Coaching Call: How do I balance my messaging when my buyer and user are different?

Today I am coaching Taila, an online mentor for high school and university students. The challenge that Taila faces today is how to clarify her messaging when her clients are students but her buyers are usually their parents. In this episode, we talk about how to hone Taila's messaging when addressing two different audiences.

– Why defining your ideal client will help guide your content marketing strategy to both the students (users of the service) and their parents (the buyers).
– How understanding both cohorts and how they consume information is so important for your visibility strategy and sales process.
– Why market research is the key to understanding and addressing both students' and parents' needs.
– How thinking outside-of-the-box will help to effectively engage *both* audiences.

 

 
Steph: Today is a live coaching call with one of my audience members, Taila, who runs a mentoring business for university students. Her big challenge that we are workshopping today is one that I know many of you deal with in your businesses, where the person who you are working with is not necessarily the same person who is buying from you, the person who is making that purchasing decision.
In her case, she's working with the university students and the people who are actually paying her who are making that investment are the student's parents. So in today's episode, we are looking at some ways that she can. Start to address the messaging and how she's talking to these two separate audiences to ensure that both audiences have what they need to be ready to sign up and work with her.
If you are somebody, for example, who you are selling to, let's say somebody who's in corporate, who has a different decision maker to the person who is taking action, this is going to be really useful for you as well as anybody who is selling to. Younger people whose parents might be paying for their investment.
I know you're going to get a lot out of this episode. So let's jump into the coaching call.

S: Do you have some kind of sales process in place to sell the offers?

Taila: I have a roadmap call session,  like a discovery call. I recently had a really successful one with a year 12 student – we sat down for 15 minutes, set out an action plan and she was 100 percent in. But it didn't end up going through because her parents didn't want to pay for it. So I think, that's definitely the gap. I do have a sales process at the moment, but it is solely in the hands of the student. There's no kind of parent involvement in that aspect of it.

S: So an easy quick change there would be, they need to bring their parent to that call. Because while the student knows you, they like you, they trust you. They have bridged that magician's gap, that gap between where they are and where they need to be to be ready to sign up and take the action. But the parent hasn't, the parent doesn't yet understand why their kid needs this, but when you have the parent on that call, then suddenly now they are a whole lot more aware of, Oh, this is what my child needs to be able to succeed, and then they're going to be much more likely to buy it. So I would suggest make it a prerequisite that the parent attends the call with you. So I would maybe put this in the intake form for the calls. So you can have a box to tick to say, yes I (the student) have the budget for working with Taylor, or I'm bringing my parent along to the call. Something like that, where they understand actually there's an investment involved to continue to work with you. It's not just free advice. Obviously they're going to walk away from that call with a lot more clarity, but it's not just a jump on the call and get free advice. And if they want to keep working with you and they want their parents to pay for it, then the parent needs to be on the call as well.

So that's one way to do it. And that can then also extend to, if you start using things like webinars to sell, it can be, something like, come to this training and also bring your parent along. Or you can start to do webinars that are purely for the parents or discovery calls that are purely for the parents.
And then it becomes your sales process. How can we fill those sales processes with the right people? And if the sales process is a discovery call with both the student and the parent, then you can keep marketing to the student. If the sales process is a webinar just to the parent, then you need to think about how can we get in front of more of these parents and get them to register for this webinar? Are you currently getting in front of the parents at all?

T: No, all of my messaging on my website is using language aimed at students as the audience, as opposed to the parents. I have some content ideas that could kind of feed through, and I've started brainstorming that, but it felt like I was doing double the work because I was trying to do double the content.

S: Okay. I would think another easy win then would be on your website to have just one page and this can be in your menu bar and it can be for parents. The page is designed to meet them where they're at, the struggles that they have as it relates to their child's performance at high school or uni.
So the struggles might be, they're feeling frustrated because they see their kid trying to study but every day, they're just procrastinating and then they're not getting the results. And as a parent, they feel like they've failed them because they don't know how to do it and how to support them.
So you're explaining, you're really meeting them where they're at. And then the call to action from that page is book a discovery call or whatever sales process you want to send them into. So you've got that one page there.

In terms of having to do double the work, ─ I think you either have to go all in on one of them. So all in on, I'm only going to speak to students and I'm going to make sure that they always bring their parent along. And this might be something that you test initially to see how effective that is in terms of selling. Or maybe you double down on, I'm only going to talk to parents.
That could be something else you could do. Otherwise it is going to be double the work unfortunately. I think something like a podcast could be really effective for reaching parents. It could be a great place to be sharing. It doesn't have to be long content. It can be five-minute episodes but it's a great place to be sharing that slightly longer form content that their parents are going to be more likely to consume, whereas high school and uni students at the moment are probably going to be more inclined to consume shorter form content. Their parents are probably more likely to be consuming that longer form content still.
They're going to need a little bit more to trust you first. If you're doing longer videos or a podcast, if you're in their ears for 5 or 10 minutes at a time, that's going to help the parents to trust you a lot more before they make that investment.

T: Yes, absolutely. It comes more naturally to me to speak to the students. I have a relationship with a lot of my audience already because I've shared a lot of my own student experience. So I think my energy is better off going to them on Instagram. But I didn't think about long form versus short form content because it's hard to know what a what a parent consumes in terms of content, what their preferences are.

S: Ok, I would be talking to some parents. So go reach out to some of your most engaged students. So think about who would be in your current audience. Think about who would be maybe five or 10 of your ideal clients to work with and ask them. Hey, would you mind introducing me to your parents? I would love to have a quick chat, or maybe even can I jump on a zoom call with you and your mum or your dad. I just want to find out a little bit more and I'll give you 15 minutes of my time to share some advice about X, Y, Z, or you can ask me some questions about this thing that you're struggling with.
And then when you're on that call with the parent, ask them, what are you struggling with? When it comes to, for example, watching your child succeed at uni and listen to what they say. And then you can always ask them follow-up questions. So if they say, it's really frustrating for me watching them procrastinating.
And you ask, what's frustrating about it? And then they might say, well, they're not getting good results. And I feel like I've let them down. And then we can start to tap into what's going on in their minds. That's the kind of content that we can create that addresses that.

Because they may not know why they need what you're selling them yet, but if you can show them how what you're selling them meets or solves the problems and the frustrations and the challenges that they have right now, and you can do that with your free content, then they're going to be so much more likely to want to actually pay for their child to work with you.

It's easy to forget that. Especially in this kind of parent-child relationship, it's not just the child's problems, it's the parent also having these pain points and they're having their own problems related to it too.
Also for the child, it might be that they don't even know how to have that conversation with their parent. They've seen what you're selling. They're know they want this, but they just don't know how to position this in a way that their parents are going to see the value in it.
So they don't know how to sell something to their parents. And that's essentially what they are doing. If you're selling to them and then they are having to sell to their parents. You need to set them up to be selling to their parents.
I see this quite a lot with people who sell to people who work in corporates, for example, and they have to then go and sell it to their boss. And something that works really well is like an email template for them where they can put all of the things that their boss needs to know to be ready to make that decision and send that to their boss.
So I wonder if there's some kind of framework that you could put together for them where it's basically a script for the conversation that they have with their parent and thinking about what are the things that the parent needs to know and to be willing to invest in this. And you might find that out by asking them in those one on one calls, finding out, you know, they want to know the price, they want to know how long is this going to take? How much time is it going to take? What kind of results can they expect?

T: Yes, definitely. I put together a document with a plan of action and personalized it to the student that I'm speaking to so they can show it to your parents. It's got the pricing, it's got how I'm going to structure our sessions, what I want to do, what our goals are going to be.
But I think from a student perspective, for example when I was a student, it is really hard, a lot of people wouldn't be confident going to ask their parents for that kind of money. So I feel like it's completely out of my hands at that stage of the process. I need to get a bit of that back.
And I try to kind of do that by setting them up for that conversation. But it's hard to kind of control that in between part. At the end of the call with her, I had a yes, and then a but, there wasn't much I could do.

S: Okay. So those yes buts, whenever you get a yes, but write it down because that's something that you then need to address somewhere in that sales process.
So for example, let's say, that you said you gave her something with like the price and all of the details and all of that, that's all the logical stuff.
But we also want to include the slightly more emotional soft feelings stuff, because that's a conversation for, for the student to go and say to their parents, Hey, like I'm struggling with this thing. That's possibly going to be quite a challenging conversation for them. And depending on the family that they grew up in and those dynamics, they might not feel comfortable having that conversation.
So if you can give them a little bit of a script to follow where they can say, Hey mum, I'm struggling with this here and this is the solution and this is how it's going to help me. That's going to appeal to the parent a lot more than, this is the price, this is how it's structured and this is how long it takes.

Those yes, buts, if you can address those maybe in the same script, you know, yes, but, uh, I don't have the budget for it right now. Well, great. But how much have you spent on uni? You know, one semester of uni is quite expensive and this is actually relatively, I don't know what your price point is, but I'm assuming it's probably relatively cheap compared to a semester of uni fees.
Or let's say they're at a high school and they're a private high school student, right? That's a lot of money. That's tens of thousands of dollars versus a quite a small investment to get the most out of it and to set them up to succeed.

T: Yeah, I had a really interesting conversation with this girl, she said that her parents, ─ wanted her to to see a psychologist this year, but she said to me, I don't need a psychologist. I just need someone to kind of help me through. Yeah, it was things like academic validation and planning ahead for her term. And she said, I don't think I don't want a psychologist. This is what I would want. So even though I didn't put it in that document, but if you compare it to if you had this many sessions with a psychologist, and you're willing to spend your money there. But I didn't put it in the document in terms of words because I didn't really want to, and I found it hard to sell myself based on something like that.

S: That's a great piece of free content. If you were to do that on Facebook or as a podcast, you know, Why would you be able to help them in a different way, or how can you help them in a different way to a psychologist and use that story that you just told me.
I don't need a psychologist. I just need this, because this is going to be more helpful and it's going to be actually more helpful, and it's a cheaper option as well. I also wonder if one of the hesitations that the parents might have, because they don't know you yet, they don't trust you.
They don't like you. I wonder if they're thinking, Oh, here's somebody who's also quite young and you don't have the qualifications that a psychologist does, even though you have been through that process and you've built this business. So you are perfectly positioned to help them with the challenges, that you've been through.

And I think that that's where sharing that content, getting in front of those parents a little bit more is going to help with that. And I do wonder if it might be worth doing some kind of webinar for, I don't know how many people you've had in the past where the parents haven't signed where they've, the kid's been interested, but the parents haven't paid, but it might be a good idea to do like a group webinar.
You can say to those students, know you wanted to work with me and your parents didn't want to invest. I'm running this info session, and I would love to have your parents come along and see if this helps them a little bit and makes them trust me a little bit more for you to work with me.

T: Yes, I think trust, that's a huge thing because the students trust me because they know me. But I can see from a parent's perspective why you would be a little bit hesitant, especially if you haven't even spoken or had any form of communication, so I'm just a completely random person to them.

S: Yes bause you've got to see it from their perspective, right? For them, Oh, my kid's asking me to spend this money on somebody that they found on social media,
selling them stuff on Instagram. That's a huge risk for them. So I would say then based on what we've talked about, I would say your action steps are going to be book in those calls and find out what's going on in the parent's minds. Like we've brainstormed a few of the things that might be coming up, but you won't know for sure until you have those conversations and then based on what you uncover in those conversations. Set up a for parents page on your website and start incorporating the parents into that sales process, whether that's discovery calls, whether that is a webinar, or whatever that sales process looks like.
And then longer term, thinking about how can you share free content and get in front of those parents in a way that feels streamlined for you. So podcast or Facebook or something that's not going to add a huge amount of extra work to your plate.

T: It feels at the moment just like I've just pushed it all kind of to the side because it feels like I have to double everything to kind of target both, but you're right. If I can streamline it a bit and include them in the important parts of the process, I might be able to target them.

S: And really, you know, encouraging the students to get their parents involved as much as possible. So even once you start sharing that content for parents saying, well, like saying to your students that you've got, Hey, I've recorded this podcast episode, share this with your mum and dad. And it starts building the trust and building the communication between all parties.
It's going to start by starting to understand what's going on in the mind of the decision maker. The parents. What's going on really well with the students. That's how you're able to connect with them so well, because you have been one of them. But you haven't been in the shoes of the parent.
You don't know what's going through their minds. And yet there's probably a lot going on in there that you and I can't even begin to preempt. So have those conversations. And that's going to help a lot more than anything else, especially it's going to help a lot more than just going out there and aimlessly starting to create content.
Exactly. Yeah. Which is what I do not want to do. ━ I have no time for that.

Awesome. Oh, this has been such a fun one to workshop. Thank you so much, Taylor. This has been a great chat. I know this is going to help a lot of people who have been listening.

 

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