[social_warfare]

SHOW NOTES

A lot of people think marketing and business is rocket science.

Spoiler alert, it’s not.

When you’re faced with problems in your marketing or business, there’s usually a simple solution.

There are no ninja tricks required, just bring it back to the basics and make sure you know your numbers.

I once helped a guy at a mastermind I was attending figure out how to solve his issue of not getting conversions on his sales calls by calling him out for not knowing his numbers, and it completely changed the game for him.

I want to help you do the same.

That’s why today’s episode is all about diagnosing your marketing and business problems. 

In it, I’m also sharing:

• The key metrics you need to be tracking + how to pivot based on your results
• My challenge to you that’ll help you solve your problems in a matter of hours

If today’s episode resonated with you, or if you’re taking part in the challenge I proposed, send me a message on Instagram (@emilyhirsh)!

If you’re feeling completely overwhelmed and need additional support in your marketing and business, visit helpmystrategy.com to see if you qualify to work with Team Hirsh.

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Emily Hirsh:

Hello everybody, welcome back to the podcast. How are you all doing my friends? Feels like a crazy, gosh, what a crazy year. And now the whole West Coast is on fire and I just can’t even believe 2020. My whole family and so many of my friends are in Northern California and it’s just so crazy to see what’s happening. I grew up there and this was not normal. We did not have fires like this growing up. I mean, there’d be like one big fire where the sky is a little bit smokey, like every five years, and you couldn’t go to soccer practice or something, but this is crazy. And I am just so sad about what’s happening there. I love California. I’m also glad that I moved away. I know it sounds bad, but it’s just not doing so well right now. And it’s really sad. So I feel heavy right now with just the world and what are my kids are gonna grow up into and just, I don’t know. It’s a lot. So sending everybody, I don’t know, good vibes. I don’t ever say that, but it’s a lot right now. This year is a lot and it just feels like sometimes like one thing after another. So who knows, we’re almost done and I don’t know what else might happen in this year. 

So today I want to talk about diagnosing your marketing and business problems. And on that, how it’s usually a lot more simple and basic than we think. And so this is inspired, I am a part of Alex Charfen’s a high level mastermind. I’ve been a part of it for a couple of years and he just did his live event. So I was at that all day recently, and we got broken out into breakout rooms to kind of go through questions, and one of them was, what’s the biggest thing you’re struggling with in your business? And there was a group of four of us and I was in there and someone asked a question and I answered it cause it was around marketing. And it just triggered this whole episode for me because I thought it was such a great topic and I think a lot of people can benefit from this. So I want to walk, I’m just going to walk through this scenario and then relate it back to kind of how to diagnose your business problems and struggles, and marketing problems and struggles, and show you how it most of the time is more back down to the basics, right?

So this person asked, they have a high ticket product that they sell. It costs $15,000 to buy the product. And so they are driving traffic to an application. They’re not a client of ours. This is somebody who I just met them, I didn’t even know them in the mastermind. And they were like, they were asking this question. So I’m giving you a background. They have a $15,000 product. They sell it through sales calls. They have, I think he said it was a webinar, some form of lead generation that then gets them to the sales call. So he said, “here’s my biggest problem is conversion. My business is not growing very much in the last three to six months. We’re getting leads and we’re getting calls, but we’re not converting them. And before, you know, three or four months ago when we did this mastermind, I thought my biggest problem was lead generation. Now I feel like it’s conversion of those calls, and so I don’t know what to do. Do I get new salespeople? What’s the problem?”

And so he was already jumping to this conclusion of do I get new salespeople? And do I make that big of a pivot? Like is it their fault, right? And so I stopped him and I loved, this is like my side business. Here’s what my dream would be is just like, side note, if anybody ever wants to do this, you think those businesses that are like your pipe dreams that are you don’t have time and focus for, but you know you totally crushed. I just want to hot seat people and fix their business because I am like very good at just getting straight to the point and being super direct at being like, here’s your problem. Do this, do this, and it fixes it. 

So I have so much fun doing that at masterminds. So I just asked him, I was like, well, what’s your sales conversion? I said, okay, how many leads have you… I think the first thing I said was, how many leads have you gotten? And how are you getting those leads? And then out of those leads, how many people are booking in calls? And out of that, how many people are converting to sales? And he sat there for like five seconds and he’s like, I’m so embarrassed to say this, but I don’t know any of those numbers. And I was like, you know, I’ve got to do a podcast on this because so many people are in that boat where we’re sitting here going, oh my gosh, my leads aren’t converting, my business isn’t growing, or whatever it is. Like my webinars is not converting, I’m not getting sales, my product isn’t selling. This is happening. This is happening. 

And we’re in chaos as a CEO and we don’t actually know what the problem is because we haven’t taken a step back, removed the emotion and the overwhelm and the stress from it and looked at the numbers. Because all he needs to do is go back. And I told him that I would help him if he did this, I have. And he got these numbers, but he needs to know these to make any decisions. And so he didn’t have these numbers, which means we actually don’t know the problem. And I walked him through this. I’m like, you have so many different scenarios of things that could be happening here that we can’t know without the metrics.

For example, your lead generation could be bringing in poor quality leads that are then booking calls that are then not converting. And so we have to see what’s happening in that lead generation phase. What’s the messaging behind that and what are those leads doing? What are they saying on calls? And you know, what are their objections? And then decide is the problem all the way at the entrance with the leads and not just the quality of leads, but maybe the messaging they’re hearing so they’re not qualified and ready by the time they get to the call? I said, or, you have a show up rate problem. Maybe they’re booking calls, but they’re not committed because it’s the way it’s being presented, or maybe you really do have a conversion problem on the sales call, but that doesn’t mean that your salespeople are bad.

And I should shout out Aandra here cause sometimes I, Aandra on my team, Aandra Bohlen, and because sometimes I work with someone for so long I start to sound like them and I’m like, oh my gosh she’s rubbed off on me. So it’s good. Aandra, if you need help with sales, that’s why I should be shouting out cause she’s helped me a lot with my own, not beliefs, but just strategies around seeing sales and jumping to the conclusion in your high ticket sales that it’s immediately the salesperson is usually wrong. And usually it’s what’s happening before they get to that call. So it’s the lead up and the messaging and the qualifying of that person. 

So I told them, yes, maybe you do have poor sales people who are not converting, but maybe also people are getting on that call and they’re not qualified because they don’t know anything about your product. They don’t know the cost. They think they’re just getting on to get more information, but you don’t know the answer to those things until you have your conversion numbers. So you need a metric at every step of your funnel and you need to know that. 

And so here’s the thing. This is one of those things that it’s like, we know to do this, but so many of us don’t. We should not be making any decisions without metrics. In my opinion, I think metrics should ground us and drive everything and decisions should be based off of that because it’s so easy to see problems when you look at numbers and this is why I’m obsessed with numbers, but this is like, when people say you should work out, you know, regularly, or every day. I’s like, we know this, but then we don’t do it. We know we should be tracking our numbers, but it overwhelmed so many people that they don’t do it. And so when you have right now, I want you to think about the biggest struggle and problem that you have in your business. Think about it, write it down, think through it. What is that biggest problem and struggle that you have in your business? Okay. Or your marketing? And then write that down. Okay. And then I want you to say, what are the metric or metrics tied to that problem? So let’s go through some examples. 

I’m not getting enough leads in my business. Okay. Well, what are the metrics that are tied to that? Your lead count, your cost per lead. If you’re running ads, your volume of leads. Okay. So all of those are the metrics. And so then you could look at, okay, I’m either paying too much cost per lead, or I maybe don’t have a strategy at all to get those leads and that’s my problem and I’m not running ads strategically. Right? Okay. Maybe your problem is sales conversion. So I’m not making enough sales with my leads or enough money in my business. Okay. Well, what are they converting? What do they need? What do you want them to buy? Okay. You got your offer. Okay. How many people bought out of your leads that went through your funnel? That’s your sales conversion percentage. What did it cost you to acquire that customer? What was your ROI on that? Okay. 

So all of those, what’s the biggest in your business? What are the metric or metrics attached to that problem? You have to know those metrics and then what do those metrics tell you? So if my problem is I’m not getting enough leads and my cost per lead is $12, my cost per lead is too high. So I either need to go fix my ad, fix my ad copy in my messaging, fix my targeting, or fix the offer I’m sending people to. Like, the PDF is not great, or the webinar title is not great, and the messaging hasn’t hit it yet. Hey, that’s all you focus on now. 

So here’s my challenge to you guys. I came up with this because this is what I was, I didn’t actually tell it to this person because I was thinking about it later. If you could dedicate two or three hours a week, block it on your calendar like a Friday, or whatever day you don’t have a lot of calls and you don’t have a lot of commitments and it’s your day to actually get stuff done and be a CEO. You all know what I’m talking about. For me, that’s Wednesday and Fridays. You have to havea date and you block off two or three hours, and all you do in those two or three hours is focused on your biggest marketing or business problem and how to fix it. Literally get a blank piece of paper, write down what your biggest problem is, your biggest struggle. Then make sure you have the metric and the metrics attached to it and you have the measure.

Now, the first week, if you do this and you don’t have the metrics measured that are attached to this problem then you have to go get them. That’s what you’re gonna spend your two hours doing. How do I get them? And how do I get a process in place to make sure I’m getting them on a regular basis? That’s step one, right? Then once you have those metrics, they’re going to tell you a story. They’re going to tell you what you need to do next. And out of those, spend that two or three hours doing that. Whether it’s delegating to people, brainstorming messaging ideas, brainstorming a new offer, a new webinar title, fixing your webinar, fixing your webinar slides, updating the way you position your offer. There’s so many things that you could do. So think through what is my biggest problem? What are the metrics attached to it? What are those metrics? Tell me. And then what are the action items I need to do based on those metrics. It’s literally that simple. I swear if you do that for the next month, come back and tell me your business didn’t grow because it will. And as a CEO, that’s where you should be putting your time is into that biggest problem and solving it because you’re the visionary, you’re the leader. 

Now let’s say that my biggest problem, let me just flip this for you guys and show you this. So I’m talking about all marketing metrics. Let’s say my biggest problem is hiring. Let’s say my biggest problem is team growth and I am not getting enough team members in and I need help. I’m overwhelmed and I need to hire people, but I don’t know how to find them. Okay. What’s the metrics attached to that? How many applications are you getting? How many interviews are you doing? Are they doing tests? How many people are doing tests? How many people are qualifying? How many offer letters are you sending to those people? Those are the metrics. Okay. 

If we start there, we’re not getting enough applications, number one, problem. How do I figure out how to get more applications? So if that’s your biggest problem, you can still use metrics for everything in your business. Maybe your biggest problem is retaining your customers. Okay, what’s your retention rate out of how many people who sign up for your program in the last month? How many people are asking for a refund or are canceling their membership? Okay. Now out of that, where does it need to be and where’s the drop-off? 

Spend your two or three hours a week fixing that problem. I think this is so good. I’m going to start doing it. So I’m going to start doing it with you guys because I think it also shines a light on where we don’t have metrics. And I see this so often. This person asking this question as a three and a half million dollar business, and he doesn’t know what his sales calls are converting at and he has a three and a half million dollar business. So it’s so common to not know this. And he could probably be making so much more money if he was focusing on these metrics and focused in on action items to fix and update those metrics, right? 

So we often get in this place where we’re like overwhelmed and we’ve got this problem. And we’re like, I don’t know what to do, I don’t have the answer. And you’re just overwhelmed. Like I’ve been there so many times. I know so many people who have been there, but really if we take a step back, most of the time the answers are going back to the basics and are simple. So for me telling him, you gotta get all the metrics that are related to this to figure out the main problem. That’s a simple, that’s like, duh, I knew that when I had a six figure business, I definitely know that when I have a multi seven figure business, but yet I was not doing it, right?

He hears that and he’s like, oh my gosh, of course, now I can just go do that. You just solved my problem, I don’t even need to be here. Right? And then also messaging and qualifying as leads. I told him that’s probably what it is, that’s probably the biggest thing is around your messaging. We always have room for improving the way we’re talking to our audience and talking to our leads in order to get them to convert. And that’s probably where the issue is. Again, back to the basics of it’s not rocket science. Business is really not, it’s not rocket science. It’s not so complicated and secret and like only some people have the solutions. It’s literally doing what works over and over again and sticking to those basics and that foundation and scaling that. That will grow your business tremendously. 

So I want to hear from you guys on this one. Send me an Instagram message or reply to our email and just let me know if you’re going to implement this in your business and try it out for four weeks. Like literally just set aside two hours a week, not even that much time, to focus on your biggest problem in your business. And it might be the same every week. That’s totally normal and fine, and make sure when you focus on a business problem that you have metrics attached to it so those metrics can tell you what you should be doing and the actions that you should be taking. Thanks so much for listening today guys, I’ll see you all in the next episode.