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Every product seller's worst nightmare is launching and getting zero sales.
So how do you prevent that? How do you ensure you're creating a product your dream client actually wants and needs?
Today on Rebel Boss Ladies episode 025 we're talking with Reina Pomeroy about just that. She’s a certified coach and the founder of Reina + Co. She does it all – she’s also an ICF certified coach, speaker, educator, author, and podcaster.
Through Reina's signature program Dreamy Client Magnet, creative entrepreneurs get laser focused so they can book more dreamy clients with ease, while getting paid to do what they love and have the freedom and flexibility to enjoy it all.
In today’s podcast and post, we’re going to be talking about #1: making sure that you don't create a product in isolation, and #2: ensuring that you're creating a customer-centric offer, meaning your customer has actually told you in one way or another that they want or need your product.
We’re also going to talk all how to ensure that you communicate your offer to your Dreamy Customer the right way, so that they know that it's right for them.
We have lots of incredible content today, so this is an episode that I’m sure you won’t want to miss!
Who is Reina and What is Reina + Co?
Reina does a lot of things, but she likes to call herself a focus coach.
“I see a lot of entrepreneurs trying all the things, doing all the things and getting kind of burnt out by all the options. I like to help people focus on what's most important so that the needle actually moves in the right direction on their businesses.”
For the past four years that she’s been running her business, Reina has dedicated a big part of her time to working with people one-on-one. Through this she was able to learn a lot about her Dreamy Client and what she can do to help them the most.
“We teach people how to do this for themselves, to help them articulate what is most important to them and really basically make more money doing what they love to book more clients. And the best part is to have that freedom and flexibility we started this business for in the first place.”
Working with Clients One-on-One: How to Find Your Dreamy Client and their “HECK YES” Offer
Reina loves working one-on-one with her clients because she says it’s the best way to figure out what they need and want. Even though passive work may be easier, interacting directly with your clients is a must if you want to figure out what their pain point is.
“I have found that when you get paid to do the one-on-one work you're actually getting paid for market research. You're getting paid to understand what's in their brains, what's necessary, what are the kinds of things that they're always going to ask you about. And by working with people one on one you kind of get a sense of what the patterns are.”
Reina uses what she learns from working directly with her clients to create a framework around the work that she does and build offers that her dreamy clients love.
She says this “market research” is one of the best ways to move into the passive income stages of your business. If you try to do it sooner, it may flop because without consulting your dreamy clients, you’re creating in isolation.
The “heck yes” offer is the type of offer that you want to be creating as an online business owner. You’re not a mind reader, so the best way to figure out what your customer needs is by engaging with your clients.
“We're talking all about the heck yes offer and that's really about being able to intuit and know what's in people's minds and how they talk about the problems that they're having.”
Creating in Isolation: How and Why You Should Avoid It
Think about it: have you ever seen a product that is trying to speak your language, but doesn’t exactly quite get it right? Maybe the topic is a little different, or the type of product isn’t what you’re looking for. Would you want to buy it?
Heck no. You probably wouldn’t love it, or want to buy it, or it might not even register that it’s a thing for you.
Reina says that not knowing exactly what your clients want is “creating in isolation,” and is something you definitely want to avoid.
She admits that she’s done this in the past. But creating what you want to create or creating what you assume your clients want can be dangerous.
“When you create in isolation what happens is that you make a lot of assumptions about what people want, what we want to do, and we try to impose our beliefs, our ideals, how we want to work on somebody else without really consulting them about what it is that they need without understanding how they would describe their problems.”
“So what happens is that you might have an amazing product and it might just solve the problems that people have. But what happens typically is that you will launch to crickets.”
Reina uses the example of a key and a lock to describe this. If a key doesn’t quite fit into a keyhole, you won’t be able to open a lock. Similarly, you may create an excellent product that solves a problem, but if it doesn’t quite fit with your customer then people won’t buy it.
This comes from making assumptions about people that don’t quite match up with what the people actually need and are willing to buy. Reina emphasizes that “you have to meet people where they are” in order to create that “HECK yes” offer.
The best way to fix this? Get on the same wavelength as your dreamy customer.
“Let's get people to say, ‘oh my gosh I feel like you're reading my mind, I feel like you're reading my journal… I feel like you just took that out of my brain. That's what we want.”
How Do You Know If You’re Creating in Isolation, and How Can You Avoid It?
You may be reading this now and asking yourself, “am I doing this?” Or “have I already done this?” How can you identify whether or not you’re creating in isolation?
Reina says that the answer is different for every person, but best way to identify if you’re creating in isolation is to think about where you’re starting from.
If you’ve done service-based work before and are creating a product based on your knowledge, then you’re probably doing okay. If you have the gist of what your audience needs and is looking for because you’ve worked with people in the past, you’re probably not creating in isolation.
However, Reina also emphasizes to make sure that your marketing meets the actual demand. You should also make sure you’re also providing a great solution, and not just the product.
“The product may be great but if you don't know how to talk about the solutions and the reason why people need it right now, why you, why this, then it's going to flop.”
If you’re selling a product and have never done one-on-one work or had interviews with your dreamy clients, Reina says that also can also be problematic.
Make sure you know exactly who your Dreamy Client is. If your audience is too wide and you’re hoping to help everyone, you should narrow your target customer so you can really understand what they are struggling with. Even if you don’t ask them directly, look at where your audience is engaging with you and see how that could translate to a need.
Reina gives an example of someone she follows on Instagram who posts about journaling and hand lettering. Her handwriting is really beautiful, and she gets a ton of engagement from her followers about how she writes so well.
“She had a goal to create a course about writing pretty letters, and I was like that's solving a problem, right? And I think that she's done a lot of surveys. She gets a lot of comments, she gets a lot of engagement… All of that, those are getting to the core of what her potential audience could want and need even if she's never offered this as a service before.”
How to Start Engaging with Your Dreamy Client and Create the “HECK YES” Offer
So how do you get started engaging with your clients, if you want to do it the right way? If you don’t have an audience or clients, how can you create a “heck yes” offer when those people don’t exist?
Reina’s created a workshop and a framework to address this exact issue. (You can find that workshop on Reina’s website here!)
The first part of the framework starts with you, the business owner.
So far we’ve been talking about the Dreamy Client and what they need, but first you need to go back and consider what you need and want out of your business.
“I think that the biggest mishap happens when we're looking for all the experts telling us what to do and how to do it. And I think that the biggest thing that we need is to slow down and consider: what do I want?”
When you get to the end of your success path, you don’t necessarily just want money. You may want a happy, exciting, or freedom-filled life, depending on what your personal values are. You may want to be able to do different things, like travel or sit by the pool at 2pm.
Reina recommends thinking about what you want from the very beginning, so you can break them down and embed them into your goals and start working towards them.
She suggests asking yourself a few questions to get started: “what do you really want to teach? What do you want to be known for? What are the things that you're going to want to offer to the world in in a passive format? And do you want to really be known for this thing that you're about to teach the world, to give people?”
The second part is to really understand your Dreamy, including who they are and what they want.
It’s possible to do this even if you have no clients or customers yet and don’t know who your people are. Reina recommends starting to think about who you talk to on a daily basis and start engaging with them.
Don’t just consider who you want to engage with, but also the people that you DON’T want to engage with. Even if you could can meet those people’s needs as well, you want to make your audience as specific as possible to decide who you’re really talking to.
The best thing that you can be doing at this stage? Get on a call and interface with somebody to figure out what they want.
“You're not trying to pitch that, you're just trying to get on a call and say ‘Hey, I just want to learn a little bit more about you what your needs might be, what questions do you have…’ And just getting on these dreamy client interview calls gets us closer and closer to those people.”
Those are the first two parts of Reina’s framework: thinking about YOU and thinking about your Dreamy.
If you need a little more guidance, check out Reina’s workshop on how to create a Heck Yes offer and the rest of the framework here.
Choosing Your Dreamy Client: Finding the People and Product You Love to Work With
Finding people that you really enjoy working with is just as important as finding a topic you’re passionate about and want to teach. If you don’t like your Dreamy Client and don’t enjoy working with them, it’ll be much harder to keep running your business.
You need to care about your Dreamy Clients and want to work with them because it will help you enjoy what you do, and help you succeed in your business.
Remember that your Dreamy Clients are the people that you’re serving and going to spend a lot of time with. If it’s hard for you to feel excited for them and you can’t really cheer them on, you may not get your best results with that group of people.
Reina emphasizes, “they're not gonna want to celebrate with you. They're not going to show up for the testimonials that you need and want all of that stuff… It feels like a mismatch.”
It’s easy to fall into this trap if you’re an “expert” in something and feel like you have to create a product based off of that, even if you don’t love it. Maybe your product will be lucrative, but you also won’t want to show up every day to keep building that part of your audience and business.
Reina emphasizes that just because you’re good at something, doesn’t mean you have to create a business about it.
You should care about the products and business that you’re creating, so you’ll keep showing up every day. Even if you’re planning on making a passive product, you still should try to update and build on that product so your audience will keep buying from you.
“The passive product is, messaging in the past has been well you just do it and then it's done forever. But my finding is that when there's new things to show up for, like there's new technologies or new trends or whatever, you're going to want to show up for those or your community isn't going to find you to be relevant.”
Before you pick your product and your audience, ask yourself whether or not you want to spend time creating that product and updating and continuing to sell it down the road. Are you willing to nurture your audience and support the people who are buying from you?
Reina emphasizes that while this shouldn’t be your first consideration, they should absolutely be important things to think about. If you’re not willing to nurture and build on your passive products, they may not be passive forever.
Considering the Type of Product: How Format Can Make or Break Your “HECK YES” Offer
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the actual type of product you’re selling can be a huge factor in whether or not your customers find your product a “heck yes” offer. Your product format could affect whether or not people are interested in what you’re selling.
First, Reina recommends considering the price point at which your audience’s pain will be solved.
Consider the threshold that your ideal client may or may not be satisfied with, and use that to build and develop the product you’re offering. If they may be willing to pay a lot more money to solve their pain, then you’ll need to make a product that fits with that threshold.
Modality is also a big consideration for your ideal client. Think about accessibility and the way that your clients would prefer to consume what you’re offering them.
Reina gives the example, “I have had this conversation many times with my clients, but if somebody is deaf a podcast is not going to do it for you right. It needs to be a YouTube video or a video that's captioned and there's, the modality does matter for people in terms of accessibility.”
On a more basic note, consider what your audience needs, how they want to learn from you and what the best way is for you to showcase your what you’re trying to teach. A busy mom may not have time to sit down and read an e-book, for example, so something in audio format may be more successful.
Reina also gives the example of selling recipes and cooking tips. “If somebody made a podcast for me about cooking, I would not be interested in buying that, I would want to see somebody showing me how to do something because I am not very good at this. Show me the steps and show me the pictures and the step-by-step of what I can print out.”
It’s also very important to think about the age of your Dreamy Client, because teaching something to an adult is much different than teaching something to a child.
Another big consideration is time, and how much time your Dreamy Client would be willing to spend consuming your product. Consider your audience’s attention span and the time they have to invest, and how you can create content that fits that. A busy mom may not have 45 minutes to listen to a podcast episode, but she may be able to watch a 10-minute video.
Most importantly, Reina says to remember that this is a learning process, and you can always work to improve your product and what you’re offering “I think the first time you do it it's not going to be perfect, right? It's OK that it's not going to be perfect.”
Objections: How to Consider Your Dreamy Client’s Objections and Create the Perfect “HECK YES” Offer
Even if your product may be perfect for your Dreamy Client, they may still have some objections before they actually pull out their credit card and buy it. How can you anticipate all of the qualms, questions and worries they may have, before they even know they have those worries themselves?
Reina emphasizes that it’s important to remember that everyone has the same types of worries. These include the value of the product, the time commitment, and whether or not it is the right thing for them at that time.
Another big worry is money. Your audience may worry about whether or not the investment will be worth it for them, and whether or not they have the money to invest in your product right now.
Reina recommends thinking about these objections in terms of how your product will be worth it for your clients. Try to answer those key ideas, the value, time and money, in order to address the worries your clients may have.
“I think one of the best things that you can understand about your product is what are the biggest promises, the biggest transformation that your product is trying to create.”
Use those objections in your marketing strategy when trying to sell your product. “I think that like we get kind of stuck in this mentality of it's awesome, it's going to be great, buy it. That's not really great marketing and thinking about going back to that original genesis of why you created this product to begin with, it's solving a problem.”
Consider how your customer expresses that problem that they have and use that language and empathy to address their objections. “How does it actually come out of their mouth when they talk to their partners, their husbands or kids, their friends whomever. How are they describing those problems? If you can empathize with your Dreamy Client you could probably write pretty good copy.”
The way you market may depend on what your Dreamy Client is looking for. Some customers are attracted by direct, simple marketing and messages when you’re offering your product. This is the strategy that I tend to use, because my audience likes numbers.
Reina says she markets differently, and her clients prefer more emotive marketing. Her audience prefers focusing on the feelings, rather than the numbers.
Your marketing strategy and the language you use really depends on your Dreamy Client. Remember that you’re trying to appeal to them and choose what works best in terms of selling your product.
The way you market won’t work for everybody, but that’s okay. It’s a double-edged sword, because some people will be really attracted to your marketing, and it may repel others. But keep in mind that that is the point, because you want to be pulling in your Dreamy Clients.
Words of Encouragement: How to Move Forward if You Feel Like You’ve Launched to Crickets
Sometimes you launch, and nobody bites on your product. If you feel like you’ve launched to crickets, don’t worry because we’ve all done it.
Remember that even if this has happened to you, or your product hasn’t resonated with your audience, it doesn’t mean that your product is bad or doesn’t have any worth and value. It just means that you may need to tweak it a bit.
“It's just really about like how can I, how do I need to rewrap this present so that people are like, ‘oh my gosh I want it.’ Instead of it being like, oh, okay, well that's another thing that I don't need to be paying attention to.”
Reina also says that having excitement and enthusiasm in your product and what you’re doing can get you much further in converting people. If you can show with your energy why people need the product and why they should care about the product, they’ll be much more engaged with you.
How does Reina do it? She says, “I have to energetically show up for the sale and the offer and the audience” to make sure that they receive the message.
//LINKS IN THE SHOW//
Find Reina’s Site, Reina + Co, here – https://www.reinaandco.com/
Check out Reina’s HECK Yes Offer workshop here – https://www.reinaandco.com/heckyes