The #1 Most Important Thing In Any Business You Should Know

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What's up, what's up Performance Marketers. How are you doing today? Today we're going to talk about something that has been coming up a bunch as I'm working with people. And it is the most important thing that you need to know when you are starting any business, or you're in a business and you're struggling to get sales. So stick around and I will tell you what that is in a few seconds after this intro.

I spent the last 17 years building my eight-figure performance business without using any of my own money, working with some of the most brilliant direct response marketers in the world today. Now I'm looking for entrepreneurs to join my affiliate army, built on ethics, transparency, and good old hard work. Join me to change the perception of how people view the greatest business in the world, affiliate marketing, and follow along, as I learn, apply, and share performance marketing strategies for working with some of the brightest people on the planet. My name is Eric Beer, and welcome to the Performance Marketer Podcast.

When you're starting any business, typically, most people will start to think about product, solution, results, things that they're going to want to get done. When I'm helping somebody build a survey, we'll ask, "What's the goal of your survey?" And as we go through the process, it's, "Well, I want to sell more products, I want to I want to sell my services." "What's your sales process?" "Well, I'll drive them to a webinar and then I'll sell them." Or "I want them to book a phone call and then I dial them and we qualify them and try to close them on the phone." Or "We'll get them to sign up for something free, we'll indoctrinate them with some emails, and then we'll close them." And that's all great and dandy, right? But then when you start to get into what the business is all about, the question is, you need to know who it is you're speaking to, before you can ever do any of those things. And I think that one of the biggest mistakes that most businesses make is they skip over the part where you're building out your ideal customer, where you're currently going after the people that you want to buy your product that people that want your solution for the problem that they're having. But what happens is, is that I think companies will create a target, you know, a general target. I'm targeting entrepreneurs, or I'm targeting moms, and once they do that, they'll start going into the process, but they have challenges when you start asking them about what their objections are. Vehicle, internal, external, you know, what kind of roadblocks are they having? What are their pain points, and you find a lot of people struggling to answer those questions. And the reason is, because they don't know who they're really selling, too. They don't know well enough. And it's the most important thing, in any business. The better you know your customer, the easier it is for you to buy media, find where they're hanging out on the internet, or outside locally, in this world there, you'll be able to create content that speaks directly to them, you'll be able to create videos that they're gonna want to watch, you're going to know what they are all about their beliefs, their characteristics, what their demographics are, how much money they make, what are their beliefs around money, right. So you know, when you're starting to build out your avatar, people do that. And they'll start doing it in the beginning when they when they start their their business. Hopefully, some people don't even do this. But the people that do will start to build out. And as they continue on in the process right there, they're running their business, maybe they're having success, maybe they're not. But one thing that people never do is go back to the Avatar and update it, as they're learning about the people that they're working with. The easiest thing to do when you're when you're trying to figure this part out is ultimately doing it by a process of elimination. You know what you don't want, you may not know what you want, you may not know who you want to work with, but you certainly know who you don't want to work with. So by finding out what you don't like, it helps eliminate things. And then it slowly starts to reverse engineer it to the point where you now have an avatar, you don't even realize that you created it. But you know, as you start working with people, you're going to learn more about who you like to work with, what language they speak, what drives them, things that they're doing, that going to help you be able to sell your product or service. It's going to help you craft your messaging, it's going to help you take your solution and customize it for that exact problem. And those people need your solution. Because they cannot solve it on their own, they need help. You are the answer, you just have to get your messaging out in the right way that resonates with the people that you want to work with. So I wanted to just come here and talk to you guys about this. Because I, I think people don't put enough time and energy into it. And I think that it never ends, you should always be updating your avatar, the more you learn about your avatar, the more you can resonate with them, the cooler lead magnets you can create. And, you know, that's the beauty of when you have a survey platform, and you're, you know, you're surveying your audience, you're always getting them to answer questions, and tell them, you'll ask some questions, and they'll tell you things about themselves. Right. So it doesn't have to be so businesslike all the time where you're, you're trying to figure out well, how much money do you make? What do you do? And what do you want to buy? But so there's cool, fun ways to do that. And also be able to ask some fun questions and learn about these users, you know, if you can understand what they read what they like to purchase, right? Like I said earlier, like how they value money? What's their demographics look like? Are they 18 to 25? You know, someone that would be like, Gary Vaynerchuk, avatar, right? He, he has that younger demographic, and they love him, right. And he speaks to them. And his messaging is directly to them. You know, he's a really smart guy. So, you know, he also resonates with people that are professionals. And he's done a really nice job of that over the years. And he's built it up. And he started really early on. So you know, he definitely has an advantage over a lot of people because he's been through it. And he's learned his pains and fear how to be amazing at it. But he's also extremely smart. Right? So as you see people, you know, he's speaking the right things to the right people, and then he delivers results. And that's a winning formula. So when you guys are out in the marketplace today, if you have a product or service, and it's not selling, go back and look at who's my customer, who am I speaking to, and go down to the nitty gritty, I'm going to go through something right here right now. Because I do this for my own business. And I'm going to give you an idea of how I go about it. So that it can help you if you're if you're not sure what to do or what questions to ask yourself. But whether you're starting a business today, from scratch, okay, or you're, you're in a business, and you're trying to scale it, you need to understand your customer, the more you understand what's going on with them, then you can deliver them the solution for the problem they're having for the wants and needs, that they're feeling about their situation. Right. So I'm gonna go through this right now, just to give you an idea of some of the ways that you can think about laying this out, right? So you want to start off with, first off just your demographics, demographics all around like, age, gender, marital situation, all things about them personally, right? But when you start saying, Well, yeah, I want people from the ages of 30 to 50, married, I'm going to target males and females. Well, think about somebody that you sell to. And when you do that, put a name to it. I remember when I was at a conference a bunch of years back, and I bumped into a brand manager who worked at Skittles. And as we were talking about doing business together, and ways that we can help them with driving more leads and getting it on their brand out into the marketplace. He started talking about the rainbow and all kinds of things on language that I really didn't even understand what he was saying. But later on, as I was asking the goal, I don't really know what you mean. There's no way I should know what he means. Because what they did was they built out these profiles of the type of people that are going to purchase Skittles. And they use those names those avatars, those reasons why on if they're going to do business with somebody, right, to the point where they'll say, well, would Nancy do that? Who's Nancy? I don't know, would she and when they speak in that way, it's they built out an average? They named her Nancy, Nancy is a certain age certain wealth level, she either owns a home, or rent has kids or doesn't have kids, right? So what they've done is they've looked through the eyes of their customer to make decisions on how to run the business. So I want to go through this with you guys, just because when I ask people this question, they give me these general answers. And it, it drives me crazy. I don't know why it does, but it just drives me crazy. Because it just feels like either a, you don't really know your business well enough, or you're not taking the time and energy to learn about the customer, to really tailor your business to their needs. And if you do that, that's how you become that, that blue ocean, that solution that just takes it that next step, and and where it really takes off, because you're speaking to the customer. So you know, I encourage everybody business, you know, business to go back and think about this, where you go through your demographics, what's the name of your, of your customer, think about somebody that buys it, right, let's, let's say, my men, I'm going to call him Austin, my women, I'm going to call them Stacy, what's the age group of who I'm going to be speaking to? Well, for me, you know, ideally, if I'm gonna start generating leads for companies, I want to find people that have a business, they're already selling, and they're just struggling to be able to bring in new people new prospects, to now deliver their solution. And if I am able to help them with finding the people that are interested in the product, and bring in new leads, constant flow, then they just do what they're already doing. But their sales are going to go up because there's more people that they're able to now pitch to, right. So for me, I'm always looking at it by Okay, what is their pain point? What are their fears? What are the characteristics of my avatar? What are their values? How do they value money? Obviously, you always think about the results, right? When you're, when you're building out your mission statement, your elevator pitch, right? I've talked about this in the past, I like to call it my elevator pitch. Whereas if you were to happen to an elevator and you're on the 12th floor, and somebody's going to ask you what you do, maybe you bump in to the person buying media for Pizza Hut, and you own a business that can do a ton of business. With pizza, you got to explain to them what you do, do you have a quick 15 to 32nd explanation of what you do, that's going to allow you to explain it to them in a simple way that they understand that that can continue on later on when you get off that elevator. So I put together like an elevator pitch like that, where it's I help your niche audience, your avatar, with whatever it is that there's their desires are by using your solution, whatever your solution is, so that whatever their transformation is, whatever the end result is of your niche, right. So it's like, you could say I help entrepreneurs, with building a massive list of qualified emails, by using my survey platforms called SurveyDetective, so that they can sell more coaching packages, make an impact, and live a financial free lifestyle. So in a quick period of time, boom, I'm telling them that, how do I figure that out, I got to go through my avatar, I got to figure out who they are, before I can ever even go down that path of being able to create that process, that pitch that that mission statement, that one thing that you're going to be able to now follow with that defines your entire business. And it's all about this. Sohigh level here. I want to just give you guys a quick framework. It's your demographics, your firma graphics, your demographics are all about who they are. You want to know about like, their name, their age, their wealth, their home situation, their marital status, do they have kids, things of that nature, if you're targeting somebody that owns a business, then you would look at the firma graphics, which I am. Most of us are right, unless you're an e commerce and you're selling you know, b2c with so firma graphics, like what type of business how long have they been in business? What's their gross revenue annually? monthly? How many employees do they have? You know, things like that. Right? Then you want to look at the characteristics and it's all around their personality. Right. So are they determined, they believe themselves, they're, they're a hustler, they're willing to do whatever it takes to go the extra mile. They're not a complainer. They're somebody who is a believer. And that takes me into like, where you want to go all around the values like, what are their beliefs? What are they thinking, what do they value, right? What's their opinions, and for example, they value their time, they value their family and friends, they like money, but they're not materialistic. There's someone that believes in self education, they believe in being around an expert can help them fast track their success tenfold. They're willing to invest in themselves, and in their business, right? That's a huge thing, like, belief is like, everything. When you're in the marketing game, like you're selling belief, that is the number one thing that you need to do. When you're talking, you got to get the person to believe before they can ever do anything else and move forward to work with you. Right. But then you dive into the pains and the fears, their objections, their roadblocks. Like for me, I've gone through and I've created like an extensive list of things for my business, right? So when you look at that, I break it out into the three things, the vehicle, which is my survey platform, and surveys, and lead generation with surveys, internally is all around your own thoughts about yourself, right, your own pain points, your own fears, and your external objections all around like your roadblocks, things that are stopping you, or at least what you think are stopping you. So as an example, if you look at at me, it's like, I'm all around the number one greatest survey platform in the world that focuses on lead generation, right? Lead Generation surveys, like, it's all we do, we don't we help people everybody's used to surveys where there'll be on a clipboard, and they'll get some feedback or some research and, and that's amazing and great, and you should use surveys, but we're specifically focused on using surveys to generate leads, learn about those leads, so that we can customize messaging for you to deliver them the solution that they need, right. So that's how I would position my business. So when I look at that, I would say okay, what are the objections from that? And someone might think, well, it won't work for my market, or it's not going to work for my business. Or maybe they've tried surveys or quizzes or assessments, right? And they just haven't had any success. Or maybe everyone's doing it. Typically, when you do this, when you're writing this down. And these in particular, these objections, you want to be able to answer that with a solution. So if you have an objection, and you can't answer on why, why it's going to work your vehicle, then should probably regroup and, and fun, find a way to solve that problem or get into a different business. But so, for example, it won't work in my market, right? So just things I've jotted down here is, you know, you just have to find what's already working and model it. Right. It's already in the marketplace. You can go first and search and see, can I find something in the marketplace that does what I'm doing? Great. Now, how do I model that it's going to lower your lead costs from whatever you're doing today, and what you're spending on leads, we're going to lower your lead costs dramatically, from sources all around the internet. We're going to increase engagement, surveys increase engagement, I've generated over 50 million plus leads, and hundreds of different categories with different partners for myself and major brands in this world. So it works. And I have to show them and overcome that objection of it won't work for my market. So that's kind of an example, on the vehicle side, right? So on the fears and pains, it would all be around like, well, I don't really have a product that works or I don't have a list, or I really don't have a lot of experience. So I would be able to just explain to them. Like, listen, if you're new and don't have experience everyone starts somewhere. And like we said earlier, I'm looking for somebody that believes that they can fast track their success by being with somebody an expert that's already done it right me like that can coach you that can train you and show you the way to go about doing it. And that would be a hurdle that I would have to get over right so that when I'm looking for those types of people, that's my avatar and I'm looking for someone that feels like they don't have a lot of experience but believes right we talked about that earlier. believes in self Education in that there is an expert out there that can can help them. So some of the roadblocks would be things outside of their internal fears, right. So like, I don't have a lot of time, sounds like it's going to cost a lot of money and have money to buy traffic, I don't want money to be able to invest thousands and thousands of dollars. I'm not sounds very techie. Or maybe it sounds like a lot of work, right? Typically, it's like excuses, right? things outside their control or so again, like, for example, if you don't have a lot of money for traffic, right, some of the solutions would be okay, well, then you can partner with people who already have a list, you can generate leads, for other companies using surveys to create cash flow for yourself, you can generate leads for companies that are relevant to what you're doing so that you can generate leads, sell those leads to a company that's not competing with you, where you're going to build your list, you're going to then be able to make money by selling those leads. So now you've made a profit. But you've also started to build an asset for yourself a list that you can now start to communicate with those people to go after whatever it is that you're looking to sell to them, right and indoctrinate to them. So, you know, those are the ways that you would go about doing things with your avatar, the more you get into the better, those are just like the high level basic stuff. But this is the stuff where I believe, like these companies that are already in business, they they step away from this part, where it's, you go the extra mile and and try to understand like other things like, what do they read? What are their interests? What are they watching? what foods that they like, right? Like? Are they? Are they people that consume content? If they do? How do they consume content? Does your audience consume content watching video on YouTube? Or does your audience read blogs, that's a huge thing to know, right? If you're, if your audience is really more on the reading blog side, and for me, I have a podcast, right Performance Marketer Podcast, I have a YouTube channel. And I push a lot of content out through the podcast, and through my YouTube channel, we also transcribe it and we put it in articles for our blogs, because we're repurposing our content all the time. But the point is, is that if you have somebody that's just reading blogs, but all you're doing is, is pumping out your your audio on the podcast, and videos, well, then the message is great, but you're not delivering it to the right person, because they're not listening. They're not watching their reading. So by knowing that they're going to be reading, now you can take your content, and put it in a format that is going to start to get consumed. And then you start to make some progress with your business. Right? Does it make sense, guys? So like, as you're using this, and you're thinking about things, these are the types of stuff you want, right? Like, what kind of movies do they like, I love action movies, right? So if I can find my avatar and, and and i think they're the kind of people that love, let's say actually movies as well, perhaps there's like a premiere in a movie where I rent out the theater, and there's 100 seats, and I put together a bonus of when you purchase my my my low ticket $47 lead magnet tips. I'll also include for the first hundred people a seat for you to come watch with me the premiere of XYZ movie, right? Or if it's a higher ticket, you know, and you want to do something where you want to send them like, uh, you know, just like quotes, or pictures or perhaps whatever is going on within the movie, you can use that theme if they like that movie, you got to think about it as Okay, interesting. So they like that movie. And that movies about XYZ perhaps I can do something fun like, you know, like Russell Brunson, we happen to have very similar tastes and a lot of those action movies and things like that. And he was a big avid Avengers fan. And there was a whole point time one he has a whole comment inside his his Traffic Secrets book where he talks about, you know, turning back the clock and there's a whole thing with the movie. And he also he had a premium when he sent out one of his offers that I bought, he sent me like a key chain with like the the hand in the last Avengers that has all the jewels on the hand and it turns and it's just, it was pretty cool. Right? And but, you know, that was something that he's into the people that he's talking to, he knows they're going to be into that they're gonna like that, because he understands his audience. So it's like things like that help you with being able to Do your giveaways create lead magnets, by knowing what they want, like understanding what they're reading can help you buy ads, know where they're reading, like, know what they're doing on the internet. So guys, I encourage you to always be focused on your avatar, always be trying to find something new about whoever it is that you're working with. So if you're working today, and you have 50 clients, and you learn something that you just worked with one client today on, that was awesome, and you loved it. And it was amazing. Think back to like, well, what did that mean? Can does that fit in what they like, their values, their their their pain points, their roadblocks there, maybe it's a demo, whatever it is, and start filling that out, have a sheet and just continue to fill it out. So that you're starting to craft your avatar, maybe you don't know it in the beginning, sometimes it's hard to figure out avatar until you start working with people. That's why people you know, in the in the self education space, that's why a lot of a lot of these coaches recommend that if you want to build your business, that you should first start to try to take your material and start working for people for free. Because what happens is, is you start to have dialogue, you're not, in your own mind trying to come up with answers. As you work with somebody, the answers are going to unfold, because it's just going to happen. Life happens, business happens. So don't make the mistake of not understanding who you're talking to. Because that is the most important thing. If you're struggling if your business is struggling. And I came to you and said, "Well, who are you selling to?", if you can't explain to me in detail who these people are, then that's the first thing you should do. Go back and start to understand who it is that's buying your product. Look at your die-hard customer, the person that loves everything about you. That's your avatar. Those are the people you're going to want to find and you're going to want to duplicate. You don't have to work with everybody. If you can find the person that is your die-hard customer, that's going to help you with creating your avatar. Maybe go and survey them and ask them some questions about, you know, what do they believe? What are their interests? How do they consume content? Go find all your die-hards, start asking those questions that'll help you form an understanding of what these people are about, you're going to start to identify patterns, and it's going to then craft your avatar in a way that I can guarantee you, you're going to see an uptick in your overall business, you're going to see an uptick in engagement on all of your copy your ads, you're gonna be able to have the right messaging on your sales pages, in your emails in however you're communicating with them. And you're gonna make business a lot easier than what you feel like it is. Like people struggle and they're just frustrated. And the reason is because they don't know who they're talking to. If you understand who you're talking to, it's a lot easier. So I encourage you guys to go back and do that. And in my opinion, it's the most important thing in any business. You need to know your customer, and the more detail the better. So I hope this was helpful for you guys, go back, you know, think about it and try to put it to action. And remember guys, just get it going. Just keep going, moving forward, and I can guarantee you that good things will happen. So until next time, good luck with everything and I will speak soon. Alright guys, take care.

Would you like to learn how I built my business using other people's money? If so, then go join my 21-day challenge at performancemarketersecrets.com. I look forward to meeting you and welcome you into my family. And remember, results don't lie, but the people who don't have any tier. Thanks for listening.