 Hi, I'm Mark and I'm here with Chris and we're going to help you to sell services now with confidence If you have no clue what we're doing over here Make sure you check out this first video in this playlist and everything will become clear. So in this video We're going to actually talk about a real-life situation and real-life sales challenge that we got from the community And we're going to do this in the Chris though fashion and that is through role play, right Chris? That's right. I'm excited to do this with you, Mark. All right. So let's paint picture here You're not you're going to be the creative the service designer I'll I'll play the client in this case. We're at a networking meeting. So There's no proposal. It's like a pre getting to know each other stage and You you're trying to explain to me what service design is because you're super passionate about service design You love it and you think every the whole world should know I run a small construction business and you think yeah Construction business is a service business. So why not they might need service design and Let's start at the point where I respond to your initial Words I'm a service designer. That's what I do Chris. Tell me what is it? What is that you do again? Mark I'm a service designer Essentially what we try to do is to design the experience for your customers and This applies many different things not just the screens. That's essentially what we do. Wow Interesting it does sound kind of vague. So You do design you make you make you make logos No, we don't make logos per se We kind of look at the entire journey the path that a person that is a leader or prospect Comes in contact with your company How they become interested aware and why they engage and and why they purchase and what happens afterwards Hmm. All right Still are you familiar with this concept? Not really. I know I my nephew does design and I don't really know what services are. We you know, I run a construction business. So It's it's kind of kind of abstract to me what you what you're just describing. Sorry Okay, do you ever think about How your customers come to find you And why they choose to work with you. Hmm. Well, yeah, not a lot. I'm busy. But yes We have we have a marketing guy who does that So let's let's flip it around Chris. This was a good attempt, but I know I know you can do better I think a lot of people recognize the situation Let's see if we can sort of Um tweak it and make it less awkward and better for for the service design. All right We bump into each other. There we go again. So, uh, chris good to see you again, man. Um, what was it again that you did? Well, mark, thank you for remembering me in the first place and I think the approach I took last time I I I see that you were confused. Let me take a different tactic. If you don't mind Let me ask you a little bit about the kinds of business goals that you have. What are you trying to accomplish with your business? Yeah, man We run a construction business and construction is is booming right now. So our our goal is always to serve our clients better we want more satisfied customers because those are ambassadors and Um, we want to grow we need to expand that's that's basically our goal But I thought this was about what you do, right? Yes, and so here's the thing that I know is I can talk all day about me But I think this is to borrow a quote from Seth Godin. We don't want to get email We want to get me mail only things that are relevant to me So I I think it's beneficial for both of us if I just spend a little bit time trying to understand What it is that is important to you So what I heard you say if I may play back what you just said, which is You have clients and you want to create more satisfied customers and that's a way that you can grow and expand your business Did I get that right? Absolutely. Yeah, that's what we're aiming for Perfect. So let me ask you a couple of questions then. Who are these kinds of clients and how do you increase customer satisfaction? Hmm Yeah, so if I look at our existing client base, there are people living in suburbs moving to a new house wanting to make a place Um, their own, you know, they're looking for a unique style and we want our catered to that So for us, it's really important And we know who these people are and and be able to help them fast And at a decent price that they don't pay premium prices. That's basically our What we try to position ourselves at And is your business in building custom homes? Is it remodels or is it just about Getting them into one of the properties you've developed We do both and You know, if you if you ask me what's there to my heart, I like to develop the new stuff But the remodeling is it's a huge business. So but My heart tells me I want to I want to build homes from scratch Hmm. Okay. I think that's probably really fun to build something totally custom and unique for the individual Right and you don't have to deal with the existing problems of an existing structure If you were to look at your business from a a high level, are you familiar with the Pareto principle? Yeah, the 80 20 something like that, right? Yeah, right like where 80 percent of your revenue comes from 20 percent of your efforts And although you passionately feel great about building new homes. Where's the biggest revenue source? Is it in doing remodels new homes or something else? Yeah Yeah, that's some remodeling thing for sure. Yeah Okay, so would it make the most sense to focus right now? Even though you don't love it 100 percent that it is the biggest driver of revenue for your business Yeah, probably probably, you know, those are the tough tough discussions But yeah from business perspective, that would be the smart move Okay, so now when people have options and they can choose you they can choose your competitors or someone else What is the biggest driver of how they make their decision? Like, why did they choose you versus your competitor? Hmm It's a great. That's a great question. I would hope it's the quality of work we do, but I'm not entirely sure man Mm-hmm. And you're not alone in this and that many of us are busy running our business and trying to provide the best Craft and skill and Do the work fast as you mentioned and also to do it at a competitive price not necessarily cheap but just not Not expensive And so we don't take a lot of time thinking about who our customers are and how we can build a stronger relationship for them What that in a nutshell is what service design is We take a look at your customers and the customers you like to have more of And we try to design a path so that you can more clearly communicate things that they value So that they're more likely to choose you versus someone else Let's unpack what just happened here. Okay Chris help us out. What was the difference between the first and the second situation? I think the tendency mark is that when somebody asks you a question like what do you do? Oh, that's my opportunity to talk And what we have to do is realize That talking about ourselves unless it's framed within the lens of what's helpful or interesting to the other person It's really dull and not interesting at all And we know this because when we meet somebody and we're watching people and when two people get together and start Engaging with one another If you really lean in if you're really listening and you're giving the other person your soul focus and attention They feel really special. They feel important They feel heard and then rapport and trust can be built But if the opposite happens, which is i'm just talking about myself like aren't I so great like check out these projects I've won these awards Then you just become a know-it-all and Someone who brags a lot and we know how we feel about those kind of people. We're not really connected to them So the first thing that we should do is to resist the temptation Of taking on a question and just talking all the time You need to know this that If you can just talk less and ask more questions You will have a better chance of understanding the problem. Here's the thing the client has a goal in their mind But it's not clear to them in their mind just yet And what we have to do is ask questions to help them surface what the real problem and their goals are So that we can think how might I best solve this problem? yeah, and you you can have a few questions that lead up to or Relate to the thing you're doing like when you ask, do you know how your customers? Find you do you know what they value about you? Those are all things that sort of link Where you can make the connection with what you do, right? You can have those questions in your mind Yes, and some people would refer to these as socratic questions If you're a fan of chris voss who wrote the book never split the difference. He calls them calibrated questions They're usually questions start with what or how How do customers pick you? What is it that you're trying to do? What are the challenges that you face in your business? What are what is your ultimate goal? Makes a lot of sense. So the general advice, I guess when when a client tells you, you know, it's it's vague It's abstract. I don't I don't really get it would be not to explain more but to ask more questions Have I summarized that? Yeah, yes, you have I think in the first scenario We already got off to a really bad start because I've already been too busy talking about myself, right? That's not a good way to talk now if you had only an elevator ride up the the elevator pitch You won't have the time to ask all these kinds of questions So what do you do if you're in a situation like that somebody leans over it's like, oh, that's interesting What do you do? What are you doing at this conference? And you know, you have a 30 second ride up The framework that you want to use there is you want to say do you know this problem? That's what I help people solve So you just identify the problem. Do you know how Companies oftentimes don't understand why customers leave them for another competitor or why they even pick them in the first place They're like, yeah Well, that's what I help clients understand exactly the door opens should we exchange information or not? Yeah All right Let let me know let us know in the comments if you've ever encountered such a situation just IPS or is this familiar we'd love to know and Let us know if we need to elaborate on this In the next video because we have got a few more coming We're going to talk about the situation where a client is reluctant or hesitant to Engage with you in the discovery stage in the research stage Because they already know what their clients want, right? So they they know who their customers are Why should they do research? You're going to hear how chris handles that situation if you're interested in that click this video over here And we'll see you over there