The Buyers Journey - Liz Bloch

Website: https://lbfundamentals.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizblochcoach/

00:01
Buddy, welcome to my session i'm Liz Bloch and I am delighted that you popped plague on this presentation that I'm doing. My accent is because I'm in New Zealander, so I live way down under in Auckland or just outside of Auckland on a horse farm. Horses are my passion and they are why I am no longer doing the corporate job I used to do, which was that as a project program manager used to work worldwide, but the trouble was I had to do 12 to 18 hour days. 

00:29
It doesn't leave much time to have a life no ride of my horses. So that's why I decided to create this personal brand business that I run now. And oh lordy, it's been a journey, right it's been a voyage of discovery every step of the way. And that is what I'm about to take you on now but specifically, I call this the buyer's journey. And there are 5 stages to this buyer's journey and I want to break them down for you because what I see happening out there in the world and what what I was always doing is I would be talking at the wrong time to the right person and not getting the sale. 

01:09
So talking at the wrong time to the right person. So I had to figure out why the heck do I know how to help everybody? Because I know how to help you, but why couldn't I get you to be a buyer? What was I missing? And this is going to be tailored specifically for the people who are like me we're building personal brand businesses. So what is a personal brand business you're basically selling your you your services and that's how you want to now make your income. Now the core frustration is that I experienced and perhaps that's why you are here and why you are listening to me right now is because you've had people like your stuff, you've had people engage with you, you've had people really close to purchasing and then you never hear from them again potentially all these are potentially or you know, there's something not quite working, you're missing something and how do we know we're missing something we're not getting the outcome we want. 

02:05
And of course, personal brand businesses who want to become profitable businesses need sales and we need clients. And if you are not getting them, that means there's something missing. And the key thing, because you've heard it probably 52 times just in these sessions, but the biggest thing we need as personal brand businesses is an audience. We need an email list now, I still say you need an email list because all of the other products that we are on, whether it be in social marketing, WordPress for blogging, for example, or even YouTube for longer film content, you can't guarantee your content is always going to be available something may happen to that platform facebook, Instagram are good examples of that the amount of times I got depublished I've lost count of, so I no longer rely on that tool. 

02:58
But what I do have is in my email list and maybe you are now going to join my email list so I can contact you and talk to you when I need to. So that is what we need to understand is, well how do we get people on that list in the 1st place? How do we build our audience and the real thing that I'm going to hopefully, and I say hopefully because we might not be a match, right well, how I describe this might not work for you, but for those of you who this actually creates some awarenesses and some new ways of thinking inside of what you're doing. 

03:33
I call this the golden key. What I'm about to go through, because when you understand how to position, message and market your services to the audience, you're going to be able to sell anything. Now, there is a process for this it is called the buyer's Psychology way back in 1966 which honestly sometimes doesn't feel that long ago, but it feels like forever ago depending on how old you are right now. He wrote a book called Breakthrough Advertising you can still get this book. And what this book talks about is the five stages of awareness that an individual goes through in terms of finding out about something and then buying it. 

04:23
And that's what I'm going to step you through today because we often are taught it's a hustle culture, right do more, have more, be everywhere. And whilst that's true, what is more important is we are writing the right content at the right stage for our buyer. And that is what I'm going to work through so the first stage we call the ice stage. Now the ice stage is twofold in the way I'm going to describe these. Ice is in. They don't know who you are. I've never met you before. 

04:57
They have no idea you exist. They might be browsing, which is how they figure out you exist. They could be like a session like this, right you didn't know I existed until you hit play. Now that is the ice stage for us in terms of our funnel. Now in terms of your customer, the ice stage is simply where they are symptom aware and they have no clue what the problem is. Now if you're a coach or you're a trainer or an educator, you often do understand that there's a big difference between a symptom, a problem and A cause. 

05:39
And we often write our material at the cause level we know exactly what the problem is. But here's the the situation when we're building our funnels and we're building our lists, we have to remember there's going to be a lot of vice people around, IE they've become aware of their problem, but they don't know, sorry, they've become symptom aware, but they don't know what the real problem is. 

06:02
So an example that will hit close to home for some of you is you don't know why you can't sign clients. It's bizarre. The symptom is you're not signing clients, but you don't know why. And it's something that's starting to, you know, book you a little bit. So that's the first stage. The second stage is cold. So they're not so icy anymore they're warming up slowly and that's when they become pain aware. So if I use my little example that I used for my ice stage in that we are aware through a symptom, not making sales so I'm not making sales. I've not got any money now it's becoming painful. 

06:47
I'm not making sales, so I'm not getting to help people. And worse, potentially my income is 0 and how the heck am I going to keep the lights on, right so that's how we go from symptom to pain. That pain is becoming something that is going to empower or motivate or create a step to the next stage, which is why did that go backwards? Sorry about that people. We just go on, which is the warm stage. This is the best stage for us, right this is where the person has now become problem aware. Ok the problem is I don't have clients and I'm not signing clients because and they're now starting to look exactly at that because reason they are starting to look online and do some research they're evaluating. 

07:44
They're probably looking into your material a little a bit more now because they've come out of symptom and pain and they've come to problem aware. Then they start to ask themselves these questions internally. They go from the what to the hell, what is the problem? Why is it occurring? How do I fix it? The minute we're in the house stage, we then are eagerly looking for solutions. Now this is the beautiful thing about us as human beings, when we have problems, we're always looking for solutions right now, I'm going to talk about a little tool that I use quite a lot of my business in a bit to explain this in a granular more detail. 

08:28
But for now, when we're finally in solution, your buyer is hot. This is where they're going to want to know more about you, more about how you work, more about what it is that you do, more about how what you do can help them get what they want, not what they need, what they want. And here's the very interesting thing to remember. In order for them to get to the fifth stage, which is to become your beautiful buyer at the hot stage, they have one primary question we must answer. 

09:04
And that question is, will it work for me? And you must be able to answer that question in a way that builds confidence inside of them that no matter what they've tried in the past and possibly failed at, you are going to solve it and help them achieve their outcome. And then of course, they've become a beautiful buyer and here to me is where the real work begins because this is where we get into that fantastic opportunity to deliver our services and help a human being transform and become the vision of them that they want to become. 

09:40
So if you're a coach like me, they're going to have that profitable business. If you're somebody who teaches somebody to speak English as a second language, their English is going to get more going, to get more confident. If you're somebody who gets people, helps people lose weight, they're going to do that, right this is when they become that client that is when your work begins. That is the fun stage. Most of us just want to get to the stage and we find bringing somebody through ice, cold, warm, hot a bit challenging and sometimes a little daunting and overwhelming and that is why we can sometimes make these big mistakes. 

10:15
And that's what I really want you to think about when we go through this next stage because here are some big mistakes we could have the right content, right we could have everything we need, we have, but guess what we're doing? We're putting it in the wrong stage of that buyer's journey. So what do I mean, We're making offers when our when our prospects are still in the ice in the cold stage, they're not ready for an offer. And that could be what turns them off because we haven't given them the symptom problem information 1st. 

10:51
We could also be overloading them with so much information that they're getting lost in it, or they're feeling like, okay, I've got enough information, I don't need your help. So we have to again, be very strategic because we want to guide them through this process. I hope you're understanding now why you don't need masses of content you don't need to spend hours and hours on a lot of things. You just need to do the right things in the right order in a pathway. And then of course, the biggest thing in today's market, because the market has changed and evolved. It used to be you only needed to have about one to six touch points in the early days. 

11:34
Touch points, meaning that they see your stuff or they've spoken to you people they will buy. Now it's up to a whopping 20 to 60 touch points. So if you're stuck in this, it's not working and you're trying to make it mean that you aren't doing the right things. It's possible that is correct, but more likely the guiding of them to make a purchase decision needs tightening up. So let's talk about that. 

12:06
Let's talk about how we can move our buyers from that ice stage or even get them to the ice stage in some cases to being buyers. And I also like to think of that in four steps. We have to build the awareness. So people need to know we exist. No point being the best coach, the best teacher, the best trainer, the best tech specialist, whatever it is that you do, dietitian nutritionist, if nobody knows you exist. So we have to build that awareness and we have to build that awareness with what I call, you're right, people. 

12:44
I used and inside my membership, I call this fruit salad marketing. And what I mean by that is if you go out to the world and you go, hey, I've got this beautiful bowl of fruit salad, come on in if you like fruit salad, I've got fruit salad, fruit salad, come on in. But by the time you're ready to pitch, you're pitching them bananas and then you're going shed why is nobody wanting my bananas they all wanting oranges and apples and melons nobody wants a banana. And that's because your marketing was wrong at the front, right? That's like ocean marketing. 

13:15
We want to get narrow and specific simply because when we want to sell what we sell, which we, we start with our offer and they say your offer is a banana. You need to tell them that's what you've got. So that you're right people come in and then if you want to get more granular, because look to me, The Who is everything and not that high level ideal client avatar stuff, that the real who, the psychology of what it is that they really want, why they want it, what they actually need, how they're thinking, All of that stuff is so important. 

13:47
So that's your right person who is the right person for you to work with? What sort of mindset do they have? What sort of action do they take? What is their standard of living where do they live there's lots of things that go into that. Then of course, we want to think about how they're going to consider things, how we're going to start to build that trust that we have what they want before they even start on the real journey towards making a purchase decision. 

14:14
And then when it gets to decision time, we want to help them make those decisions because, you know, you hear the phrase objections. They've got objections well, I like to make it even more simple they've got concerns, they've got questions. The more people you get to talk to who are your right people, the more you will understand what those questions and concerns are. And then guess what happens in your messaging when you're putting together the content for the different stages? You will start to be able to answer those questions and concerns before they even voice them. 

14:51
That is the quickest way to build trust. And then and of course, action, again, humans, sometimes we need a reason to buy and so that's where we have to create that urgency and make it really simple for them to say yes. So let's dig into what that really looks like. So again, at the ice stage where we want to build that new awareness, hey, we exist and we can, we've got these skill sets and this could be where you're at right now, IE this could be your symptom. 

15:21
So these are typically going to be short form content. They could be a social media post, a LinkedIn post, it could be an ad, it could be a blog post. So these are quick at this stage, the ICE stage, they're only going to give you one to two minutes of their time. They're not going to read a scientific method on how to do something and they need it to be liked. They need it to be entertaining because at this point, remember they only have a feeling of a symptom. I don't know how I do this i've got no idea, but I've got no clients or for me, I can talk you through an example of I had a very sore back. 

16:06
Now it turns out my sore back was nothing to do with my back, but my symptom was my back. So at this stage, like I said, sure, quick i'm only going to give you one to two minutes it's why you've got to stand out. And here's why that's being specific works because I'm flicking through something or I'm reading something in this stage and suddenly I read something that hits me because it's personal. 

16:30
This is what's exactly going on. This is exactly my symptom. That then leads you into the cold stage where they start to consider what you are saying. This is where you're building awarenesses this is where they're going. Oh, that's right she said that the next step, and this could be that. How interesting. So this is where they're going to give you a bit more of their time they're going to think to themselves, oh, I'm going to invest a bit more time and, and listen in a little bit more. So we want this content to be value packed. 

17:03
We want it that helps them connect dots inside their own thinking so that they build that level of awareness so if I use the, I don't have clients. So here I could say, look, it's possible you don't have clients not because you don't know what you're doing, but because your audience is too small. And so we need to now focus on how do we get an audience that is full of buyers for you. 

17:33
I could give you the following because I want to make it fun. You only owe me 5 to 10 minutes, right 5 to 15 minutes. I can create a simple guide. I could give you a mini training. I could set up a quiz. I could set up just APDF that's going to help you brainstorm a few things. So these things again are simple they're fun they like they are written in non-technical language, right they're easy to consume your goal here at these two stages. Fun, light, but full of new awarenesses you're helping them connect the dots you're helping them go from Oh my God, my back is killing me to oh, it might not be the way I'm sleeping it could be because my hip flexes are a bit too tight i remember reading something about that. 

18:19
I remember seeing this guide about how these things connect that leads them to the next stage what's the next stage the warm stage, the best stage for us because this is where they're going to give us a walking 30 minutes to 2 hours. So this is where we get to have fun, right and this is where we start to really build trust because this is what you want to be able to do with them is what I call sequential learning. 

18:43
You want to help them have a new understanding in an easy way so that they start off here at a Oh my God, I don't know what to do. And they get to be going, OK, I've got that that makes sense to me i can do that. So that is what we would do in a webinar, a master class, a video series, a challenge, a demo, a book, what I typically call your sales system, 30 minutes to two hours and what is important in here is you are transferring certainty and trust. They need to start having faith and confidence that you can really help them. And here's the more important thing, they need to start to have confidence and faith and certainty and trust in the themselves that they can achieve what they want to achieve. 

19:30
So that's the purpose of this phase that's the type of content you should be looking at creating. Which then of course, for those hot, hot, hot people, leads them into action. They're going to be ready to pull out that credit card and pay you. So this is what it looks like it's usually your pitch, your sales call, or your sales page. Now at this stage, remember what I said about objections just being concerns and unanswered questions? This is where you want to make sure you are answering them before they get to ask them. If they're asking you those questions, take note to make sure you include that in either your warm or your hot assets. 

20:15
The next go around, because the quickest way to build trust with somebody is to answer the questions they already have before they answer them, they may think, oh, this person really knows what they're talking about this person can help me. This person's a bit different. So at this stage you can see they're willing to give you one to two hours, they're willing to give you a lot of time. So I teach audience build platforms and these are your long standing pieces of content so these things go into YouTube broadcast blogs, something that's really searchable because at this stage they may be on a call with you, but they'll also be looking into your content. 

21:00
They'll also be wanting to research you a little bit more and depending on your niche, depending on how competitive it is or how busy it is. This is why it is so important as business owners that we regularly produce this content into what I your audience build platform. So that in a nutshell is the buyer's journey. So I hope that I've made it quite clear why we can go from ice to cold to warm to hot and you can imagine if an ice person comes in with a symptom and you're saying, hey, come book a call, hey, come buy my stuff. 

21:34
Why are you hearing crickets? Because we haven't earned the right to pitch. So this is the big shift. The big shift is, I want you to think about the fact that you don't have to convince anybody to buy your stuff either. You just guide them and you guide them by showing them that you can help them. We're humans. We want connection. And particularly now that everything seems to be, you know, use AI, do this with AI. But we're humans we don't want AI we can sniff it out. 

22:04
Don't you sniff that out when you read it. So what we want is that connection we want to know somebody's in our corner, somebody's going to help us, somebody sees us, somebody values us. The next thing you need to think about is you want to align your messaging and your offers so that the pitch just happens naturally it's what they're expecting and in fact, it's what they're wanting to hear and sometimes how you know this is working, that you have got your buyer's journey worked out and mapped out and it's beautiful. 

22:35
Is that at that warm? They're already saying to you, how do I work with you? They're already asking that question. And then of course, the best part, don't figure it out alone. What do I mean by that yes, of course you can come work with me and I'm going to help you go through this in a structured, planned way. However, you know your person, you know who you want to work with, go talk to them, go have conversations with them, not conversations to sell conversations where you're starting to understand their mind when they thought they were in, you know, when they thought this, what their symptoms were and then they learnt no well, the symptoms suddenly becomes this big pain and this big pain became this super big problem and that's when I took action. 

23:17
If you can get the languaging that they use, your messaging becomes even more effective. And so I, I, I really want to dial this in i really want you to hear me. Trust and certainty is what everybody is growing. That's why we can't speed things up. And if you are selling a high ticket offer in today's market, you're going to have to work a little bit harder then you used to have to work to get that trust and certainty and that's why you need to know you're who. 

23:52
Because if you're who has tried and failed many, many times, they're going to be cynical. They're going to look at it sideways it doesn't mean they don't want what you're offering. It doesn't mean that they themselves don't want that that result. It just means they're going to be a bit dated. So think about that as you build out your content and I really want to emphasize, this that certainty and trust, it doesn't come from out there, which is why you can't convince them, OK it comes from internally, It is within you, it's within them, it's their heart, it's their emotions, it's their feelings, it's the things that they hope for. 

24:35
So really and truly, in order to be able to sell them, you first need to find an audience that is your audience that you connect with, that you know you want to help and support. And then it's just about packaging and positioning your messaging along this buyer's journey. So that's the key. And when it comes to certainty and trust, I always talk about it like this, like you're when you're not certain, when you're full of doubts and fear and you know, if you're building a business, it could be you're an imposter syndrome who might help them there's so many more people that can help me like no, enough, I need to learn more. 

25:17
I'm not ready time isn't right. Ok, that can all be going on and you're not, you might not be sure enough and you might be lacking in belief and you certainly don't have the confidence. And so if you're out there marketing with that, then I like to think that you're this dimmed rightful. So when we're trying to bring and say, Hey, make me aware of people, we've got to be out here shining brightly, right? And if we're in this dimmed fear based place, we don't want to be out there shining brightly. We're crawled up and scared and in our caves. And so I teach something called my think framework, which takes you from that and makes you all big and bright. 

25:55
And here's one of the little tools I use i'm sorry, I'm not an artist, but here's what we tend to forget because here's what we know we know that we're standing where we are and we're looking up the hill we're going. I want to help 10 people. I want to make twenty thousand dollars. I want to feel like I've got a reason to be on this planet, whatever it is, right we're looking up, but then we realize Oh my God, I don't have the skills, I don't understand this selling stuff i can't get people into my world, why isn't it working and we start to fall down into what I call the river of shit that is floating shit people. 

26:33
And if we are not careful, we're on our backs. No, I can't do it anymore. So are your people. So what I want you to remember is how far you've come. And more importantly, anybody you're going to help. They're down there, they're behind you. So they're looking up at you going, oh, I want what they've got. Oh, I want to learn what they've done. I want to actually achieve what they've already got. So never, ever, ever sit there and think to yourself, I'm not good enough because you are. Because you are getting better, hence you're looking up hence you're going through your own skill building building a business is all about building skill. 

27:15
Building a skill takes time. Give it time, but remember you're advanced, you're going up a stage, they're behind you. You've already done this work that they're now doing 9 times out of 10, right? Because I'm, I'm thinking most of you solve problems you had to solve for yourself. So that's what gets you out of the imposter syndrome because you're not going to help people who are way up here advanced than you. You're helping the people down here as you continue to grow and develop. And so I want you to hold on to that because that helps you shine bright this is part of my think framework, right? And that my friends, my beautiful people who stayed with me and listened to this, that's the buyer's journey. 

28:04
And I really hope that you found that useful and that I have helped you understand why producing the right content at the right stage is going to help you turn all of those beautiful people that you want into buyers. And just before I leave you, I'm going to blow your mind a little bit and I'm going to show you how you would map this out as projects. Because in order to get a client, you must start with your offer. 

28:34
If you cannot tell me what problem you solve, how you solve it, how much it will cost, how or what bonuses you may get, and why you must buy it in X time. That's your work immediately. Then you can come backwards and then you can write your pitch, which is your hot asset. When you have your pitch, you can then come and do your warm asset content for your sales system. When you have that written, guess what you're able to then do? You can then unpack it for your cold and your ice people because you know that the problem you solve way up here starts off with this little symptom. 

29:22
And that's what you're going to tune into. And that's how you're going to bring all of the ice people into your funnel and warm them up to hot and come out with buyers. And here's the key thing I want you to go away and think about building a business is really, really simple. Simple does not mean easy. You only need to do 3 things. You need to have an audience build strategy and an audience build platform. So how do I turn strangers into leads? And that is this process, the sale system. 

29:53
How do I get my warm and hot people to be buyers and then delivery over deliver. I'm I'm a big person of undercharge and over deliver. I've always been like that because I meet my clients where my clients are AT and I want them to be successful. So I hope you found that useful. I have enjoy talking to you through this medium my door is always open if you have any questions if I can answer anything further then please let me know. 

30:21
If you come into my world, I do this as a master class but I go much deeper into a lot of it. So yes, I hope I get to hear from you and please feedback i love feedback, good, bad and ugly. Tell me what you thought and I hope you get a lot of value from the rest of this summit. I will talk to you all later bye.