← Follow The Yellow Brick Road
Follow The Yellow Brick Road
London Special Ops Recap: Tactical Calls, Pricing Truths & Fast Filters
00:17:20
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- [00:00]
A
Generally speaking, there are a lot of times that I get a phone call and I have to make a very, very quick decision and that decision could affect people's lives, laying people off, etc. That decision could affect someone's ability to pay for their house, could affect millions of dollars to a business, could shut down a business, could be a legal decision on suing someone or responding to a law. So this is why I say all the time, don't ask me to make a decision on what's for dinner. There's a lot that gets plan put on us as operators because it's just easier to say go figure out how to do it. And then it's also going to be your fault when it's wrong. And we deal and have dealt with that quite a bit. So for me, my decision making process looks like this. Immediately I go into what are the outcomes that I could have based off the choices that I have. And so generally there's two to three outcomes for every choice. And then I get rid of anything that I'm not comfortable with. If the outcome is going to create something that I don't feel comfortable with, I could go to jail, I could get fined more money than what I have, anything like that, or the client that goes out the window. And then I hyper focus on what, which one has the most probability to the outcome that I most desire. Most of the time the probability is so far from what I desire. But if I can get, I need to get the closest that I can so I can try and create that situation. And then a lot of times I will stress test that very quickly. There have been times that I've called you. There have been times that I've called you. There's been times that I called the whole team together to try and like, let me get your thoughts on this or to get data to get some. This is what I think is going on. What do you think is going on? What do you, what have you seen? What do you know? But sometimes like those things have to happen in 15, 20 minutes. And so that's my, that's my process. So I, I'll start with Richard. I'd love to hear yours.
- [01:55]
B
Sure. I think decision making, one of the biggest challenges when someone starts making the big decision for the first time is to make them tangible. You obviously weigh up very much what is actually going to happen, as you said, like what the actual consequences could be. Having some kind of actual tangible thing where it's okay. This is the results of this decision I think is invaluable for me in terms of being able to actually make that decision because it makes it real. It stops being theoretical. It starts being, okay, here's the actual consequences. Here's what happens if you take either of the paths ahead of you. So to give a little example of that, we can't get too far into our client, but we've had to make quite a few decisions about marketing. For big events, for instance, like how we pitch stuff, do we keep with a client's plan and just figure out how to make that work, or do we say, okay, well, I need to spend some time going through this and.
- [02:47]
A
And then send Emma to go argue with them?
- [02:48]
C
Yeah.
- [02:49]
B
Yes, essentially. Yeah. So in.
- [02:52]
A
Oh, they're wrong.
- [02:53]
B
Yeah. I mean, not to be overly cartoonish, but yeah.
- [02:58]
A
I mean, it's important. And that's tough because you're putting me in a tough spot.
- [03:03]
B
Sure.
- [03:03]
A
So that's a hard call for you because I'm gonna have to call them and I'm going to tell them that their marketing genius isn't so genius and it's not going to work.
- [03:09]
B
Sure.
- [03:10]
A
Most of them listen to us because they hired us because they know we know what we're talking about. Yeah, I get it.
- [03:16]
B
Sure. But just to actually take that from being the theoretical to the tangible, I like to think through and plan out actually what needs to be done to make this happen. When I'm making one of those decisions, when I'm coming to you for any of those decisions, I typically have everything more or less laid out, not necessarily written out. I've been writing it out more as. As we've seen. But I know what comes next. If there's a question about, okay, so let's say I take your advice. What do I do in this part of it? I will generally have that idea pretty well mapped up because I've taken the time to think through that as a tangible path of action. It really does boil down to taking things from theoretical to an actual real world. Here's what we need to do. Here's what I want to do. Here's the decision I'm making. That's, for me, how it works.
- [04:06]
C
So for me, I'm gonna take just a slightly different approach because, oh, I.
- [04:09]
A
Know that's why the three of us work well together, is because we do have different approach.
- [04:13]
C
I'll.
- [04:14]
A
I'm going to tell Thiago's in a second and he's going to be pissed, but I don't care. He should have come to London for me.
- [04:19]
C
The decision making, what happens or why we're able to make good decisions is coming from our experience and the things that we've. We test on our downtime. So for me to make a decision on whether we're going to do X or Y, it's not coming from a place of guessing. It's not coming from a place of just pulling things out of nowhere or gut feeling. For example, it's all based on the thing that I've tested in the past, and it's about how we keep ourselves informed. You read a lot, Richard. Testing out. We're testing out new platforms every other week. Not necessarily because we want to make use of them, but because we are able to know the pros and cons of every single thing. And it's all about what happens behind the doors, behind the scenes that helps us make those decisions. So in our downtime, we're testing different platforms, testing different strategies. Even when the little thing that no one is testing, we're making those tests. That's why every project that we encounter, we usually have a bit of time to look back. For example, we do a quarterly event for one of our clients. And after every event, the question we ask ourselves is, how did that go? How was the event? What did you learn from it?
- [05:32]
A
We're never happy. Everybody's always happy. We're never happy with ourselves. We're always like, we could have done better.
- [05:37]
C
That's what's going to help us make the decision the next time. Because even if it went amazingly well, I want.
- [05:42]
A
Yeah, we don't talk about the 90,000 things that went perfect. We talk about the one little thing that wasn't exactly what we thought it was going to be.
- [05:49]
C
And that's the conversation that helps us make decisions the next time. Because even if it's something that no one really noticed, but we noticed it, it's going to help us avoid. If it ever comes up. And if it doesn't even know if it's not a problem right away, we've discussed about it, we know what to do is if that ever happens. And so when someone calls us and say, hey, I have this problem, guess what? We've actually discussed about this and we've thought through it. We didn't think through it just so we can use it right away. Now we know we've thought about it, we've tested it against what we've done in the past, and then we use that to make a decision immediately. I think that's our secret. Yeah. At Shockwave, we talk through things. We actually have conversations and during those conversations, we're dropping nuggets here and there that the next time it comes up like, hey, we actually talked about this last week. It was a whole different context. But you can take the context from this and apply it to this and then helps us make that split second decision. So I think that's, you know, all of us as a team, that's the secret. That's what we do. That's how we do it.
- [06:46]
A
Yo, we interrupt this pod to tell you like, and subscribe. What are you doing? Why haven't you liked? Why haven't you subscribed? Just subscribe. What's the problem? In all seriousness, subscribe so that you get notifications every time we drop new content. Additionally, if you have not signed up for our visionary vault, what the hell? Www.specialopspodcast.com Go sign up. It's free. We never try and sell you and we're putting all kinds of stuff in there to help you with the operations of your business because we're passionate about it and we want to share operational excellence with our direct response, e commerce and online selling. Family.
- [07:17]
C
I've been there, I've done that. I've worked on different project over the years of working with Shockwave and even before Shockwave and I've worked in different capacity. That has helped me become who I am today. And so when a two line brief comes over to me, I can immediately see again being in the higher level. Now I understand what a business owner wants, but at the same time understand what a graphic designer needs to hear. There's a difference between what you want and what needs to happen. The owners don't think about what needs to happen. Again, that's my job, to be able to take what you want into what needs to happen. And so what? One of the major things I'm able to do is be able to speak the language of everyone on my team. And when I say language, I don't mean actual language, the technical language. So graphic designer needs to hear certain keywords for him to understand what you're looking for. A copywriter needs to hear certain things for him to understand what needs to be written. Podcasting needs to hear a whole different type of language for them to understand what needs to happen.
- [08:16]
A
Development is a big one. Development's a big one.
- [08:19]
C
Developers need to hear a whole different thing when you know they need. And my original background is development. I studied, I was supposed to be a computer scientist. And somehow, thank God, thank God, somehow.
- [08:31]
A
You had a course correct.
- [08:33]
C
In marketing. So like that Experience over the years has been able to help me to break down things granularly for the members of the team. And I will give you a quick story. We have a client and just last week he said to us that this version of the website that we have right now doesn't look like we know what we're doing. That's exactly what he said. Yeah, we need a website that makes us look like, you know, what the fuck we're doing. That is all we got as a brief.
- [08:59]
A
But what was funny about that was, is you were given a website to mimic and it looked exactly like the website you were told to mimic.
- [09:07]
C
Exactly.
- [09:07]
A
And then he got on and said a week ago, this to you. And so then what all I took.
- [09:13]
C
Was, you know, I understand where it's coming from, is we had a different version of the content written, which is more of a sales letter, which goes deep into what exactly we're selling. And then the design was the most important part in this particular thing because it was about, we look like, you know, what we're selling. That keyword look is. I automatically knew that it wasn't about the content because the content was strong, but the layout and how we had it on the website just right. Like it's just all put together in a very weird way.
- [09:40]
A
Two sentences, this isn't right. And it looks like we don't know what the fuck we're doing.
- [09:43]
C
And. And I'm able to tell that, okay, the graphics needs to be so much better. And with a graphic designer, we're going each section by each section. A lot of graphic designer, they have the skills to design very pretty, but they don't understand the conversion behind the conversion mechanism behind designing. So they're able to put up a pretty design. But I asked you a question. Is this design going to trigger any kind of psychological response from someone wanting to buy a lot of graphic design? This is a very big problem with graphic designers. They design for look and feel, rather for designing for conversion. And designing for conversion is a whole different thing that we can speak about on a whole different day. So these are the things that I apply across the board. And just being able to speak the language. And again, I'll just bring it back to saying, I've been there, I've done that. I have years of experience and been able to understand what needs to happen in each category for each person. Regardless of the skill you have, regardless of where you come from, just understanding what you do and being able to explain to you the way you need to hear it that would be my. That's the secret behind how I do what I do.
- [10:51]
A
That's fantastic. That's not the whole secret, though. So that's number one. So, number one, you're able to take initiatives from me, from our clients, and quite a few at any given time, and in two to three sentences. And that's usually all I give as well. Most of us, right, we feel like we've painted this, like, roadmap that's perfect in our two sentences, but really, it's like the average person couldn't possibly take that and create an entire project out of it. Whereas you've played so many roles, from tech to graphic design to marketing, that you understand how it all comes together and you're able to actually paint the true roadmap instead of the destination, which is what I give you or what our clients give you.
- [11:36]
C
Correct.
- [11:36]
A
The second part of that is, and this is been a real superpower of yours, I think. Richard and I, who. We get to see Richard on another episode. But Richard and I, I think, have struggled before you came. You're in your second year with Shockwave, but, you know, we're almost six, and so we struggled for a while managing all these different teams all over the place. And you've come in and done it what looks like effortlessly. I know it's not effortlessly, but you make it look really easy. So I kind of want to talk through. You have teams that you're dealing with that are Shockwaves, teams that are clients, teams that are vendors of clients. And you're having to not only manage the projects, but you're also managing the people and the outcomes. And that's a really difficult thing to do.
- [12:29]
B
If you're making $200 from 40% of your audience and the rest of them, you're making maybe $60. Are you really making money? In the end, it's really a question of getting those numbers locked in and understanding where you need to set your pricing in that sense.
- [12:45]
C
So for me, I think one of the things that I see a lot that people are not doing in terms of pricing is the value stack behind the pricing.
- [12:54]
A
What I mean is so good. Yeah.
- [12:56]
C
They're not creating enough reason why it doesn't matter what amount you set. You can set as much price. They're always going to have a customer for whatever price point you set. So what the mechanism behind selling that price is the way you stack the value, the way the sales page, the sales letter. Whatever you do to sell it, you need to be able to create enough value that it's a no brainer. And regardless of, like I said, doesn't matter what price you end up choosing as long as people see that value. People are going to take out a credit card and they're going to purchase, I think previously it used to be very popular.
- [13:28]
A
It's very popular.
- [13:29]
C
On your checkout page you have that.
- [13:30]
A
Hey, this is the, here's the bonuses you're getting, here's the fast acting bonus. People aren't doing it anymore.
- [13:36]
C
Yeah, I've seen that happen less and less now and I think that's something that, you know, it's a big mistake.
- [13:41]
A
Well, the market, the market is being flooded due to Covid.
- [13:43]
B
Right.
- [13:44]
A
Like a lot of people are moving on to moving to online because at the height of COVID I want to say, please don't come at me in the comments if my statistics are wrong. I'm doing off memory. But I believe that at the height of COVID at the beginning of COVID it was like $313 billion. And at the height of COVID it hit like $370 billion. And so people flooded the market because they couldn't work in an office anymore and they were losing money or whatever. And so they just don't understand, they haven't studied the psychology, pricing and value adds. And that's so true, so important.
- [14:23]
C
Yeah, so that's, for me, that's the, one of the major things. And then also like you said, just as you said earlier, we're always going to make money down the line. So when you're thinking about pricing on the front end, you need to also be thinking about pricing down the line. You know, are you putting an order bump in there? Are you putting Upsell down? So whatever it is you're going with, how does that correlate with someone coming in at a $7 pricing and then you're trying to upsell them to a $1,000 man, so stupid. So you need to be able to create a correlation behind your right because.
- [14:54]
A
Your core product has to fit the demographic for your upsell. And if I'm trying to sell, and I hate that you just said that because we actually met with, we met with a potential client that has a $7 product to a 5,000. But it's very, to a 5,000. It's very true. If I want you to come into my world, my order bumps need to correlate with the outcome that I want. And so if I'm targeting someone who spends $7, that's not the same person that's gonna spend 5,000. It's just, I mean, it could be, but that's probably not the next thing you want to give. So if, let's say it's a $7 info product, the next thing should be something 47, 47 and 97 somewhere in there. And then the next thing, and then the next thing. Because, you know, that's a really great point. I love that.
- [15:46]
C
Yeah. So those are the things, you know, and of course on the long run, because there's always going to be. Once they're in your world, you need to make sure you create more value and more products for them to, you know, continuously buy from you. And also price that according to that initial price point that you have. Because again, no matter what, if they're coming at a $7 pricing on the front end, chances of them being able to spend as much as you want is not necessarily there. So just keeping track of your initial entry point for a customer. If you want to segment that on your back end so you know that, you know, people in this bucket are most likely not going to spend more than this certain amount of money. So like you said, a lot of our CRM don't have that enough information. Would have been good to be able to set up a campaign where I'm sending $1,000 offer to someone that has overall like average order value of that particular segment is above $100. And then I'm able to send them a $1,000 offer. You know, just around how you choose the price based on how much the person is able to spend is really important.
- [16:50]
A
Thank you so much for joining Special Ops Podcast. Please make sure to like and subscribe if you liked what we were talking about today.
- [16:58]
C
So.
- [16:58]
A
Www.specialopspodcast.com and sign up for our free Visionary Vault. We never try and sell you anything. We have tons of stuff in there that can really help you explode and Excel and create operational Excell direct response online or e commerce business. See you next time.