0:00:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: Hi. Welcome back to Friends in Business podcast, Ben. Excited to be back. Look at this backdrop we’ve got going on.
0:00:50 Ben Wright: Yeah, it’s pretty special.
0:00:51 Jemimah Ashleigh: The last couple of weeks we’ve been recording one specific way, and today we just, we got a little distracted. We had a little bit of lunchy lunch and got a bit distracted and the sun got a bit bright, and I was like, arguably, I think we’re doing better.
0:01:02 Ben Wright: And you know the bit. I’m going to sheepishly say, this is my home.
0:01:05 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:01:05 Ben Wright: Every single backdrop that you see, it’s our life. We get to live it every day. And that is something that business has opened up doors for us as a family that we just never would have had. I stayed in the well trodden path. Yeah, that I guess I kind of expected to go down.
0:01:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: And really, it’s been a huge benefit to me also, who gets to come up here every week and I live at your house. It’s not the worst, actually.
0:01:30 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:01:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: I will say we were finished recording podcasts, and as you guys have probably figured out, we actually get along pretty well. It’s not the worst thing in the world to get to hang out in paradise. And this is the backdrop. Ben found me earlier, just standing in the backyard looking at the trees. He goes, what are you doing? And I said, just looking at the trees. And then he stood there and looked at the trees with me for five minutes.
0:01:47 Ben Wright: The point of that is that sometimes when you get to a crossroad and you take the road less traveled, it can make all the difference. Because the best things in life, I’ve never found the best things in life come easy. I’ve never, ever found that I can be successful in something without an application of time and a trade off of something.
0:02:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. Do you know what always comes back to me when people talk about this? Is that the movie, the baseball movie, a league of their own. If it was easy, everyone would do it. And believe me. How many times have you quit? I mean, properly, like, I’m going to KFC and getting a job there quit
0:02:21 Ben Wright: On my mind?
0:02:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:02:23 Ben Wright: My wife, actually, when I get a little bit down, she actually says to me, go get a job. And I look at her and I say, how dare you And bang. On the way. Off I go.
0:02:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’m unemployable at this point. Like, I would be a nightmare to employ as a full time person these days. And I think that’s really important to know. Like, and I think the road less traveled and if it has ended us in Noosa, I mean, I’m fine with the road that you took, Ben, I think. Approved. Approved. Today we’re talking about lead generation. This is one of my favorite things to talk about because it’s one of those things that, again, high quality leads. No one’s knocking him back.
0:02:58 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:02:59 Jemimah Ashleigh: Such an important part in business.
0:03:01 Ben Wright: Yeah. And I mentioned previously that last year’s problem and the COVID problem with many businesses, in particular leaders, was getting the right staff in and actually motivating them and engaging them. What I’ve seen switch this year, and it’s been a pronounced shift, is that lead generation is on everyone’s mind. In fact, so much so that I think we’re six episodes in. And this is our second piece around networking and lead generation. And it’s because, number one, businesses have tightened up a little bit. Businesses and homes and people, that the economic belt has ratcheted a little bit. And businesses and people just aren’t prepared to spend, which means getting leads is harder. But more importantly, getting good quality leads is even harder. So I’m gonna talk through five things. It’s even more valuable. Exactly right. And particularly if we look at last week when we say if we can bring a new customer to our business and then pull the lever of increasing their basket size and have them return down the track.
0:03:54 Ben Wright: Yeah, exactly right. So we’re going to focus today on new customers.
0:03:57 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes, please.
0:03:58 Ben Wright: How we get new customers, because this is.
0:03:59 Jemimah Ashleigh: We hear us all the time. Both of us hear this, and I hear this all the time. Like, I don’t know how to get in customers.
0:04:03 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:04:04 Jemimah Ashleigh: And my go to phrase is always what has historically worked? Because if it’s historically worked, it’s probably going to work again.
0:04:09 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah.
0:04:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: So let’s hear from you. This is your. Got some five things to share with us today.
0:04:13 Ben Wright: Five things. Okay. So number one que eye roll. You need to know who your ideal customer is.
0:04:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: No, I love that. This would be my actual epitaph. We keep talking about that for some reason. It would be where idle clients spending time money. Absolutely.
0:04:31 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s called an ICP. It’s a technical term if you’re looking it up. What we want to understand is which are the customers that we either solve a problem for most impactfully or open up an opportunity.
0:04:42 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:04:43 Ben Wright: It’s not just about problem solving. So often we look at solving problems, i.e, we’re going to get a tax return done, or we’re going to save legal bills. Right. But the reverse of that is by getting, you know, the problem is getting a tax return done. We’re paying too much tax. But the opportunity here is, what can we do to set them up in the future, right. To be able to get the most out of their business or out of their lives or their investments. Right. It’s more than just minimizing tax. And the same with legal fees. Right. How can we set up the structure of a company or an agreement? Or how can we set up a supply piece of work whereby the agreements benefit our business to be able to maximize sales down the track. Right. There is always an opportunity that often comes next to a problem.
0:05:23 Ben Wright: So understanding who our ideal customers are, and I am not someone that’s from the camp that says everyone, because while.
0:05:29 Jemimah Ashleigh: I have seen that. So, as most of you guys know, I run a networking group for a long time. But I’ve often said, like, I’ll talk to anyone. And I went, that’s a really good way to ruin a day. If you got me talking about when I heard was a woman who had a premium skincare line. She’s like, anyone with skin is my ideal client. And I remember thinking, it’s not. You’re a premium product. You don’t want the people who are spending $1.99 at the reject shop. You want the person that’s understanding skin care, that they understand that they’re looking at not getting Botox, they’re looking at like, there is actually a lot more that goes into this than I think people give credit for.
0:06:03 Ben Wright: Yeah, I. Yeah. And I look at one of our businesses that was very successful was the renewable energies business. And there were two customers in the business world that were really impactful for us. They were customers who wanted to go on a journey around the sustainability piece. It wasn’t just save money. So those customers needed to be really clear that they had a strategy internally they wanted to follow. And the second piece was that the quality of that installation was really important to them. So we actually had a certain tier of business in a number of industries. We had seven industries that we targeted really heavily with businesses that were certain sizes, that had certain geographic footprints and certain people within the business. They were those that we targeted and we were really clear, because once you get clear on that, you start to market in really specifically to their needs.
0:06:48 Ben Wright: Because someone who has skin who is 65 is going to behave differently to someone who has skin who is 25.
0:06:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: Who is now, for the first time, getting those first little wrinkles. Wrinkles.
0:06:59 Ben Wright: I’m still waiting for my first wrinkles.
0:07:01 Jemimah Ashleigh: Well, thank God. How lucky you are.
0:07:02 Ben Wright: I say that with a grain of salt
0:07:03 Jemimah Ashleigh: But I will say one of the things that I find really interesting with this is how many people haven’t niched this down and don’t have just really gone, oh, chat to anybody about this stuff, because the amount of time that you’re going to waste, you know, it’s almost like if I said to you, Ben, hey, listen, I’m launching this new product. I’m really excited about it. It’s for all small businesses. Can you write down everyone that’s earning under a mil, the businesses that you own right now?
0:07:28 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:07:29 Jemimah Ashleigh: There is this moment where you will actually get brain freeze because for you, that’s everyone we hang out with. Like, that’s our entire network. My entire network is business owners and entrepreneurs for the most part. And most of them, 85%, would fall under the mill at the moment. Here’s the problem. I’ve just overloaded you with people and you’re going to have about 15 seconds to respond to that and suddenly you’re like, oh, gosh, I don’t know how to start there. So the better question is, well, Ben, I’d love to chat to anyone that runs a, some sort of coaching business that’s currently sitting at about $1 million would be really great between 500 to a mil. And I would love them to be based in Queensland or New South Wales. Suddenly we have a much clearer profile. And probably one or two names immediately came to your head.
0:08:14 Ben Wright: Yeah. And look, I’d say that’s even too broad.
0:08:17 Jemimah Ashleigh: Again.
0:08:17 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. Still too broad. But that’s okay. So we’re working out who our ideal customer is.
0:08:20 Jemimah Ashleigh: Better than everyone with skin, right?
0:08:22 Ben Wright: That’s right. And I think people can work through that. The second piece I want to look at is, why do they choose us?
0:08:27 Jemimah Ashleigh: Why us?
0:08:28 Ben Wright: Super impactful.
0:08:29 Jemimah Ashleigh: Why us?
0:08:30 Ben Wright: And I think that the easiest way to look at this is to get out a piece of paper and to sit down and say, okay, I’m competing against two or three of my competitors. Why am I going to win? So in our renewables business that we had, the reasons that we knew people chose us was because we had a national footprint. So we had proven capability across the country, which not everyone did at that point in time. We were able to take them on a journey, so it wasn’t just one technology. So they trusted because we had multiple technologies in our toolbox, if you like. Lots of tools in the toolbox that because we had that, we weren’t going to be pressing an agenda. We were looking a little bit more neutrally at what was best for them at the point in time. Right, right offer in the right place at the right time. So we knew they chose us very specifically around that. They chose us because we had a really experienced sales team and the sales team were actually able to step through and break the complex into something simple. Something else that will be on my tombstone made the complex simple. We were really, really focused around doing that. And look, there are some other reasons as to why they chose us, but we narrowed it down to five or six key reasons why businesses chose us. We were also then aware why they didn’t choose us. So when cost was a really big factor, when they wanted lowest price wouldn’t choose us, doesn’t.
0:09:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, someone says, I want the cheapest out there.
0:09:47 Ben Wright: Yeah, exactly. Right. When they needed really, really large balance sheets, so when their risk profile was quite small, we knew that they wouldn’t choose us. And there were certain types of projects that we didn’t touch. We didn’t work with builders, for example. We knew we weren’t right for builders, so that was really important for us because we then knew who our customers were and why they chose us, which allowed us to target them with the right offer. Right in the right place. So we had the right reasons they were going to choose us is the offer, and the right place is who we were targeting. So they’re our first two pieces.
0:10:19 Jemimah Ashleigh: TikTok. Yeah, great.
0:10:19 Ben Wright: Ideal customer, who we should be targeting and why they choose us. Next piece number three. Now. And I think this is one of the most important pieces that any business can have. And that’s a value proposition.
0:10:30 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes. Oh, my goodness.
0:10:31 Ben Wright: So you can articulate why people choose you and that can be as simple as a two sentence statement that everyone in your business knows. Be you a small business, be you a larger business, that everyone, when they’re out there and they’re talking to new customers, they’re talking to existing customers, or even if they’re just talking to people at a barbecue, they can say, my name is Ben Wright, I’m a sales strategist and I work with sales leaders so that by the end of my program, they have the balance they need in life because their team produces predictably, deliver. Now, I’d have a different pitch for a small business for sure, but straight away, sales leaders who don’t have great balance in their life because their team don’t deliver predictably and often, that’s because they’ve got to manage them all differently, right? Straight away, bang, I’ve got them because I’m creating an outcome. So any business, be you, small or large, be you the largest business in the world. If your team can all articulate the value you provide, what it does is it opens doors to your right customer because you’ve narrowed that proposition to be targeted to your right customer with the problem you solve or the opportunity you capitalize on.
0:11:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: Well, and I think what’s so important about this is that you look at something like meta Facebook. When you say the biggest company in the world, Facebook’s not promising you 24 hours social media, we’re going to sell your data to China. You’re going to get bombarded with ads. They’re promising a connection that right now at your fingertips is every person that you could have ever wanted to talk to immediacy in conversation. They’re promising connection
0:12:04 Ben Wright: And a sense of purpose that comes with that.
0:12:05 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, absolutely. When I help you sell your business, we can do all that, but there’s this other stuff that comes with it. It’s almost like the how doesn’t matter. It’s the outcome completely here.
0:12:14 Ben Wright: Yeah, we are very much about outcomes. When I talk to an early entry salesperson, I’ll talk about the first thing you need to learn is your features and benefits. But if you stop there, this is the role you live in. The second thing you need to learn is the value that provides.
0:12:27 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:12:28 Ben Wright: Fantastic. You learn that you’ll become very good in the role that you work in and you’ll more than likely get promoted. The third piece is the outcomes you provide. So what are the features and benefits and the value you create? What does it lead to for the person at the other end or the business at the other end? Because if you get that right, that’s when you get to lead a business.
0:12:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, just bringing this down in Aleka, a little bit of it. One thing I saw recently was a personal trainer, like, going to help you work out every day. I was like, no one’s buying that program, so not one person is like, you know what? In that sounds great. No personal trainer gets up and goes, hey, listen, Ben, here’s the plan. 1500 calories, you’re going to do 100 burpees a day and 100 sit ups and 400 push ups. You in? That’s terrible. It is. You’re going to feel the best you’ve ever felt. It’s you’re going to live the life that you want to live. You’re going to have more energy or feel better. The process of getting there is almost irrelevant if the benefit’s good enough.
0:13:21 Ben Wright: Yeah, absolutely. So once we can roll that out across our organization at every level.
0:13:27 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:13:28 Ben Wright: We have a value proposition that multiplies as everyone knows about it. Right. Consistency does breed success. So we’re talking about understanding who your ideal customers are. Yes, absolutely. Number one, then we’re looking at why they choose us and why they don’t choose us. Number two, and then number three is building our value proposition out so we can actually talk to these people. Number four, this is where lead generation rubber hits the road. This is that. You know that saying wear the rubber off your shoes, right. This is all about understanding where they hang out. So it’s not where do they hang out on a Friday night? Although it could be, depending on the industry, it’s at a professional level. What’s the easiest place to engage with them? Is it social media? Is it trade shows? Is it through networking events? Is it through referrals, via, via partners? Is it through your extended database that you already have and you just need to be getting parts one, two and three? Right. And you already have that database out there to market to? Is it in podcasts? Is it creating a podcast? Is it advertising through a podcast? Is it through local community groups? We spoke last week about building revenue, and so many of these we didn’t talk about. But if we can understand where our ideal customer hangs out and they’re open to hear from us, bang, that’s it. That’s the silver bullet.
0:14:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: I will say this was so important for me and we a little bit different in our business, which is whereas our ideal client spending time and we talk about physical time, attention, economy time, and where they’re already spending money. And one of the time things that this was like the biggest kind of aha moment for me when I real, like this really came to fruition was at a nipple court. I play nipple. Not particularly good at it. We have a great time.
0:15:06 Ben Wright: What position?
0:15:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: I want to talk about that. Wing defense.
0:15:09 Ben Wright: Wing defense.
0:15:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: I know it’s a lot of money.
0:15:10 Ben Wright: So you’re a dower defender. That actually goes. I understand that now slightly violent and.
0:15:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Just having good time and just chasing the ball and not really getting anywhere. Really enjoy it. Anyway, I sent the net books and I had this client who is a tutor. He teaches and he has a tutoring school, and he was doing these things like he was in school magazines and he was sending fliers to the schools. And I said to him, you’re hitting the students. You’re not even hitting the parents. Like, you’re not even talking to the parents at that point, the decision maker in this situation is not going to be the child. The child, for the most part, is not making the financial decisions. They’re not pulling the trigger on what is profitable and what is necessary for their education. You need to be talking to the parents. And so that I hang the phone up. This was so beautiful. I hang the phone up, I go downstairs. I walk across the road to Flagstaff Gardens in Melbourne, where I play netball. Walk across and I look at how many parents are sitting at the courts and waiting for their children, and they’re watching their kids and they’re paying attention. They’re talking to other parents.And I rang him back and he said, oh, is everything right? I said, I figured it out. Sponsor your local courts. Go to the netball. Go to the. And it was such a lo fi idea that ended up having to put on five more staff.
0:16:26 Ben Wright: Yeah. Cool.
0:16:27 Jemimah Ashleigh: He had a brick and mortar business and I was like, I’ve never worked with someone to get more visibility for a tutoring school before. Great opportunity. But it became this really tactile thing, and that’s all he does now, is the local tennis courts, the footy clubs, the cricket clubs, sponsors movie nights and puts on barbecues, and every parent sends their child to the tutoring school to get additional grades.
0:16:48 Ben Wright: Yeah. There’s a really powerful message here. The buzz at the moment is social media, and I get it. It’s important I subscribe to it.
0:16:57 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes, you do.
0:16:57 Ben Wright: Right. But you can use it in different ways. I actually don’t use it to generate leads. I use it for social proof. Right. But a lot of the businesses I work with do. But it’s not the only way now to generate leads. And some of the tried and tested methods of generating leads are still really, really relevant. And it is absolutely fine if your business generates its leads from Saturday and Sunday morning netball. But you’ve got to know what works, because if you get that right, that’s actually what leads into point number five, which is about review, refine and rollout.
0:17:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:17:35 Ben Wright: So that’s. Take these options you have community groups, radio, social media, referrals, project partners, all of these things. Take them, try them, but review them regularly.
0:17:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, right.
0:17:46 Ben Wright: Monthly or quarterly, depending on your business. I wouldn’t recommend you do it weekly, certainly monthly or quarterly, depending on these resources. Have a look what works. Reinvest into what doesn’t work. Refine. So the review is. Let’s have a look how we’re going. The refine includes either going out to those that didn’t work and just tweaking them or finding those that did and going out even harder. Right. And then re rollout is actually rolling that out, because what will happen over time is those six or eight things you try will start to condense. We’ll find two or three that work. We’ll invest really heavily in those. They’ll work even better. There will likely come a point in time where one of them will stop working. We go back to the toolbox and we pick more out and we roll through it. But it’s really important that reviewing, refining and rolling out. And my number one tip here is to make sure that you’re scheduling in those review periods in every program I do, we make sure that we have it scheduled. So you know what works.
0:18:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: Well, it’s this after for thought, right? Oh, it’s been working for a while. It’s always worked. Has it?
0:18:43 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:18:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: Five monkeys is very real, as we know in every business.
0:18:46 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:18:47 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. My number one takeaway here, Ben. Like, really hard to do this one. Really hard to come up with a number one takeaway for this. Like, I’m gonna break the rules, all of it. But I will say probably my number one here is find what works for you here. One of the things that I think that we can get really caught in is the social media. I’ve got to run ads. I’ve got to get lead acquisition that way. I’ve got to get these people where’s their hands that way. I think it really can be as simple as the nipple court solution. Where are those people spending their time and money already and hammering those places? And if you are stark, I would be saying, go back to where most of your clients have come from, because if you look at the journey that all of your customers have been on, I think it’s a really good place to go. Well, this is already naturally working.
0:19:27 Ben Wright: Yeah. Cool. Okay. I love it. I really do like that as a number one. I’ll just quickly recap the five. So number five is understand your ideal customer profile. Right. Then why they do or don’t choose. You get your unique value proposition down pat so that everyone understands it within your business. Find out where your customers hang out so you can target them and then review, refine and roll out or measure what you’re doing. : For me, my number one tip is to actually take those five and do something with it by including everyone that’s relevant in your business. Because if we can actually take that, apply it to our team, it takes about half a day. I do it all the time, constantly running this exact workshop. Right. If you do that with the team, then everyone buys in, and then when everyone buys in, they’re more likely to implement it. So it also helps us to bring in some terrific perspectives outside of our own. But that’s my number one.
0:20:17 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, I think we keep coming back to these systems and results and just this continuous cycle that we have to keep doing these things. And it really does come down to that, doesn’t it?
0:20:26 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Well, business is hard. I took the road less traveled and it made all the difference. And along the way, I made some friends in business, which is who we are. So please get in touch with us. Let us help you. Even just social media messages, we’re here to do that.
0:20:39 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, come have a chat with us, please. We love to hear what you guys are up to and let us know what tips below. Let us know. Tell us what’s really working for you and what silver bullet maybe has made all the difference for you so far.
0:20:49 Ben Wright: Awesome. Well, until next week, we’re your friends in business. Bye for now.
0:20:52 Jemimah Ashleigh: See you then.
