| One of the most useful ways to think about products is vitamins versus painkillers. Vitamins are nice to have: - Productivity software that helps you get more done
- Calendar scheduling tool
- Calorie tracker
Painkillers are closer to MUST have. They clearly drive ROI or decrease cost/expensive problems/liability. For example, painkiller products for online marketing would be stuff like: - Your email service provider — gotta have it to grow your list
- Website security after your site gets malware — can't risk going offline or looking shady to customers
- Cart abandonment software — wins back sales you'd otherwise lose
Today's idea is 100% a painkiller. The problem it solves can cause your company to lose money, time, and energy. Founders I know would kill to never deal with it. They would pay you large sums of money to make it go away. I'm going to show you the product you could create to solve it, and the exact steps I would take to grow it into a $10k/month business and beyond. You can apply the plan to grow it to any service-based business that solves a clear pain point. The Problem: Every company, once it gets to a certain size, has problem customers. - They send in tickets that zap the life out of the founder or customer support rep
- It's hard not to get emotional
- You want to rip their head off
- You know you shouldn't respond
- But they're talking dirty about your business online
- Threatening negative BBB review
- Issuing unwarranted chargebacks
I don't care if you're the world's most customer-centric company, you will still attract the occasional lunatic who takes their anger out on you, your product, or your support team. Even if it only happens once a month, it still takes a toll on everyone involved. The Solution: Create a service that makes this problem disappear: - When a "code red" ticket comes in, the client assigns it to you
- They don't have to think about it anymore
- You handle it for them
- As an outsider, you can handle it with less emotion
- You'll meet the problem customer where they are
- Talk them down
- Affirm them
- Save the refund, chargeback, and negative online attention
Your best fit client likely gets 10-20 of these problem customers a year. They sell higher-priced products, which makes just one save valuable to them. They would easily pay $1,000 per month to not have to deal with it. If you can deliver, your word-of-mouth potential is high. Founders and support folks swap horror stories all the time. Next time your client has one of those conversations, your name will come up as the hero who made their problems go away. How to Get Your 1st Client: First, you should narrow this down to a type of customer instead of targeting every business under the sun. For example, I would focus on the online teaching / guru market. - They sell high-priced courses/programs
- The value is generally subjective, so even the best products will get called scams by unhappy customers (this has happened to virtually everyone I know who has hit a significant number of course sales, no matter how ethical / customer-driven they are)
- Tons of high 6-figures businesses where founder is still highly aware of problem customers, or they only have one or two support people to deal with them
Step 1: Make your hit list Start with all the educational products you've ever purchased. Courses, ebooks, PDFs, coaching, etc. Make a list of every single one. Go through your inbox and find ones that have been pitched to you recently. Add them to the list. Browse affiliate sites like ClickBank and add some of the popular courses to your list. Get to at least 25 target clients. Step 2: Contact them The key here is to show your approach. Let people see how you would make their problem tickets evaporate into thin air. To do that, reach out to the support email address for every company on your hit list. Create a really bad ticket as an example. Get creative. Maybe even make the subject line a complaint (risky, but could get attention). Show them the scripts you would use to deescalate the situation. Let them see the before and after. Tell them you can take these tickets off their plate. Step 3: Followup No response? Search LinkedIn for the company's head support person (or founder if it's a smaller company). Pitch your service with the 3-Minute Rule this time. Link to the example ticket (and solution) you already created for them. Again, SHOW your approach. How to Deliver for Your 1st Client: Once you land your first client, you don't just want to wait around for their first problem ticket to come in. You need to demonstrate value from the beginning. Here's how I would approach it: - Learn their product inside and out
- Study their best-fit clients and WHY they love the product
- Review their last 10 trouble tickets and come up with alternate approaches to how they were handled
- Demonstrate an alternate approach to the client
- Secure their buy-in to the approach and method
This way, they're not just paying you to sit around and wait. Once the next problem ticket does come in, have them assign it to you via their ticket system and take it from there. When you resolve a problem ticket, provide a breakdown of how you handled it and document your takeaways. This will reinforce your value to the client and serve as a readymade case study you can show to other potential clients. How to Get Your Next 5-10 Clients: Like I mentioned earlier, referrals will be magical for this business. If you deliver, they will likely happen whether you ask for them or not—but ask for them anyway. Take those case studies you've created from resolved problem tickets and blur the names of people involved. Showing your work is now a lot easier. In fact, I would send at least one example to everyone from your hit list who didn't respond. But you don't have to stop at referrals and manual outreach. Partnerships would be a phenomenal growth channel for this business. Think about all of the software tools for support out there—Help Scout, ZenDesk, Front, etc. They all have blogs, they all need content, and you've got a batch of valuable case studies that demonstrate how to deal with the hairiest customer service issues. Each one would be a perfect pitch for guest posts, webinars, FB Lives, podcast interviews, and more. - Make a list of the top 100 tools, customer service influencers, blogs, podcasts, etc. and pitch them on one of the above.
- Use the pitch scripts I shared in this blog post
- Incorporate a link to your service in every partnership—make it easy for people to find you
- Bake in an offer for a free "Problem Ticket" audit
- Show leads how you would save more clients
- Keep running this playbook every month
Who's going to create this or apply this approach to their existing service? Send a reply and let me know. - Bryan P.S. Want us to create a step-by-step plan like this for your business, and coach you through executing it? We run a 1:1 coaching program that does exactly that—but imagine this plan with 10x the detail. :) Book a Strategy Call with us here and we'll show you exactly how we'd grow your business. | 
