Make Your Customer the Hero
Why your marketing should tell your customer’s story, not yours.
We see it all the time, a billboard, bus stop ad, or a yard sign with a well-dressed, successful-looking real estate agent. They exude professionalism and confidence; something worth aspiring to be…but only if the goal of the ad is to recruit more real estate agents.
The hard truth is, your prospective customer doesn’t care, they want to see themselves in your marketing (ok, maybe not literally) but they want to see a representation of what they could be or have; their aspirational identity.
Marketing is a game of psychology; identifying your ideal client and what they want to become.
When sales leaders participate in their client’s stories, they show their clients how they will transform into their aspirational identity: a mother or father who is able to provide their family a home to grow in, a backyard to play in, great schools, a neighborhood with the amenities that they find important.
So, where do you begin telling your client’s story?
We sat down with StoryBrand Certified Guide and Principal Brand Strategist at Fruitful Design, Raj Lulla to talk all about the StoryBrand Framework. StoryBrand is a marketing framework that helps businesses tell their customer’s stories by placing the customer as the hero and the brand as the guide.
Check out the episode now and you can check out Raj Lulla at Fruitful.design.
YouTube | Spotify | Google | Stitcher | iTunes
Is Your Customer Ignoring You? | Episode 3
AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT
Bryce Curry:
You have a huge problem. Your business is being ignored. This episode gives you a framework to address one of the most challenging things in marketing and sales. Prospects only listen to brands that communicate simply and clearly. They ignore all the rest, no matter how big the brand might be. Welcome to The Info, a podcast that encourages and equips sales leaders such as yourself to prospect smarter. I’m your host, Bryce Curry, VP of Marketing at Cole Information. I’m excited for you to hear from Raj Lulla, partner and strategist at Fruitful Design and Strategy. He’s going to unpack the power of story to overcome the curse of being ignored.
He’s a certified StoryBrand guide and he will walk us through the StoryBrand framework and how it’ll add clarity to your business, but most importantly, position your business for growth. One of the keys in your sales process is the power of story. In today’s podcast, The Info by Cole Information, I am excited to have my guest, Raj Lulla. Raj is actually one of my favorite people, and I don’t say that lightly. I don’t say that about everybody. We share a general curiosity about life and different things, so we connect in a lot of ways, but I’m excited to have them on this episode to unpack the power of story and the approach to the framework of building out a process that adds clarity to your message.
So, one of the reasons we’re doing this podcast is to talk to sales leaders all across the country about tactics and technology, but one of the things that’s mission critical is the clarity in the message that you deliver through those campaigns. People connect with stories and really a conversation in a lot of ways is storytelling. Our lives are stories. You can really apply it to everything. The obvious things would be movies and books and all the famous directors and writers and novelists that come with that. So, before we dive right in and unpack some of that, what that means for our audience, sales professionals and marketers across our verticals, tell the audience a little bit about yourself.
Raj Lulla:
As Bryce said, I’m Raj Lulla, principal strategist here at Fruitful Design and Strategy. My entire job is to help small business leaders and salespeople tell their customer’s story better, not their own story, their customer’s story. We do that by helping you position your customer as the hero of the story and position you as the guide using a framework called the StoryBrand framework.
Bryce Curry:
That framework is something that I’d like to talk about a little bit later in the episode. Obviously, it’s a framework that we don’t have time to unpack, nor would I expect you to do a full workshop here on this episode, but we’ll talk about at a high level what that looks like. One of the things as consumers and business owners, even sales professionals, we’re interacting daily with microbits of information. We’re accepting that, we’re interpreting it, we’re rejecting it. That’s one of the reasons for this podcast is there’s many things out there as we are marketing, as we are sales professionals. We’re trying to get individual’s attention.
I always tell people when they’re like, “So what’s the secret to marketing?”, or if they’re really interested in marketing, I always tell the team or that individual, as a marketer, your start line is being ignored. So, you’re starting at ignore, which is a depressing thought at first, but that’s just human nature. Our brains, I think, are structured in a certain way, and I think that’s part of the framework with StoryBrand, is the acknowledgement that our brains at a high level are focused on thriving and surviving.
There’s primal reasons for all of that that go beyond this podcast, of course. But it’s important when you’re talking about consumer behavior, messaging, and stuff like that. So, I’m curious on what are your thoughts on the challenge it creates for sales and marketing professionals when the people that they’re prospecting, they’re starting at ignoring them?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, I heard somebody say one time that the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s apathy. When they have somebody come into their office, marriage that’s in trouble, the thing that they’re most worried about isn’t when the couple is bickering and fighting or whatever because then they’ve got energy. They got passion because the stuff that is happening in the marriage bothers them. Hate, anger, that stuff is powerful. We’ve seen this in the social algorithms and outrage is very powerful thing, but apathy is so much worse because that means just they’ve given up or don’t care at all. So, marketers face a very similar challenge.
Think about it, Domino’s Pizza, one of the greatest turnaround stories in all of marketing history. People actively hated it. They would make jokes about it on Jay Leno, all that stuff, how it was cardboard, all that. So, they actually occupied a space in people’s consciousness as the worst pizza. So, then when they made a turnaround and they said, “Hey, you’re right, we’re terrible,” then they had room then to surprise and delight people. Whereas the pizza chain that nobody’s heard about or nobody cares about, your local pizza place that just pops up one day and then two years later it’s gone like a lot of small businesses, they have a much harder time because people just don’t care at all in either direction, love or hate.
Bryce Curry:
Right. I think that’s a great example, and for our audience, something to relate to because we’ve all come across that turnaround story and there’s several brands like that that have been successful in doing that. I think a lot of it does. One, they have very creative agencies that back that and embrace that, but they also have product improvement and stuff like that. That’s important.
In our past conversations, I remember you saying something and I think this comes out of the StoryBrand process is if you confuse, you lose. Could you unpack that a little bit? I mean, it sounds obvious, but in its simplistic form, it actually has a lot of a benefit to our audience when you’re thinking about, “Hey, I got to do a sales pitch in front of someone that actually opened the door, answered my call, received my email, stuff like that.”
Raj Lulla:
One of my favorite things that I learned about in psychology class when I was in school was this thing called the cocktail party effect. The cocktail party effect is your brain’s ability to filter out all noise besides the conversation that’s happening in front of you. Now you’re only going to use that strength, that skill if the conversation that you’re in is interesting. I mean, I think we’ve all been at parties where the person you’re talking to and then you’re like, “Oh, there’s meatballs behind that person,” or they’re like, “Oh, I’d rather be talking to that person.” So, you’re trying to monitor multiple things because that person hasn’t engaged you.
Same thing happens in marketing, where clarity comes into that, where confusing equals losing is that if you’re trying to tell your customer a lot of different things about how you are the real estate agent who will help them find the cleanest bathrooms in houses, but really all they care about is floor plans or square footage or whatever, then they’re going to go, “Okay,” and they’ll ignore it. So, it turns out if you were also the real estate agent who helps people find the best floor plans and people care a lot more about that, then you shouldn’t lead with the bathroom thing, because it’s weird and confusing and people are going to be like, “Oh, that’s the bathroom lady.” They’re not going to remember that you could also help them with the thing they really care about.
Bryce Curry:
As marketers, as sales professionals, our audience is looking at KPIs and in some ways, many of them are graded on their performance against things like contact rate, open rate, various measures of engagement. If you’re BDR listening to this episode, you’re thinking about… Remember what I said? You’re starting at ignore. “… How do I get that attention and turn it into someone that we can move into the pipeline and work through down to the funnel and stuff like that?”
I really connected and I in full disclosure have gone through a workshop with Raj on a few different things from corporate level to specific verticals. I really connected with this idea of if you confuse, you lose. One of the things I want to make sure our audience connects with in this episode is that I think that sometimes we get so close to the service or product that we provide. Especially if it’s a technology that we get so close to it that it becomes difficult to express what it does.
Raj Lulla:
Oh, 100%.
Bryce Curry:
So, we trip ourselves up, and I know that sometimes when I have to sit down and think about writing copy for an email again about something specific, like hyper-local marketing, prop tech, all these fancy terms that I need to step back and think through or think about, “Is this confusing?”
I know that you guide people through that process and give some of our notes from our sessions weekly when I’m thinking through different things, whether it’s an interoffice meeting or something that we’re getting ready for a campaign in that aspect. So, I’ve really connected with this idea of how the brain works and how as marketers, if you confuse, you lose. I think that’s pretty powerful stuff.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. If you’re in sales or if you’re in marketing, it’s helpful instead of thinking that you work for your company to start thinking that you work for the client. I’ve said it to you many times when we get locked into some of those conversations where it’s like, “Oh, we got to use this word or this fancy technology or whatever,” I will often say, “I don’t work for you, I work for your customer.” In fact, I will really often say that I’m a ruthless advocate for your customer, because ultimately, that’s what’s going to make you successful as a salesperson, as a marketer, is being an advocate for your customer to get the solution to their problem. That’s really one of the key tenets of the StoryBrand framework is figuring out what problem you are solving for the customer.
We get too close to it and we say things like, “Well, our customer’s problem is they need prop tech.” It’s like, “No, no, no, no. Our customer’s problem at the most basic level is they need to sell more things and the prop tech will help them do that in whatever way and then it’s our job to start with that problem. They need to sell more things and then figure out how this prop tech connects to that problem is the solution to that problem and then explain it very clearly with the plan.” This is what happens in stories and movies all the time.
In Star Wars, Luke wants to be a hero from the very beginning. He wants to go to the academy, he wants to fly. Then as he meets Obi-Wan Kenobi in episode four, Obi-Wan Kenobi gives him the path to becoming the hero that he wants to be. It’s to become a Jedi and to train in the ways of the force, because otherwise, Luke didn’t know how to do it. He had a vague notion of I want to be up there, I want to be off this dirt planet somehow, but he didn’t really know where he was going. You are doing the same thing for your customers. They have a general desire, I want to sell more things. Then you say, “Hey, cool. Well, I have this thing that’s really powerful and here’s how you get into it so that you meet your goal.”
Bryce Curry:
Right, absolutely. I mean, we can all insert our favorite movie and think about that framework and why we connect with story and why it’s so powerful. One of the things I wanted to unpack with you is as our audience is listening to this and it could be a new concept, a new framework for sure, which we’ll get into here in a moment, just to put some tangibility to what we’re talking about is when I think of the sales funnel and our customers, our audience is tasked with hunting to transaction in a lot of ways. It’s like your cocktail example. So, if you give the full story up right at the start, is it overwhelming? What are your thoughts around pieces of the story in connection with the sales process?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, I think it’s HubSpot who identifies the four stages of the sales funnel as awareness, interest, consideration, and purchase. You don’t have to remember all that, but the idea is that people go from just being aware that you exist through a series of closer and closer steps until they buy from you. I’m not sure when this episode’s going to air, but we just got done watching the Super Bowl. For me, I care probably almost as much if not more about the ads as I do the game itself. The one thing I always think at the end of the game is, “What ads do I remember?” Some of them are a brands that we’ve known really long. So, awareness is super high, it’s tied, it’s certain alcohol companies, all that. So, they’re trying to get us to consider a new product.
Pizza Hut just brought back the big New Yorker and several of us who grew up in the ’90s were like, “Whoa.” So, we’re aware of the brand. We’re considering a new thing. Other companies like Coinbase last year and what was arguably the best ad of last year’s Super Bowl was just the QR code bouncing around the screen. It is because most people are not engaged in crypto yet, even though maybe in worlds that we live in, people are talking about all the time, but the majority of Americans don’t hold crypto.
So, just getting people to be aware of the company at all, to visit the website at all is a win for that company. We do the same thing in marketing where we have to decide, “What’s the intent of this campaign, of this ad that we’re doing, this messaging? Is it to get people to engage in awareness? Is it for them to be interested in the product, consider purchasing from us or to actually purchase?” What you tell them, which piece of the story you tell them is going to depend on the intent of the ad.
Bryce Curry:
That makes a ton of sense, especially in visual medium. I think it applies to our audience that’s also doing outbound telemarketing, that’s doing different types of drip campaigns. I think that story is the glue in some ways that brings continuity to your message. Again, we don’t want to confuse.
Raj Lulla:
Speaking of outbound telemarketing, some of the best cold call stuff I’ve ever received, I will say it’s like maybe I don’t know what the opposite of lukewarm is, but luke cold calling. Some people who are in my networks but haven’t done business with me. Some of the best calls that I get are ones that end with the question, “Is there anything I can help you with?” As opposed to jumping to the bottom of the funnel and saying, “Hey, do you want to buy this thing you’ve never heard of or never thought about until today?” Somebody just making themselves aware and then positioning themselves as helpful to me.
This just happened to me this last week where somebody in my network who probably wants us to hire them as a contractor reached out and they asked that question at the end. I’m a lot farther in my career than this person. So, at first, I couldn’t really think of anything. But then right after the call, I was like, “You know what? I’ve actually got a need for a personal project that I’m looking for a specialist to help me with.” I asked the person and he was like, “Oh, yeah, I know somebody in that field,” and made an introduction. It was a great introduction and it raised his stock dramatically with me.
So, I know that we think of this a lot as numbers games and that stuff. If you insert that just little human element of thinking, “How can I be helpful to the person on the other end of the phone today?”, you’d be surprised, the answers that you get. Sometimes people say things like, “Well, unless you can get a baby to stop crying because they’re teething or whatever.” Then it’s like, “Oh, have you tried the little giraffe?” Whoa, what giraffe? You are more than one thing, just like your client is more than one thing. So, just being helpful, proving value to them early helps them begin to trust you, which is a huge part of continual the relationship.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, absolutely. I think the psychological side of that is as when people are engaging with each other, especially in the context of prospecting, it comes down to, “Can I trust this person? What are they going to do for me?” Those type of questions. Some may ask them out loud, some may just ask them internally, but we’re always asking, “What can this person do for me?”, stuff like that. So, I think relationship is obviously very important, but today, what we’re talking about is how to build those relationships, I think, by using a framework that does work. I can say that because we do it, we’ve embraced it as a company. When I talk to other fellow marketers in my network, I do recommend this type of framework.
So, let’s spend a little bit of time talking about what StoryBrand is. I think about our audience and one of the things our audience, it could be a real estate agent that wants to go from 20 deals to 50 deals this year. They get granular and you have to. I mean as sales professional, it’s extremely important. There’s way better sales coaches out there. I look forward to having some of them on future episodes that have frameworks and structure that’ll help you with that.
But if I’m a real estate agent that wants to go from 20 deals to 50 deals or an insurance agent that wants to have 45 quotes a month because that numbers equate to this many new policies for my book of business or a home pro that’s doing really great work in a certain neighborhood and wants to connect with the neighbors, we’ve talked about storytelling. We’ve talked a little bit about the psychology behind it and developing relationships, but let’s just dive a little bit into what is StoryBrand and for this audience, just unpack that a little bit at a high level.
Raj Lulla:
I’m going to give a little bit of hard truth to our audience here. Say that you are that agent who’s trying to go from 20 deals to 50 deals or get 45 new clients for your agency. Your customer does not care about that goal. I know that’s a hard truth, but if people buy a house on average every seven years, that is the only transaction you make that year that they care about. They’re one house because they’re not going to do this again for a while. They don’t want to do this again for a while.
Moving is stressful and it’s a big change in transition. They want this to go amazingly well and they want to have a great experience with it. They want to feel like they got a great value and they want to be able to trust that you are the person to lead them there. If they feel like they are one of 50, they are going to not have a good experience. So, sometimes when we talk about the number of transactions we did last year as a measure of our success, we actually put people off, because they feel like one of many-
Bryce Curry:
That’s a good point.
Raj Lulla:
… as opposed to the only one. I think that as much as anything is a great example of how the StoryBrand framework works. We flip our mindset to put ourselves in the shoes of the other person, make them the hero of the story. Why is this person moving? Is it because they’ve got kids who are growing up? This is hitting a little close to home here, but kids who are growing up. They’re banging around the hallways and scuffing the walls and all that. You could use a little bit more room. Is that their goal or have they just sold their startup and they’re like, “Hey, I need the pool now. I need the whatever”?
Bryce Curry:
For sure.
Raj Lulla:
Whatever situation they’re in, they’re in the middle of their own story and you are going to help them get to success. So, if that success is being a great mom or dad who is providing the space for your kids to grow or whether that success is being the young millionaire or billionaire who is getting that place that’s going to be on cribs or whatever, that’s the only thing they care about. When you position yourself as the guide, as the helper to that success, you’re going to win. If you position yourself as the person who did 100 deals last year or the best agent in town because I’m on the most bus benches or whatever, people just literally will not care. They want to believe that you are going to help them get to their success, not yours.
Bryce Curry:
One of the reasons I want to have this episode is because of that exact thing and that is clarity of message. Sometimes that’s a harsh thing. I’ll have a support rep say, “Well, ask them what did they say? What was the call to action? How did they position themselves? What does the story look like and so forth?” Things like we’ve been talking about. Generally speaking, people just don’t know. So, the reason I wanted to have you on and excited about this episode is because one of the big frustrations is I’m not getting a response, right? I’m trying to get that next deal. I’m doing the hustle.
I’m doing what you’re telling me to do, Cole. I’m doing the cold calling, I’m doing the circle prospecting, I’m farming neighborhoods. I love Coal Realty Resource because I can connect with confirmed homeowners and have up to three points of contact. I get that, but I’m not getting that response. If you can hone in your message, it’s going to help with those response rates, which is why I think this audience should care about this episode ultimately.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. So, I’m going to drop a link in the show notes here that you can go and look at the framework. You start with the character transformation. That is who your customer is going to become after they’re successful. Let’s use the example of me looking for a bigger house because my kids are growing. So, I want to go from tired, frustrated dad, maybe a little too much noise in the house to relaxed, comfortable dad who’s taking care of his kids. So, there’s going to be a change that happens in me and I will attribute some of that success to what you did for me. So, with character transformation. Then we go to what the character wants, a bigger house. That one is pretty obvious.
Now, one of the things that we very often mess up in trying to put ourselves in the shoes of the character, like I said earlier, is it’s not prop tech that we want. It’s the bigger house. So, sometimes you say, “An agent who is five-star rated on Google and whatever.” No, that’s not actually what I want. I want the house and the agent is a help to that, not the end goal. I know it sounds super simple, but you would not believe how often people mess this up. So, I want the bigger house. Then what is the problem that stands between me and getting that house? It could be that the market is bananas, right? It has been for a few years.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, you’re right.
Raj Lulla:
Or it could be the zip codes that I want to move into don’t have very much inventory or it could be a number of things that stand between me and that. Again, that’s easy to try to insert ourselves here and say, “Oh, well, the problem is I just can’t find the right agent.” I know a lot of agents, but my real problem is honestly trying to navigate this market.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great point.
Raj Lulla:
Then how do I feel about that problem and then why is it just plain wrong that I’m experiencing that problem? So all of the first three elements of the StoryBrand brand script are about the customer and who they want to be and the problem they’re experiencing getting there. Then it’s only on the fourth element of the brand script that we finally talk about ourselves, and that’s the guide section. The guide section, we present ourselves as empathetic to their problem so we know how they feel and then we show authority over their problem. That is the first and only place that you can talk about that you did 50 transactions last year or that you’re the number one agent for whatever zip code.
Bryce Curry:
That’s the complete opposite of how I think. I know I thought it first and a lot of people think, not necessarily always out of ego, but you want to talk about, “I did this. This is why you should trust me. I did all this,” because you worked really hard to do that. You are really close to it. I was talking about earlier, and there’s an element of that. We’re not saying that doesn’t have a place at certain points in time. You have to obviously add credibility, but I really want people to hone in on what you just said. That is the first part, which is completely different than a lot of marketing messaging that we see our customers and it’s not putting anyone down. It adds clarity because it connects with the prospect.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. There’s a real estate agent here in Omaha by the name of David Potter, and he started doing these things called dream sessions. I think it is the most brilliant thing I have ever seen a realtor do.
Bryce Curry:
Interesting.
Raj Lulla:
Real estate agent too. He will just have people come in usually in January when things might be a little bit slower and just talk to them for an hour, hour and a half, and just talk about what they’re dreaming about. I have the real estate agent who sold me my house. I have the one that my parents have used to buy a couple properties now. I knew David, but I had never worked with him before. But when I saw a video of him helping a friend of ours find a shop, it is Bruce Guitars, he’s a luthier, a guitar maker. I’d been to their previous shop. It was in Nell Forest, which I know not all of you know, but it was literally in a forest and way back on a road. It’s one of those places that you’re like, “Will I be murdered here?”, because it’s just so out of the way.
Bryce Curry:
Tucked away.
Raj Lulla:
But it was cheap, I assume. It was a tiny fraction of a big warehouse. The whole thing was creepy, all that. So, Micah came to David and said, “Hey, this is my dream is to have a place that people liked visiting, a place that I can set up for a while.” I didn’t know about any of this happening until David had helped him find that place that was going to be a shop. There’s a cool story about the previous owner of the home who had also been a craftsman of some kind and really felt personally connected in the transaction.
So, then I saw video that they made after this whole thing was done, and my thought was, “Hey, I know some agents,” but I want to set up a conversation with David because he cares about what I’m trying to accomplish and he might be able to help me think about things outside of what I’m already thinking and that willingness to put my problem first and even my dreams and my aspirations. I love that he called him dream sessions.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, that’s awesome.
Raj Lulla:
That meant so much to me. I haven’t bought a new house yet, so it’s whatever, but it made a connection.
Bryce Curry:
There you go.
Raj Lulla:
To your point, it got me from ignoring to paying attention.
Bryce Curry:
That’s just a great example of how amazing… It’s a little beyond maybe today’s episode, we should have you back, but if you ever actually sit down with somebody and ask them, “When you dream, what do you dream about?”, that can be a pretty interesting adventure. Of course, it has to be asked at the right time. You can’t totally start top of funnel and be like… It’s an interesting idea to invite people in, and I think that that’s a great tidbit for our agents. I would encourage them to maybe give that a try and see how that goes. We talked about the flip of you. You think about the customer. You think about the prospect and what their problems or whatever their situation would be. Then you get into who you are, but then what’s the conclusion if you will?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, so you go from demonstrating your authority as a guide, again, showing your empathy. That’s really important to do first and then demonstrating your authority. Then you have to give him a clear plan, because again, this is something people do. I know I’m talking about real estate a lot, but insurance is the same game where I change insurance as little as possible. I do not want to deal with this. Hardly anybody does. Especially I remember telling an agent one time, it’s like, “Your job is to make me think about all of the worst things that could happen. That’s not something I want to do on any given Tuesday,” but these are transactions a lot of these that we make rarely.
So, we forget the process. It’s filing your taxes where you think about it about once a year and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, I forgot the healthcare form. I forgot the whatever.” There’s all these different forms that you have to put in. If we were smart, we’d be a little more organized about it, but it only happens once a year, so we don’t think about it that much. Same with this. You got to give your customer a plan, then you have to call them to a clear action, but one thing that’s really important is that it’s easy to think that calling them to that action’s like, “All right, I did all the rest of the work. They’re just going to come flocking in now. The truth is most people are not there yet.
Again, the awareness, interest, consideration, purchase, most people are not at that purchase point from the beginning. Some people are, they need out of their house right away. They need a new insurance policy right away. They are ready to find a new agent for that problem, and that’s great. We love those customers. It’s great when they shake right out of the bottom of the funnel. The rest of them are going to need something called a transitional call to action. I think this is part of what’s really brilliant about David’s strategy of the dream session is that he didn’t call me to let him sell my house. He called me to hang out with him, share my dreams, and then see if there’s any good fit there.
Even more transitional than that, he asked me to watch a video about how it worked for another client before. He didn’t even really know. He’d asked me personally, he just put that video out there. But it was a step towards him that I was willing to make that made me willing to take another step towards him. That stuff is really key to getting people to move from, again, awareness, interest. I’d known David for a long time. I was aware of him. I wasn’t necessarily interested, and I don’t think he’d be offended by me saying that. We all know a lot of agents.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, for sure.
Raj Lulla:
But what makes me interested? Oh, a different approach. That’s interesting. Then you have consideration purchase. They come a lot easier after that.
Bryce Curry:
Well, and I would assume and maybe we should reach out to David and have him on a future episode.
Raj Lulla:
I’ve been thinking of recommending him.
Bryce Curry:
It’s always good to have people that are in the field that are doing and practicing what we’re talking about. I really like this idea. It’s the first time I’ve heard it, but it also establishes him in that moment. I would assume we need to ask him as the guide.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Bryce Curry:
I mean, when it comes time for you to make that decision, you’re going to look to him to help you probably guide.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. We’ve been texting since then. As you all know, as a salesperson, texting is the holy grail. I’ll ignore an email.
Bryce Curry:
That’s refrigerator rights in my book.
Raj Lulla:
Yes, exactly. Yeah. I’ll ignore an email, but I never ignore a text. Last two things that you do need to be aware of are success and failure. In any story, there’s going to be success or failure. Luke Skywalker wants to be the hero. Success would look like blowing up the death star. Failure would look like being killed by Darth Vader and the empire taking over the galaxy. A couple of things that people get a little bit itchy about with StoryBrand is like, “Oh, it’s negative. We talk about the problem a lot and we talk about failure.”
Well, for one, we only talk about failure a little bit. A little bit of failure goes a long way. The statistic that I think 80% of people go with the first agent that they talk to, and people can lose a significant portion of their net worth because a lot of our net worth is tied up in our houses for a lot of people. They can lose a significant portion of their net worth by going with the wrong agent.
Bryce Curry:
Oh, absolutely.
Raj Lulla:
That’s failure. It’s okay for you to point that out. Now, you want to do that in a way that’s compassionate. You’re not throwing other agents out of the bus, but you warn people of the potential problems. There’s a financial wizard out there. His name is Ramit Sethi. He talks about how to do the best principles of getting rich, and one thing he says is that a 1% fee on financial advising can end up costing you 30% in returns. So, he talks about that failure. It’s a very similar concept here. If you lose even just a little bit of your home’s value in a bad transaction, then that can set you back significantly for years to come.
Bryce Curry:
For sure.
Raj Lulla:
So success, what does it look like? Hey, we’ve got more room for the kids. Finally got that pool, finally got that den in the basement, or whatever success looks like. Then failure looks like either staying stuck in the same house that it’s just going to get smaller as the kids get bigger or it’s going to be making a bad transaction that is going to set our family back financially, which is going to make things like college harder. It’s going to make things like setting up the kids up for success, saving for weddings, all that stuff. Again, you don’t want to go too far in all of that, but it is true of my situation. It’s actually your responsibility to help share those things so that I don’t make a bad decision.
Bryce Curry:
It applies across all the verticals that Cole services-
Raj Lulla:
100%.
Bryce Curry:
… in insurance and in home services especially.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, bad solar panels, that’d be a terrible investment.
Bryce Curry:
There’s so much education that goes on specifically with solar. We have a lot of solar clients that are using Cole Neighborhoods to prospect specific neighborhoods based off of demographics, but also lay of the land and stuff. That’s a little over my head, but basically how the sun shines and kilowatts and stuff like that for our solar guys out there.
Raj Lulla:
Not to mention local energy programs and rebates, incentives, all that stuff.
Bryce Curry:
You need a guide to take you through that.
Raj Lulla:
Oh, 100%.
Bryce Curry:
I’m going to listen to somebody that is going to take the time to walk me through that in a clear way.
Raj Lulla:
You want to mess with somebody’s most valuable things in their life, mess up with their relationship, their money, or their house. If you really want to anger somebody, those would probably be the top three places to do it. So, when you get a guide that truly is invested in your success and knows how to get you there, you’re going to trust that person more.
Bryce Curry:
Absolutely.
Raj Lulla:
It’s going to move you towards a sale, and it’s going to move the homeowner to success. That’s huge.
Bryce Curry:
As we close out this episode, one of the great things about going through that story is you want to share it with people.
Raj Lulla:
Oh, 100%. Yes.
Bryce Curry:
When you get to that conclusion and it was successful and the guide took you there and you reached where you wanted to start like you’re talking about in the first part of the framework, you’re going to share that. People love to share stories. I mean, it’s what bonds society in a lot of ways in a positive way. But for a small business owner, when you think about referrals and the referral stream that something like this could create, it could just compile itself.
Raj Lulla:
Well, one thing on that too is clarifying your message, putting your customer as the hero of the story is actually going to make you a better practitioner. The reason is because you’re going to notice that there are themes that go through your most successful transactions. So, you might realize, “I actually don’t like selling half million dollar up homes because the transaction takes longer. Maybe the clients are more demanding, whatever,” or maybe it’s the opposite. I hate selling anything under $500,000.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, for sure. Sure.
Raj Lulla:
When you apply this, who can I make heroic? Who can I make successful? You start to go, “Oh, I’m not going to market to anybody who doesn’t fit this profile anymore.” That helps you not waste time, helps you not be frustrated, honestly, makes you better at home, because you don’t come home from work bashing your head against the wall first, and then you get to be known for, exactly to your point, you get referrals for being the agent who does X, being the home service pro who does X. That is the key to scaling because then your marketing does marketing for you. You only have to get somebody’s awareness and then they’re going to tell 10 more people.
Bryce Curry:
That’s right.
Raj Lulla:
That’s the holy grail marketing right there.
Bryce Curry:
Absolutely. That’s where I wanted to conclude was that exact point is that this is a great way, if I’m a listener, okay, I like stories, I like movies, I read books, I get what you guys are unpacking, interesting framework. But at the end of the day, that success, that conclusion, a great story is shared and it has a compounding effect. On future podcasts, we’ll have coaches and technologists and sales coaches that will get in the mechanics of pitches and stuff like that. But I wanted to have this episode to unpack exactly what we’re talking about, because before you get into the mechanics of the campaigns or the execution, you really got to step back and evaluate and go through a process like this.
So, I hope this episode has given you something to think about. I am a big believer in this process as a marketer, but also just because I know that as a sales pro, as a business owner, you’re starting with that consumer in an ignore stage. How do you get recognized? How do you build trust and become their guide, get them to their success, and then have them share that success with others. So, Raj, thanks for being on The Info today.
Raj Lulla:
Absolutely.
Bryce Curry:
I appreciate your time. How can people get ahold of you?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, if you just go to our website, fruitful.design, then we host periodic StoryBrand workshops or we can just do this directly for you on a one-on-one service. Again, we’ll drop a link in the notes to some resources. There’s a book called Building a StoryBrand, and then there’s also a free version that you can fill out online. It can be tough. So, if you need some help, feel free to reach out to us fruitful.design.
Bryce Curry:
Awesome. Thanks, Raj. Talk to you soon, everybody. I hope this episode provided value to you as a salesperson. If you enjoyed our content, please like, subscribe, and leave a review. Make sure to join us for the next episode of The Info by Cole Information.
