Maxwell Nee shares expert tips and best practices for building trust through scorecard marketing, highlighting key mistakes to avoid along the way. He explains how a well-crafted scorecard can engage clients and convert leads by providing valuable insights tailored to their needs.

Case studies, such as a branding coach who generated 800 leads and a gym that saw 90% conversion rates from complimentary body scans, illustrate the effectiveness of these strategies. Maxwell emphasizes the importance of understanding client awareness and delivering value that resonates with them. Tune in to discover how you can leverage scorecard marketing to enhance your client relationships and boost your business results.

Takeaways:

• Scorecard marketing is a powerful tool for generating highly qualified leads, especially for products needing education.
• Maxwell highlights the importance of providing two-way feedback through scorecards to engage clients effectively.
• One effective strategy is to ask for contact information at the end of the scorecard to reduce drop-offs.
• Using urgency in follow-up communications can significantly increase conversion rates from leads to customers.
• A case study showed that a personal branding coach generated 800 leads through an effective scorecard.
• Highlighting gaps in clients' knowledge can create urgency and drive them to take action.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• ScoreApp
• Rethink Press
• Amazon

Hi.

Welcome to another episode of Trust Builders.

Today I have the pleasure of talking to Maxwell Ni, who is the Chief Operating Officer of ScoreApp.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Awesome.

I am very excited to talk to you today because I've come across ScoreApp many, many times in my role as a business coach.

And I constantly tell people that scorecard marketing is such a powerful way of engaging with our buyers and our customers.

And I'm excited to just pick your brain firsthand today of what makes a really good scorecard.

What are some issues to avoid?

What are some best practices?

You know, really dive deep on all of these issues before we get started.

What is a scorecard and how does it work?

Yeah, good question.

So a scorecard is a tool that you can use to convert traffic.

Online traffic could be online in person into a highly qualified lead.

So it helps you to generate more highly qualified leads.

Think of it as, you know, a lot of people know what clickfunnels is.

That does a similar thing.

A lot of people know what quiz funnels are.

Score App is essentially a new quiz funnel that converts at a very, very high rate.

Awesome.

So in what scenarios would I be using a scorecard rather than, let's say, an ebook or those other traditional lead generation magnets that we usually think of?

Yes, they all work.

You know, just because you use one doesn't mean you can't use the others.

You know, I really believe in having multiple paths for your clients to come and find you and learn a little bit more about you.

So what you want to do is you want to use scorecard marketing when you have a product that needs a lot of education.

It's really good at educating your audience.

That's when it really shines the best.

Sometimes an ebook, for example, is only one way, but a scorecard provides two way feedback for you and your audience to get a personalized experience.

You set me up perfectly for my next question.

What kind of insights is someone like, let's say I'll create a scorecard for my coaching business.

What kind of insights could I get as people filling out the scorecard?

Yeah, so you can pretty much ask for any questions you like.

You know, we have clients that are asking the ideal clients, you know, how much would they be willing to pay?

When are they ready to work with me?

If they could wave a magic wand, what would be the thing that they would love the most from you right now?

Which is all super, super valuable stuff.

Yeah, that makes sense.

One thing that I've seen Score App do Differently, maybe.

And before we get into more best practices, it's just one thing that I think is important to understand.

With Score App, the one thing you guys do differently is you, for example, have a way of asking a few questions before you, for example, sign up for a webinar.

So it's not your normal quiz necessarily only.

But you allow people to also just ask me four questions before I sign up for a webinar.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You know, so a webinar registration is a good example to use as a scorecard.

You know, you've also got like personalized PDF reports.

So, you know, a lot of people use their ebook as a trigger to activate a scorecard for their ideal clients.

Okay, so let's dive deeper into what makes a great scorecard.

What are the key elements to make it really an effective lead generation tool?

And if you can then expound a bit on what makes it work in a way that people are actually engaging and keeping, you know, it's hard to keep people answering 12 questions.

Right.

So what helps them?

What are they key elements that we have to have in a scorecard to make it effective?

Yeah, good question.

So, you know, ultimately the scorecard needs to solve a problem.

You know, it needs to solve a problem that gives enormous piece of value that the client wants to engage and extract that value.

So, you know, a perfect example would be, a really common one is, you know, personal trainers might use a scorecard to generate leads for their business.

And a really typical personal training quiz might be, you know, find out which body type you are and, you know, what's the best strategies for you to use to achieve your fitness goals.

So that helps you sort of visualize that, you know, you either fit into one of three buckets, right, in terms of body type, and then those body types, you know, should all have different strategies to achieve different goals.

So it's all about, you know, hyper personalization and collecting that amount of data from your ideal clients.

Yeah.

How can you personalize your scorecard?

Yeah, so, you know, we, before ChatGPT came out, it used to take about a day and a half for someone to sit there and think about the questions to ask.

And because it's basically like writing a marketing campaign, you know, what kind of campaign you're putting out there, you know, how you're asking these questions, what, what information, what journey you're trying to take your client on in terms of the branding and the marketing and the copywriting.

But then ChatGPT came out and we've integrated that.

An AI wizard into score app where you just basically answer a few questions.

A bit like someone taking you through a personal branding exercise to extract your essence.

You answer a few questions, then what happens is that it pulls out a marketing campaign out of your ideal client, the questions that it answers, and it writes about six or seven hours of copywriting for you in a about less than 10 minutes.

So it's a pretty magical thing to use.

So when you're referring to personalization of the scorecard, you were more referring to me as the person writing it rather than the person taking it.

So it's not going to say, hi Hannah, let's take the scorecard with me filling it out.

But it's more helping me as a business to make it really hyper personalized to my business.

Yeah.

So that's one element.

And then also once your client goes through the journey and collects their personalized report, that report will be personalized to them.

Like it'll have personalized results based on how they score, you know, which body type they are, and then that will position you really well to be the expert to help them achieve their goals.

I was actually at the receiving end of one of your reports the other day, went to Rethink Press and took their quiz on which type of publisher I should go with.

And at the end I got this awesome looking report and it really was helpful because it compared all the different publisher types and then it said at the end, okay, Hannah, how about, you know, like, it was very like tailored to me, so that made me feel very heard and understood.

So I hear what you're saying there.

What other elements are there that I should be aware of?

Building a scorecard that really helps engage people in that whole process, makes them actually fill it out.

Yeah, you know, it just really comes down to the value that you provide.

Right.

You know, like, are you providing people with something that helps them achieve their goals?

If you are, then people don't mind putting time into things.

You know, if you are providing something of high value, people are willing to pay.

You know, we've got some scorecards out there that people even pay money for to complete plus answer, you know, 45, 20 questions.

So there's no strategies to get people to do things.

It's, you know, are you providing enough value that they, that they're hooked on doing it.

So really super, like you have to start.

What I'm hearing is you have to start with a very urgent and important problem that your buyer Persona is facing and then very much align to that to help answer the question.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Okay.

Anything that I need to be aware of in terms of creating, like, the design of it or things that keep me going as I, As I answer the.

Or maybe set the expectation properly to make sure that I actually will complete the scorecard all the way to the end.

No, the only, like, little tactical thing that you could do is, you know, a lot of people ask for their name and email at the beginning of a scorecard that.

Because that filters out people that are serious.

Right.

And allows you to follow up with them.

But what you could do that, that's a little bit tactical is ask for your name and email at the end of the scorecard so that it's like they've done all that work and they've, you know, seamlessly gone through a journey.

And then, you know, the part that people might resist, which is given their contact information, it's like, okay, well, I've already come this far, so I might as well, you know, offer my contact information.

So a lot of times when I have gone through a scorecard like that, that can be a bit jarring.

Right.

When you, when you've answered 12, 15 questions, you invested four or five minutes of your time, and all of a sudden I'm expecting to see the result, and they want my contact information.

Is there any way to make that more.

More seamless that I don't abandon and be like, why are they asking me for my information?

Not really.

You know, you've.

There's two ways to look at it, you know, one way is that a high filter weeds out the people that, you know, it might be a waste of time to jump on a potential, hey, chemistry call, sales call with them.

So you kind of want people to drop off because you only want the really, really committed, highly qualified people to come through to you.

You know, like, wouldn't it be nice if.

If you spoke to one person a day that was booked into your calendar and every single one of those became.

Became a client.

Right.

Because they were the perfect fit for you.

You were the perfect fit for them.

And that's what we're trying to achieve.

We're trying to find the perfect fit.

We're not trying to fit everyone.

And you mentioned that was the second.

Thing I said it did.

I can't remember.

No problem.

Well, the one thing that I can maybe think of is just to set expectations before.

So if you, if you're expecting to have a PDF sent to you, I'm expecting that I have to give my email address.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

That I have to sort of Give my email, then I won't be scared away.

Okay.

In terms of success studies or you know, if people are thinking, well, I've tried so many different things.

Is there a specific example you can think of that you can share with us where a scorecard really significantly improved a company's lead generation and then as maybe a second example, shortened their sales process?

Yeah, it typically does exactly both of those things.

So one example is, well, you know, we had a client who offered personal branding coaching, right.

And personal branding coaching is a particularly intangible thing.

You know, like when I look at your personal brand, how do I know what to rate that?

How do I know?

You know, it's like my opinion against your opinion.

Right.

It's not very clear.

So this particular woman, she's on our website, her name's Hannah Power.

She created a personal branding scorecard that generated 800 leads, you know, within a very, very short period of time.

So that's like raw numbers.

And typically if someone already has some type of lead magnet that will typically convert at about you know, maybe 10, 15%, it's not uncommon for scorecards to convert at 20 to 40% because it, you know, the hook and the self discovery process is, you know, really quite compelling.

And shorten the sales process.

Do you know of any success story there?

Yeah, well, if you think about the sales process, every sales process is a two way conversation, right?

So you have someone that is asking questions, typically the salesperson to diagnose and problem solve and then you've got someone who's answering the questions.

So if you think about a scorecard where like a lead generation process that asks a whole bunch of questions and then, and then it gives personalized feedback.

If you imagine like a 45 minute sales process, the typical questions within a scorecard is typically the first five, 10 minutes of that sales process.

So you already have that information like hey, what are you looking for?

You're looking for it right now.

Is this something you might be interested in?

Have you tried other things before?

Have they worked for you?

Have they not?

How much?

When was the last time you tried something?

Are you looking to start anything today?

All those questions, typically the exact questions in a scorecard.

So you're, you're fast cutting your shortcutting and you're fast tracking, you know, the first five, ten minutes at least the first 20% of every sales conversation.

Yeah.

Okay.

A lot of companies that I work with have like 6 to 12 month sales cycles because they're in enterprise technology and we're talking about 45 minute sales cycle.

We're shortening the first 5, 10.

But I can see how that extrapolates very easily because 80% of the questions that a salesperson usually answers are repetitive and could be covered in a scorecard there as well.

So it doesn't matter if you have a really, really short sales conversation with just one phone call or over the span of a long time, it's equally applicable.

Yeah.

And if you think about it, it's.

It also helps you to segment who you follow up with, how and why, you know.

So another really good example of a scorecard is when I lived in the uk, I forgot the brand, but I answered a bunch of questions for this, like this health supplement, nutrition store brand, and this store sold, you know, proteins, you know, vegan food, it sold supplements, sold greens powders, and it sold pills and shakes and everything.

Now that's a big, like rainbow of healthy food things.

Right.

And I was only interested in two.

I was only interested in the supplements plus the proteins.

I was interested in the vegan stuff.

I wasn't interested in the straps and the hand wraps.

So they only showed me what I was interested in.

Right.

A bit like Amazon.

So Amazon does this, you know, every Amazon purchase that you do, every search that you do feeds into their scorecard and then it spits out back to you, you know, what is most relevant for you.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.

Awesome.

So let's switch a bit to building trust.

One of my, my core things that I constantly, you know, help businesses with is to build trust.

And a scorecard, if employed properly and ethically, it can build tremendous trust.

How would you explain a scorecard helping to build trust in the sales process and maybe also with existing customers?

Yeah, really good question.

So, you know, trust is a very simple yet powerful word.

You know, it's, it's something that, and this is my definition of trust, you know, trust is something that can't be shortcut.

What I mean by that is if you spend 10 hours with someone in person or online, you're reading their content or watching videos or on a video call with them, compared to spending one hour with someone, it doesn't matter if that person you spent 10 hours with has less qualifications than the other person, you're just inherently going to trust them more because you feel like you know them more.

Right.

So trust is in many ways just where you invest your time.

And the people that have really, really large scalable businesses, huge audiences, a lot of people really willing and able to do business with them, they They've invested in tools and assets that scale that trust building process.

You know, a scorecard was one of them.

But a scorecard should just be the beginning, right?

Once someone has come into your, into your orbit and they are lead, so they're interested in what you have to offer, then you've got an opportunity to then also share the ebook, right.

Or also share some videos or then add them to your email list and then, and then keep them updated with what you're working on or any live events that you might be doing.

So it's that ecosystem of a whole bunch of interactions that helps to build trust effortlessly, but really, really elegantly.

Yeah, it's a difficult one because the kind of trust that we have to build is like epistemic trust, right?

We have to build trust based on the information that someone is telling us.

So what kind of psychological principle, and I think you were alluding to that is scorecard marketing using to build trust?

Yeah, so I think that, you know, there's a lot of trust built in like reciprocity, right?

So for example, if someone gives you something that's helpful to you, you know, for free, at no cost, then that builds trust because it builds credibility, builds authority.

And then all those things just all add up to the equation of trust, right?

And then, you know, you've also got the ability, you know, a scorecard is just one tool, one step in the process, then you've got the follow up, then you've got the contact.

Like every little touch point, you know, sort of builds more or less trust, right?

So, you know, Amazon's a really perfect example.

I remember seeing somewhere that people trust Amazon so much that there's millions and millions and millions and millions of people every Christmas Eve that will order Christmas presents on Christmas Eve that need to be given to that person on Christmas Day, right.

So why do people trust Amazon so much?

To put the hands of Christmas, of the happiness of Christmas Day in the hands of that company because they've seen long term interaction with that company, but they've also seen really reliable, consistent results.

So it's also that chance to build something reliably and consistently that's on brand that really helps people to, to get over that hump of can I start to trust you or am I not quite ready yet?

What kind of mistakes do you see companies make when they are building scorecards?

Where can you go really off track?

Yeah, I think all the data is in the numbers, right.

If you're building something and people aren't really using it a lot of people should be getting conversion rates at 20 to 40%.

But if your conversion rate is less than 10, then there's something missing on that front page.

If there's people that are not finishing your scorecard, then that tells you something as well.

So it's all.

So it's all about using data to help improve more of your data points.

Right.

So, you know, where a lot of people can go astray is they might be very, very, how do I say?

They might be very, very product focused and technically brilliant.

But, you know, actually communicating that and articulating that to someone else who doesn't walk in their shoes might be a bit challenging for them.

So that's when we would probably refer them to one of our partners to help them get set up in their.

In their scorecard, which is basically just like another marketing campaign to help someone who has a bit more of that marketing brain to help you out.

Yeah, but there's anything specific that stands out to you that people consistently do wrong and it's just like a pitfall that most people fall into.

Yeah.

So, you know, so I used to use Score up as one of my tools when we were doing like 250k a month in online course sales in one of my other businesses.

And one of the things that we found that really made a huge difference that not a lot of people do is when someone fills out your scorecard and the registered interests, typically that's a really good opportunity to either email them, call them, or whatever else.

A lot of people would just never call them, you know, or they'd wait a week to call them, you know, and I don't remember what I was doing last week.

I'm not sure if you do.

Most people don't.

I really don't remember what I was, you know, browsing the stores I was browsing through last week, the things I was looking at.

So it's about that, you know, engaging with your clients with urgency makes a really big difference, a huge difference in terms of conversions.

That's actually my next question.

How does effective follow up look like?

And the answer is probably it depends on what you offer and what your value is.

But is there some best practices or some tips that you can share of how to actually then turn that submission into a sale?

Yeah.

So definitely you want to respond within 48 hours.

If not, if not any quicker.

Right.

And then you also want to have mechanisms in your scorecard that highlight gaps in what they have.

See, the issue that a lot of people make is that they assume that their Clients are as aware about the gaps that they have that they are.

Which is just incorrect because I'm an expert.

Like, I'm an expert doctor.

That's like a doctor assuming that everyone knows exactly what type of flu that they have.

Well, no, we don't.

That's why we go to a doctor.

Right.

So sometimes as a business owner, we can assume that our clients are, you know, are thinking the same way that we're thinking, which, you know, happens a lot, but it's just not the right thing to do.

And you want to highlight gaps in people's, you know, that they don't see to help them out and help them prioritize what they need to do to get to where they want to go.

So a really good example is I used to help out a gym with marketing, and this gym was making like four times more revenue than any other gym I'd ever worked with.

And what they did that was really, really unique is they would offer a free body scan to everyone that walked in that typically Most gyms charge $30 for.

So this gym would pay for you to take this body scan, which, you know, is a pretty compelling thing.

It's like, why not?

It takes, you know, two minutes and I get a free body scan.

And then guess what?

Everyone's body scan shows, Right.

The piece of paper shows, okay, your, Your blood sugar, your.

Your body fat percentage, all that type of stuff is 3 out of 10, you know, and.

And 5 out of 10 is where health issues, long term health issues, start to start to surface themselves over a long period of time.

So everyone all of a sudden saw black and white, a measurable gap in their life, and of course, had a lot of urgency.

So the conversion rate of people that saw that went into that gym compared to those who didn't.

About 90% of them signed up to that gym on that day.

That makes a lot of sense because you.

Not only highlighting what really the problem is, but you starting to show them what the consequences of not doing anything about it.

Which is the true cost.

Yeah.

And having.

Which is the true cost.

Yeah, yeah.

What the end state could look like if I start doing this program.

Right.

Like, you need to start.

In order to overcome a problem and start taking action, like actually going to the gym, you need to have that end state in mind and have that goal and dream.

So if I, if I know I can close this gap, that'd be great.

Yeah.

And a lot of people just weren't aware, you know, they weren't aware that they were so far away.

They weren't as healthy as they thought.

So, you know, a big mistake people make is they assume that their clients are aware, but they're not.

That's why we're here, to show them that we use tools like scorecards to help them, to see, to show, not tell them.

Yeah.

To finish us off.

How do you measure the success of a scorecard?

Yeah, so the way I would measure it is, you know, as long as you're hitting those numbers, so 20% conversion rate on the front, as well as, you know, probably 1 in 10 conversion rate from a lead to a client on the back as a minimum.

That's.

That's successful scorecard for me.

But, you know, not every scorecard is designed to bring in sales.

Some people use scorecards with their existing clients to measure them on their improvement.

Right.

So you might be in, like, a coach or a therapist, and you might want to rate your clients based on the improvement of their mood or the happiness or depression and things like that.

And then, you know, you've also got people who use their scorecard just for data collection.

Right.

So is that scorecard collecting all the data that you need, you know, is at least say 75% of people finishing it that started.

Finish it.

Right.

Then that, you know, all those different scorecards have different categories, but, you know, success in all of those is, you know, those numbers being as healthy as they could be.

Yeah.

Usually I ask people, and there's a bit of a surprise question here.

What is a book that you have read over the last six to 12 months that really has changed your life?

Oh, it's a big question.

Really has changed my life.

So nothing comes to mind, honestly, in the last 612 months.

But there is one book that I always mention, which I sort of reread every now and then.

So it's called Outsiders, and it's a book about nine CEOs, and they.

They outbeat.

They outpaced, you know, all the really famous CEOs that you hear about by about 15 times in terms of return and growth.

And they did it in ways that are not written in any textbook, you know, so they did it in really contrarian ways.

And it's just, you know, so incredible.

Right.

Like, obviously, if you want different results to everyone, you have to do something completely, drastically different.

And they did.

And they all did the similar things, and they all won.

That sounds like a really interesting book now.

Yeah, Outsiders.

I'll definitely make sure I link that in the show notes.

Speaking of books, I know Score app does something incredibly awesome they actually send exactly the.

You can actually go to your website and request a book, a physical copy, if you're in the uk, I think in Canada, in the us.

Otherwise you get a digital copy.

But you can actually go and get it for free.

Right.

You just ship it for free.

So where would people.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

So whilst we have a new batch, but whilst we have copies, we'll get you out a free copy of this book right here.

So you just need to go to Score app S C O r e a p.com forward slash book and we'll get exactly that out to you, either PDF copy or physical copy, whilst we care.

Awesome.

Good stuff.

Well, Maxwell, I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your insights.

How would someone get in touch with you personally if they wanted?

If they were interested in Score app and giving it a spin, how would they get in touch with you?

Yeah, good question.

So I am addicted to LinkedIn, so that's definitely the best place to get me.

So if you want to jump on LinkedIn and message me there, I will, you know, pretty much see every message that comes through there.

Perfect.

I'll make sure to link your profile as well, so it's easy as possible to get in touch.

Awesome.

Thank you so much and I really, really appreciate your insights.

Perfect.

Likewise.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Cheers.