#18 The Magic 7 Hours with Dan Harrison

The Next 100 Days invited Dan Harrison from Customers On Tap, who is carving out a solid reputation in the field of customer acquisition. He starts by discussing a concept which covers the time needed to build rapport and convert a prospect into a customer. It is… The Magic 7 Hours It’s all about relationships. It comes from work that Google did. How much time you need to spend with prospects before they spend money. So if you are trying to attract new customers and they have never heard of your before, and they have no relationship with you already. Then it takes approximately 7 HOURS of exposure to you and your content before they feel enough rapport and enough trust before they spend with you. Google have commissioned research into “Moments of Truth”. Included in that research were the number of touches where you are seeing someone’s content in a number of different places, such as email and social media. Irrespective of numbers, the whole concept is that it takes a discrete amount of time consuming your content before they will buy from you. It is an idea that gives you a plan of structuring the amount and type of content you create and distribute. So how many communications before someone buys? Dan has completed research with his own customers that has told him that the average number of (events) communications is NINE before the prospect becomes a buyer. It does depend on service. Follow up is critical! It is not just the initial impression, but all the other things that happen afterwards to build up that rapport, to get the transaction. UK prospects are more reserved, we like to take our time to get to know someone, we are more curious than perhaps peoples are elsewhere. It makes common sense. Repetition is fundamental to getting your message across. Direct marketers have long understood that a 3 mailing campaign will almost always outperform a single mailing. Dan tracked people’s interactions by time in his CRM system. Everything is logged. He counted the number of events before a transaction took place. We are in a digital age where business owners are seduced by automation, passive income and very hands off approaches to their business. The basic concept of building a relationship and having a PERSONAL rapport with someone BEFORE they buy, has been forgotten in favour of ‘how may Facebook ads can I have, how many funnels can I do, how many emails can I send’. This is a pursuit of automation rather than the bit that works. What sort of events/relationships are working within that 7 HOURS? Dan notes the most important ‘events’ or touch-points in that seven hours are: Speaking to someone on the PHONE. Speaking to someone at an event, as exhibitor or attendee. Video content, such as recording a training video. Content sent by email and social media and then INTERACTING with someone on email or social media. Responding to an email for example. They add up and there is a CUMULATIVE effect. The lesson for your business is to allow your customers to talk to you more. Sending out broadcast Twitter tweets and Facebook posts when it was NOVEL did work. Now you are in a sea of people doing exactly the same. Dan argues it worked because it was novel NOT because it was effective. In the meantime, relationships have not changed in the slightest. It is just different ways to do that. If I send messages and people have consumed the content AND then they meet you at an event or exhibition, then that relationship is instantly reinforced by your social content. Dan says everything has to act together – the online with the offline (such as telephone contact). How does the relationship work between number of events and length of time? Dan says it is impossible to capture the actual time as that is driven by the consumer, is not helpful as it detracts from trying to create the best interaction with that person. Were there particular patterns that got people to the...