What To Do If Your Customer Wants A Customized Path

Hey everybody, it's Tara Bryan. And you are listening to the course building secrets podcast. Whether you're a coach or a CEO, the success of your team and clients is based on your ability to deliver a consistent experience and guide them on the fastest path to results. This podcast will give you practical real life tips that you can use today to build your online experiences that get results and create raving fans. Why? So you can monetize your expertise and serve more people without adding more time or team to your business? If you're looking to uncover your million dollar framework, package it and use it to scale you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

Hey, everybody, welcome to today's episode. In today's episode, I want to talk about perceived value. So I was talking to a client the other day, and she was adamant about having her clients be able to choose their own adventure choose the direction that they wanted to go in in terms of her program, whether they wanted to take all of the modules, or one or two of the modules or, you know, some combination of the above. So she was convinced that every single client should be able to create a custom experience based on what works for them and their organization. So I want to dive into that a little bit. Because I think this is a common belief that people have is that despite you defining the framework of here's a step by step process that it takes to get from where you are today to where you want to go. Right. So you're looking at when you put together your program you're looking at, okay, so what's the problem that somebody has? And what are the steps that they need to take to solve that problem? Right? So you are defining that framework, and then you create your signature program, based on that, you know, you unique way that you're looking at helping that client be successful. So within that, sure, there are various ways to look at how do you create a unique and personalized experience for each of your customers based on maybe where they are. So one example would be, you have one customer, so customer a, who comes to you and they so in my case, so I'll give that example. So they are in corporate, and they want to start their own business. And they're not exactly sure how to package what they're doing, right. So they have an expertise, they've been really good at doing their thing in their job, and they want to take that and turn it into a business. Okay, so that's Person A. So does that fall within my wheelhouse? Yes. Right. So the starting point for this person is I'm good at something. Now I want to make it into a business, which that result would be get the business started, right. So then I have Customer B and Customer B already has been on that part of the journey. But now they're like, Okay, now I've, you know, determine what I'm going to be doing. I've come up with my signature framework. Now I want to automate it and put it online, so I can leverage my time and leverage my expertise. Okay, so that's a similar customer a little bit different, but similar. And so the path that they're gonna take is slightly different. Maybe they're farther along in the path than customer a, or maybe they are still on the same path as customer a, but they're starting at maybe step three instead of step one, right? So that's great. So you can either have Customer B go back and do step one and two, because it you know, there's no harm in having them do that. Or you can say, Okay, well, Customer B, you are at step three, you start at step three, you can skip modules one and two. Right. So that is kind of an example of how to personalize an experience for people, right. So so if you take that particular situation, you can still automate that personalized experience. And you know, you can give them a quiz or a pretest or swing however you wanted to think about it, right? To help them identify where they should be starting. But really, they're going through a still a prescribed path. It's not willy nilly. That because This person has decided that they, they want to control how they're going through the training, that they get to just choose willy nilly which ones are going through and which ones are not going through and whatever else, right? Because here's the problem. If you allow somebody to be like, Well, I only want to go through Module Four and module 10. And you're saying, Well, here's the path that you need to be successful, then, most often, if that person's like, Well, I'm just gonna customize my experience and just do these two modules, they're not actually going to get the results that you're promising, which leads to decrease customer satisfaction, which leads to wanting a refund, which leads to not, you know, promoting, or referring clients to the program in the future, right. So it starts to erode your signature program, if people are just willy nilly taking whatever they want, in whatever order, and, and whatever. So I'm talking to this client, and she's like, well, it's a really important part of the sales process that they get to choose which parts of this training that they want to take. So that means that as a company, they could choose which ones they wanted their employees to do, maybe they didn't need the other ones. Or maybe it wasn't important, or maybe they had just taken a different training or whatever else. It's sort of like, if you're reading a book, right, and you read a book, and you say, Well, I don't want to read the beginning of the book,

I just want to start at the middle, and start reading from the middle of the book, or I'm just gonna read the end of the book, I'm not actually going to read the beginning or the middle, I just want to find out what happens to this character. So I'm just going to read the end, that sort of the same experience, right. And so whenever somebody says, something like that, it really brings up two red flags. The first one is you're not owning or feeling confident in the path that you've created. In your signature program, right, maybe it's in for more information, maybe, maybe you haven't connected the dots between one end of the path to another. And so those kinds of concerns, when I'm, when I'm helping coach, somebody really just tells me that we need to dial in what, what results they're hoping for people to get. Because it just, it doesn't make sense for them to be able to just pick random things here. And there. Now, if it's a bigger course, in there are discrete sections in it, that are almost like many frameworks, right? Like, if you do, you know, one and two, you get this result, sort of, like I said, with customer a versus Customer B, that, you know, customer a can get to a certain point of success, run through that for a period of time, and then move forward into steps three and four, and, you know, etc. That's, that's a different scenario. But if you're saying, here's the signature program, it starts here, it ends here. And then because your clients are asking, you just say, Well, yeah, you can just take whatever you want, you can see how that starts to dilute the strength of your program. And, and so the way that I, I sort of help somebody understand this is that there's a reason it's your proprietary framework, right? Like, there's a reason why you put it in that order. There's a reason why there's a beginning, middle and an end. And it's okay, to have that strong message to your customer to say, my goal is to get you to these results. If you want these results, then this is the path that each of your people needs to go down. Or, like I said, you haven't an initial assessment, and people start where they're starting. But you can't have them start at the end, and then go back to the beginning. Right? Again, if you take that book analogy, it just doesn't make sense. You read the back of the book, and then you start reading, you know, reading back to the middle in the beginning, it's just not that it's just not how it's how we do it, right. And so the bottom line is what happened with this client, she kept pushing and pushing and pushing, and we had, you know, this conversation at the end of the day, her point, which she finally articulated, was I just want them to be able to feel like they have a choice. And it's a great, like, we can do that right we can have a prescribed path. And then we can give them a choice for you know,

is it going to be path a path B and path path C? And she can still keep cognitive control over that experience for that customer. But it's just not going to be willy nilly, you know, here in there, because that's more of a customer experience, right? If you're creating a custom experience for a particular customer, meaning they want something completely different than the signature program that you've created, or they want something, in addition, or they want different examples, or they want it tailored specifically to their company, that's a customer experience that falls outside of, you know, sort of the 80% of what you're going to create in terms of an online experience or even a prescribed experience, even if it's not online. Right, and so that you can look at those as two different customer, deliverables, two different customer journeys. One is, here's my program, and here is the path to get you from point A to point B. And we know we can get you successful. You know, if you are, you know, going down this path, if you want my expertise to create a custom experience for your people, here is a different offer that I'm going to give you that's outside of trying to fit them into the program, and then just letting them go willy nilly through the program, because at the end of the day is sort of like a pharmacist, right? Like, you wouldn't go to a pharmacist and be like, yeah, well my doctor prescribe this medication, but I just have decided that I want to do this different one, like I just, I'm just gonna not use this prescription, I'm just gonna, you know, get this other drug that I want to use, because I feel like it's going to be more effective, right? Like, you wouldn't do that. And so that's the same level of ownership you can have over your program is this is, you know, guaranteed to give results, or this is, you know, the results that people have gotten from going through this program. There. It's, it's written and created in a specific format. And, you know, we'd love for you to jump in and do it. And, and giving them that prescribed path, because at the end of the day, people want the fastest path to results. They really want somebody to guide them in the way that's going to be successful. And you are allowed as the expert to own that process. So you can push back on them. And then again, if they want something designed specifically for their organization, great, that would be a premium offer that you would give them that would be different than the 80% of what you're selling. So I just wanted to bring that up today. Because it tends to be something that I think people, as experts are hesitant to own up that prescribed path. But the more you can do that, the more you actually get that authority as being the expert, and people come to you because you have the answer. People aren't coming to you because you're giving them 52 choices they're coming because you have the confidence to say here is how to solve your problem that you have today. And if they don't have a problem, they're not going to buy your product and they shouldn't, because they don't have that problem. Right. And, and so hopefully that gives you the clarity when you are creating your framework. That is okay, too. Tell somebody that this is the path that will help you to get to the results that you're looking for. And if you want something slightly different or design different or something more specific, then we would happily give you a customized premium offer that extends what we're doing further. Alright, there you go. There is your course building secret tip for today.