How Smart Positioning Can Make Your Marketing 10x Better

The main symptoms of poor positioning

Louis: What would be the main symptoms for this particular type of business? The main symptom of a poor positioning?

Philip Morgan: The main, the thing that gets them in to see the doctor, the pain is their pipeline is unreliable and short. Their pipeline of new business opportunities. So someone in a business of that size is, I would almost bet money that 80% of the time their business development is referrals, repeat clients and basically luck. So that’s the main symptom, is that they feel very vulnerable to an unexpected change in a client pulling out at the last moment. And that client was the bulk of their revenue. Or they just can’t really forecast with any confidence beyond about six months because most of them have projects that are three to six months long, sometimes longer, and not that many clients at once, which is fine. That’s not the real problem. The real problem is they’re not sought out for anything. Nobody. I mean, they’re not in demand, in other words. That’s the main symptom, at least, that I deal with. There’s other problems. People feel like pricing is difficult or they feel like client management is difficult. And those are all part of, I think, what gets a business like that to seek outside help. But when they come to me, it’s because they don’t know how to generate demand for their services. They feel like it’s just luck, really.

Louis: So they get big clients from referrals, but they’re not able to forecast things in the long term. And outside of, I know your expertise is in These particular brackets, 1 to 25 people in a technical firm like software and that kind of thing. But outside of that, speaking more generally for digital marketers working for a business, that could be something a little bit different. Do you think there are common symptoms outside of that in terms of positioning issues with the business that could be applicable to any type of businesses?

Why positioning matters more for service businesses

Philip Morgan: My experience really is with services businesses and the sale for a services business is so heavily based on trust that I think it is kind of different than, let’s say, if you’re selling a SaaS where someone needs to trust you enough to do a free trial. That’s a lot easier than convincing someone we’re a trust we can deliver on a $50,000 mobile app project. So most of my experience is on that side of things where what you’re trying to do through your marketing is to. Is to create trust and build trust as quickly as you reasonably can so that when the budget is in place and when all those other pieces are in place, a client is going to choose you because they trust you to accomplish something that’s technically very complex and manage very large projects. Sometimes this applies, I think, even on the smaller end of the scale. It’s not just 50 or $100,000 software projects. It’s also, can you build a website or can you put together a marketing campaign? So I’m not going to be able. I’m not going to say much that’s useful outside the world of services where you have to build up trust. I guess that’s what I would say in response to your question. I think selling software or selling products can be a completely different game because sometimes it really is not about trust at all. It’s about something else.

Louis: Gotcha. So do you think there’s a link between a good positioning and trust? The more somebody will understand clearly what your business does and for who, the more they’re likely to trust you.

Philip Morgan: I was going to say define good positioning. I’m going to put you on the spot.

Louis: You define it for me.

Philip Morgan: Well, yeah. So you, I think, gave us start of a really great way of thinking about it, which is it’s clear, right? It’s clear who your services are for and it’s clear what you can accomplish for them. And I think that may be in fact the easiest and best way to define what’s a good position is it’s actually clear. I always encourage people, when they’re starting to care about the idea of positioning, I encourage them to go, this is really most suitable for software developers, but to go to a website called Clutch Co and look at their listing of software development shops and maybe there’s different ways you can sort them, but just pick 10, right, and go look at the websites of those 10 software development shops and you’ll be shocked at how similar they are and how usually they absolutely resist the idea of being specifically for a very narrow, specific type of client. You’ll just see stuff like, you know, they claim how great their process is, they talk about how great their team is, and all of those are, I think, somewhat important. But those are kind of like the table stakes. Those are the minimum things that you need to do professional services is have some clear idea of process and have a team that’s not terrible. So they’re kind of bragging about those things, like they make them different or exceptional. But when you start to look at enough, if you just sit down and just scroll through like 10 or 20 software development company websites, you’ll see a shocking amount of similarity. So the first thing that a good positioning does is clearly differentiates you from those companies. And sometimes all you have to do is say, we’ll do any kind of software development, but we’re specifically focused on a particular market vertical or a particular type of client. So I guess that’s how, first thing, that’s how I would define good positioning at a minimum is that it’s just clear and it’s specific. And for a larger business that is more sophisticated in terms of how they think about the marketplace and Their place in the marketplace. The idea of being narrow that way maybe is not so terrifying. But I can tell you, for people like solo operators, solo freelancers, solo software developers, it’s like terrifying to do that, to narrow down in that way. Because you’re just afraid you’re going to exclude. You’re afraid you’re going to make the wrong choice because you feel like your experience is limited. You’re not, you didn’t go to business school, you know, you don’t know what’s best and you’re just afraid to make that choice. So yeah, I think if with, without clear positioning, it really does affect every aspect of your marketing in my experience, because it just makes it harder. I talk to people who are like, I would love to do some kind of marketing, so I’m not totally dependent on referrals, but I don’t know, I, I don’t have any idea what I should write about. I should blog, but I don’t know what I should write about. Like that’s a very common thing. That’s the symptom, the cause is. Well, of course you don’t know what you should write about because if you could write about anything because you have no focus in your business, then it’s going to be a constant struggle to figure out what to write about. But as soon as you add some very specific focus, like that problem goes away for most people.

Louis: Yeah, from my experience, usually when I meet startup founders or business or even digital marketers who are trying to explain what they do, as soon as they struggle to explain in one clear sentence what they do, I know that they have a positioning problem or something along those lines. It’s very clear to me that as soon as we struggle to explain in very clear words, because that’s the other thing. If you make a very long sentence explaining what you do with very complex words that I don’t understand, then to me that’s a clear of the fact that you still don’t have something that is clear and not a clear positioning. So before drilling down a little bit more into actionable items that we can explain and give away to the listeners, I’d like to dig into you a little bit more and get to know you a little bit better. Right. So I met you a few months ago, I’ve bought your book, one of your book, first of all, which is like the positioning manual for technical firms. Because at the time I was doing my consulting and I needed help. Then we had a conversation over Skype to get deeper into our particular issue and Then today, before I started to interview you, I looked at your background because I actually never really looked at your background. I just read your website and you got referred from somebody I knew that I trusted. So I trusted you in return. So before this consulting. So you’ve been doing consulting, this Philip Morgan consulting for four years, right? I mean, almost four years, yeah, that’s about right.

Philip’s journey from agency co-founder to consultant

Philip Morgan: Yeah.

Louis: And then you were, before that you were co founder of an agency for four years around that as well. Right. So I’m sure there’s a story there that you need to explain. Right. So what happened at the end of this agency, those four years? Any event, particular event that made you to decide, I’m going to go on my own and do my own thing.

Philip Morgan: I think I wanted to try some things that were not a good fit for a business that was already up and running and had some direction and momentum. So I just, I mean, this causes me endless amounts of trouble. But when I’m ready to try something new, like I’m ready right away, as soon as I decide I’m ready to make that change. So it means that I can move very quickly from one thing to the next. So I wanted to try some different pricing models to try moving away from hourly pricing and try some fixed pricing. And that was, I mean that was probably. It was just I was too willing to experiment. And when you have other people who are a part of the business and you have. We didn’t have employees, but we had contractors that we hired. I see this with positioning too. As soon as there’s more than one person, there’s this momentum that is harder to change. And that’s both a good and a bad thing. Like the good thing is that momentum is kind of what your business is all about, right. You want to build up that momentum so that you can survive a bad month or someone could get sick and it doesn’t bring the whole company grinding to a halt. That’s the good side of momentum. The other side is if you’re still kind of trying to figure some things out about how to be self employed, which I definitely was at that time. And you want to try some experiments, it’s just harder to do those experiments with other people involved. So I think that was the thing that led me to go out on my own. The other thing was that I was sick of the rain in western Oregon where I lived. It was just. Are you still in Ireland, by the way? Lou?

Louis: I am. I love how you are linking the rain and Ireland.

Philip Morgan: So you probably know what I’m talking about the climate is maybe a little bit similar and I just couldn’t stand it anymore so I had to get out and I moved to California. I think that was also part of needing to because it was a business where I think me being remote that way might not have worked so well. So those were the main reasons why I am more of a risk taker than I realized when I was younger. When I was younger I just wanted a job and stability. But I seem to be okay with a little making my own job and having variable amounts of stability depending on that.

Louis: So when did this type of risk taking personality started to arise? Because I looked at your experience and yeah, I could see many full time jobs over the years. And then all of a sudden you start to shift into entrepreneurship and consulting and stuff. So what happened there?

The 2008 wake-up call and embracing risk

Philip Morgan: I think it’s kind of like when someone’s married and then their spouse suddenly leaves and they’re like, wait, I thought this was like a stable thing. Like that’s how I felt about full time jobs is I just thought my experience always was I decided when I wanted to leave a job and so I always felt in control. Like a job was stability and I was in control of the changes. And then 2008 happened and like a lot of people, I moved out of the driver’s seat and into this position of like, I got laid off at the end of 2008. And I don’t feel bad at all about that, but it was kind of like, wait a second, this thing that I thought was stable, insecure, this job, I just got booted out and I wasn’t in control of the timing. And so I very arrogantly was like, well, I can do better than that. I’ll start my own business and then I’ll be in control again. And to a certain extent I was a little more in control. But also I started doing something I wasn’t very good at, which was working for myself and being in charge of finding my own clients and that kind of thing. And that actually was a huge wake up call because I went into it with really a lot of arrogance, like, oh, this is going to be so easy. I know how to run a business. I see all the mistakes the guy I used to work for made. He had just one big client and I’ll never do that again. And guess what? Two years later we had one big client who just suddenly left. And I repeated the exact mistake that I didn’t really criticize this guy directly, but when I would think about what he should be doing differently in his business. I was like, oh, he should not have one big client. That’s such a terrible mistake. I made the exact same mistake myself. You said, when did I start to embrace risk a little more? I think it was around 2008, because I just saw so many changes in the economy. I was like, well, things that I thought were really stable and dependable probably are not quite so stable and dependable. And that translated into me being very interested in helping people stabilize their business. I mean, that’s a big part of what I think positioning is, is moving into a more proactive place in your business.

Louis: Yeah, that’s an interesting point. That’s why I was asking those questions, because I could feel that there was something that happened. So, 2008, you got laid off and you started your own thing. So you run this business, this agency, for four years, and then, as you said, you moved on consulting. I’m just curious. You started to explain the fact that you like to do new things. When you decide to do something new, you just do it right now. So what happened? You went to the office one day and you say, hey, by the way, I’m quitting. Go fuck yourself. Or what happened?

Philip Morgan: It was terrible. I think I left a voicemail. I mean, I thought about it for. I mean, I didn’t just, like, up and quit like that. Obviously, I was a partner in this business, so we had to transition out. But, yeah, when I made the decision, I called right away. I left the voicemail. It’s just the worst, least kind way to tell your business partner you’re breaking up with them. And, yeah, it’s very much like that. It’s like I don’t have a lot of patience to wait for the current thing to wind down and the new thing to start up. It’s not a great quality, but. Oh, well. Another example of that is recently I was doing a fair bit of copywriting work for clients. And as the part of my business where I provide advice to people about positioning started to grow, I said maybe I could just do only that and wind down some of these other services I was providing, like copywriting. So that’s another example of, like, okay, let me just wind those services down very quickly, which I did, and let me focus on this new thing maybe a little bit before it was quite ready to carry the business. So I’m always just moving on to the next thing as quickly as possible.

Louis: That’s an interesting part of you, part of your personality, I have to say. I’m kind of the same when I decide something I want to do something new. It’s very, very, very difficult to keep going on the thing that is currently there. So I share your pain. Listen, I appreciate you being transparent about it and it’s always nice to know a little bit more about the background and why you’ve been doing that. To me, that gives me a lot of answers to a lot of questions I had about your character. So let’s move on now. So you have Philip Morgan Consulting. You specialize in positioning for technical firms, but to me, positioning is part of marketing. You might disagree, you might agree, I don’t know. But to me, you’re a marketer. Even though you specialize you’re a marketer. As a marketer, why do you think marketers have a bad reputation in general?

Why marketers have a bad reputation

Philip Morgan: I try to avoid making generalizations, but you’ve invited me to, so I’ll indulge myself. They have a bad reputation because so many reasons. I really was thinking about this the other day in terms of this question. Why is marketing. This is related, but I think I’m going to get there by way of a detour. Why is marketing hard for like the solo software developer? And I think because it’s so personal. For someone who runs the kind of business that I help with this solo services business, you can probably relate to this. It’s just so personal because it’s so much about you and your personality and how your approach to services and you have this personal relationship with your clients. And I think maybe when it becomes not personal is when marketers start to do the kind of things that they have a reputation for and people start to hate them is maybe when they don’t have as much skin in the game. So I can imagine that if I was doing marketing for some mid size, I don’t know, clothing brand, it would not feel so personal because it’s a product business. It’s not really about my services and it’s somebody else’s money. And if I was in that position, I might be making different decisions about how I market, how I use this tool called marketing. I know this is very sort of abstract, but I think that’s part of it is just that it’s. As soon as it’s other people’s money, you make different decisions about it. I think that marketers are hated because they can promise things that aren’t true. I think they’re hated because they can look at people like numbers instead of like people. So let’s really get that conversion rate up. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But that can be part of a sort of attitude and an approach that collaborates with some pretty nasty ways of marketing. So I think that’s part of it. But honestly, I don’t know some simple answer to that question, but I think those are. Part of it, is that you treat people like numbers and you’re spending other people’s money in order to try to create a financial outcome that’s not based on a relationship or not based on really trying to help people.

Louis: Yeah, I think you’re making a very good point. The first point you made is particularly interesting. I know a few software developers or technical people and more in general, I know quite a lot of people who are not marketers themselves and have to kind of use marketing in their business. And what you say is very true is that they feel that doing marketing and running their business is completely incompatible. It’s like exactly as you said, because it’s personal. Because running your business is personal or your thing is personal. Therefore you can’t do marketing. Because by definition, in their own mind at least, marketing isn’t personal. Marketing is fake. Marketing is lying to people and manipulating them. But this is exactly why this podcast exists, because I think that this is not true. This is the wrong type of marketing. You don’t have to lie to the marketing. You can be truthful and honest and position yourself very well, and that’s marketing. So that’s an interesting point. And what you mentioned about people treating people as numbers is also another thing that I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and the root cause of that is, especially in digital marketing, where we are behind our computer all the time, it’s very easy to forget that we are talking to people and we look at spreadsheets, we look at Google Analytics, we look at all of that, and there’s a lot of vocabulary around audience leads, traffic, very impersonal, that you kind of forget that those hits on your website, those leads generated actually people just like you and me. And that creates this kind of distance between the marketing and the people, which creates some sort of a. Marketing tends to be impersonal. Marketing tends to be less enjoyable for people on the other end of it. So that’s one of the things that I’ve started to think about that happened. So we’re not blaming. Just to be clear, we’re not blaming marketers for doing that. On the contrary, I think it’s. I think they’re trying to do their job at the best of their ability. But we need to recognize the fact that, yeah, people are not numbers and Google Analytics is a good thing. But it’s not the only thing. But it’s something that you mentioned before in one of your interviews I listened to is customer research and customer development, talking to people, actually talking to people that could help any marketers, right?

The power of customer research for positioning

Philip Morgan: I believe so. With my clients, I’m trying to help them essentially do one thing which is specialize in some way. So as soon as you say to someone, okay, you’re a generalist, right now, you will work for any kind of client and you’ll probably say yes to almost any project that they want help with, as long as it’s basically within your skill set that’s a generalist. And there’s initially a sense of safety in being a generalist. Like, oh, I’m so flexible. I don’t have to worry that if the thing that I chose is the wrong thing, because I’m not choosing anything, I’m just saying I’m a software developer or I’m a web designer or I’m a copywriter or whatever, I’m a marketer. So that feels safe. And narrowing down feels like kind of risky, right? You’ve got to have some way to take the risk out of making that decision about how to narrow down. So that’s where I feel like research really comes into play, is we all have ideas. As freelancers, we’re sort of like artists. We focus on our skills, we focus on the instrument we play or the media that we work in. Like, that’s the kind of mindset that you typically see with freelancers. And it’s wonderful. But you also, I think, have to combine that with a more like, more the way a business owner would think about doing things. And so when you’re moving out of that mindset of I think angular is the most amazing front end framework, or I think Rails is the most amazing thing, or if on the marketing side of things, I think content marketing is the right way to do marketing, or I think SEO is like, whatever, you’re kind of obsessed with your tools that you use to create results for clients. And when you’re in that mindset, you’re actually sort of unlikely to really understand what your clients think, which is sad. But you can make that work for a while because you can just sort of say, it’s sort of like saying, I have the equipment needed to build a house, so if you want to hire me to build a house, I’ll use my equipment to build a house for you. But again, when you start to specialize or narrow down. All of a sudden you’re moving away from thinking about your tools all the time, and you’re now starting to think about what your clients need. And most people don’t know. And that’s where research comes in. So maybe they think, like, I’ll pick on you and use you as an example. Maybe you think that sleazy marketing is a problem and there’s demand in the marketplace for someone who will stand up and say, we are really good marketers, but we don’t believe in sleazy marketing. That could be true, that there’s demand for that. But how would you know without doing some research? Right? So that’s where the research comes in, is validating, that either it’s an assumption or something that you’re guessing because it’s just a hunch that you have. Clients need to write checks for that kind of market position to be successful. And for them to write checks, they need to know that there’s a problem and seek out a solution to that problem. So again, that’s where I think research becomes incredibly valuable. And it doesn’t have to be. When I say research, like, I think a lot of people are going to think, oh, it has to be like scientific research. It has to be highly structured, very disciplined, very controlled. I’m going to have to do a focus group and invite people into a room with a mirror on one side. And that’s not true at all. It really is just asking the right questions and listening and ignoring your own assumptions for long enough to gather data.

Louis: So let’s get into that a little bit more into tactical stuff, because I’m very familiar with customer development as well. But you’re probably even more knowledgeable than me. So for marketers, digital marketers, digital leaders, or anybody in the tech industry, that we need to start doing customer research to actually understand what the hell our customer really want. What would be step one? What would you advise them to do?

Step one: The first pressure test

Philip Morgan: I’m going to tell a brief story. I recently watched this movie, Deepwater Horizon, which was about the oil well here in the United States that was one of the biggest oil drilling disasters ever. They did a pressure test to see at a certain point whether this mechanism that was sealing off the oil well would hold back all the pressure. And the test, it was like the sequence of tests, right? And that’s kind of how customer development is. So the first test is to see if you can get someone to agree to talk to you. And for a Fortune 500 company, they’re doing this kind of stuff. All the time, it’s no big deal. But for a solo freelancer or a small shop, they’ve never done that. They’ve never said reach out to a stranger. Usually it’s a stranger. Although you can start with, let’s say past clients. That’s a nice way to make it easier is just interview a past client and basically say, you know, when we were working on that project, I was kind of heads down and actually don’t know as much as I would like to know about the business problem we were solving. Could you talk to me about that? So that’s a safe place to start. But most people have never reached out to strangers and said, I am trying to find the answer to something. I think you can help, or I think you can help me avoid making a mistake. Would you help me by talking to me? And so that’s the first like pressure test is can you reach out to, let’s say 50 or 100 people who are in a market segment or who are a member of an audience or whatever, and can you get them to agree to be interviewed? If you cannot do that, what chance do you have of ever marketing to that market? Right. If you can’t even get people to. It’s not that all 100 of those people, like, even if you can just get 10% of them to agree to an interview, that’s usually a meaningful amount of response. But that’s really, at least in terms of how most Internet marketing works, where it’s really based on a direct response model. If you can’t get a response to even something free, what chance do you have of selling services to that market? Do you agree with that based on your research?

Louis: I’m shaking my head. The listeners can’t see that. But yes, I wanted to add to that. So the critical thing to think about is that nobody cares about you, right? So that’s the truth, right? Nobody cares. And therefore to make them care, even if it’s something tiny, for example, imagine trying to make like you go on the street, you get out of the building, and your task is to make 10 people to sign up to your free newsletter. Only that and I can guarantee that it’s going to be hell of a struggle. People will say, what’s in it for me? Why should I subscribe? And it’s only free. It’s a free thing. And you wonder why the hell are they saying no? Well then imagine the next step, which is trying to sell something worth money. So I agree 100% with you. One tip for this first phase is to if you contact people who don’t know you or where you don’t have a lot of relationship, I would advise to tweak the email or whatever you use to contact them into saying you are the expert in this field or in this industry and I very much look up to you. I love to learn more about you and your process, your industry, your business. So really framing it into it’s all about you. I want you to talk to me and people love to talk about themselves. So would you agree with this approach?

Philip Morgan: Yeah, in fact, I would say that’s probably the whole secret of marketing. If you could reduce it down to one thing is how can you make it about your. This is more true of professional services. How can you make it about your client than about you? That’s the other thing. If you go to Clutch Co and look at 10 or 20 websites of software development firms, so many of them will be about the company rather than about their clients and their clients problems. So I agree completely with that. And that’s really why that’s the first sort of pressure test is if you can’t get, if you can’t figure out how to get somebody to tell you about their problems, I mean a lot of people will pay, you know, a psychiatrist, two or three hundred dollars an hour to have that privilege. So if you can’t get somebody to treat you as their business psychiatrist, then I think your chances of actually marketing to them around marketing to that audience around some problem are actually quite low because you’ve proven that you don’t understand their world enough to even get them to respond to an email. It’s not like you’re trying to trick somebody, it’s just that you’re trying to give them a good reason to take time out of their day. And you said something and I think the answer is people are trying to protect their time and attention whether they know it or not. If you went out on the street and tried to get 10 people to sign up to your free newsletter, why would they say no? Because they’re trying to protect their time against time vampires and leeches and things that will suck away their time and attention and not deliver a return, a positive return on investment. So I think that’s why is people are. People know what’s a waste of their time and maybe they have to get multiple reminders of how this would be beneficial. But there needs to be a clear what’s in it for them. So yeah, I mean that’s a big part of the value of research is it Sort of shows you where your value proposition is weak from day one. Even if you’re doing research for a value proposition you haven’t really figured out yet still, it’s the first part of figuring out is doing that research.

Louis: So I mean we’re talking about technical firms in particular because that’s where we specialize in. But I think this advice works for anybody. I believe 100% that any marketers, wherever they are, should talk to customers face to face or over the phone at least once or twice a month minimum and do customer research interviews. And so many are not doing it. I’m not blaming them because I understand how busy they are and I understand how other stuff like they have to do other things. But this is so valuable, so, so valuable, right? So step one, we try to get them to agree to a free to something that is just like maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes of their time. They’re going to talk about their problem, they’re going to educate us about their, their problem. The way the industry works. What’s your advice into what to ask? What should those people ask them?

What questions to ask in customer interviews

Philip Morgan: So that’s where it starts to depend on who you’re speaking to. One shortcut when someone is thinking about specializing their services is to find a few other people who are consultants. So if you’re thinking about specializing on a market vertical, try to find a few other consultants who also serve that market vertical. So let’s say you’re a software developer and you want to focus on dentists because you think that the more successful dentists, the bigger dentistry places might need custom software or they might, let’s say, let’s actually say you’re a website developer and you want to focus on dentists. That makes a little more sense. I would find consultants who serve dentists and interview them to start with to very quickly get a high level understanding of what are the problems for someone who runs a dentistry business? What are the things that they’re always complaining about? What changes five or ten years from now are clearly coming their way that they’re going to have to deal with that are going to be challenges for their business. How do they make money? I mean they make money by charging money for their services. That’s not what I’m saying. How exactly do they make money? Do they sell teeth cleaning at a break even price and then try to upsell you on other services? Or is it a completely different model? You see what I’m saying when I say how do you make money? It’s really like really understanding what makes them Successful financially and how financially does their business work? You do not need to know enough to be a dentist yourself for the research to be successful. You just need to know. You need to just not be a dummy. You need to not be ignorant of the basics of their business. Right? So you can get a shortcut by just talking to people who are already consultants, who are focused on that market vertical or that industry or that audience.

Louis: I can hear the question of listeners in their heads straight away saying, why would my competitors or future competitors would agree to talk to me?

Philip Morgan: Because some people don’t fear competition. Some people do. So a percentage will be like, wait a second, it seems like you would just compete with me and so I’m not going to help you. Actually, I talked to a guy last week who is doing this and that was one of the responses. He got much more. That’s maybe 20% or 30% of people. Many more will be like, their spouse doesn’t care, their friends don’t care. All those people are tired of hearing about the. They just would love to have somebody to talk to about what they do all day and so. Or they would just like to help somebody out who is clearly just starting out and they’re not afraid of the competition because they know they already have more work than they can handle. So some people will not fear that. And then the other thing you can do is try to find consultants who are not directly competing. Like if you’re a web designer and you want to focus on dentists, maybe you find someone who is a dentistry business consultant who is advising on how to run their practice, but really doesn’t design websites. So they don’t. They do not see you as competition. So it’s actually not as big of a problem as you might think. But the other thing to be aware of is you might start there, but you should also speak to dentists or people in the, in the actual industry. So the kind of stuff you’re asking them is it really depends on your level of knowledge. But the question you would like to be able to ask towards the end of that call, after they trust you a little bit, is what keeps you up at night about your business? What are some problems that have been persistent problems for three, five years or longer that you just have not been able to make go away? It’s sort of a, I’m sure you know this. It’s kind of a balancing act. On the one hand, if you’re a web developer, you don’t want them to be spending the entire interview talking about how difficult it is for them to fill teeth. And really the problem is that clients are feeling too much pain and they wish they could get better at sedating clients or something that’s not helpful. That is a problem for them. But there’s nothing you can do with that. You’re looking for that overlap between where you could help and where they have some problems. So obviously just stick with our example. It’s a web developer or a marketer who wants to focus on dentists. They need to be saying, they need to be saying, thank you so much for talking to me. For the next 15 or 20 minutes I’d really like to learn more about how you get clients or what keeps clients from coming back or what kind of marketing problems you’re dealing with. So you have to have some context, some scope so that you’re focused on the issues where you potentially could help. But the problem is if you get too specific, they will not talk about something that could be an amazing opportunity or a real need that you don’t know about. Right. So you have to. It’s a little bit of an art and that’s why it’s so intimidating to people. Most people are not willing to ask for help from a stranger. Like could you take 15 minutes and give me the gift of your knowledge and your insight and I have nothing I can give you in return? That’s hard for people to ask that, but it’s one of the most valuable skills I believe that’s out there for a business owner.

Louis: But what you said before, I don’t believe that they have nothing to offer in return. Exactly what you said before, you offer an ear to listen to their problem. So I don’t think they should feel bad about it. And I do receive a few emails every now and then of people asking for help, new startups and stuff. And I actually usually am delighted to do it because I’ve been in this position and most people actually are very happy to talk to people and help them because it makes them feel good as well. Let’s not lie about ourselves. It makes us feel like, oh, we are knowledgeable in this area and somebody is seeking my help or my knowledge. So I’m more than happy to give them, to give that to this person and makes me feel better about myself because I’ve helped somebody today. So yeah, I think it’s a win win. And so to go back to, you’re

Philip Morgan: right, that’s the reality. But people think that it’s this one sided thing, but you’re right, that’s the Reality, it is a sort of equal exchange.

Louis: But that’s what people need to think so that they’re not intimidated about it. So step one, the first pressure test is trying to make them agree. Step two is trying to frame your question in a sort of a. Like let’s say if you are to take your example again, if you’re a web developer and you’re thinking of specializing in working for dentists in particular, you kind of maybe have to ask them about the business side of things. You shouldn’t really worry about the medical side because you can assume that you can’t really do anything about the medical side perhaps. And so trying to frame that into maybe business in general, what keeps you up at night in your business? In the business side.

Philip Morgan: Right.

Louis: So you have that. So step one, step two, then what’s the next step? Once you have asked those questions, once you get to know their business better, what should they do?

Looking for patterns and being willing to pivot

Philip Morgan: You’re looking for patterns. That’s part of step three. I mean, step three could be a couple things. One is you’re looking for patterns. So you have to have more than one one of these interviews. You’re looking for that point when you, you just know what someone’s going to say before they say it. So you ask them what’s the biggest marketing problem you have? And you’re not surprised when they say whatever it is. Maybe it’s like customer retention or getting new business or whatever. You’re just not surprised. Oh, okay. Like with me and the people that I work with, one of those things is going to be the biggest problem is I don’t know where to get started. Or the biggest problem is referrals are so great. I’m just afraid to try something different or whatever. Right. Like you’re just not surprised. So that may be step three is you start to identify a pattern. I think part of that is you’re willing to try a different hypothesis or a different market. So with positioning, with narrowing down and specializing, which is really for the type of people I work with, that’s really what positioning is. There’s other aspects of positioning like pricing and so forth, but for most people it’s just making a decision, how am I going to narrow down, how am I going to focus my business? And I’ll give you an example of a guy I worked with where the market that seemed to make the most sense for him was financial services. Like companies that manage people’s portfolio of investments. There’s just tons of those and he had some pre existing access, he had contacts in that market vertical, it just made a lot of sense. And the service that he offers seems like it would be very valuable for this type of client. And this is actually, I guess, not step three. This is step one. They would not respond to emails. He just did. Tried everything you could try, really, with trying to reach out via cold email to this market. No response. And then he’d ask somebody like, what’s going on? Somebody who works in that world. And they said, oh, nothing, you just have to call us. We as a group of people, we as an industry just ignore cold emails. We’re happy to answer the phone though, and talk to you. And that just wasn’t going to work for him because of really good reasons. He just didn’t want to have to do business development by calling people. And I totally understand. So the point I’m making is you have to be willing to say, okay, that market is not going to be a good fit. Even though it seems like a good fit on the surface, in reality it’s not. You just have to be willing to let the data help you make your mind up, rather than ignoring data. I guess that’s really what I’m saying is a big part of step three is like to really see the data for what it is. And maybe what the data is telling you is that this is a market that has so many problems, but they do not value the thing you do at all. Startups often are like, not really appreciative of technical talent like tech startups, because they’re drowning in technical talent. That’s where people with software skills and a lot of curiosity and enthusiasm to try new things, they gravitate towards the tech startup world. And so tech startups are like, if you come to them and say, I have all these great skills, they’re like, yeah, well, so do 10 other people who sent us their resume this week. So you may find in step three, after you’ve talked to some people, you start to see a pattern. The pattern might be they don’t value what you do at all and they’ll never pay you to apply your skills to improve their condition. So that’s really, I guess step three is just being willing to be wrong or seeing the data for what it is and believing the data. The data is again, not highly scientific data. It’s just what you learn through really listening to people and really asking the right kind of questions. That’s what the data is. And the data may tell you that you were wrong and you should try a different market. That’s hard that’s hard to be at that place.

How to know if prospects value your services

Louis: But how do you know whether the person you’re talking to values what you might be offering or not?

Philip Morgan: Well, the conventional advice is you just try to sell them something. I mean, not while you’re doing the research. I’m not saying you should never combine a sales call with a research call, but that’s sort of. The conventional thing is like, would they pay money for what you’re doing? You can’t really do that as a part of research. So a lot of it is discovering if they have a history of hiring somebody like you or some kind of specialist to solve this problem that may come out during the interview is, do they have a history of spending money in a similar way? After you see the pattern, a lot of times it will just be. There’s no pattern that overlaps with what you do. So you might hear 10 clients talk about, maybe you’re selling Facebook ad management services, right? And they’re like, what’s most effective for us is in person events. And we know that works. And you just know from talking to them that they’re not open to the idea of something like Facebook advertising. So that’s the other way you know, that they won’t value your services is that you just kind of infer, you read between the lines. And the other way is that usually at the end of these research interviews, this happens a lot. Clients will say, now what. What do you do? That’ll be. So you’ll kind of say, thank you so much for talking to me. Is there. Are there any questions I can answer for you before we wrap this call up? And they’ll say, now what do you do? Almost exactly like that. And then you’ll describe what you do. And often that will be the moment when you discover if there’s any interest in them finding out more about what you do. So there’s no, like, one way to know for sure. But I really encourage people to do the research and then make their best guess based on the data and assume that it’s not going to work. So if there’s any sort of indicators that this type of client’s not going to value what you do, that it would be better to move on and do more research than to take a. A big risk and assume that the data is wrong.

Louis: Yeah, I completely agree. So another thing that you said that is, to me that’s very interesting, very important for customer development interviews is that, as you said, it shouldn’t be a sales call, so people should avoid trying to sell anything to those people or trying to convince them that their way of thinking is the right way. Because that’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make is trying to influence them. So the way I explain it to people is trying to act as a journalist to be genuinely curious about their business and genuinely curious about the problem they are facing. And this way they will be truthful and you will stop trying to sell them something. Because as soon as you try to sell them something, you end up screwing the data altogether.

Philip Morgan: Yeah. And they’ll smell it on you. Even if they’ll smell it on you, even in that initial email, if your intention is to sell them something, they’ll just know somehow. Because people have developed these defenses against marketers and salespeople for good reason. Because of what we were talking about earlier.

Louis: Yeah, because of the bad M world. What do you think marketers should learn today that will help them in the next 10 years or 20 years, or 50 years?

Future-proof marketing advice and top resources

Philip Morgan: Well, I think that marketers should be thinking in terms of how can I narrow the scope, how can I try to reach fewer people? That’s the way I can phrase it. That is, I think going to be most upsetting to people is not how can you reach more people, but how can you reach fewer people but better? That’s the byproduct, isn’t it? If it’s like if you say, okay, I only want to affect 100 people with this marketing campaign instead of 1,000, or like divide your goal by 10. Right. And if you start thinking in that term, I think it will open your mind to what can we do if we were only trying to reach 10% of our target? And I think it will open your mind to stuff that ultimately is more effective, which is what you’re saying. Because if your goal is smaller, then you, you can maybe approach things in a way that you know is going to create a deeper impact or a deeper connection with those hundred people instead of a thousand. And I think that change in thinking might, for a lot of people mean that you do reach 1,000 people, but at a much higher quality. So that’s what I think is just try to go smaller in terms of your number targets and bigger in terms of the impact or the connection or the quality. I know that’s a very sort of high level, but it’s really, it’s a mindset shift that I think can be very powerful for people.

Louis: Yeah, because imagine those 10% of people, you get 10x more out of each of them because you’ve been so much more targeted and much more helpful. They are willing to pay for way more services or products that you’re offering. What are the top three resources you would recommend to digital marketers out there?

Philip Morgan: I’m going to recommend a book on negotiation because it has this mindset baked into the book on negotiation that I think is very powerful for marketers. I think a lot of us think that what we’re trying to do is get a yes from clients. But I think if you think in terms of getting a no, then the yeses that are left over after you’ve gotten a bunch of nos will be more powerful yeses. It’s a book called actually I have it right here. No, the only negotiating system you need for work and home. This is by this guy, Jim Camp. People should get the paperback rather than the Kindle, which they look almost like the same book, like different versions or something but the paperback version is much better or the paper version rather than the Kindle version. So that’s a good one. I think Seth Godin’s blog can be a resource because it’s these little bite size pieces of information and encouragement and thinking every day that contribute to, I think, a good mindset about marketing. What’s the third resource that would make any marketer more effective? Just learning something about email marketing, I think. But that’s a little specific.

Louis: Yeah, because sorry to cut you there, but I received your email for a while now and you are very good at it. You have this way of. It’s weird. I don’t know. I don’t know how, how you do it. It’s just a very personal way of writing emails to a lot of people, which is quite interesting. So I would say the number three resources, because you’re too nice not to plug your own stuff is to subscribe to Philip’s emails and see for yourself how he writes his emails so you can copy him and tweak it and do it your own. So yeah, I think that’s the third resource. Where can people connect with you and learn more from from you.

Philip Morgan: I chose two marketing channels for my business some time ago and they’re the ones that I emphasize. One is email marketing. So they can join my list using a course by signing up for an email course on positioning position crash course dot com. Why that’s good is because I, I will invite you to email me. We can start an email conversation. I don’t really use social media very much. It’s awesome, but I don’t use it. I mean I have a presence on social media but it’s not. It’s not a good way to connect with me because I’ll ignore it. If you email me, I’ll get back to you with something, you know, good, especially if you have a question. So I’d say go to positioncrashcourse.com and sign up and see if you like what you receive. And if you do, then we probably have lots of things to talk about. That’s probably the best way for folks to find out more.

Louis: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time once again, Louis.

Philip Morgan: It was awesome to be here and

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