DAY 28: THE ASK METHOD

The Simple Way To Read Your Customers’ Minds And Create The Product They’ve Been Waiting For (Even If They Don’t Know It Exists)

How To Get Crucial Insights So You Can Stop Leaving Money On The Table

Excuse me. You left this here.

It’s the money you could have made if you knew your customers better.

I don’t care if you’re reading this from a private jet with a Rolex on your wrist and a glass of Cristal in your hand, if you don’t know your customers —

You’re losing money.

Are You Making The Fatal Mistake Of Failed Businesses?

Failed businesses share one thing in common:

Customers did not want their products.

But certainly this isn’t the business owners’ fault, right? How could they have known what customers wanted?

“It seemed like such a good idea at the time...”

...is the refrain of washed up CEOs and people who jump into a pool with clothes on before realizing they have a phone in their pocket.

Many a hopeful entrepreneur believes that, if he can just come up with a good idea, he’ll be a millionaire.

But ideas are cheap. Everyone has ideas.

You.

Me.

Your uncle, Steve.

None of us are millionaires, though.

Because an idea, no matter how good, is not all it takes to build a sustainable business. Unfortunately (or fortunately), ideas are not an acceptable form of currency.

“I’ll give you my best idea if you give me two cheeseburgers.”

“Keep your idea. The burgers cost $3.76.”

More than anything, businesses need customers.

Without customers, you don’t have a business. You have a legal entity and a neat idea, but you don’t have cash flow.

And if you own a business, but you don’t have any customers — or you don’t have as many customers as you want — it’s probably because you don’t understand them as well as you should.

How To Know Your Customers Better Than They Know Themselves

I’m not talking about a therapy session. Although that would likely be beneficial for both parties.

I’m talking about something much more straightforward.

It seems so simple that when I say it, you’re going to want to kick yourself...or me.

The #1 way to know your customers better than they know themselves?

Ask.

But the truth is, it’s really not that simple. This might surprise you, but you can’t say:

“Hey Mr. Customer, what kind of product should we create for you?”

Because your customer doesn’t know what type of product you should create.

But he does know two things:

• His past experience; and

• What he doesn’t want.

Before the Blackberry or the iPhone, most people didn’t know they wanted a phone with computing power. But now everyone, even your uncle Steve, has one in their pocket.

Before queso, we didn’t know we needed a liquid form of cheese. But I digress.

Your task is not to ask customers face-value questions to get a vague sense of their desires.

Instead, your task is to ask customers the right questions that will draw out deep, insightful answers you can use to create a new product or re-position an existing one...to develop a product that solves a problem so deep, your customers didn’t even know they needed it.

So how do you do it?

Ask. By Ryan Levesque — The Extensively-Detailed Roadmap To Learn Exactly What Your Customers Really Want So You Can Give It To Them

Ryan Levesque is bestselling author and an entrepreneur.

But before that, he was a cubicle employee.

He’d always dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur, and when the market crashed in 2008, he seized his opportunity.

He then started a small business with his wife, Tylene, and grew it from $0 in revenue to $25,000 per month in just 18 months.

That experience revealed to him a process he now calls The ASK Method.

Since its inception, The ASK Method has been used to generate over $120 million in 23 different industries.

It’s even helped one company generate as many as 52,000 email subscribers per day.

In his book, Ask., Levesque does more than lay out a vague thought process. Instead, he bares all, revealing the full details of The ASK Method, all the way down to cut-and-paste copy you can use with your own customers.

What Is The ASK Method?

The ASK Method is the path to your customer’s heart.

It’s a specific series of survey funnels that will take you from “I need to learn more about my customers” to “I’m honestly a little uncomfortable with how much I know about my customers. I think I know them better than they know themselves.”

Because when you truly understand your customers, you can build products that actually help them. Products they won’t buy reluctantly. But products that will make them scramble to pull out their credit cards.

Why Your Customers Will Love The ASK Method

Your customers are fed up.

Hopefully not with you, but undoubtedly with the glut of marketing material they receive on a daily basis.

Most of this marketing is tone deaf. It screams into their ear through a megaphone without regard for what they really want or need.

But The ASK Method forces you to put down the megaphone. Instead of yelling at your customer to “buy, buy, buy!,” you instead sit down with them and ask:

What do you need from me?

(Not in those exact words, mind you. More on that in the book.)

Unsurprisingly, listening to your customers' needs, desires, and pains can help you develop a product they actually want to hear about, and more than that — that they want to buy.

With one fell swoop, you’ve separated yourself from the competition and created a pack of passionate fans who would love to buy from you.

Stop Leaving Money On The Table. Get Your Copy Of Ask. Today.

When you purchase Ask., you get a step-by-step guide that teaches you exactly how to implement each of the five individual elements of The ASK Method’s process in your own business:

• Prepare: The Deep Dive Survey

• Persuade: The Prospect Self-Discovery Landing Page

• Segment: The Micro-Commitment Bucket Survey

• Prescribe: The Profit Maximization Upsell Sequence

• Pivot: The Email Follow-Up Feedback Loop

Ask. is not an exploration of a concept, rather, it’s an extensively-detailed roadmap.

Follow it to the T, and you will learn exactly who your customers are, the biggest, scariest challenges they face, and how you can develop a product they will not just buy — but that they will love.

Stop leaving money on the table. Get your copy of Ask. today.

[Get The Book]

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ANALYSIS

I love writing about marketing products.

Because, when writing to marketers, I feel like you encounter less skepticism. While other marketers know exactly what you’re doing, it feels like a bit of an acknowledging head nod, like “I see what you’re doing here, but do ya thang.”

Product

I wrote about Ask., a book by Ryan Levesque that details his survey funnel strategy to learn more about customers so you can serve them better.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is a digital marketer, an early stage startup CEO, or a personal brand.

This is a person who has some background knowledge of marketing, but is humble enough to know they don’t know everything.

They have an idea of who their customers are, but they’re either not earning as much as they’d like, getting enough leads, etc.

In general, it’s someone who has a vested interest in the marketing success of a company.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is problem-aware.

They know they’re not making as much money or getting as many leads as they’d like. They are likely in the later stages of sophistication, as they’ve probably seen many marketing courses or books by this point.

That being said, I think this letter could do a better job of addressing that deeper level of sophistication by focusing on how The ASK Method helps them understand customers better.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that, if you don’t understand your customers well, you’re leaving money on the table.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that, The ASK Method can help you understand customers better than they know themselves so you can develop a product they love and want to buy.

Lessons Learned

I may have said this in an earlier letter, but I think understanding problems is easy.

It’s framing the solution in the best way that’s a challenge — at least when you’re confined to one day for each sales letter.

In order to truly understand why a product is great, I think you have to spend time with it. Quantity time leads to quality copy in this case.

Because, while it’s easy to understand a solution at face-value, the only way you can get a better understanding of the true essence of a product is to live it and breathe it for a while.