you inspire them is through a few types of content that we call deep dive content, okay. And so your job is to inspire them by giving them stories of people just like them who have conquered that problem. Ideally, following the process that you started to teach them in your educate, you know, level. So, case studies are often what this is called. But But done so in a way where you make the customer, the hero, you tell a story that's inspiring about what this, what this company experienced what this person experienced, what they went through what they discovered what they did, how they solved it, how your brand was their part as part of the journey, but really making them the hero. So you inspire them through social proof. And you can also inspire them by giving them a deep dive into what I call, like how it works kind of deep dive content. So that's where you're going to, you know, show people like a real deep intimate view of like how the process works, but but done through the lens of the customer, placing themselves in that story and placing themselves in that journey. So you can say, what you're going to experience. Next is this. And then you're going to run these numbers. And here's what you're going to, you know, calculate and then you're going to, you know, interact with this person, you're going to like really put them in that story and do a deep dive on how it works. But put them in, put them in it. So they can start to do what's called transfer of ownership. Right? It's a psychological thing. Back when I worked in retail many, many, many, many years ago, one of the things that we did was, we would hand customers, the remote control. And we would tell them what to click. Why transfer of ownership. When we were helping a customer plan out their home entertainment room, we would ask them, so let's do this. Okay, is this the shape of your your living room? Where's your couch, and we put the couch on the graph paper and they are their chairs, their coffee table? And we put their room on the paper? Why? psychological transfer of ownership. So when you do the how it works, deep dive stuff, but it's akin to a product demo, really, you've got to put them in the story in order for that to happen. Because if you because what you're trying to do is you're trying to inspire them. You want them to see like, wow, all these people are having success. They're like me, now I'm visualizing myself in this process, and having this success that's inspire. That's your job. And the reason that's so important. And by the way, it's the most important type of content to create sales opportunities. Why? Because it tees up the next relationship level, we call it the foot in the door, but your mission at the next level with the footnote is to engage them now you're going to try to engage them one to one, but the Inspire sets it up how you're going to essentially say, look at all these people like you who've accomplished these amazing things following this process. Would you like that too? If you do the Inspire part right, setting up your foot in the door to engage them one on one simply becomes a very basic sales question. Would you like that, too? Would you like to see how that might look in your organization? Would you like to see what kind of impact this process would have on your assembly line? Would you like that, too? It's a very simple sales question. It's not heavy, it's very natural. It's very logical. Again, going back to dating, you know, we've been at this a while, things are going great. If you like to take this to the next level, would you like to make a more serious commitment, right, you're just referencing what has already happened. And you've got the proof, right, you've got that history built up. So that's the one two punch there. Finally, you have your last two stages, which is to transform, and elevate. So the transform level is where you sell them your core offering, and you're delivering your core offering. And it should be transformative, meaning that your product is supposed to drive some sort of outcome. People are buying whatever it is you have to offer or not, because they need the thing you have to offer, they need the outcome of your thing. And hopefully, that thing is creating that outcome, which is a transformation. And then finally, that tees up your opportunity to elevate them into a fan. And again, I mentioned this a moment ago, if you're servicing the entire customer, again, it's not just about taking them out to golf, you're servicing the entire customer. And you're building into your business model ways to elevate them and elevate their status, not just because they're your buddy, but you've truly elevated who they are as a person who they are as a company, then you're accomplishing that final stage. Again, if you look at what we've done here is you have 312 punch combos, once one stage sets up the next, then the one stage sets up the next and so on. So that's how I view a relationship driven funnel.
Joe
Okay, so what you're essentially saying is you're taking a traditional funnel, you're flipping it on its head, we are now calling that an ascension path. And you're building in a whole bunch more touch points for someone to actually elevate through these relationships. So you're essentially slowing them down by adding more steps for them to take. But you're really speeding up the path for them to get into a long term healthy relationship with you.
Frank
Exactly. And I'm not suggesting that I invented this idea of an ascension ladder, many other people before me have talked about an idea of Ascension ladder. But what we are saying in the building your digital utopia book where we talk about this relationship Ascension path, is we are saying that there are now specific steps that we're calling out that have specific missions at each step that I just described. That's what's different and aligns with a natural relationship driven progression. So that way through the process, people can move through in a very natural way to where as they go through this process, they're going to have a very magical kind of experience is going to feel very natural, logical, and it's going to be an experience, unlike what they've experienced with your competitors.
Joe
Yeah, I love that. And you know, once you get that built, you of course have to nurture it and optimize it. I think we're going to be talking about that coming up soon.
Frank
For sure. This is you know, everything that we talked about is not set and forget it kind of stuff. This is not like it again, I made it very clear in past episodes. And today, the magic elixir there's only one bit of a magic elixir I will ever talk about and that's like the magic that comes from commitment and consistency right everything else it's not secrets and hacks and magic silver bullet this No, it's you're gonna have to maintenance this you're gonna have to pay attention you're gonna have to nurture you have to put some tender loving care into into this and anything of any magnitude you're going to build is going to require that so absolutely not a set and forget anything. With that, folks, we are at the end of our episode today. Thank you for joining us. Hope you return for our next episode. Remember to get the blueprint that we talked about go to buildingyourdigitalutopia.com to get a blueprint where you can map out this entire funnel for your organization. And folks have an awesome one.
