What I’m about to show you guys right now is straight from Frank Kern’s desk & notepad. Very few have actually received this training in person and luckily for you all, I’m spilling all the sauce.
What I’m going to share with you guys is a methodology elite coaches use to help their clients succeed.
It is clear and concise and most importantly, IT WORKS.
But before I can start I have to explain to you guys cycle of what Frank the Tank calls the “Circle of Doom”.
The "Circle of Doom"
As business owners we’ve all experienced this so it should be quite familiar to many reading this. It’s a cycle comprised of these 6 states.
Stress -> Marketing Mania -> Problems -> Reactionary State -> Overwhelm -> Fear
Here’s the deal. Oftentimes the business goals we and our clients have for our businesses are divergent from what we want out of our business and for our lives. There’s usually a strong disconnect between both end-points.
Let me elaborate.
9/10 people who set out to start their own business do so for the freedom, less stress, etc. But just as often, the business goals these people have ultimately take away that freedom and pile on even more unwanted stress.
Here’s an example.
You quit your job because you hate having to take orders from your boss so you started your own business and now you have to take on orders from 10 different clients. The problem here is the more you conduct business the more clients you’ll have the more orders you’ll have to take which is the exact opposite of why you started the business in the first place!
Scaling usually means more maintenance, overhead, responsibilities etc.
Think of the phrase “More money, more problems”.
You can’t have, let’s say the goal of taking your business from $10K to $100K per month and expect less work to be done. At least not until you’re able to fire yourself from your business completely and ride off into the sunset. Your business needs you for the foreseeable future. Which means you’re stuck with it and all of its problems that come along.
Why is knowing this useful? Because now you’re able to identify the same divergence with your clients. Most business owners rarely know what they want their business to produce and provide for them. They just want more thinking more will solve their problems not create them. All you have to do is ask them these 2 simple questions and create a clear, concise objective.
- What do you want us to achieve as a result of working together
- What do you want your life and business to look like?
Congratulations! You just finished the first step in the S.A.N.D.O.R method.
Now before I can actually get into what that is. I need to first explain what hiring a consultant means to your clients. Let’s face it. Digital marketing has been commoditized. You can easily hire decent mid-tier media buyers, designers, copywriters, etc. on $36K-56K salaries. The strategies, tactics, and techniques are all readily available online. Knowing them doesn’t make you special. So why are they hiring YOU?
These days, all this information overflowing online. Your job is to organize all that information overload your client is experiencing and alleviate that overwhelming feeling not cause it!
You are being hired for relief.
It’s very easy for us after a client explains a business problem they’re having to FLOOD them with solutions.
Them: “I want to increase traffic."
You: “We can Blog this, SEO that, Social Media over here and over there.”
I can keep going so I’ll do one more.
Them: “I want to optimize conversions and increase AOV.”
You: “We can UI this, scarcity that, live & abandoned cart recovery here, social proof there.”
We’ve all been that guy, it’s important to know when not to be. In our line of work there are many ways to attack the same problem.
And it’s not that you shouldn’t employ all of the solutions available to you and your client. It’s that you should only employ one option at a time.
Here’s how it’s done.
The SANDOR Method.
- (S)pecific Objective
- (A)sset Inventory
- (N)umbers Audit
- (D)iagnosis
- (O)ne Step At A Time
- (R)eview & Repeat
We’ve already covered Step 1. Steps 2. & 3 are just more of the same and all three can be done during the sales process leading up to the deal.
Not to be confused with Sandler Sales Process that @ROGUEWEALTH often preaches but can be utilized side by side one another.
Step 2.) What are your client’s business assets?
- Their product & service offerings
- Marketing Materials
- Employees/Team
- Followers/Subscribers
- Etc.
Take inventory of everything and get ‘em all down on paper so you and then are both aware of all the moving pieces.
Step 3.) Run the Numbers
- Profit, Revenue, Margins
- Clicks, Views, Conversions, AOV, LTV
- Opt-in Rates, Acquisition Costs, Abandonment Rates
- Etc.
Line up all of the KPI metrics in a row. Quantify everything. Keep in mind your client may not know some of their numbers.
Work with them through the audit to help them arrive at the facts. You can’t know where they’re going until you know where they’re at.
Step 4.) If you haven’t closed the deal yet, this can be used as or in conjunction with your proposal, presentation, pitch - whatever you want to call it.
I recommend applying the Pareto principle here. If you’re well prepared 80% should already be pre-written and templatized. The other 20% is personalized and tailored to your prospect or client. In preparation you would create small turn-key slides for all pre-existing digital marketing components and then put all of them together when that time comes.
For example, you would prepare a slide explaining what an abandoned cart recovery email sequence is and when you speak to a client that could use it to their benefit you’ll just add the slide to the presentation.
Your Diagnosis should be simple.
Cause -> Effect or Strategy/Tactic -> Result.
Be conscious as to not to confuse or overload them with details and minute nuances. Just make it about what it is and what it’ll do. Skip the why and how for later.
Step. 5) is the most important step and what makes this method so effective.
I believe it was @theChrisDo that once said.
“A 12-week project is actually 12, 1-week projects.”
Damn, now that’s perspective shift if I’d ever seen one!
You can’t iterate and test options if you’re applying multiple solutions at a time. Doing one at a time ensures you’ll be able to identify what works and what doesn’t. Not every business is going to benefit the same way from the same thing. It’s always a case by case basis and should be treated as such.
The last step is simple. You Review and Repeat.
Review the cause and effect, was there an improvement? Did anything decline when it was supposed to?
Identify what changes were made and what were the responses to those changes. Never move onto the next step or component until everything checks out as a net positive.
Check in with client to make sure if they are noticing how the marginal improvement in their business is effecting their daily life.
It’s not always going to be good personally so address that and get them through the process because that’s what it is after-all.
A process.
