Client Success Strategies with Megan Huber

Catharine O'Leary: Hey everyone, welcome back to kickstart the conversation. I am your host, Catharine O'Leary. And today I have Megan with me, Megan is a client success strategist. She partners with established high growth online coaching and education based business owners and their teams to increase client results in retention, leading to greater profitability, scalability and sustainability. Megan combines her 20 years of experience across public education, athletic coaching, Client Success management, group coaching, and entrepreneurship in a way that supports leaders and teams to provide a superior client experience. And I think that this, what we're going to talk about a lot today is that client experience sometimes gets lost, especially as new entrepreneurs, put like, put it together their courses, and they're really excited about the courses. And they're really excited to deliver the courses. And a lot of the back end a lot of the like onboarding experience, a lot of the you know, okay, now at the end of the course, or even during the course, like, you know, keeping people motivated, keep people going through it, or, you know, it doesn't have to be a course, it could be a mastermind, it could be anything, it takes a little bit of a different thought process and a little bit of a different focus on your business to actually incorporate that. So Megan is here to talk all about that. They can tell us a little bit more about you know, your business and who you serve. Yeah,

well, that was such a lovely introduction. And, yeah, my business has pivoted, you know, obviously, all of our businesses pivot over the years, I've been in the coaching and online education space since January of 2012. So it has certainly gone through quite a few iterations. In I've had two different businesses. And in between those two businesses, the reason why stopped one started another years later, I was the Director of Client Success for a very large scale coaching company, started that in 2013. And then I was full time 2014 15 and 16, came back onto the scene in early 2017. And, you know, I was doing the typical thing that a lot of business coaches were doing, because it is attractive, if there are, you know, 90% of the marketplace is at a particular level, and they want how do I generate leads? How do I get more clients? How do I book myself solid? How do I make more money? And how do I grow this thing, and when I left the company I was with, again, I kind of like made a little name for myself, and one little tiny corner of the coaching space. And that's just what came to me. And so I just sort of ran with it. And at the end of 2020 21, I was like, Okay, wait a minute. I like what I'm doing. But I don't love it. I'm good at what I do. But I'm not a genius at it. And I am far too frustrated and irritated than I should be. Something has to change something has to give. And, you know, I know that a lot of the audience may be new ish in their journey. And I think sometimes we go in a direction that we think we're supposed to go in, or we have to go in, because of whatever anybody else looks like they're doing in the marketplace. And if we pay too much attention to that, we start to question our own zone of genius, our years of experience, our wisdom, our skills, our gifts, our talents, our heart, our passion. And I've kind of done that to a degree. So I kind of picked my head up one day, and I was like, Okay, I'm about to make a really big move. And it required me to essentially shut down what I had been running for six years. And I have this moment, at the end of 2021. And in about a 10 second period of time, all of my experience that I had had kind of flashed before my eyes and I was like, everything I love and know how to do it really is in the category of fulfillment, everything after the sale, it's in program development in creating a superior client experience and really understanding the student learner and in our case, it is adults. And how do I keep them engaged? How do we elevate you know, the percentage of clients that are actually making it through our programs and then getting results because it's very, very low and the online education and coaching industry? I think it's like 5% 7% 10%, like something that low which is abysmal. And I just could not shake that. That is what everything I've done, you know, from a pretty young age has kind of led me to and where I shifted my clientele. You know, I'll be really honest, most business owners, at least the ones I come across, don't really even put clients success and client experience on their radar until they're making millions of dollars a year. It's just and I get it. Everybody's focused on I gotta make money. I gotta pay the bills. I gotta get the client I got to build this thing. And so so much of our of our time, effort and energy is on marketing and sales and making the money. And so then we sort of almost like don't have time to think about, well, how do we truly support our clients. And that's where I love coming in. Because I don't say that to beat anybody up. But we just don't know what we don't know until somebody like waves the flag and rings the bell and says, Hey, wait a minute, hey, wait a minute. And so I think that's what I feel like I've been doing for a few years is like, Hey, I'm over here, I'm over here, we've got to look at this, it's really important, I promise, trust me. And people are just now I've been speaking this message for about two years. And people are just now starting to actually really pay attention to it. I think for a number of reasons, you know, things have changed in the in the world. So that's what we do. And we go in, and we audit companies, primarily, their retention, their referrals, the results our clients are getting. And based on what we're seeing, and what we're hearing from their clients, then we make, you know, we make a prognosis on, okay, where do we need to change things, and then what actually needs to happen, so we can see that retention, and those results increase, so that you are a world class organization.

Catharine O'Leary: And I think the way that, at least the way that so I came on to the entrepreneur scene around 2018. You know, when when I want to think back to the mentors that I've had, and the coaches that I've had, and some of the programs that I've gone through, even up till now, it's been a lot of when's your next launch, like getting ready for the next launch, getting ready for the next, you know, bootcamp or webinar, or like, it's all on client acquisition, and very little conversation about client retention, which, you know, amazes me because it's five times more expensive to get a new client than it is to keep the client that you currently have. So I think that we're actually wasting a lot of time and effort and money on continually being in this, like, you're always going to need new clients, like, you know, like, that's just this, you know, the cost of doing business, I get that. But it's almost like we've gotten too far to the, to the acquisition side, and not far enough with retention side, because I think that a five or 7%, you know, completion rate on a course like that's, it's not just abysmal. That's criminal. Like it's

like, yeah, terrible. Yeah, it's bad. It's really bad. Yeah, I agree with you. You know, we're never going to stop focusing on marketing and sales. Like, that's never going to stop, you'd have to have that system in place, for sure. But I think this is an opportunity for every business owner, no matter what level you're at, to evaluate, where am I spending my time? Where am I spending my resources? Where's my money going? Even where my thoughts going? Because if we actually pay attention to our thoughts on a daily basis for for many entrepreneurs, their thoughts are consumed with how do I get the next client? Or how do I have the next big launch? Or how do I improve the number of eyeballs that are looking at my stuff? Or how do I increase the number of people on my list? You know, and do that, you know, that's actually a really great practice for anyone listening to this to do for the next week, for the next week, Monday through Friday, just start analyzing your thoughts that you're having around your business? And what category of your business? Are your dominant thoughts in? Is it about generating eyeballs? Is it about growing your followership on Instagram isn't about closing more sales is about making more money. Because a lot of those things are actually very self focused. That's very like about me, myself, and I. And that's not really thinking about the client, and the clients experience and how they feel because we're so consumed with what we're thinking how we're feeling, and I get it, this is not a judgement, I've been there too, is human nature. So I think that would be a really great practice for people to do and then draw a pie chart and actually sketch out what percentage is going to getting the clients in my thought life and how much is going to my clients and how they think and feel and what they're experiencing, it would be very eye opening to do that so that you can start shifting, because like you said, Catharine, I believe that we should be spending the same amount of time, effort, energy resources and money on client, the category of client success and experience as we are marketing and sales. It should be equal in a company.

Catharine O'Leary: I believe so I, I would actually given that. I mean, I've been in some companies, corporate companies that like totally missed the ball, or mishandled the ball on the pretension side, like they crashed and burned like it's like, and these are like I'm talking about big companies that you know, if you're not listening to your consumer Based on your client base, about what they are wanting and needing and what their experiences with you, you know, a competitor can come along and, and steal them very quickly if you're if you don't understand your, you know, your kinks in your armor.

Mm hmm. Yeah, it's true and, and look, for someone who has a bit of a larger sized company, even if you have just a handful of team members, you know, if you look at any person in your organization that is on the side of client fulfillment, and success and client experience, they really are the voice of your customer, they truly are, which means they deserve a seat at the table with whoever is helping you with marketing, and whoever is helping you a sales. I mean, one of the things that I just want to like, oh, kind of screen sometimes is there are a lot of business owners who are working with well, meaning marketers, and marketing agencies, and well meaning sales agencies. So it's an outside person coming in. But those two entities are providing advice on things they have no business providing them on. And, you know, one of the things that I've been seeing and hearing lately is, you know, a marketing agency or a sales agency will come in and say, hey, you need to take your $20,000 program, and you need to pull out this tiny little chunk of it. And you need to go create a front end offer that cost two or three or $5,000. That's but that's all a marketing and sales play. That's all How do I make more money play. The problem with that? Is it those marketing and sales agency typically have zero experience and zero expertise in client experience and client success. And so these front end offers that are being created by just pulling a piece out of the 20 or $30,000 offer. The problem with them is no one's thinking all the way through, no one's playing the tape all the way through, they're not transformational. So the client, it's a way for the company to make more money up front to get more clients in for less money. But the program is not actually helping clients produce any kind of tangible result. And then they expect them to then upgrade to the 20 or $30,000 program. And I'm like, Really, like Who told you that was a good idea. But again, a lot of folks don't know what they don't know, when it comes to this relatively new conversation about client success and client experience.

Catharine O'Leary: And we're not, I mean, so often because I, you know, I, I have a company that does develop quizzes, which are a little bit of a gamified way of, you know, client attraction, my whole bent on it is the data collected afterwards to help you with the client retention, which a lot of people don't do. But we're not talking about like this whole gamification thing and trying to, you know, make sure like, it's not it doesn't have to be a significant amount of your fulfillment time to try and, and gamify. Or you have to put in a whole new process, or you have to hire somebody to help you do this. Like, that's not really what we're talking about what we're talking about is listening to your consumers. And where are they getting stuck? Yeah, and why and how can you get them unstuck instead of just saying, Oh, well, you didn't do your work? Because that's what I hear a lot. Oh, you didn't you didn't follow the steps. So like, you know, you're out. And it's like, well, wait a minute, like, like, maybe the steps were too hard. Maybe the steps were not, you know, explained well enough. I mean, what like, like, what, what happened there? And I don't know that entrepreneurs, I'm sure they care that you know about that. But I don't know if they've put that effort, as you said into, into finding that stuff out and fixing it.

I think most people do care. I do. I don't think we have. I mean, people will fight me on this sometimes. But because I guess there are really people out there who really don't care. But I do believe I do believe most people care. Maybe not all at the same level. There are some that don't for sure. But again, they're they're not an expert in what you just said. And so in their mind, I mean, I have a client like this, they do, you know, they they've worked with 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of students in their program 10s of millions of dollars a year. But their attitude, and their, the the way they think about their clients coming in and getting results. And I get it. They're coming from the position of well, this is how we did it. This is how we were successful because they built a business in a certain category. And then they created an education program to teach other people how to how to build a business in that particular industry. And they said, well, we just went out and took action, and we just went out and failed and we just went out and figured it out. And it's not that hard. And it's like, Okay, now to your point, Catharine, the two people who run the company are two men. And there is a female who's involved as well. And the two men are largely the ones creating the curriculum and teaching inside the program. They're not the ones running all the calls that the clients have access to every week, but they do some, the demographic is average age, a 55 year old woman who was in the same career for 20 to 25 years. And a lot of them were also potentially stay at home moms for a good solid 10 to 15 years, they you think that a 55 year old woman who has been told what to do for the last 25 years and did the same thing, every single day at her job, is just gonna go out into the field and just figure it out and take action. She's not, and what what this company finally did hire a Director of Client Success about a year ago, the first person ever in the history of the company that collected a shred of data. And one of the things that she found out about their clientele is that they are very compliant and agreeable. Okay, well, that's telling you a lot of information about how you should be structuring your curriculum, and leading your clients through the curriculum, to then go take action, you've got to understand the demographics and the psychographics, about the actual clientele. And I always say, I'd be really interested to hear what you have to say about this might be too long of a conversation. But I do believe that you've got to the way, the way you learn about or what you're learning about a prospect at the level of marketing and sales, it's different when they become a client. Because you don't really need to know someone's learning style in marketing, to attract them to your launch to then sell them in your program. But once they're in your program you do you've got to understand their personality, their learning style, introvert extrovert, you need to know so many things about them, so that you can best direct them. I'll give you one quick example. I know a guy in the real estate investing category. He has 25,000 students. So he's been doing it for a long time, he didn't do that overnight, his organization just on the online education side makes close to 100 million a year. Over time of teaching adults, he's identified and it might be higher now because I heard him say this in September of last year, he has figured out 22 different avatars of clients inside his program, which to your point they're figuring out with however, whatever their tool or mechanism is at the level of marketing or sales, or once they're in the program, I don't I don't know at what stage they do it. It's really similar to what you're talking about quizzes. And I remember hearing him say from stage, I would never tell a stay at home mom who becomes my client, that her form of marketing, to go to go invest in real estate would be to cold call. Because a stay at home mom is never going to cold call. So if so he's like if I think that any of the stay at home moms that join my program, and they have a lot of them are going to go out and cold call, they are not getting results in my program. So I've got to figure out if they're not going to cold call, what is the say at home? I'm going to do what she wired to do? What's her personality like such that I can figure out? How can she hit the ground running? What's her skill set? What are her gifts, what she's comfortable with? Not like, Oh, this is how I did it, you got to do it too. You got to go cold call because that's what I did, well, then 80% of your clients are going to fail, because 80% of your clients are not like you. And that's what we're forgetting. That's it that's the biggest thing that I see that we're forgetting because we are in the category of education. So you've got to understand your clients and you've got to understand a lot of new things about them that you didn't find out about them or maybe you didn't need to know about them at the level of marketing

Catharine O'Leary: I think in yeah this is this is a fascinating conversation I think that what happens and I would love to hear your your opinions I think what happens is that we get so tunnel visioned at the marketing and sales phases of attracting our ideal client ideal client ideal client go after your ideal client if you serve everyone you serve no one you know make sure you niche down. That's correct for marketing and for sales conversations. Absolutely. That makes people think that I've got one client like one client avatar as you said, but there's a lot going on within that avatar like a you know, a a business that takes coaches say from six to seven figures, right? There's a lot that goes into that process and I'll and where people can kind of, you know, slot into maybe maybe some people are challenged with the mindset and you need to work on that a little bit more or maybe they're challenged with the programming and the IT side, and you need to help them but then, you know, build a team around that. Or maybe it's leadership like, like, whatever that is. But I think we get so focused on marketing to one avatar that we forget when people come into our programs and into our communities, that they're still individuals. Like, just because they kind of shared this ideal client avatar doesn't mean that they don't have different, like you said, you know, learning techniques or not, and I'm not saying that you have to customize to every person, but and 22 avatars is a is a lot to manage. But this is where segmentation can come into play for your, for your clients, when they get into your community. Now you can say, okay, you know, what, this group has similar characteristics. And so like, I know that for these characteristics, we need to focus on X, Y, and Z, if you can do that, and they and you know, it doesn't have to be 22, it could be, you know, 345, you'll be able to personalize and customize a little closer to that one on one, you know, conversation, at least in a group setting that you wanted? Yes,

exactly. You make a really good point that I do think we believe, you know, we know how we were successful. And we know ourselves really well. And I think that's part of it too. Well, I did it this way, or this is my personality, and we're forgetting Yeah, but other people have different personalities. And I also think that you're right to that we do have the tunnel vision, because we do think, well, if if everybody's qualified, and they meet our qualification criteria to be a good fit for our program, then I can lead all of them in the exact same way. And that's, that's just not true. And we're not saying, you know, neither Catharine nor I are saying that you can't have upset methodology or a set curriculum, you can. And you just need to understand people. I'll give an example. I was a high school teacher, my very first career in my 20s. And I taught, I think this was even harder. I taught an elective. So I wasn't in the core math, social studies, science or English. I taught business education classes, so students could elect to take my class or not. And oftentimes, your elective classes in a high school, the terminology they would use is a dumping ground. Because they would just need to put kids somewhere. It's at a certain point when they're making the schedules. So here I am, I'm in my early 20s, when I started, I had kids who are aged 14 To you can stay in high school till you're 21 Then they kick you out. And I actually did have a 21 year old one time, I was 22. At the time, it did not know that. Yeah. So the other state kicks you out after you're 21. So I had freshmen, two sophomores, I had kids that were autistic, had learning disabilities, I EPS, which is an individual education plan. I had the smartest kids in the school, I had ADHD, ADD, you name it, I had it all in one class. At the same time, I taught three classes a day, three different groups of kids a day, no class was the same. No two students were the same. So when I was a high school teacher, I had to figure out very quickly, I am teaching all the kids the exact same curriculum, because my my course actually had to integrate test. So the state gave us curriculum, I wasn't creating the curriculum, I had access to that. Every single student did the exact same curriculum. But I had to figure out how to communicate differently, with different kids based on were they an introvert or an extrovert, what was their learning style? What was their processing style, then the other thing that we also really need to be considering with adults, and it's the same with kids, but it's worse, it's actually worse with adults. You know, I would have to figure out, not that I necessarily needed to know, the environment. Specifically they were coming into my classroom from but I didn't need to understand like, I might have had a student who witnessed domestic violence the night before, I might have had a student who is hungry because they're not fed breakfast in the morning, I could have a student who ran away from home and now they live with grandma. I you know, I could have have a student who just broke up with their boyfriend or girlfriend earlier that day, I could have a student who's being bullied. Okay, all that plays a role and how someone shows up in your classroom. Now flip that too. We're all working with adults, the same stuff, could have just gotten an argument with their spouse could have gotten beat by their spouse, their kid could have run away from home. Their parents could be on their deathbed. A parent could have just died the week before they're overwhelmed to high heaven. Like that's what we're not recognizing about our adult clients. Your adult clients are Are 100 times more overwhelmed than my high school students were and they were already overwhelmed. So your, your adult client is already coming into your system overwhelmed with just life, let alone your subject matter. They're in, they chose to work with you in your program. Because whatever you teach, and whatever you're trying to help them achieve, they're overwhelmed by it, trying to do it on their own, or else they would have already done it on their own. So you've got a double whammy of overwhelm coming in. And I do a lot of third party interviews with my clients clients. And I just did to this week for a project that I'm working on. And both people, they're men, the ones that I've interviewed so far been men, they both said that the beginning of the program for the first few months, it's like drinking from a firehose, it's very overwhelming. Now both of these people, one had been in for six years one and been in for two and a half years. So they're, you know, they love it, they're not going anywhere, anytime soon. But we need to recognize that the way we're instructing people, in especially in the beginning of a program, it can make or break someone's ability to be successful in your ecosystem.

Catharine O'Leary: Well, I think it also highlights that, and this is one of the frustrations that I've had. And one of the things that I you know, I'm on a mission to, to help people with is, you don't stop learning about your clients once they come into your door. In fact, it should actually hype up, you should start learning more about them. And and, you know, you said, you know, in a in a client attraction phase, you know, you're not gonna ask, like, are you an introvert extrovert? Or are you like, how, you know, how do you handle change, or, you know, get their disk or, and I'm not saying that you have to do all that anyways, but there are probably some things that will help you out. If you know better, like when you go into the next coaching call, if you know that so and so you know, doesn't talk a lot. And you might need to draw them out a little bit. Or, you know, like, don't let someone so take the mic quite so much put a timer on, you know, that facilitation is is really important for us. And even, you know, as they're going through coursework, those touch points, like maybe maybe, you know, one group, you know, has a characteristics that you kind of need to communicate over, communicate with them a little bit more than maybe other people. But you'll learn that as you go. I mean, that's not stuff that you learn when they're coming into your community. Because you don't, you don't need to learn all that stuff, if they're not going to come into your community. But once they're in your community, what processes do you have in place to to have that additional learning that will help you help them?

Exactly. Feedback, you know, gather feedback gathered, I see a lot of coaches and service providers, you know, they'll ask their clients to fill out an initial intake form. And a lot of people create intake forms based on the intake forms, they filled out when they were a client in somebody else's program. And it's just a lot of information, quite frankly, that is subject matter specific to whatever the person is going to teach you inside the program. In most Intake Forms I've seen do not ask questions like, Are you an introvert or an extrovert? How do you learn best? How can we best motivate you? People aren't asking those questions. And it would behoove us to be asking those questions. So that's like a place to start. And then I'm a massive fan of feedback, and collecting feedback, you know, feedback surveys, after you onboard your client, find out what they thought of the onboarding experience, you know, the longer your program is, the more the more off, you know, the more feedback surveys you're probably going to send out. Um, I don't want to do overkill, you know, you don't need to be asking for feedback every single week. But there are certain points within the program. A lot of people shy away from asking their clients feedback, because they're very afraid to hear something negative. But I'm telling you, your clients are more than willing to provide feedback, most of them. They actually appreciate and respect when you do ask for feedback, because it's showing them that you care. It's showing them that you want to continue adding value and make improvements. And you can figure out probably like 80 to 85% of what needs to change and evolve inside your program to better serve your clients based on what they're telling you in feedback. So give them an opportunity to share, because you will really learn a lot about them and about what's working, what's not working for them inside your program. So when the baton it needs to

Catharine O'Leary: be doing. Yeah, and I would I would suggest and I see this a lot that people like after summit or something like that. They'll send out a feedback form. It's in a form format, so it looks like a mortgage application. And there is no incentive to actually fill it out. Now, if they're your community and your clients, they might have more incentive. But, you know, just like, Hey, you came to the summit, can I get some feedback? There are ways to incent people, like, you know, an Amazon card, or maybe you get you know, you know, if it's a client, maybe you get money towards the next program or, you know, a special ask me anything or something like that there's a ton of ways don't don't give up on the feedback form. There's, there's ways to format it so that it's a little easier to digest and go through. Don't ask 150 questions, because nobody wants to sit there and list all that out. And maybe it's not a form, maybe it's a hey, can I jump on a call with you? 10 minutes for feedback, and then I'll give you an extra 10 minutes of one on one time. Right? If you need that kind of feedback loop, there's a lot of ways to get it. So because I see people just like, oh, I send out a survey and like only two people, you know, replied to it. So, right, I'm either going to give up or I'm going to assume everything's fine. Neither of which is a good way to go.

No, not at all. Yeah, I love that I love incentivizing. And I'm certainly one of those clients, I will always fill out the feedback survey, because I know how helpful it is. And I'm and I will also be the person who will give you constructive feedback as well of where I think that you know, you could be doing things better. But again, like your clients are willing to do that. The one thing I'll share about feedback, and I hear this from a lot of folks, what clients do not like when they are asked for their feedback, is to give you their feedback, and then hear no response from you. Yes, they hate it. And they want to know, a lot of clients actually want to know, like, if they know you're sending feedback surveys out or collecting feedback from, you know, all the clients, they actually want to know what the results were. Some people are interested in that. But then they want to know, what are you going to do about what I said in the feedback? Are you going to do anything about it? If so, what's that going to look like? How are you going to roll it out? What what you will start to lose the trust of your clients if you ask for their feedback, but then you don't acknowledge what they shared with you. They do not like that at all.

Catharine O'Leary: No, because it's asking. It's asking just for the sake of asking and with no intention. Yeah. So if you if you're asking me for my feedback, and I want to be heard, I'm gonna give you you're giving you my feedback, but then I need to know that you heard me, yes. So some sort of response to say, that's a really good point, I'm going to change that look for that on the next update, or a summary of the results in a newsletter or, you know, something along those lines, you don't have to be given out like all your state secrets. So that's not what we're saying. But, you know, if you're going to ask people to co create with you than they need to co create. Yeah, and they, you know, the more that you can make them part of the process the the more, you know, valid and the more engaged that they're going to be.

For sure. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So,

Catharine O'Leary: Megan, thank you so much for being on the show, were going a little long. So I just want to give you an opportunity to let everyone know how they can connect with you get in touch with you. If they want to learn more about customer success and how to make their businesses, you know better on that fulfillment side and retention side.

Thank you the best place to go is my podcast. The name of my podcast is built to last with Meghan Huber. So if you are listening to this show, you're more than likely a podcast listener listener, and will really enjoy what we share over there. It's predominantly about client success, largely. So if you want to dive more deeply into this type of a conversation, then head over there. And in terms of social media, I would say Facebook is the other place to pay attention, I tend to be a bit of a long form copy writer, and a lot of my Facebook posts are pretty educational. So that would be another awesome place to go as well. Awesome.

Catharine O'Leary: And we will have the links in the show notes for all of that. So if you want to connect with Meghan, it's the built to last podcast or on her Facebook page. And Megan, thank you for joining us today. Really appreciate your time. Any final words for those listening out there? Well, thanks

for having me. Final words, you know, start paying attention to client success and go do the activity that I mentioned earlier, where you are evaluating the thoughts that you're thinking in your business, at least for a week, Monday through Friday, and pay attention to are they more dominant about your marketing, client acquisition, your sales or your clients success and just see if those scales need to be tipped just a little bit.

Catharine O'Leary: I love that. I love that. I'm going to be doing that to everyone. So I think that's a great that's a great exercise so thank you for listening again everyone out there and just remember to keep asking those questions and keep being curious talk to you next time