Jam Session

Joseph Maxwell  00:00

Here’s an easy commerce here. We’re going to be talking, oh, there we go. It’s recording now. So now I need to be careful with what I say. So we’re going to talk through these five, one per week of this digital online sales cohort that we’re going to be doing. So the first week is where we’re going to lay out the vision like what what does it look like you’re getting on ecommerce, what is the benefits? How can you do it, it’s very, it’s a lot easier than you might think it will be. There’s going to be work but we’re going to make that roadway as easy as possible a road trip. The second one is easy navigation. And taking an allegory from the Lord of the Rings series of books and movies, we’re going to be talking about what it takes to actually get from our source to the destination and I’ll be it the Frodo had a little bit more difficult of a journey then we’re going to have there still as a as allegory there is we want to help you avoid those pitfalls. And in specifically this week, we’re going to talk about helping customers navigate almost to that final destination page. We’re going to talk about emotional connection, a making infusing, you might say a b2c business to consumer of mentality into this website. Because ultimately, if our customers are, if they’re, if they see a trend website is transactional, we’re missing out on what I believe to be the greatest differentiator of one company versus another company that are selling roughly the same type of widgets. And then finally, we also have to talk about closing the sale. So there was a real quick overview Curt of what we’re going to be talking about, and I couldn’t be more excited about having these conversations over the next few weeks. I love

Curt Anderson  01:44

And again, guys, if you just joined us, I see hey, my friend, Eric, I’m Erica last week at the fuse hub, the New York MEP conference workshop last week, Erica Happy Tuesday Julie’s here today. So again, guys, if you’re just joining us, drop your LinkedIn drop your website in the chat box. Let us know where you’re coming from. Great opportunity to connect with some new friends here. Got Whitney Tom, my friend Tory’s here. So alright, we’re gonna dive in. And Jon, let’s go here. So you have a great story that you’d like to share, you started from zero. And it’s really done. It can be daunting, challenging, but it doesn’t need to be. Can you talk about the eCommerce journey when you got started?

Jon Guess  02:19

Yeah, you know, before coming over to the agency side, I did work for a distribution company, worked there for 15 years. And we were just like a lot of b2b companies that it was on the roadmap, we knew we wanted to sell online, but we knew nothing about it. And I was actually a network admin at that company. So I had a little bit of technical background, but I did not know anything about eCommerce. And so, you know, we worked with an agency, we started a sister division that was totally focused on E commerce and really started from zero, I remember, we launched the website and $0 the first day in sales. And so, you know, the website process in and of itself was, you know, one of the phases where we, you know, had to build a website, but then after we went live, you know, the work could just be done, it was, you know, getting that feedback from the customers iterating making changes, putting that feedback into processes and you know, it was a long process but it was very rewarding process. And so it can be done. There’s tools out there, this this cohort class can definitely help with that. I recommend lean on agencies they’ve been there they’ve done it, they’ve seen different types of businesses and and all sorts of industries. So you know, it’s a very rewarding process that can be done in this cohort is going to kind of walk break it down into digestible sections and walk everybody through it. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  03:51

I love that and I’m going to give a shout out to our friends at the MEP so that you know if you’re not familiar with your MEP network We’ve got John here from the Nebraska MEP but whatever state you’re coming from there is an MEP Manufacturing Extension Partnership near you. Also, how about PTAC I got my friend Diane here frm the tax centers so you want to check out your local Hey Dan, Happy Tuesday to you so but let’s dive in here you know a lot of manufacturers out there they’re like you know, you know again, cost of manufacture contract manufacturer ecommerce isn’t quite for me, man. I just I heard this recently from a manufacturer and this is you know, this can be tough right. The question to the manufacturer was, why do you make it so hard to do business with you? Why do you make it so hard to buy from you and so Joseph, we’re gonna dig into that but I just want to share it this was a post on LinkedIn. This was a public post and this this was from three hours ago. I put out I put out a post making a comment about how I manufactured shared that customer there was like, man, like Dude, you’re making it so hard to do business with you like I want to do business with you but it’s hard. This person put up this quote here check this out. I went to a suppliers website, you Yesterday, hoping to get a price of a piece of equipment, a commodity type thing. The website offered an incident quote, I filled out the form, no incident quote, I received, received and an auto email, no incident quote, it’s the next day. Still no incident quote. So Joseph, can you please talk about you know, like, and here’s my dear friend, Chris Harrington. She says, For Goodness gracious, Pete’s sake, will you please just put the price of the O ring out there? Joseph, why is it so important to get that price out there? It’s

Joseph Maxwell  05:32

because that’s what the customer wants. Right. And so the problem here is with the instant the idea of instant quote, people, of course, think like Jason thinks that he’s gonna get the price immediately. Kurt, can you go back to slides, I want to pull up that, while there is a very important phrase that Jason put in here, maybe purposefully, he used the term a commodity type thing. In other words, we’re not talking about what I’m guessing to be this elaborate industrial piece of machinery that has 1000 different configurations here, it sounds like it’s something that’s pretty standardized in order to get now from a customer company’s perspective, and rightly so they might be concerned, well, I don’t my pricing getting out there, I’m concerned, my competitors are gonna get it, we need to wall this off that sort of whatever the reason is there. And it probably was a legitimate reason. But this is something a customer wants, it’s your by trying to protect your pricing. In this case, it actually is turning other customers away. And so it’s becomes a difficult balance. But I think the pendulum has very much swung in the foot in the way of, we need to get our pricing out there or whatever it takes in order to help our customers get what they need. And in this case, they’re looking for pricing. But I also questioned the term instinct, quote, we probably shouldn’t be using that terminology here in a situation like this, because it’s not an instant quote, it’s a normal quoting process, which is understood if that’s what you need, call it an a quote, process. Right?

Curt Anderson  06:56

Right, get quote fast. And if you’re gonna put it out there fast, then then maybe back it up. Right that so it’s right in, and we’re gonna dive into a couple of examples here, and we’re gonna let’s dive in. So we what we want to do guys is, you know, everybody’s busy. And here’s a couple of scary facts to think about. I’m just talking with a woman this morning, you know, Gen Z, the oldest Gen Z is now 27. Like, they’re not, you know, they’re not young, they’re not kids in high school anymore. Like, these are folks, these are business owners, entrepreneurs, supervisors, managers making business decisions, millennials, the oldest millennials, 44. Like, you know, they just want instant satisfaction instant, you know, Uber, you know, instant, you know, whatever they want it fast. John, why is it so important to help that ideal buyer buyers make that buying decision on a Friday night at midnight, and not have to wait for you to open up that door on Monday morning just talked about, you know, being that 24 hours? sales experience?

Jon Guess  07:50

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s one of the main reasons you want to do e commerce, you know, you only have your operating hours, usually eight to five throughout the week. But it’s not only that a lot of these manufacturers in b2b have a sales force that can only reach so many people, a lot of them are regional and have grown and, you know, been in business for 6080 years, but have not made it out of their region. And so I think that’s the beauty of eCommerce, not only can you reach more people, you can use the power of Google search and start getting out there in the world, but but also extend your hours, you know, that anybody can shop at any time. So you don’t have to be there to answer the phone. They can shop at anytime. After hours, weekends, anytime of the week.

Curt Anderson  08:35

Yeah, I love that. And Joseph, I’m going to come back to you real quick. So we were talking about like that instant quote situation. Can you talk about there’s a thing called Customer Portal? Okay, a customer can just like enlightened folks. So if that’s new to anybody, so again, like, you know, hey, I don’t want to put my prices out there and what my competition, but maybe what Jason was talking about back here, you know, boy, if I had a customer portal, can you just explain what is that? Yeah,

Joseph Maxwell  09:01

so a customer portal is basically where you log in to your account, you have your email address and your password when you log into a website, and that you have gone through some type of approval process typically, where the sales team then gives you access to a specific price list or a specific set of prices. And in this type of a scenario, once you log in, you see your dealer only your other special pricing or even if you’re a retail user, you see that specific pricing to you, which gives you instant access. It could be at nine o’clock on a Friday evening or midnight on a Friday evening because you need to make this purchase decision very quickly. But you have access to that at your fingertips. The other thing about this customer portal that not only can it give you your prices, it can even filter down your your catalog of products if you need to disseminate this through your company. Maybe you’ve negotiated some super good deals on a list of products. But the other thing is it can give you depending at the Basic Law level it’s in name only. But more or less a Domino’s style pizza tracker system, where your customers have this visibility into what the status of their order is. It’s not like as fancy looking as something like that is out of the box. But it gives a textual can give you a textual status as what this order is looking like in the process of the pipeline of being fulfilled, assembled, manufactured, whatever that step of that process is, which gives a really powerful, powerful visibility into this process, which ensures that your customers are going through the website or helps to ensure that they’re going to website as opposed to calling you every day just to see what the status of this order is. So there’s a couple of great features of a cut of a buyer portal. One thing I forgot to mention there is reorders. So as your customers is you make it easy for them to come back and reorder with just the click of a button. So maybe the initial sales process was involved, it took a salesperson time to help nail this down to the right specifications. But perhaps they need to come back and order something, order that same piece of equipment again, or they need to order reorder, they have to order parts for that piece of machinery, filters or blades or whatever, they’re able to come back into their portal and do that really quickly.

Curt Anderson  11:19

Yeah, a lot of flexibility there. And just think like for the purchaser that needs a bundle, you know, like they’re buying certain products, right? You know, it can make it so easy or different. Diane has a question. And again, guys, if you’re just joining us, chapter, chat, your name, LinkedIn and the chat box if you’d like to, and please feel free when why make this as rewarding, helpful and valuable as possible for you. We take, you know, we appreciate your time. We never take that for granted. So we want this as much value for you. Diane has a great question here. Alright, let’s see. I’m moving my zoom around. Make sure I read it correctly here, Diane. So she says our client firms, manufacturers that sell business business, they sometimes have difficulty thinking that ecommerce can be business to business, not just business consumer, this portal, but would be something to help them correct. What do you think there? Joseph?

Joseph Maxwell  12:08

Absolutely. Oh, yes, it’s that well, so yeah, the portal has many advantages. But that would be one of those that would allow customers to be able to extend that further. Yes, I agree.

Curt Anderson  12:20

Absolutely. As a matter of fact, Dan man, it was like we’re great minds think alike are perfectly aligned. Here we have a little case study that we’re going to show you. And so what we want to do is we want your customers to be looking like these wonderful young people right here. Just like Jason Jason is looking for that instant quote. Well, if you say instant quote, let’s give Jason an instant quote. Let’s give Jason You know, the opportunity that he doesn’t have to call us for the price on the O ring right? Let’s give Jason the opportunity like that Dominos example you just gave Joseph that I can find or try I don’t need to call you for tracking information when I have a deep dive engineering challenge or problem or I don’t understand something about the products that you make then I’ll pick up the phone but boy when I just need the price of the old ring or I need tracking let me just look at that computer look at these don’t those young people how about every Tuesday just looks like these young people right here Diane right. Okay, John guess the John gas we did a great project together again. Tori This is for you my friend. This is these are folks right in Buffalo. They’re right down the street from Buffalo Bills stadium, though they’re not Super Bowl champs like Joseph, you know, he’s

Joseph Maxwell  13:23

almost almost. Yeah. Now we weren’t we weren’t even close. But

Curt Anderson  13:27

alright, so this is a company called steak go. And stay CO was founded man. They’re one year older than I am. They were founded in 1967. Just a great wonderful Made in USA company. They manufacture covert antennas, man, Utah, just right here made in USA the president of the company ain’t here she is right there. So Kyle, she’s a lovely woman sitting to my left, we went on site, we did a little for those of you that are familiar with my live show, we did a little case study success story. John, talk a little bit and this is right. This was their phase one. Do me a favor, talk about how that phase process is so important for E commerce. And then let’s talk about how they jumped in a big commerce and took on that customer portal for their phase one. Absolutely,

Jon Guess  14:12

to you know, one of the things that Joseph mentioned was the pricing, you know, it was important for psycho not to have their pricing there needed to be that registration process. They needed to have that approval for customers to get in there and be able to purchase so that was one thing. But back to what you said about MEP, you know, ecommerce was new to them, and they knew they were going to have to grow and learn as they went through that process. So, you know, to keep things manageable, they had a really focused in VP part so they were wanting to do the crawl, walk, run approach. Let’s get on online. Let’s start transacting, let’s learn from our customers. let’s iterate from there. And so, um, you know, they had an ERP they didn’t integrate with that right? right away, they were going to keep that part of it manual knowing they could do that down the line. And you know, they’re a small staff, they knew they were going to be stretched for resources. So we had a, what we call it was an accelerator build, it was, you know, really focused in on what they needed to transact online. So of course, we had shipping, we had payment, things like that. But the big thing that we focused on was the products, let’s get the products on there. Let’s get them in the right navigation, the right categories, let’s get that registration process working. Let’s let’s launch within a minimum viable product and MVP approach. And then let’s learn, let’s get feedback. And let’s grow from there. And what that allowed them to do was, was to take what sometimes can be a six, eight month project, we were able to do it around three, they were up online, transacting and you know, like I said, Can can get that feedback and start making it better, maybe they integrate with the ERP down the line. And so it’s a approach we really like to take a lot of times, especially for clients that, you know, this is all new to them, they’re biting off a lot, let’s let’s keep it focused and keep it a minimum viable product in the front end. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  16:14

And that’s an Thank you that was a great example. And what we would I want to really hit the point I want to hit here for everybody is just how important it is to understand the ideal buyer. Now, if anybody has gone through any my webinars workshops in the past, I have a little tagline so that I do buyers called Diane, right are soulmates. You know, who’s your ideal buyer? Who’s that person out there? That man, you just really deliver top product, what we the very first thing we did for psycho was like, hey, we need to understand who is that buyer, we came up with three distinct buyers here. And so one and so and you know, not about psycho, it’s all about you think about you know, your ideal buyers, who’s your soulmate? So, you know, we take what we decided was, you know, hey, it’s James, the engineer, James is, you know, he’s working for maybe a train or some type of transportation company, geeky engineer. So like our language, our communication, our E commerce strategy needs to really speak to James, what challenges is he facing? Now here? This is a really fascinating dynamic. And the reason I’m showing us because another soulmate of theirs is filled Agent Scott. Well, guess what? Scott has a little bit of different strengths and different pressure points than James does not that, you know, everybody doesn’t have stress, but filled agent sky, he’s protecting his agents. He’s pretty, you know, his life’s on the line every day, he needs it as mission critical that he has quality covert antennas on their vehicles. And then the last person is Nick, purchasing agent, and, Nick. So what we wanted to do when we went in, like every decision that we made on that website, it was really we were asking ourselves constantly, how can we do the best job we can for James, what can we do for Scott, what do we need to do for Nick? How about Scott’s life’s on the line today, and he’s on, you know, on his mobile phone out in the field needing to make a purchase. So Joseph, come at us here talk a little bit about you know how, and we’re gonna dive into like, how at swift otter, you guys really do this. But talk when you tackle projects with your clients? Why is it so important understanding that ideal buyer first and foremost,

Joseph Maxwell  18:14

because it’s basically the foundation of the project, it’s like, Bill, if you don’t understand your buyer, it’s like building a house without pouring that cement slab or that this foundation walls underneath the house, it’s not going to go well, I mean, you might have a beautiful website, but give it a couple of years that website’s not going to be transacting, it’s not going to be hitting the mark that you want it to hit, just like a house will be starting to fall apart, given a couple cycles of frost heave, it’s not going to go well. So in this case, understanding who your buyers are, is critical. So at a surface level, we we typically look for and websites like this, these three categories, and you’ve outlined them well here. So basically, we have a technical like architect, engineer, these are technical people wanting the details will usually have an end user. And then we have a persona for a dealer, kind of like a middle person there. So in this type of conversation, we want to make sure that the needs of each one of these groups of people as they pertained to this brand going online is met. So for example, the technical users, they don’t care about the price for the product. In most of the cases, they’re interested in the specifications, what is the voltage for this? What is the output power for this? What certifications does this comply with, you know, that kind of engineering speak, they’re also going to be wanting to see the drawings. Perhaps the user manuals, too. So that’s, that’s the technical group we meet to make sure that their needs are well addressed on the website. When I say well address, it’s easy to find information about these products. They’re not going to be digging through the search bar in the menu and the help section like the information is right there. And ideally, we usually find it on the product page, well documented there. They the field agent in this case or the end user, they will be potentially looking at pricing, although there’s slightly different, and that’s why it’s good to be digging into the details, because the field agent might not actually in your, in this case of psycho, or whoever was this was for was is probably not going to be as interested in pricing, but they’re going to be looking for user manuals, contact information, etc. In this case, and that’s, again, the nuances critical here, the purchasing agent, they’re going to want pricing that their specific pricing for this product. And so that’s where we have these typical three profiles, but we’re given given user, they’re going to shift we’re going to just a little bit, and we have to make sure that the website is perfectly in tune with that making sure that they can get the information they need as quickly as easily as possible. So that they are not required to have to pick up the phone. Now, again, like you said earlier, if they, if they want to pick up the phone, we’re not going to stop them. In fact, that’s why we strongly recommend putting contact information in prominent places on the website, to again, make the website not quite as transactional, you’re accessible, you’re easy to reach. And so in those cases that they do want to pick up the call the phone and just make sure that there’s a human on the other end, you’re not talking to some AI robot rater that is capable as well. So that’s that’s how we usually dress those type of conversations. Well,

Curt Anderson  21:17

fantastic. I love it. And what’s cool is, you know, they’re manufacturing product, as we’re seeing here for, you know, first responders, military, that type of thing. So this is a perfect example where a lot of manufacturers like wow, you know, we’re not selling the consumers. You know, this is a perfect example. I love how you broken down in three buckets. John, anything else that you want to add? You know, going through the process? I

Jon Guess  21:37

think he nailed it. I think the one thing I would add, we were talking about b2b portals, you know, a lot of those b2b tools within those platforms out there have quick order as well. purchasing agents are a great example they love to go in a lot of times they have long orders, a lot of times they have repeat orders, which the reorder may help but quick orders and other thing where they can quickly type in skews add to the order. A lot of them even have the ability to upload a CSV. So the purchasing agent, purchasing agent can have their CSV uploaded, all of those are in the cart ready to checkout? So again, it’s understanding those different buyer personas, but how do they shop for the ones that are shopping? What tools they need to make it easy on them where they want to do business with you and keep coming back?

Curt Anderson  22:23

Yeah, that’s fantastic. And you know, one thing I want to add so you know, a lot of manufacturers and we’re gonna do a deep dive of the cohort is you know, a little bit on like that SEO key keyword strategy and a my friend Wiggins here, Whitney, you need to drop your LinkedIn in the chat box. She’s a marketing extraordinaire. And so you know, one thing you want to think about is, you know, well, I do CNC for anybody or everybody, right? Make, you know, circuit boards, or, you know, 3d printing, and we’re trying to be everything to everybody. I couldn’t encourage you enough, you really want to narrow that niche down, get that focus. And that’s what ecommerce does for you, is it allows you to get, you know, go down into buckets. Let’s go here. This is anybody that comes to our workshops, comes to our programs catch catches our live show, this is one of our favorite tag lines, and we try to practice what we preach here is how do you out teach the competition? How do you I’ll teach the competition? What on earth does that mean? Now Joseph? Dude, the admiration respect I have for you. You guys are doing an amazing, incredible job at swift either. So Swift, ITER is an E commerce agency founded 12 years ago by my friend here, Joseph, Joseph, you practice what you preach. Can you talk before I dig into a couple examples? When you started your company at a very, very young age? How did you What inspired you to like, Hey, I’m going to come out as a fierce educator. Can you just kind of walk us through that?

Joseph Maxwell  23:49

Sure. Absolutely. So starting it back. That was 12 years ago, I needed something to differentiate myself and I, at the time, certifications were very popular in this very small niche of the industry that I was working in. And I knew that in order to prove my value, my worth, I needed to get certified. In fact, there was seven certifications that covered this application. I got every single frickin one of them like I just I had to get them off. It was kind of like a drug or I just I couldn’t stop. And so what ended up happening is as time progressed, people have new version of the application, etc. I needed to get a new piece. I wanted to update my certifications, of course, but other people sort of saying, Hey, can you help me out here? And that’s really how it started. It started from me getting certified actually one key element here I forgot to say when I was 15 years old, I studied for and I passed the CompTIA A plus certification. It’s two tests, basically saying you know everything about hardware and software I got that when I was 15 years old, in and I think that’s what started this this drive for at Education and it really clicked for me because it’s one thing for an E commerce agency to be a service provider, and there’s a dime a dozen, there’s a ton of them out there, right? Basically, hey, we’ll build your website for you. But it’s a totally different thing to say, okay, we can build your website for you. But we’re also going to teach you what it takes to master this website yourself. And that’s part of what we’re doing here with this e commerce cohort coming up, we want to teach you well, we know the process gets you the full big picture as far as what does it take to be an E commerce in mind, because on one hand, it is easy, and it’s a really great avenue. But on the other hand, there are some challenges that unless you understand these challenges, it could complicate well, it will complicate your ability to truly succeed. And that’s where my goal is to help of merchants in this case, but we I’ve done it for technical users, for since for what, six years now. So somewhere in there six years, we’ve done it for six years, helping people understand how to be better at the profession.

Curt Anderson  26:02

Yeah, that’s fantastic. And so I want to so what I want to do from here is I want to talk about like, I want to break down a webpage. So it doesn’t matter what manufacturer distributor what product, you’re selling a service, it’s what it is, we’re talking about, like b2b b2c, it’s, it’s HT H, it’s human to human, it’s how to track human. And we’re talking about, you know, I want to go back as an artifact. I’m gonna go back to a couple pages here. How about about these guys right here, what we want to do is we want to make a great first impression. What you know, when I say every, you know, you’ve got three seconds to make a great first impression. And when you’re online, it’s mobile, mobile, mobile, on somebody’s desktop, are you speaking the right language? And what are we selling? Every day? What are we selling one word, one word, only pop quiz, trust that’s selling on a daily basis. So I want to break this webpage down. And let’s just look and again, you’re like, hey, well, wait a minute. This is an E commerce firm. It’s what they do. Exactly. We’re there. These guys are setting the standard high. And we want to apply the same strategy to manufacturers and look at the success here. So Joseph, you’re very humble guy, why don’t you sit back, I’m gonna brag about you for a minute. He didn’t know that I was gonna do this. So he might turn a little shade of red. So they saw Adobe commerce, which used to be Magento. So Adobe Commerce on my live show yesterday, we just interviewed a wonderful woman from Adobe commerce. So when you hear Adobe Ed’s that Adobe PDFs, all that stuff, monster, monster gazillion dollar company, they have an E commerce solution. Joseph, you offer a training for folks. And so I want to break this down. So now whether you’re manufacturing a widget, your contract manufacturer, I watch, this is all about you. It’s not about us or Joseph, it’s we want to show that we’re taking a process down, okay? Our training is used by the best to be the best. It’s you like, look what they did there. They’re not talking about themselves, they’re talking about their soul mates are the best. So they can be the best. He’s not saying like, Oh, we’re the best you need to buy from us. They’re saying, No, we’re doing this for the best people to help them better their lives, right. So think about your product, your service, what you do, and how can we get a tagline on your website that does that that is textbook since 2018. Swift otter has helped by our estimates, almost 10,000 People get certified Joseph Howe, on Goodness gracious out, how did you do it? Man? Friend, how do you? How do you help that many people?

Joseph Maxwell  28:34

It’s honestly a a pleasure. It’s a it’s a privilege to be able to help that many people. We started back in 2018. And I had no idea was going to blow up to be this place. To get to this place. People needed help getting certified. And it was honestly answering a major need in the industry, with with an aunt was an answer for that. And so we were able to get out there to be able to help people understand the process. In fact, we actually even were able to help write some of these certifications. So we were involved in that standard setting that process off to ensure these are good quality certifications, the big challenges and that’s why we why I use that tagline. To help you be the best help the best be the best is this Magento two space is very, very difficult. Magento two is an enterprise application. And developers need to be highly qualified to do it. Otherwise, the whole process just kind of can fall apart. And so that was our goal and based off of the number of people that have gone through this program who’ve been highly successful. We actually ran certification programs for free. It was January through April, our February through April, someone there for quite a few years. Helping people get up to speed get certified as a group for me I don’t like working out by myself, I have a hard time getting out of bed. If I’m gonna work out by myself, it’s just who I am working with out with a class of people, as far as exercise goes, helped me in every day, every day of the week. I love it. Well, almost every day didn’t work out today. But that’s that was the idea with those certification programs in, we were able to help. We’ve helped 1000s and 1000s of people. And again, I think it’s from what we’ve estimated, I can’t necessarily prove it. Otherwise, I would say 10,000. But we helped a ton of people get certified. Okay.

Curt Anderson  30:27

And so again, what I want I’m trying to make this as applicable as possible. For the folks in the audience here. Joe, we talked about how we broke this down into three buckets, little bit technical somebody in purchasing somebody that’s actually using the product. Okay, so maybe it’s maintenance Marie, maybe it’s a, you know, engineering house, maybe you know, purchasing, you know, Patrick or Pam right. So what they did here is they had their two buckets of their soulmates. So again, I want you guys thinking about, you know, like Tori, just be applicable for you or Susan, your business. You know, who you know, who are those soulmates? Here’s who we’re speaking to, here’s the engineer. Here’s the purchaser in their case, here’s the developer, here’s the merchant. Now, here’s what I really love right here. What did I just say, you know, we’re so every single one of us, we’re selling on a daily basis, that word, trust, John, talk a little bit about like, how, you know, when you’re working with your clients, I’ve had the honor and privilege you and I’ve been on site in Texas, we’ve been together and buffalo, working together with clients. I know, this is a big, big tagline for you talk a little bit about how important it is? Or what are some things that folks can be doing to resonate that trust with their ideal customers? Yeah,

Jon Guess  31:36

I mean, I think it doesn’t get any easier than than what we’re looking at right now. You know, who do you work with? What are recognizable names out there that are trustworthy, and making sure that you’re putting that anywhere you can on your website, you know, one thing that we preach all the time, to customers who are doing ecommerce, is get that trust badge everywhere on the site, not just on your homepage, not just on the About Us page. You know, if you think about it, a lot of people are googling and that’s how they get to your site. So they may land on some random product page, it needs to be everywhere that trust factor, like you said, Curt, you talk it all the time, it’s because it’s important, it’s important, you need to within seconds, trust that website that you’re on, you know, understand what their value prop is, understand that they you know, have a secure website, things like that, and in a matter of seconds, feel good about your experience feel good about adding a product to the car and, and making it through the rest of that process. Fun fact, I also used swift otter before I worked here, use their guides to pass the Adobe Business practitioner expert exam. And so read the study guides took the practice test. And that’s actually how I got acquainted with Joseph and ended up working under him. But it speaks volumes. I’m one of those 10,000 How about that, that? Well,

Curt Anderson  33:03

that is awesome. That is such a great story. And you know, I’m going to jump ahead one slide here. And let’s get back into that social proof, then I’m going to come back up. So to talk a little bit about like that level of trust. And now and again, guys, what I’m COURAGING you here is we’re trying to build that trust. How about social proof? Okay. Now, what Joseph has done here is he’s calling out testimonials. Joseph talked a little bit about how important getting you know, on a 10,000 people, you just gotta you just got a wonderful testimonial, a video testimonial from our friend, Jon here. How important is it to get these testimonials on our websites as manufacturers?

Joseph Maxwell  33:36

It’s, it’s, it couldn’t I cannot overstate how important it is. And here’s why. Customers want to see from other people, what if this is legit or not. Ultimately, that’s why you have now challenges buying off of Amazon, it’s gonna sound contradictory here for a second. Because these sellers on Amazon have figured out how to game or scam the system. That’s why you have things like what’s fake spot some of those tools. The thing, the key point is, is we’re not going to have those type of problems for the most part on our websites. And hopefully we wouldn’t game those reviews. But those that I’m saying is using that as an illustration to show just how important it is to get people to review your product. And there are strategies to doing it, it has to be a conscious effort, because how many of us just love to go and put comments on a website as far as what a great product it is like, it has to be so unbelievably amazing. But there are some strategies that we’ll be talking about in this cohort on how to do this. And I want to call it a real quick point here is that just launching a website, you might say anybody can do that. But launching a website that sells it kind of takes you to the whole end other end of the spectrum where there is 1000s and 1000s millions of articles on everything you kind of need to do. So on one hand, it’s like you can just get the website out there but on the other hand, the optimizations in the review Using social proof and all that stuff, all the different pieces end up in millions of articles. So how do you know actually what to do where to go. And that’s really where this cohort comes in, we boil down our experience, in part in these specific pieces, such as getting reviews, getting the social proof on your website, how to display it becomes knowable, it becomes no doable, as opposed to having to sift through all these articles online. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  35:27

I love that. And again, so let’s back up one step. And I want to talk about like the the customer experience here. So again, you’re targeting, you know, developer training, such as you know, our friend, John, and again, your manufacturer out there, you might be like, hey, wait a minute, you know, you guys aren’t, you know, it doesn’t matter. You know, like, whatever that services that you’re providing? What’s step one? What’s step two? What’s that, you know, crawl walk, run experience that you would love your customer to have? An How can you walk them through? Joseph, do you want to just share a little bit what’s going on on this page? Absolutely.

Joseph Maxwell  35:59

So our goal is to help customers understand first that we are highly capable, that we will help them get what they need in this scenario. So as they come in here wanting to get certified that as a pain point, there are managers jumping on their desk there, that’s generally what the motivation is, or they’re just they want to get certified. We help address that pain point. And that’s what we’re helping to do. We’re in this slide this picture here of our page, we’re helping present the picture for them to make that motivation intrinsic. So here is what I get out of this, this is a career development opportunity that is going to basically putting money in the career bank, if you will make that investment there. So that I can become, I can get to that next level in my career. And that is our goal in this type of a scenario is we want to help give them that the bigger picture. And again, for merchants, the way that this is can also be portrayed is your customers have these pain points, they they are needing your product, even if it’s a spring to go in a product that that you’re manufacturing, that is a need a pain point that you have that of course, you would not be able to facilitate that manufacturing process without that spring. And so getting that spring on time to the right quality of setter is absolutely critical. And so as a manufacturer of springs, in this type of scenario, you might consider your product boring. Well, the reality is, it’s not boring, because you’re answering pain points and needs. And so then it comes down to this product page, presenting how you solve these pain points, ie the benefits. And this goes through a whole section that we also are going to talk about, it’s easy to talk about the features. This is a stainless steel spring. And it’s I don’t know all the specifications of a spring, but like it goes through all these details of a spring. But reality is we need those information. Your engineers, on the other hand on the other side will need to know that this is a stainless steel spring of this type of diameter of this type of coils, etc. But they also need to understand what sets this spring apart as a benefit. So whether it’s your delivery time, whether it’s the reason that stainless steel is helpful, because you also are going to have some type some part of your audience that will need to know why they should buy a stainless steel spring versus a spring steel spring. I’m mixing this up I don’t know much about springs myself, but you kind of get the ideas, we need to present this information to the customer. Again, like Kurt mentioned earlier, their soulmate in the in the format that they want to digest it in in the format that resonates with them. And we’re never going to hit that format, unless we have boiled down and have a clearer picture of who is actually using the website and what formats they actually need. Yeah, yeah,

Curt Anderson  38:41

I absolutely love that. Let’s keep it going here. So I love what you’ve done, as you described, you know, here’s your background, here’s your credentials. Here’s your story. And the last thing is how will getting certified helped me how will buying my product, you know how we’ll buy this product this spring that you’re describing that covert antenna? Packaging? You know, I think Tori, we were talking about labeling, you know, whatever the product is that you provide whatever solution is, how would this help that other person? John, anything that you want to tie in here, you know, maybe from as a customer perspective, you know, just swift died or that you want to end? Yeah,

Jon Guess  39:20

no, I mean, I think Joseph touched on it. It’s a thing in our industry to get certified. It’s something that’s expected of you on a lot of us like me who like to geek out on this stuff, want to learn that and want to take that next level. It is a career booster, um, you know, you get those certifications. It’s going to help you in your career, I will say been a lot of schooling in my life. I have my MBA, that Adobe certifications, the toughest exam I’ve ever taken in my life. And so, you know, these are easily attainable. They are very, very tough exams and you know, so as a customer of that I needed that assistance. I needed those practice tests. I needed those guides to help me prep. for that, and um, you know, it will, it will help you in your career.

Curt Anderson  40:04

And the big thing I love about this page is, you know, you take care of, you know, there’s 100 Page study guide. So now maybe you’re not offering 100 Page study guide on your product, your process that spring, you know, circuit boards, whatever that you manufacture, but you certainly could offer a buying guide, regardless of what your services, right, I’m looking at my friend, Diane, at PTAC are our friends at the MEP center. I have my ecommerce guides, you know, like we can put out a guide. Again, how do we help our soulmate? How do we make their day just a little bit better? A little bit easier, a little bit more understanding of what do we do? What do we provide? Alright, let’s start. I know we’re starting to come into time a little bit here. So, Joseph, let’s go here, for folks out there. You know, we, through weather training, coming up webinars, workshops, a lot of marketers, a lot of entrepreneurs, it’s, it’s lonely out there, right? I know, like, I’m a solopreneur, it gets lonely. And so I want to team up with you guys, hang on my friend, Diane, Jonathan, Nebraska MEP, hanging out with all these folks. Because like we were longing for community, in a great way to build community is when we can we have an opportunity to do things with each other. And you don’t have to be alone. And you don’t have to make all these mistakes. Talked a little bit about why it’s so important to have, you know, trusted guides resources. And let’s do it, would you concept? That’s for Joseph.

Joseph Maxwell  41:25

I missed that. I thought he was saying I thought you said Jon, okay. Sorry, man.

Curt Anderson  41:29

Yeah, so

Joseph Maxwell  41:31

being able to do this together, again, the goal is to leverage our the knowledge that we’ve gained over the years, Kurt, bringing a whole bunch of knowledge into, we’re gonna we work together to boil this down into a, a system that is going to help you be successful. And that’s the key point is this community where we, just like Diane said, there love it, we are better together. And so these classes is not a Kurt, John and I just speaking at you. In fact, it’s pretty, it’s kind of the opposite. And so yes, there is some training that we will be delivering, but it’s in bite sized chunks, where we then work through what we call a worksheet, a work Guide, which then allows you to make this your own, and then you bring the results of the findings back in the class. So we’re going to be taking breaks, it’s going to be very collaborative, a lot of great dialogue, which then allows us to be able to respond to those comments, those questions, and may and enriches the conversation. They’re here through this the classes. So very, very strong community. And I’m really excited about that. Because that makes what our knowledge that we’re bringing to the table even more relevant to those that are able to participate. Yeah, great.

Curt Anderson  42:56

And so I know as we start winding down, we’re gonna save time for questions. So in as a matter of fact, if anybody wants to, if you have any questions whatsoever, ecommerce, maybe your product line, if we want to geek out a little bit, we’ve got time, we would absolutely love to dive in, get a wonderful opportunity to connect and engage with each other. Let’s talk a little bit, Jon, why we’re why we’re kind of winding things down. Talk a little bit about the cohort itself. And just, you know, what’s, what can folks expect?

Jon Guess  43:26

Yeah, I mean, I talked about this a little bit, when I was on the manufacturer, when I was on the merchant side, it would have been great to have a course like this, you know, I was filling my way through it, leaning on my agency for the website, build part of it. But you know, learn that after the fact that many pieces were missed. We’re going to, as Joseph said, break this down into chunks, we’re going to handle the vision on the front end, we’re gonna make sure that you understand what that whole process is going to look like, before we dive into it, then we’re going to tackle the more important pieces like navigation, that’s a very important part, we’re going to give you tools to help be able to figure out that navigation, we’re going to look at your competition, we’re going to look at your product set, as Joseph mentioned, there’s going to be workshops for us to really get specific, we’re going to work together to build those pieces out. We’re going to look at your product display pages, we’re going to look at the checkout process. And so our goal is to for you to be able to walk away from this with a clear vision, a clear path to go back to your team and become that champion. And you know, get that internal buy in and really lay out on the table what that entire process is going to look like. And you know, we’re not going to mince words, and we’re not going to tell you what you want to hear. In commerce. This is hard, you know, building the website, you’re not done and so we’re going to be very real, be very authentic, try to give you an idea of what that process is going to look like from beginning to end. To be successful. So

Curt Anderson  45:03

Joseph wants you to take us home Brother, let’s talk a little bit about the dates and what folks could expect. And yeah,

Joseph Maxwell  45:10

yeah, so it’s five weeks, we’re gonna have a hour and a half conversation each week, meetings will be recorded. So if you’ve got spring break, or he gets sick or something like that, unfortunately, that happens, we, you will, you’ll be well taken care of, you won’t be able to join in the live live conversation in that case, but you’ll be able to get a catch up after the fact, which is, you know, still pretty good. We’re going to we have every one of the most of these weeks we have a, except for the Easter Week, we have a office hours. In other words, we’re going to be here for one hour on that, that Friday, each one of these Fridays, three Fridays here in this through the course of this class. Bring your questions, if you have questions, or you need advice, feedback, we will dive in personally for you. In this high type of a scenario, without one other cool thing with this cohort is we’ve actually been able to negotiate with one of our partners to give you a fully enabled, ecommerce will fully b2b enabled e commerce platform such that if you don’t already have an e commerce Store up, you just kind of want to fool around, just kind of follow along, see what’s going on, get your feet wet. Whatever other idiom or analogy you want to put in there, like you will have capability to be able to do that. So this course is going to be highly practical, not something you’re just going to be like a whole bunch of head knowledge and not but how actually do I do this? You’re not going to have that question. As you participate, you will have this burned into your head very practical, very usable, real life knowledge.

Curt Anderson  46:47

Absolutely. So that’s going to be awesome. So I guess as we wind down, I wouldn’t be mindful of everybody’s time. And if you have any questions whatsoever on your E commerce journey, maybe any frustrations challenges, you know, we’d love to tackle those right now. I’m going to put, here’s our email, contact information. Please, if you want to give a screenshot or again, we’ve dropped our LinkedIn profile and the chat box. I don’t know Joseph, you want to drop the link for the training. You can drop that in the chat box if you don’t mind. Or John when you guys and so any. So while we’re winding down, are there any questions? I’d love to address anything. Give a shout out to Tori to Whitney Julie. Erica, any questions our friend John is here today from Nebraska. Diane Beier. Hi Diane any questions that you guys have and I know it’s March like this is March Madness at its peak right here right this is like we’re looking at March Madness coming at us right here so right Jon Guess

47:50

the way cats go. That’s right. So

Curt Anderson  47:54

alright, if if we don’t have any questions again, if you’re on the shy side, you know, please reach out to us individually one on one we’d love to talk to you further. Reach out to your local MEP Manufacturing Extension Partnership Tory I talked to the folks at Insite they so I’ve got a lot of exciting information for you there and reach out to our friends at TAC right Diane our friends at TAC are always crushing a huge supporters of manufacturers all across the great United States. So if there aren’t any further questions, thank you Whitney Houston. Appreciate you as always, I just got to meet I was with Whitney. We were at the industrial marketing Summit. Man Whitney, I miss you already my friend. That was such a great time. So okay, guys, if you have any questions, you know where to find us, Joseph, any parting thoughts, words of wisdom that you want to share with folks as we close out?

Joseph Maxwell  48:42

Looking forward to it. Thanks for bringing us on, Curt. Really appreciate it, man. John

Curt Anderson  48:46

gasps any questions? Any comments, thoughts, words of wisdom you want to share?

Jon Guess  48:50

Same thing I had a blast. Thanks for bringing us along and looking forward to I can’t wait. Awesome.

Curt Anderson  48:55

All right, guys. Have a wonderful amazing rest of your week. Be Awesome. be inspiring. And just if you need thing reach out to us have a great rest of your day. Thank you guys. Thank you

49:18

all right.

Curt Anderson  49:20

Okay, that was a couple quality that that was

Joseph Maxwell  49:23

that was I think it’s still I think it’s still recording. FYI. That was there you go. You