Ep 44: Uncovering Hidden Objections and Limiting Beliefs

Dec 20

Uncovering Hidden Objections and Limiting Beliefs

Do you want to get more conversions and better results from your community? It has taken me over a decade of community management to really understand those little nuances that take somebody from being a good community manager to a really outstanding community manager.

This one nuance in particular is going to help you get more conversions from your free community into your paid community and help your members get better results.

Levels of a Community Manager

Community managers have a lot of roles, but the most obvious one is engaging within the community platform. I think about this on three different levels.

A level one community manager is somebody who is in a cheerleader mindset. They are there to give an attaboy, attagirl and celebrate people inside of the community. They are helping make sure people feel seen. That's a level one mentality when we're talking about engaging in the community.

A level two mentality is where they see themselves as a guide to community members. They are pointing them to the right resources and their best next action to help them make progress. This is where we shift from engagement being the goal to progress being the goal.

I have an entire episode on this topic, so click here to listen.

How do we uplevel even more and get to the level three community manager?

That is somebody who sees their role as a coach inside of the community. I'm not talking about being an actual coach, but approaching community engagement with a bit of a detective mindset. This requires more curiosity and helps people take action by overcoming those mindset blocks that often get in the way.

Coaching is where the mindset comes into play, and we all know that mindset is 80% of the game. I promise almost all of the questions that get asked in your community have a hidden objection or hidden limiting belief behind them. If that isn't addressed, it doesn't matter how you answer the question or how many questions you answer for this individual, progress is not going to happen.

Adding the Coaching Layer to Community Management

In order to add a coaching layer to your community management, you need to do three simple things.

1) Don't rush the answer.

Oftentimes we talk about streamlining our community management and making sure that we have systems and processes that allow our community managers to spend less time in the community and help serve our community faster.

We have pre-planned responses and resource guides that allow us to get answers and links out quickly. We start rushing through, which we would never do if we were looking face-to-face with someone helping them through their problems. Slow down and ask yourself, what's the real problem here? What's the question behind the question? Oftentimes it's obvious and all we have to do is slow down and identify it.

2) Consider looking for context.

If you use a Facebook group, you can click on the person's profile and see the questions and comments they engaged on to give yourself some context. For example, has this person posted 10 tech questions in the last month? They are overwhelmed by the tech. That's good context to know.

3) Ask questions.

These questions can be really simple. Here are some examples:
“Tell me more.” “

Will answering this question help you get unstuck?”

“Is there anything else that's holding you back from making progress right now?”

“Why is this particular question or this particular challenge important to you right now?”

Adding these questions into your response can help you take it a level deeper, and encourages that individual to slow down as well. They are trying to rush through the checklist, but not actually getting to the root of the problem of why they are not making progress.

Effectively Handle Community Questions

So here’s how this plays out in your community. Let’s pretend this is a post that was just posted in your community.

“I'm struggling to decide on a landing page platform. Is there training somewhere on this? What does everyone recommend?”

You could easily respond with the training inside of the program and be that guide who says, “Hey, that's really fantastic. Let me give you access to the training. And oh, by the way, this is the recommended platform.”

But what if this person hasn't chosen their audience or decided on their offer and this is the third tech question asked in a week? Knowing that information is important in addressing this particular question.

How would you know that? You slow down. You look for context. You ask questions. Here is how I would consider responding. A good response would be getting them that resource and sharing your recommendation, but an outstanding response would be based on the things that we've discussed.

“Sounds like you're ready to create a landing page. That's great, Sally, here's the link to the recommended tools page where you'll find the suggested landing page platforms. Is there anything else that's holding you back from launching your course?”

We've asked just one question. This doesn't require you to have any additional context, but what it does is it gets them thinking through what the true roadblocks are and making progress towards their goal.

Another way you could do this is, “Sounds like you're ready to do X, Y, Z. That's really amazing, Sally. Here is the link to the resource. I noticed that the other day you posted that you're still struggling to identify your audience. Although I know it's really easy to try and check off the box of finding a landing page platform, what I really want to do is help make sure you have your audience nailed first. Have you completed the XYZ worksheet to naildown your audience? Have you chosen your list builder or your headline?”

The questions will help them understand their best next step. This obviously doesn't apply to every post inside of your community, but I do want you to keep this in mind because otherwise you may miss out on conversion opportunities.

Looking for the Question Behind the Question

You need to be asking questions to help understand really what's behind the question and what's happening. The next time that you are engaging in your community, I want you to slow down a bit. Then read the post again and ask yourself what's really the problem here? What are they really trying to solve? Is there a question behind this question? I want you to seek to uncover a little bit of context so that you can best serve the individual asking that question.

Then I want you to go a little deeper with them to ask questions that help give you insight into how you can better serve them by helping them overcome those hidden limiting beliefs and objections that are often lurking behind those common questions inside of your community. When you do that and you take this approach inside of your community, you are going to see more conversions and more people taking action.

Shana Lynn