Building the Customer Journey
What does it take to build a real-world customer journey?
After reading a well-known source that claimed that people “don’t just wake up and decide to buy,” Matt takes issue with the formulaic and template-driven journey. Because people really do wake up and buy things without traveling the marketer’s well-planned journey. Mary Czarnecki joins in to provide practical advice about the development and considerations of building realistic and usable customer journeys.
CRM efforts suffer without clear customer journeys.
Unfortunately, one experience that we both share is working with companies that have already invested thousands of dollars into a CRM, but are unable to use it. Without the planning of the customer and their experience beyond the acquisition, companies invest in the CRM, but only use 20% or less of the capabilities, as they have not invested or planned the process or framework.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Mary Czarnecki: But the idea is that even if we start with a hypothesis and we start with a theory of what this looks like, that then should be tested for validity. But to your point, I mean, I love the Amazon example of their return evolution. So, I love the evolution that they’ve gone through now of, you know, for most products you buy, you can drop it off at a Kohl’s or a Lowe’s or a wherever.
They, they wouldn’t have made that evolution if they hadn’t dug into that part of the journey. Right? And understood it’s not just the physical onus of like, having to find the box and do the physical things. There’s an emotional benefit to that. There’s an emotional feeling of, “Ugh. You’re making me do a job. I didn’t sign up to be a packaging expert.” You know what I mean?
[00:00:52] Bumper Intro-Outro: Welcome to Endless Coffee Cup, a regular discussion of marketing news, culture, and media for our complex digital lifestyle. Join Matt Bailey as he engages in conversation to find insights beyond the latest headlines and deeper understanding for those involved in marketing. Grab a cup of coffee, have a seat, and thanks for joining.
[00:01:20] Matt Bailey: Hello and welcome to another edition of the Endless Coffee Cup. I’m your host, Matt Bailey. And with me today again, Mary Czarnecki. Thank you so much for joining me, Mary.
[00:01:29] Mary Czarnecki: Absolutely, Matt, happy to be here.
[00:01:31] Matt Bailey: I, I so enjoyed our last conversation and it’s been really interesting getting the feedback from other marketers about our last podcast, which was “Therapy for Marketers.”
[00:01:42] Mary Czarnecki: Yes.
[00:01:42] Matt Bailey: Um, apparently yeah, we all share the same frustrations, whether we’re consultants or in the system, in the silo, so to speak, everyone’s got the same frustrations.
[00:01:54] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, it is funny how, uh, obviously, you know, over time you start to gather a little bit of, uh, proof that some of these are, uh, pretty common, uh, issues that we’re all facing, so I love, I love our little marketing therapy session.
[00:02:07] Matt Bailey: That was great. It was great. And just this morning I had someone contact me about that going, “Thank you. So, so good to know I’m not alone.”
[00:02:17] Mary Czarnecki: A hundred percent.
[00:02:18] Matt Bailey: Oh. So, I wanted to talk to you again about, ’cause I think we started talking about the customer journey and I think that’s an area where a lot of people have questions about, how do I build a customer journey? What even is a customer journey? And in really getting ready for this, I saw an article at a, let me say a, a well-known software vendor, and talking about the customer journey, and they wrote, “Your customers just don’t get up one morning and decide they’re going to buy.”
And, and immediately, like that’s the first line. And, and I’m like, “I certainly hope a competitor of mine is working for you, because how insane was that?” Because, so let me set this up even more. Okay, yesterday I’m browsing Reddit and I found there’s a whole subreddit called “Idiots and Cars,” and it’s all dash cam footage of people being idiots.
This morning as I’m taking my kids to school, I have to go through a roundabout, and I was almost hit because someone doesn’t know how to use a roundabout. And immediately I’m like, “I’m buying a dash cam.” And so, before the podcast, before we’re recording, I’m on Amazon looking at dash cams. I, and in fact the brands were not as well reviewed.
And so, there’s my customer journey, and it, probably it doesn’t fit anyone’s plan journey. So, I just, I’m like, let’s get the facts straight about what a customer journey is, and, and how do you plan for just some of these paths that people take?
[00:03:56] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, no, it’s a really good question. And, and it’s a question I’ve heard before, but it, it confuses even me when I first hear it. I’m like, “Okay, wait what?” Um, but then you kind of think about it and you’re like, “Okay, so let’s bring it back.”
So, the way that I think about a customer journey and I, I definitely agree with you that it’s important for, for really all organizations, all brands, all marketers to at least have this consideration. You know, some brands I’ve worked with are, you know, super far in advance, they’ve got these gorgeous graphics of like, you know, the journey and all the steps and all their content mapped to it, and God bless them, but most people aren’t like that. Right? So…
[00:04:32] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:04:32] Mary Czarnecki: …to get to your question about, okay, well, I woke up one morning and did decide to buy this thing, right?
[00:04:38] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:04:38] Mary Czarnecki: What about that? And so, what I think about it, is it, you know, there are certain products that are kind of urgency based, right? They’re kind of in the moment decisions, you know, pack of gum at the checkout stand, right? So, it’s not like you’re gonna have like a consideration and a warmup period, and then you have to finally convert them to the gum sale.
[00:04:58] Matt Bailey: Right. Right.
[00:04:59] Mary Czarnecki: You know…
[00:04:59] Matt Bailey: It’s not a 16-stage journey there.
[00:05:02] Mary Czarnecki: Yes, exactly, right? Is there an evaluation and education stage with that pack of gum?
[00:05:07] Matt Bailey: Yes.
[00:05:08] Mary Czarnecki: Right? And, and in a way there is, but they’re almost micronized, right?
[00:05:12] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:05:12] Mary Czarnecki: So…
[00:05:12] Matt Bailey: Right. Right. Micronized.
[00:05:13] Mary Czarnecki: Microscopic.
[00:05:14] Matt Bailey: I like that.
[00:05:15] Mary Czarnecki: So, it’s like the micronized journey.
[00:05:17] Matt Bailey: Yes. I love that.
[00:05:18] Mary Czarnecki: Um, but it is funny because it, again, it all goes back to a little bit about what we talked about last time which is, you have to consider your target audience, your product, and your market. Right? And so, that’s why, you know, when people, I love it when I start working with clients around journey, they’re like, “Oh, well I, we took this consultant course,” or “We, we hired this person to bring us this framework.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but that’s a framework that doesn’t really apply to your situation.”
[00:05:47] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:05:47] Mary Czarnecki: And so, if you’re really starting there with, “Okay, who is my target? What is my product kind of doing for them? What is our promise?” Then that’s where the journey kind of comes in. So, I love your dash cam example of, you know, I wasn’t even aware of this until I found this subreddit, and then I was in a situation that triggered me to want to get this thing.
So, if I was like the dash cam product manager, right, the journey that I’m really thinking about creating is exactly that. Like, I should know…
[00:06:21] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:06:22] Mary Czarnecki: …that there are these trigger moments that happen for people, that they’re like, “I want a dash cam now.” Right? “And I now need to understand which one is for me.”
[00:06:31] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:06:31] Mary Czarnecki: And so, their journey is going to look very different than, for example, my customer’s journey where, if a client or client prospect is thinking about consulting with me, they’re going to go through a longer evaluation period, as opposed to like, “I want a dash cam. I want it now. I’m going to go on Amazon. I’m going to do some, like, comparison shopping.” That’s what’s should be informing the, uh, the journey that the brand manager’s putting together.
[00:06:56] Matt Bailey: Absolutely. What I found interesting is, I was learning more about the differences from the Q&A and the reviews. That all of the, I would say the, the brand content, it was all very much the same. It was very generic and, “It does this, does that.” It wasn’t until the comments, the questions, and the reviews that you’re learning, “Okay. This cannot survive heat over a hundred degrees in the car. So, you know, if you’re in a Southern state, don’t, don’t bother.”
[00:07:29] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, if you’re in Arizona, don’t buy this one.
[00:07:31] Matt Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. And, and learning just the little differences, the nuances, everything is based on the size of the memory card. And, you know, that’s not anywhere in the, you know, in the content or in the marketing content.
One of the times, I know whenever I would come in and we would talk about a journey, it was always a whiteboard. It was not a, a template, “Let’s start from here.” It was, “What do you know? What is it that you absolutely know about your customers?” And this is where I love to talk to the salespeople because they’re the front line, and they’re the ones that know most of the times what prompted the call.
And so, I like to know that story. What prompts the call, what made that happen, and, and how does that develop? But from a content standpoint, I look at how many times someone gets this trigger, as you said, and, and they immediately go to search.
[00:08:28] Mary Czarnecki: Right.
[00:08:28] Matt Bailey: And I want to find out more about this. And, and I’ve, the, the greatest example of that is people who search for “Obedience Training,” but then there’s people that search for, “How do I get my dog to stop peeing on the floor?”
[00:08:42] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:08:43] Matt Bailey: That is a pain point trigger, and if they’re searching for that and find your obedience courses, now I’ve got them at a high emotional point and I can move that into a sale. Uh, and so you’re finding more of those, that high emotional point in the process that triggers that action, that triggers that decision.
[00:09:05] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I mean, it’s something I joke around a lot with people is that there, there’s problems that people have that they don’t want, and then there are problems that they’re actually willing to pay to solve.
[00:09:17] Matt Bailey: Wow. Yeah.
[00:09:17] Mary Czarnecki: Right? So, that’s what you’re talking about is, “Okay. Yeah, I’d, I’d love to have a more obedient dog and it’s kind of annoying that they bark, but I’m, I’m not feeling that urgency to lay out a bunch of cash on obedience training. Okay, my favorite carpet is getting destroyed.” All of a sudden, we have that, that, like you said, that emotional trigger, like that thing that like now this is more, this is painful enough for me to want to pay to solve.
[00:10:00] So, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you the, I did not make up this joke, but it’s a funny joke about, I, I like to say two ladies out to a brewery, outside brewery in Portland, right? ‘Cause everyone brings their dog to these breweries. One of the ladies brought her dog and they sit down, they’re having their beers and the dog’s whining. And so, her friend asks her, “Well, why is your dog whining?” “Oh, she sat down on a nail.” And her friends ask, “Why doesn’t she just move?” She’s like, “Oh, well it’s not painful enough for her to move. She, just painful enough for her to whine about.”
And so, as marketers, that’s what I think about is, okay, where are we gathering our audience intelligence about what are these pain points? People love to talk about pain points. People love to talk about, “Oh, what’s keeping them up at night?” But we have to ask that extra layer of, “And are they willing to pay to solve it?”
[00:10:36] Matt Bailey: Wow.
[00:10:36] Mary Czarnecki: Right? Because there are going to be certain things that people are like, like you, you could have seen that subreddit, you could have been like, “That’s hilarious,” and then you could have been thinking about, “Oh, well, it’d be cool to have a dash cam, but I don’t really need one.” Right?
[00:10:50] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:10:50] Mary Czarnecki: And so, that thought’s there, but it’s, you’re not going to take action on it. And so, getting back to the journey, this is the thing about the journey that then becomes strategic, which is if we understand that, we understand that there are things that bring our products into your awareness, right, at the beginning of the journey, then there are things that are going to actually trigger you to buy. Right? To consider and then to buy, right?
And that consideration fades for, you know, kind of short-term purchases can be very, very tiny, but there is a consideration piece, right? There was a consideration for you when you were going through the roundabout and you were like, “Okay, this is why.”
[00:11:29] Matt Bailey: Right. Yeah.
[00:11:29] Mary Czarnecki: “This is why people buy dash cams.”
[00:11:30] Matt Bailey: Yep.
[00:11:31] Mary Czarnecki: You could actually see yourself in the dash cam story. And so, they know that that consideration period is short, but then the purchase part is going to come up very quickly.
[00:11:41] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:11:41] Mary Czarnecki: And so, that’s the interesting thing is, if you truly understand that, then you can be strategic and be like, “Okay, how can I, if that roundabout moment, I, I can’t count on, how can I start creating trigger moments?” Right? So, “What content do I need to put out there? What education do I need to put out there?”
And that’s what I loved about what you said as well, which is that, you know, you saw this subreddit or, you know, the dog example I love, ’cause I’ve got two dogs, right? You know, the carpet thing…
[00:12:11] Matt Bailey: Yep.
[00:12:11] Mary Czarnecki: …very familiar with. “Okay, my dog’s, you know, not potty trained, I gotta fix this, right? This is not like a puppy anymore.” And then they’re searching for that. That’s our opportunity of bringing the journey together, the content creation together, and these creation of these trigger moments, where if we know that they’re having this high emotional experience of, “Now I have a problem that I’m willing to pay for a solution to,” how do we show up in that moment? So, if we are creating the trigger moment through our content, then we have to know what those trigger moments are so then our content is literally right there.
[00:12:47] Matt Bailey: Yes.
[00:12:47] Mary Czarnecki: And I loved what you said also, too, about the, the kind of richness of, for you, the buyer, how to differentiate between these products being in their reviews. So, one of my ninja tricks, I think you and I have even talked about, is when someone is looking for audience insights, or intelligence, or voice of the customer, and they don’t have a lot of past clients or customers in this space, or maybe they’re launching a new product, is to go to Reddit or to Amazon and read their reviews.
[00:13:17] Matt Bailey: Absolutely.
[00:13:17] Mary Czarnecki: And not just read the good reviews but read the one-star reviews.
[00:13:21] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:13:21] Mary Czarnecki: And that voice of the customer is rich. I mean, people are, like you said, in there telling you, “Well, don’t use this thing or this part in a high temperature situation.”
[00:13:33] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:13:33] Mary Czarnecki: So…
[00:13:34] Matt Bailey: Yeah. It, those three and four star reviews I think are the most valuable.
[00:13:37] Mary Czarnecki: Oh yeah.
[00:13:38] Matt Bailey: Because they’re the people that I, kind of like, “I like it, but…
[00:13:42] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:13:42] Matt Bailey: And, “It failed this way.” One of my favorites was I saw a three star review for a five star hotel in New York City. And the review said the rooms were tiny. I’m like, “Have you ever been to New York City before? You, this is, this is what you get!” And, and it went on and on about how tiny the room was.
Wow. I, you know, so that was one where you just had to laugh and, uh, I saw another one. This was for a historic, like bed and breakfast inn, in, in middle of the U.S. somewhere. Um, I think it was like somewhere in Illinois or something, it was 100 years old. That was how they advertise it. It’s like a 100, 150 years old, it’s historic.
One of the reviews was three stars and it complained that everything was old and the furniture was old, the decor was old. And I just, so I love finding reviews like that because, it, it’s one of those where, you know what? Sometimes that three star review is not a bad review because it’s giving people, it, it lets me know you’re an idiot, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m, I’m on the right track. So, I love those kinds of reviews.
[00:14:57] Mary Czarnecki: I do too. And it’s so funny too, because, well, you know my husband owns a restaurant here in Oregon wine country and it’s not a…
[00:15:05] Matt Bailey: Yes.
[00:15:05] Mary Czarnecki: …it’s not a drive through. You know, it’s a fine dining restaurant, you know, white tablecloth, silverware, and we’ll get those three star reviews too, which is that, “It was such a long meal.” You know, when people come, it’s a dining experience.
[00:15:17] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:15:17] Mary Czarnecki: Like, we have a set menu, it’s a seven course menu. It’s not a In-N-Out Burger, right? This is, you know, so there’s, there’s a level that you kind of look at that and you’re like, well, you know, and obviously every, everything that’s not a five-star review is a knife to the heart.
[00:15:33] Matt Bailey: Right. Right. Yeah.
[00:15:34] Mary Czarnecki: But at the same time, you also have to laugh a little bit. So, like the, the folks that were like, “Oh, everything’s so old,” or “Oh my gosh, these rooms in this New York hotel are so tiny,” in a way, yes. As, as you’re kind of doing your homework and kind of reading reviews, you do have to take those with a grain of salt, right? You kind of have to just step back and laugh.
[00:15:53] Matt Bailey: Absolutely.
[00:15:54] Mary Czarnecki: But in a way, it still can be really valuable audience intelligence in that, say, for example, you’re this new New York hotel, and you realize that you need to start attracting more people who’ve never been to New York, or who’ve never stayed at a nice New York hotel. And they may think that, “Oh, by upgrading to a, a nice New York hotel, I’m gonna get bigger rooms.” Well, no, it’s, it’s still New York, right? So, we still need to make sure that, you know, they understand that this is what’s going to be happening here.
So, you know, it depends, if you’re kind of tongue in cheek or a little witty, that could be inspiration for a great campaign, right? If you’re now saying, “Okay, I need to market to a target audience that may not be familiar with the fact that New York City hotel rooms are not huge suites. That could be a very cool tongue in cheek campaign.
[00:16:46] Matt Bailey: That’s when I learned what upscale boutique means.
[00:16:48] Mary Czarnecki: Yes.
[00:16:49] Matt Bailey: It just means it’s a nice, small room.
[00:16:53] Mary Czarnecki: Yes.
[00:16:54] Matt Bailey: Well, and so, I, a couple of things that I think we’ve triggered on here is just that knowledge of the customer. And so, usually yes, if I’m working with someone about customer journey, it’s, it’s, “What, what do you have? What emails have you received from people throughout the journey at different stages?”
[00:17:13] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:17:13] Matt Bailey: I love asking the salespeople, “What do people complain about? What are they like?” And, and that’s where I don’t think salespeople have been involved enough when coming together for a customer journey mapping project or something like that.
I always, you know, I’m sure you do the same thing. I want people from finance. I want people from every major department that touches this process. You’ve got to be here, but I stress that the salespeople have to be there, because they are the customer facing part of the organization. And they, I, I think sometimes marketers diminish what salespeople know, and that irks me because I started in sales and went into marketing. And your salespeople know much more than you think they do.
[00:18:04] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, no, and it’s totally, it’s totally true because they are the front lines, like you said, they’re actually having conversations with the person that you’re trying to convert, right? The person that really is creating your income.
[00:18:17] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:18:17] Mary Czarnecki: So, a hundred percent they should be involved in the journey and process. The way that I, I like to set it up is that marketing should create the frame based on what they know. But it’s the sales intelligence that you’re going to get about that voice of the customer. What are they actually asking that’s going to fill in the frame?
Because even though you have the journey steps, the next layer down, before we even get to, “Okay, what content are we putting in, or what, what’s our kind of gap analysis around the content that we, we have?” Which I definitely think, I love what you’re saying is like, “Okay, what do we have to start? Like, what have we already said to them?”
Like, the layer in between those two has to be, and this is where sales genius comes in, which is that, what is the question that I get asked at each phase? Right? So, this is that insight that, you know, and joke around about like the dark corner conversations in the mind of your audience. What is that dark corner conversation that’s going on in their mind, that monologue that you’re trying to turn into a dialogue?
So, what is the question that they ask at the beginning, the middle, the end of the journey, and that’s going to come from sales, ’cause sales has literally asked those questions.
[00:19:23] Matt Bailey: Yes.
[00:19:23] Mary Czarnecki: Right? So, the first conversation they get, they probably get a certain number of questions. Those questions are going to change over time. And those questions are what we’re tagging to different parts in the funnel, or different parts in the journey. Then it can actually inform, “Okay, do we have the right content out there now? Do we have a whole bunch of content down,” well this is what I mostly see is like a ton of content at the further part of the questions of, “What’s the difference between the different technical specs?” or “What’s the, the buttons, the switches, the levers?” right? “What are all the features, the functional benefits?
[00:20:00] People have a ton of content about that, but very often I don’t see a lot of content, unless someone’s thought about this strategically, at the top. Right? We kind of say the top of the benefit ladder, right? Where’s that emotional connection? Because before I can earn the right to talk about my features or my functional benefits, I, I need to make sure that I answer three questions, right?
Which is, “Do I like you? Do you work with people like me? And have you been successful delivering delight for people like me?” Right? So, we have to address those before we get to kind of earning the brain space for them to consider our buttons, switches, and levers.
[00:20:35] Matt Bailey: I like that. I like that. It, It’s, I mean, that’s powerful because a lot of times salespeople have though, they know the objections. They know what comes up, and so many times the objection is nowhere in the content.
[00:20:50] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:20:51] Matt Bailey: And I, I mean, it reminds me, so of, of when I was in a sales position, we were in a software company, and we were considered a startup. I had the New York Times as a client and I’m trying to get our software in there. The customer told me, “You know, you guys check all the boxes. There is no logical reason why I shouldn’t work with you.”
And I’m like, “Yes,” I’m, I’m, I’m thinking about how to spend that commission already. Two weeks go by, and he never calls. So, I call him, “What’s going on? I thought this was a deal.” He tells me, “You know, Matt, I love you guys. I, you’re, you’re great. I think, you know, I think the world of you.” He says, “However, you’re, you’re a startup company, which has inherent risk and no one ever got fired staying with insert legacy company here.”
We had no content that dealt with that. Nothing. And, and because that’s an emotional objection, that’s not a feature or a benefit, that was a, and, and immediately in my head I’m thinking back to university psychology Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, because he’s making a decision at the safety security level. That, “If I make the wrong decision, I lose my job. I lose my house.”
[00:22:05] Mary Czarnecki: Yep.
[00:22:05] Matt Bailey: “My family is angry at me.” Whereas I’m up at the self-actualization, and I’m selling based on the company’s benefit and not his. So, it changed my whole approach after that. But that’s where, from a, you know, from a marketing standpoint, we had nothing to deal with that. That was all what a salesperson deals with, these types of emotional, emotionally charged objections that have to do with personal life rather than professional, “This is how it benefits the company.”
[00:22:37] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, and I think honestly, that’s a space that I see marketing letting sales down. Honestly, ’cause if marketing is done well, right, if the communications we’re putting out there have addressed those barriers, right, and kind of preemptively knocked them down, or at least given the salesperson content that they can reference about those issues, ideally by the time that they’re getting into the actual sales conversation with the rep, that reason to believe has already been shared. Right?
So, that, yeah. You know, we call them everything from like “Reason to Call Campaigns” or “Pre-sale Campaigns,” right? So, the idea is that hopefully before they get on the call, the prospect has already consumed some amount of content. Right? And the idea is that if they’ve watched a webinar, or they’ve taken a training, or they’ve downloaded a white paper, or they’ve read something, or an email, those top of the funnel emails or content shouldn’t be jumping into all of the technical specs, like you were saying.
[00:23:35] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:23:35] Mary Czarnecki: It should be about, “Why us? Why you? Why now? Why us? Like, why should you even think about us? What, what, and then why you? What, what’s the win we’re going to get for you?” And like you said, so, so many times those first few emails you get, you subscribe to someone’s newsletter, which by the way, is the worst call to action. “Please jump on our newsletter updates.” Really? That, no.
[00:24:00] Matt Bailey: Yeah. Yep.
[00:24:01] Mary Czarnecki: So, if someone actually does, and they jump on your newsletter, and that first email I get is, “Well, we’ve been in business since 832 BC. And we’re this, and we’re that, and all about us, and da-da-da-da-da.” Like, tell me what’s in it for me.
[00:24:18] Matt Bailey: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. You’ve got to start with that. And, and that’s, I was teaching the other day on marketing automation and just that welcome series. And the welcome series is not about you. It’s, it’s educate, educate, upsell, is, you know, what are you going to get out of it? And, and what I was trying to lead them is, teach them how to get more out of the relationship.
[00:24:39] Mary Czarnecki: Yep.
[00:24:39] Matt Bailey: Focus on their value. How can they get more value out of the product, out of what you’re, you know, out of this? Teach them how to do more.
[00:24:47] Mary Czarnecki: Yep.
[00:24:48] Matt Bailey: Don’t talk about you. Talk about them, and then, you know, and I always like the, you know, email one, teach. Email two, teach. Email three, upsell. It’s a good system.
[00:24:59] Mary Czarnecki: I agree. Yeah. I mean, it’s like that whole, you know, give them a piece of candy and take their wallet at the same time. Right? So, it’s funny, but it’s true.
[00:25:10] Matt Bailey: Well, it, yeah.
[00:25:11] Mary Czarnecki: ‘Cause I mean, the thing is, we, we don’t stay in business if we don’t make offers.
[00:25:15] Matt Bailey: Right. Right.
[00:25:16] Mary Czarnecki: And so many people are like, “You made an offer in like, the first email?” I’m like, “It was in the P.S. dude, and they got like all this extra value.” So, it’s one of those things where there’s a balance, right? The big mistake is obviously always promoting, right? Promote, promote, promote.
[00:25:32] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:25:32] Mary Czarnecki: None of your content is value added. None of the content feels like it’s anything but a bait and switch. That’s unfortunately way too common. Right? But like you were saying, you have to put offers into your welcome sequence so that if people do see value, the last thing we want to do is make it hard for them to give you money.
[00:25:51] Matt Bailey: Right. Right. Absolutely. I, that’s what amazes me, is sometimes I think people make things so much more complicated than they are. People in my training classes laugh, but I, I go on and on about this, I’m like, if it’s not a big, bold, beautiful button, then you’re wrong.
[00:26:06] Mary Czarnecki: Yep.
[00:26:07] Matt Bailey: You, you, that’s what people want to see, and that’s what increases conversions. The bigger, the bolder, more beautiful the button is, the more people will press it.
[00:26:16] Mary Czarnecki: Yep. You’ll appreciate this, um, being the data genius that you are. So, I was working with a software company that had done so much investment in their user experience and their, their actual user dashboard was gorgeous. It’s super intuitive, and they had done all of the eye tracking studies and all of the focus groups and all the things, but they didn’t apply that same experience to their email.
So, literally I’m looking at their marketing communications, and first of all, it looks nothing like the UX, the user experience in the actual product. The fonts are different, it’s all black and white, there’s, there’s nothing. Right? Whereas the user experience, their actual product is so intuitive, it’s beautiful, it’s amazing, it makes you feel emotionally good. And their marketing was just depressing.
[00:27:06] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:27:06] Mary Czarnecki: Right?
[00:27:06] Matt Bailey: Wow.
[00:27:06] Mary Czarnecki: It didn’t feel like the same brand. And to your point, I went through five emails, and I was like, “Where in here can I give you money?”
[00:27:15] Matt Bailey: Wow.
[00:27:15] Mary Czarnecki: “Where can I say yes?”
[00:27:18] Matt Bailey: That’s a company, that’s evidence of the, the company loving themselves just a bit too much.
[00:27:24] Mary Czarnecki: And the disconnect, right?
[00:27:25] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:27:25] Mary Czarnecki: ‘Cause they’re different teams, right?
[00:27:26] Matt Bailey: Oh, yeah. Right.
[00:27:26] Mary Czarnecki: So, you’ve got the email marketing team over here in their silo. And then you’ve got the product design team over here in their silo. And the miss was that there was no bridge, right? There’s no bridge between the work that the marketing team was doing, and the product development team was doing.
Whereas, if there had been that bridge built in, something that was driving kind of unification across the customer experience, the customer journey, then that would have been solved. Right? So…
[00:27:56] Matt Bailey: Wow.
[00:27:56] Mary Czarnecki: …and it’s not that each team then would have to come up with it on its own. Right? The focus group intelligence, the user design intelligence the product team had really should have been shared with the marketing team, the communications team, so that they don’t have to do it all over again. Right? So…
[00:28:12] Matt Bailey: Well, and what you’re advocating, and, and this is so, such a part of journey development is having that integrated team approach. You just can’t have one department or one team do all the research, “This is what we’re doing,” and never share that, or, or if you can’t get anyone else to buy in, it’s not going to work.
I mean, you brought up data. I could show you some, some really simple Google Analytics that I don’t even have to look at the campaign, and I know you’re not mobile friendly. And you want to talk about user journey, when I see a 0.0, no, wait, the mobile conversion rate was less than 0.01%. 65% of visitors were coming in on mobile.
[00:28:58] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:28:59] Matt Bailey: And you’re converting less than one out of a thousand. I didn’t even have to go look at your site. I can just look at the analytics and know there’s a big issue. And, and that’s what happens when you’re not bringing every department in on, “Here’s how we’re going to do it. Here’s our structure, our framework,” because the content has to match the design, which has to match…
[00:29:20] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:29:20] Matt Bailey: …the message, which has to match the function. And that’s where it, it’s so invaluable to build that journey with all the other departments, because now we have this, this singular focus to what we want people to do and what they’re going to experience as they go through.
[00:29:38] Mary Czarnecki: Yep. And that’s what I love, too, is people always laugh when I’m like, okay, well, coming in to work with you for the first time or teaching a workshop, you know, people are always like, “Ugh, she’s talking about the target audience description again. Ugh, she’s talking about the brand character again. We have all that. We’ve done all that.” I’m like, “Well, okay, great. Awesome. Show me.”
[00:29:56] Matt Bailey: Yup. Yup.
[00:29:57] Mary Czarnecki: And then…
[00:30:00] Matt Bailey: I have to laugh. I, I’ve gotten that too. Like, “Oh, we’ve done that already.” “Alright.”
[00:30:04] Mary Czarnecki: “We’ve done that already.” “Okay, well, may I see your target audience description?” Right? And then you get this, this document that’s something, that definitely everyone’s got psychos and demos and all this kind of stuff, but more often than not, if there’s a problem with the journey and there’s a problem with the content, there’s a problem with your understanding of your audience. Right?
[00:30:24] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:30:24] Mary Czarnecki: And so, that’s why when I get the eye rolls of, “Ugh, we’ve done that already. We don’t want to go back to that.” I’m like, “There’s a problem.” You know, it’s kind of like, I can imagine now at doctors feel like when people are coming in and they’re like, “Ugh, my back hurts, and I’ve got heartburn, and I feel awful in the mornings, and you know, is there a pill or should I get physical therapy?” And they’re like, “Okay, well, what did, what do you eat? And how much booze do you drink?” Right? It’s like…
[00:30:50] Matt Bailey: Yes. Yes.
[00:30:52] Mary Czarnecki: Right? I mean, it’s one of those things…
[00:30:53] Matt Bailey: Ugh, these questions.
[00:30:53] Mary Czarnecki: …where like, “Ugh, well I don’t want to change how I eat and how I drink.” “Well…”
[00:30:58] Matt Bailey: “Ok. Alright.” Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. It, it gets to that. And, and that’s a healthy structure thing. And I, I mean, it doesn’t happen all the time, but there is one specific time where yes, they had all the brand work done, they got all the customer research done, and it’s, as I’m going through that and we’re talking about it, and, and this is why I love the sales team. One of the sales guys is sitting back and he goes, “That ain’t our customer.”
[00:31:23] Mary Czarnecki: Right?
[00:31:23] Matt Bailey: Yeah. He’s like, “Nope.” He’s like, “What you described there is probably less than 20% of our sales.” And, “Okay, tell me about the other 80.” He’s like, “It’s one, one profile.” And he just laid it out and all the other sales guys are going, “That’s it.”
[00:31:40] Mary Czarnecki: Yup.
[00:31:40] Matt Bailey: “Yup. That’s it. They know what they want. They give us a call. We do it.” It was interesting because what he was basically saying is 80% of our sales are repeat sales, and all they do is call and they get it. And you’re focusing on this 20% that he says, “We rarely deal with them anymore.”
[00:31:59] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:31:59] Matt Bailey: It, it, it was just all completely outdated, and it was great ’cause we just throw it all out. “Let’s, let’s redo this, throw it all out, start over.” It was fantastic because it, it was that reset to the meeting that, “Oh, half the people in this room don’t know what they’re talking about.”
[00:32:15] Mary Czarnecki: But again, that’s that we’re stuck in our silos, right? I know that you and I joke around with marketing technology, no one puts data in a silo, right? So, no one puts baby in a corner. But it’s the same with teams, right, and, and kind of knowledge transfer within an organization. I think that’s the transformation that really needs to happen…
[00:32:33] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:32:33] Mary Czarnecki: …in a lot of these organizations is bringing sales and marketing together. Not, you know, when I ask those questions, “Okay, you’ve done the target audience research, right. You have your segmentation study done. Could I see it?” If someone says, “Oh, we have to go find it.” That’s a bad sign.
[00:32:51] Matt Bailey: Yes.
[00:32:51] Mary Czarnecki: This is something that should be plastered on everyone’s wall. This is something that everyone should be, this should be your mantra every morning. When you plug in and you open your computer and you’re like, “I’m working on whatever I’m working on today. This is who we’re going after.” Right? That should be something that is fully ingrained and, and almost, you know, mantra-sized over, you know, this should be your mantra every day.
“This is who I’m talking to. I’m going to sit down today, and no matter whether I’m creating an email campaign or a business plan or whatever, I’m going to be talking to Jane, or I’m going to be talking to Joey, or I’m going to be talk-” whoever this person is, and if the sales team is saying that, “Look, 80% of our sales is coming from existing customers,” the marketing team’s responsibility should be A, to know that and B, to make sure that, that our strategic plan is aligned to that renewal objective. Because if I took a look at their marketing plan, I guarantee if they haven’t had that conversation with sales, they’re probably investing way too much in new acquisition.
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[00:35:27] Matt Bailey: I, I love what you’re saying because, and I’ve given this advice before, take down the expensive artwork and put up poster-sized personas of your audience. Put them around the audience because that’s what you should be thinking about every day. Who’s this persona? What are their triggers? And if those were the artwork around the office, I think people would get it a little more…
[00:35:50] Mary Czarnecki: Yes.
[00:35:50] Matt Bailey: …because, and it was great because when we started talking about, you know, 80% of the sales are these, are existing customers, and we started looking, “Psychologically, what drives them? What, how are they driven? Who are they?” They weren’t doing any loyalty or recognition, but after our customer journey, oh, they started investing a ton, that based on the amount you buy, you get this, and then you get this, and then you, and the results of that have been amazing. And they were saying it’s actually cheaper to do these rewards.
[00:36:25] Mary Czarnecki: Oh, a hundred percent.
[00:36:25] Matt Bailey: And it’s a lot more fun to come up with, “What’s the next reward?” rather than to spend all this money on acquisition and things like that, because then, and, and that’s the thing. These, these customers, they’re not on social media. They’re not.
It’s one of these where, “I, I’m going to show my friends what I got, you know, as a reward or, or what this company sent me, because I spend so much money with them.” That was the persona. The persona was that luxury lifestyle, “I want people to see,” because they’re the owner and that’s, and, and when we figured that out, it was just, it was beautiful. I loved how that came together.
[00:37:03] Mary Czarnecki: No, and I, I think it’s true. I mean, that’s one thing, you know, early in my career, spending time at Johnson and Johnson, I loved about the fact that J and J is very clear about their credo, right? They have the J and J credo and as a new employee, you have to memorize it. It’s kind of a joke. At least when I was there, I don’t know. It’s been decades since I’ve been there.
But like, the idea is that, you know, we, we were brought on and we were indoctrinated into this culture and in the credo, it’s not just about the company, it’s about the audience, right? It’s about, “Who do we serve and what do we do for them? What’s our mission? What’s our purpose?” And that creative lives in everyone’s office, right? Whether you’re in a teeny, tiny little cubicle, whether you’re in the mail room, it’s on the wall, it’s up there. And I always used to joke around with friends who, as we, you know, went out into the world and got new jobs at new companies, all of the flashy artwork, and like, you’d see these quotes up there from like Einstein or Steve Jobs up on, you know, framed photos and stuff like that.
And I’m like, “Wouldn’t it be more inspiring if we had our insights, right?” So, like, you know, when you’re creating your creative brief, what’s that insight? Frame the insights, ’cause the insights is what should be driving us, right? Steve Jobs isn’t going to make my paycheck happen.
[00:38:17] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:38:17] Mary Czarnecki: But my audience insight will. So, I love that.
[00:38:21] Matt Bailey: Yeah. One of the things, and I wanted to ask you this. So, you know, we’ve been kinda like bouncing around with the, the, the journey map, but we have talked about those trigger moments and that’s one thing I absolutely love doing is looking not, and, and I think a lot of time people spend maybe too much on acquisition and focusing more on once someone’s in the funnel or becomes a customer, what are we doing with them?
And I find that maybe only 30% of the attention is on that post-sale process. And, and 70% is on the acquisition, and, and my goal is to try and, “Let’s, let’s reverse that. Let’s flip that. What are we doing to keep them once you get them, and how are you upselling and cross-selling?”
And, and maybe you’ve experienced this, but every time that we have looked at that post-sale process or post-lead process in a B2B, there has been money on the table that we have discovered within the first half hour of, you know, and I’m talking about a full day journey mapping process, within the first couple of hours, as soon as we start looking at the process, there’s money on the table, that, that, because no one has looked at this as a solid process with everyone there, and we’re like, “We’re losing money, thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, because something’s missing here. You’re, you’re missing this, and it’s not being tracked here.”
[00:40:00] And that has blown my mind, and that is probably, I think one of the most fun things about journey mapping is we find money.
[00:40:03] Mary Czarnecki: A hundred percent. I mean, especially for anyone that’s dealing with any kind of subscription model…
[00:40:08] Matt Bailey: Oh.
[00:40:08] Mary Czarnecki: …or sale to install model, or sale to onboard and adoption, right? I think you see insane breakage rates, and what I love to look at is, you know, you’re the data guy, so you know how it goes. It’s like, “Alright, show me a breakage percentage.” Right? So, you have one person who’s a salesperson, right? They close the sale, they’re like, “I’m done. I’m out. I’m on to the next lead.”
And is there a catcher, right? “Do you have an onboarding person? Do you have someone that’s picking up that now client and bringing them into the world that they bought into? Yes? No?” If no, we’re going to see a pretty high breakage rate. And then also if there, even if there is that person who’s kind of catching this now new client and bringing them into implementing the thing that they bought into, what happens after they, they, they get through that first 30 days, right?
So, if it’s a subscription model, especially, I want to look at the second number, which is, “Okay, what’s your average life expectancy, right? Like, what’s your, how many months are they sticking around?”
[00:41:10] Matt Bailey: Yes. Yes. Yes.
[00:41:11] Mary Czarnecki: Right? And if, if we’re looking at, if people are like, “Oh, average stick rates, you know, two to three months.” I’m like, “Ooh, we got a problem,” ’cause you know, there’s a problem there.
[00:41:21] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:41:21] Mary Czarnecki: So, that’s, I love exactly that, which is that, it’s like digging for gold in your own backyard.
[00:41:27] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:41:28] Mary Czarnecki: You know…
[00:41:28] Matt Bailey: Oh, I love that.
[00:41:28] Mary Czarnecki: …you’ve done all the work, you’ve made all the investment in this acquisition, and the retention, and then the opportunity, like you were saying earlier to upsell, cross-sell, grow the lifetime value is just insanity. So yeah, I think that almost these, these journey mapping sessions for established businesses that have clients that maybe have clients that have even said, “We, you know, we love you,” there’s a, at least a portion of them that are, you know, potential to become brand advocates, forget the acquisition. We’ll get there later, but like, let’s harvest the gold that’s sitting out in your backyard first.
[00:42:06] Matt Bailey: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that’s the danger of, of coming in and, and, and marketing does, marketing’s all about the acquisition. My job, I feel like, in doing a customer journey is helping marketing to see the fun in retention. And, and how do you keep this person, because if you want to increase profitability, just make your existing customers spend more.
That’s, it’s a simple equation. And so, that’s why I love that. Yeah, absolutely, it’s digging for gold in the backyard. And, and I can without a doubt say every time we’ve done it, we have found thousands of dollars just, “No one’s taking advantage of this. No one’s doing this.” And, and the cool thing is, it’s usually something that doesn’t take much to make it happen.
[00:42:48] Mary Czarnecki: No. No, and actually, this is so funny. So, a lot of times when people are talking to prospects, right, as, as consultants or, or coaches or instructors, more often than not we’ll get a certain number of objections, right, to our training or our workshops or things like that. I’m sure you’ve heard all of the same ones I have. But I, actually I’m a weirdo in that I love it when people tell me, “Oh, it’s not in the budget right now.” Or like, you know, the price objection, right?
“We can’t take your workshop, we can’t do your training, we can’t bring you on as a consultant because it’s not in the budget.” I’m like, “Give me 45 minutes and I’m going to walk you through 5 different things that are going to take zero investment, but if you actually do them, you’ll be able to pay for me 10 times.”
[00:43:28] Matt Bailey: Oh yeah.
[00:43:29] Mary Czarnecki: Right?
[00:43:29] Matt Bailey: Oh yeah.
[00:43:29] Mary Czarnecki: And one of those is exactly that. Have you done any kind of retention? Have you done any kind of upsell, cross-sell, downsell? Right? What about the people that got all the way to the sale and said, “No.” What do you do with them? Do you have a downsell offer? Right? Treating a downsell potentially, it doesn’t have to cost a dime.
[00:43:51] Matt Bailey: No. Well, and how, how many, I got to ask you, how many of these customer journeys have you done where they A, or option one, already had a CRM in place that they didn’t know how to use, or B, they had the idea to do a customer journey mapping before they bought a CRM.
[00:44:12] Mary Czarnecki: Yes. I would say more often than not, the CRM is there, but I, you know, most organizations are taking, taking advantage of less than 25% of the capabilities.
[00:44:23] Matt Bailey: Absolutely.
[00:44:23] Mary Czarnecki: And part of that, I blame the technology company because I, I think that’s them falling down on that and part of their journey, right? Because if I was signed up for a CRM that had all this power, and you weren’t telling me about it, I’d be angry.
[00:44:39] Matt Bailey: Wow. Well, there, there are, so I will say this. They are some CRM vendors that once the sale is made, they say, “Okay, now let’s set this up. Let’s get this working.” And the company says, “We got nothing.” And, and that’s my, you can’t automate what you don’t have.
[00:44:55] Mary Czarnecki: Right.
[00:44:55] Matt Bailey: That, that’s, that’s the simple truth. And so, now the company has to spend 3 to 6 months trying to figure out, “Well, what’s our process, what’s our framework?”
[00:45:05] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:45:05] Matt Bailey: “Oh, we got to write 200 emails to automate? We don’t have time for that.” So, in the meantime, they’re paying for CRM and, and I, I, I don’t fault the vendors as much because I would be selling the crap out of it too, if it was hot.
[00:45:18] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:45:19] Matt Bailey: But there’s only so much you can do when the client says, “We need to have it, but we’re not ready for it. And, and so I’ve talked to a lot of CRM vendors that are saying, “Yeah, they, they buy this stuff and they’re not ready for it. They’re, they’re…”
[00:45:32] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:45:32] Matt Bailey: So, that I find as well, when someone says, “We can’t afford it.” “Oh, but you can afford to pay for a CRM system for the next year, and not get everything you need out of it.”
[00:45:42] Mary Czarnecki: So, a couple of things that spark in my brain when you say that is that first of all, if I were a smart CRM marketer and I’m saying, “Okay, some of the reason people are saying no, or some of the people are, who are saying yes, but then regretting it, which is never a good thing, that means that there’s a solution that we are not offering them.”
And I, I am firmly one of these people who, I’m like, “Don’t spread yourself too thin. Don’t go, you know, horizontal until you, you know, have your vertical feet under you.” But the idea is, you don’t necessarily, if there was a CRM company that all of a sudden could partner with another service provider, another product provider that was able to then, that was delivering that, getting them ready for the CRM…
[00:46:25] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:46:26] Mary Czarnecki: …how much more powerful, then, would that sale…
[00:46:28] Matt Bailey: Oh.
[00:46:29] Mary Czarnecki: …positioning be? “Oh, you’re not ready for us? We’re not going to give you, we’re going to stand in our ethics, and not sell you something that you’re not ready for, so you’re not paying the bill for 6 months.” Because we know that people say that, right?
[00:46:42] Matt Bailey: Yes.
[00:46:42] Mary Czarnecki: “Ugh, we paid for this thing, and we never used it.”
[00:46:44] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:46:44] Mary Czarnecki: Again, if you knew that, “Hey, you know what? We’re not going to be like those others that are going to take your money and just run. We actually want you to be able to do this well. So, we’re actually not going to allow you…”
[00:46:56] Matt Bailey: Oh.
[00:46:56] Mary Czarnecki: People love not being allowed to pay for things. “We’re not going to allow you to buy our product until you go through this 90-day kickstart with our vendor, or with our partner, with our sub-brand, whatever it is, that’s going to get everything in place, so that when you do come to us, you’re locked, loaded, and ready to go.”
[00:47:14] Matt Bailey: Yep. Because yeah, if you don’t have that process identified clearly, and your followups, and your triggers, and your automations, if you don’t have it, then you’re not ready for it. And, and that’s what I love about the journey mapping is, it gets all that organized in place, and it defines what you need.
So, I had an agency bring me in, they were getting ready for a CRM, and we did this. And yeah, we came out of that with, I think it was like 400 emails need to be written. We need 30 case studies. We need, you know, for different stages and all this, and of course the client’s like, “This is so much work.” I’m like, “But you were ready to buy a CRM system, and, and it was going to sit there, and, and you didn’t even know what you needed to do it.”
It’s just funny how people perceive what they need and, “I’m willing to pay for it, and we’ll eventually get this stuff together.” Now, you have no clue what you need until you do something like this.
[00:48:13] Mary Czarnecki: No, I love it. Yeah, and the journey and that understanding of those questions, right? So, what are the stages? What are the questions they’re asking at each stage? And then, how are we going to enter that conversation? Like you said, there’s 400 emails. You know, sometimes it’s only 4 emails that are going to make the difference out of those 400, but you have to at least know what the journey is before you start creating content, before you start investing in marketing technology, without that it, like you said, it’s kind of just putting a whole bunch of spices in the spice back with no breastfeed to plug it into.
[00:48:46] Matt Bailey: One of the objections I often hear about journey mapping is that it’s kind of a, a touchy feely, you know, ’cause we talk about high points and low points that, where’s the customer really like, “Wow, these guys care about me,” and where is the customer thinking, “Uh, what do I do now? No one’s telling me anything. No one…” and I don’t think enough companies really, I would say really see that as a valid method of measurement, that, “Where’s the customer in this process? Where is their emotional state?”
Uh, I think sometimes people think that’s a little too, oh, you know, unscientific, uh, but it’s a valuable way of looking at it because I think we’ve all been in that situation as a customer. I mean, I think of one where I had to send a document to a company, I got no confirmation that the document was received and, and there was nothing about how to get the confirmation or, and this was a pretty serious thing. But there was nothing about that. Emotionally, I’m in a low point. I’m wondering, “What’s happening? I’m wondering if you even care. But, but mapping those points is so critical.
[00:49:59] Mary Czarnecki: Well, and, and like you said, I think that that’s, it’s also where that sales and marketing connection comes in, right? Because if we’re just developing the journey and we’re just mapping these kind of theoretical emotional points, that’s one thing.
[00:50:00] But the idea is that even if we start with the hypothesis and we start with a theory of what this looks like, that then should be tested for validity, right? This shouldn’t just be imaginary. It shouldn’t just be theoretical. It should be, “This is what we think is happening, now tell us if this is actually happening,” and then bringing that back and iterating on it.
But to your point, I mean, I love the Amazon example of their return evolution, right? So, back in the day, if you bought something from Amazon and you wanted to return it, you had to find packaging, you had to print out the label, you had to figure out where the packaging tape was that your kid had taken out of the utility drawer, right? You know, it was a disaster. And then I would just end up losing money because I’d never get around to returning it and repackaging, right, ’cause, you know, someone stole my tape. Right?
[00:51:02] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:51:02] Mary Czarnecki: So, they understood that by doing that journey map, by digging into that specific phase of that experience, and this, again, goes back to your point of what about the digging for gold in the backyard about like, this is someone who’s already purchased, we already have their money, they’re never going to make another purchase if they have to go through this rigamarole to get their money back and make another purchase.
So, I love the evolution that they’ve gone through now of, you know, for most products you buy, you can drop it off at a Kohl’s or a Lowe’s or a wherever. They, they wouldn’t have made that evolution if they hadn’t dug into that part of the journey. Right? And understood, it’s not just the physical onus of like, having to find the box and do the physical things. There’s an emotional benefit to that. There’s an emotional feeling of, “Ugh, you’re making me do a job. I didn’t sign up to be a packaging expert.” You know what I mean?
[00:51:58] Matt Bailey: Right. Right. Oh, yeah. “How am I supposed to know how to package this?”
[00:52:00] Mary Czarnecki: “I didn’t sign up to be a shipper packer.”
[00:52:02] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:52:02] Mary Czarnecki: And, but there’s an emotional benefit of being like, “Oh, I can just go and drop it off, and someone else will take care of it.”
[00:52:09] Matt Bailey: Right.
[00:52:09] Mary Czarnecki: You know? So, I think that that’s pretty genius, that if they hadn’t dug into that part of their experience, they wouldn’t have made that evolution.
[00:52:17] Matt Bailey: Yeah. I, I, one thing I like doing, and, and I would, listener, dear listener, please go to a search engine and search for journey maps and look at the images. You’d be amazed at how many companies have shown their journey maps. Uh, Starbucks, there’s journey maps from Starbucks all over the place about the customer experience of walking into a store and what they look for, that if you can’t find a seat, that’s a low emotional point, and it’s going to turn you away, and you’re not going to stay there. However, if you do find a seat, that means you’re happy, you might buy more.
[00:52:52] Mary Czarnecki: Yup.
[00:52:52] Matt Bailey: So, there’s all kinds of journey maps that different companies have done, and, uh, car rental companies, insurance companies, they’re all looking at how do we make things smoother for the customer, and the, the, overall, it makes the experience better. It’s, it’s just really a, uh, a great graphical way of viewing what our customers go through.
[00:53:15] Mary Czarnecki: A hundred percent. What I love, too, about what you just said is that it, it makes you feel good, and that’s when you’ll go into, I’m sure you have had this experience too, you go into these companies where you get the vibe that everyone’s excited about what they do, what they’re providing, what they’re selling, because they can see the benefit that it brings to their audience.
[00:53:34] Matt Bailey: Yes.
[00:53:35] Mary Czarnecki: And then you go into those companies that like, it feels like a slog, and it feels like you’re trying to shove something down someone’s throat that doesn’t want it.
[00:53:43] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:53:44] Mary Czarnecki: And I would say if that’s the kind of experience that you feel like either as a sales or marketing person you’re going through, is that, “Ugh, how do I find the next person that I can force this on?” Journey mapping may be in your future.
[00:53:56] Matt Bailey: You know, it’s so funny. So, I don’t, this experience came into mind, the optometrist I used to go to, I would walk in there and it was like a, a team or something, I don’t know, because there was only always like 20, 30 people in the waiting room. It was the most depressing place I had ever, I, I mean, like nobody’s smiling, I’m trying to make, it, it, you know, I, I like conversation, I’m trying to joke a little, make conversation.
[00:54:23] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:54:24] Matt Bailey: Not cracking a smile. I, I came out of there, I told my wife, I’m like, “I never want to go back there ever again,” because nobody was enjoying what they were doing, and I feel like if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, then you don’t enjoy me being here, which means you’re not going to give me the service that I would expect.
So, I mean, I changed optometrists simply based on that experience alone, because all you had attitudes that stunk, and it, and it infected everyone who was in the waiting room, ’cause they weren’t happy to be there either. So, it, it’s, yeah, I, I really get what you say that, but when you’re working with a company where they absolutely love what they’re doing, it’s infectious, and, and it makes you feel more at ease, that they really care about what they’re going to do.
[00:55:11] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah. And I mean, just, I know this is kind of a side topic, but it is funny, you were saying about, you know, some people feeling that, “Oh, the emotional thing,” or, “Oh, it’s just too,” you know, the emotional level conversation is, “It’s not hitting my bottom line, like, that’s not strategic enough.” Well, I mean, just about the, the employee retention, I mean, think about the reduction in turnover, reduction in, in operational reduction, operational cost reduction.
And also, you know, you’re going to have to invest less in constant acquisition of new customers if people like working with your organization, right? So, I mean, I love the optometrist office, you know, how many times do they have to refill their pipeline of new patients if every time someone comes in as a new patient, they’re like, “Whoa…”
[00:55:53] Matt Bailey: Yeah.
[00:55:54] Mary Czarnecki: “this is…”
[00:55:54] Matt Bailey: Depressing. Like, it’s an eye doctor, it’s not a funeral home. What? Come on. What is wrong with this? Yeah.
[00:56:00] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:56:01] Matt Bailey: Yeah. So, so amazing. I love that emotional aspect, and one of the things that I love prying, it, it’s kinda like when you, when you find that there is a pain point within a process of a company, and that’s what I like in the, in this journey mapping, it’s like, “Well, let’s explore this. This is, this is something we’re not doing well. Why? What’s happening here?” And you could just see around the room, people are just like, “Oh no,” you know.
I found a process that was being handled where, and this is a B2B, and a, a portion of the financial approval for the sale was being handled by email. It was not being handled by any system. It was, “I’m sending this to this person, and I’m waiting for them to get back to me.” And, and it was within the organization. And I’m looking at the, you know, the, the executive team, like, “You do realize there’s no tracking, no measurement, once it hits this process here, it’s completely out of the system. And I can’t tell you how quickly these approvals are happening, I can’t tell you, you know, what feedback are you getting? Because now this, this, even if you automate, you need to figure this out.”
And no one on the executive team realized that that was even happening, that this was completely out of, you know, it’s happening in, in personal and business email accounts. I’m like, “This is the breaking point. This is it.” But without going through that process, they would have never figured it out.
[00:57:36] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah.
[00:57:37] Matt Bailey: That’s what I mean, there’s gold on the table.
[00:57:40] Mary Czarnecki: I know. There’s, there’s giant gold hunks in the backyard.
[00:57:44] Matt Bailey: Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh my goodness. Mary, I can’t believe it’s been, it’s an hour already. Man oh man.
[00:57:54] Mary Czarnecki: Well, I kind of feel like if our last session was, “Therapy for Marketers,” this was a little tough love from her.
[00:58:00] Matt Bailey: You know, I would per, I would really agree. I’ve done a couple of talks before on how sales and marketing need to kiss and make up. It, it, it could be such a contentious relationship. You know, one example, I, I, I, it’s story time, I think. I went to a meeting and there, there’s marketing on one side and there’s tech on the other, and marketing’s pointing the fingers at the technical and IT like, “The website’s broken, no one could buy anything.”
And we evaluated the website and came back and said, “By the way, website’s bulletproof. We tried to crash it. We tried to do all these things. It works great. By the way, marketing team, when’s the last time any of you tried to buy something?” They never went through it. And, and what happened was the, the technical team, as, as you were saying, they built the website. Marketing, they kind of never looked at the sales process of the website. They only looked at the pretty pictures. And because they never looked at the process, well, you know what happens when IT builds something. It’s functional.
[00:58:59] Mary Czarnecki: Yes.
[00:59:00] Matt Bailey: Whereas there was no big, bold, beautiful buttons.
[00:59:03] Mary Czarnecki: Yes.
[00:59:04] Matt Bailey: It, that’s all it needed. And just doing that, but instead, marketing’s just pointing the finger, blaming somebody else. And I kind of had to gently lead them down this path of, “No, this is user interface. This is the process of conversion. You kind of have to lead that. You’re the ones that are the touchy feely, look at the image, you got to look at that as well, that’s not just their fault.” And so, that was probably one of the easiest customer journeys we ever worked on.
[00:59:33] Mary Czarnecki: I see that all the time, right? Is marketing and tech, marketing and sales, sales and tech, right? The idea of, you know, they’re like siblings in a family, and they’re like, “Well, he started it,” and “She started it.”
[00:59:45] Matt Bailey: Oh, yeah.
[00:59:45] Mary Czarnecki: No, no.
[00:59:47] Matt Bailey: Yes.
[00:59:47] Mary Czarnecki: Let’s work together.
[00:59:49] Matt Bailey: That is so true. That is so true. It is very much that sibling, sibling thing. So, oh my goodness. Great insights, Mary. Thank you so much. I, I appreciate you making the time to be with us today.
[01:00:00] Mary Czarnecki: No, absolutely. I always love, I love these chats, Matt, so…
[01:00:04] Matt Bailey: I know.
[01:00:04] Mary Czarnecki: Thank you for having me on.
[01:00:05] Matt Bailey: I know, I’m still waiting for some more in-person events here. It seems like, uh, that they’ve tailed off for a while with, with more COVID.
[01:00:14] Mary Czarnecki: I know. Well, we’ll, we’ll keep our fingers crossed and in the meantime, we can catch up over coffee.
[01:00:19] Matt Bailey: Absolutely. Absolutely. Love it. Hey, dear listener, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Endless Coffee Cup. Go check out Mary’s page, see what she’s posting. You’re, you’re getting active on LinkedIn. I love it. So, seeing some of the things you’re posting there, Mary.
[01:00:34] Mary Czarnecki: Thanks.
[01:00:34] Matt Bailey: And where can people find you? I got to let you do your plug.
[01:00:37] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, absolutely. So, all the latest and greatest information is over on our website. It’s just my name, maryczarnecki.com. Uh, it’s Polish, sorry about the spelling of the last name. Nothing I can do about that, but, uh, I’m sure Matt will have that posted below, so.
[01:00:51] Matt Bailey: Yeah, we’ll have the link in the show notes. Alright, Mary, again, thank you so much. And dear listener, look forward to talking with you again on another edition of the Endless Coffee Cup podcast.
Featured Guest:
Mary Czarnecki
Consultant, Speaker & Coach
LinkedIn profile: Mary Czarnecki | LinkedIn
Website: Mary Czarnecki