The author describes himself as "an aggressive student of marketing for more than 28 years,” and as having sold more than $ 30m worth of marketing consulting services to Fortune 100 companies such as Lipton, American Express, Colgate-Palmolive, Whirlpool, Panasonic, AT&T, Kodak and Hallmark.
The subtitle of this book is “The counterintuitive online formula to discover exactly what your customers want to buy… create a mass of raving fans… and take any business to the next level.” The author claims that his book is “the world’s most powerful marketing formula…”
The process Levesque describes should make your customers feel that you are talking directly to them, not at them. This is achieved through the “Ask Formula”, a way of asking questions that will assist you to accurately determine what your customer wants, the language of their context, and the issues and messages they want to hear. Asked correctly, they will tell you what they want to buy, and under what conditions they will be willing to buy from you.
“Instinctively, we ask people what they want. We think if we just ask them, they’ll tell us, and we can sit back and watch the dollars pour in,” says Levesque.
Steve Jobs, a man with a fine sense of what people will appreciate, said, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Henry Ford believed that, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’”
However, people are good at answering what it is that they don’t want, and what they’ve done in the past. Had Ford asked his potential customers what they do not like about their horse, they might have responded that it is too slow, needs feeding, or only carries one person at a time.
The purpose and value of this book is to offer a formula that will allow you to identify what your customers want, even when your customers can’t quite articulate it. This is the value of the “Ask Formula.”
The method the author uses is a set of surveys. “The secret to spectacular sales (is) all about asking the right questions, in the right way, at the right time.” Levesque’s formula has had success in multiple businesses and has revitalized markets that were previously considered dormant.
When you are able to discover what your customer wants to buy through “somewhat counterintuitive” questions, and you are able to customize a solution for them, they are more likely to purchase from you. If, in addition, you can completely automate this process so it does not require a conversation with every single customer, you have a very powerful digital marketing system.
Executed correctly, these automated surveys will give you priceless information that will inform you of exactly what the customer wants to buy, and when they are ready to buy it. When you are present with the exact product or service when they are ready to buy, you will have a satisfied customer who will return for more.
Through this process of surveying potential customers, you will also be able to identify why they decided not to buy, so you can revise your campaign or correct your offering. When you have this working accurately, you have the ability to scale your business to something much, much larger.
The hard work, however, lies in getting the details of the process correct.
The Ask Formula uses a combination of questions in surveys in a very specific sequence, and requires that you act or adapt to the data you collect in very specific ways. If you are broadly addressing the right group of people for your product or service, the surveys or questions should appeal to their “sense of self-discovery and curiosity.”
The set of surveys operates like a funnel to assist you to clarify who is in your market, to engage with them, and then, further down the funnel, to refine your marketing approach to them and then to benefit by closing sales. Levesque’s “Survey Funnel Strategy” describe a step-by-step, detailed process to apply in your online business.
This funnel is significantly different to the common practice where you, as a prospective customer click on an online ad, are led to a landing page. Here you are immediately asked for your name and email address, and other details you probably would not like to enter, in exchange for a free report or coupon. Then you are shown a webpage with a “one-size-fits-all” offering, and moved too rapidly to the payment section for your payment details. Little surprise that the results are paltry.
The Survey Funnel Strategy offers a slower and more carefully crafted method that will allow you to really satisfy the client so the buying decision is so much more likely. Essentially you succeed by never assuming you know everything about your prospective customer, and you eliminate as much guesswork as possible. Having collected real data, cleverly and carefully, you better understand your market and the natural consumer language it uses.
When people do not buy you need to understand that too, so you can hone your approach for the future.
While the logic of this process is obviously compelling, the value of this book to anyone interested in micromarketing to a mass audience, lies in the clever construction of these surveys and doing the hard work.
Even if you do come to the conclusion that this process is beyond your capability, and you do need to engage the author’s company to do the work for you, you will have picked up great insights along the way.
You will also have seen proof of Levesque’s ability. You were self-selected as shown by the fact that you bought the book. You do know how complex doing the work correctly is, and you are now willing to buy it from a master.
Readability Light ---+- Serious
Insights High --+-- Low
Practical High +---- Low
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works.
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Customer reviews
A complete waste of time, and an emotional turmoil (in a bad way)
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2016
This book is bad enough that I leave my first Amazon review on it. And I spend on average $100 on Amazon. My boyfriend thinks I must have experienced an existential crisis or mental meltdown to do that. However, the review must go on.The beginning chapters: If the purpose of reading this book is to know how to sell or create surveys better, then no one cares about the personal background of the author in much detail, desperate and frustrated to see the link between his struggle and the book (after all, levesque has already supposed to nailed the ASK formula when he got sick. Not much of a revelation or story builder for the readers). Levesque dedicated half of the book mentioning how great the book is but nothing about the methodology itself. It's really bad taste and offers a horrible blow to the credibility of the book (no one should to go such inapproaporate length to talk about how good the book is in that very book).Also, the graphics of the excel documents in the book are way too tiny to be eligible. And the Information there is supposed to be important. It's just a very careless mistake throughout the book.I'm not going to criticuze yet the methodology of the survey making methods myself, but the sentences in general are very repetitive, self-aggrandizing, and it's really hard to extrapolate the theory and apply to individual business as his theory is in general very narrowly discussed and based too focused on his own personal case studies.Just spent $9 on the book and found out they offer the book for free online. But his official website (and the bonus materials he mentions in the book) is nowhere to be found. Fishy.
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2016
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 10, 2017
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 22, 2015
You see, I have always been good at putting together average sales funnels, you know what i'm talking about, the typical squeeze page => email sequence => sales page type of funnel, but I always seem to plateau after a couple of rounds of A/B testing.
I knew I was missing on something because no matter what headline I test, or how long my email sequence is, or what type guarantee I have on the sales page etc... i can't figure out why I just can't seem to squeeze more money out of my funnels. What am i missing!!!
Long story short, I came across Ryan's material where he talks about something he calls the "deep dive survey" process, its a type of "pre-funnel' work he does BEFORE he starts building out a funnel or enters a market (he dives into the specifics of it in the book).
After I implemented this technique I fond out that i was attracting about 5 different customer segments, and each segment described their challenge very differently than the way I was talking about it in my marketing!
The problem?
My funnel was “leaking” prospects because the messaging was so broad it didn’t resonate with most of the customer segments. I was missing the mark.
To put it in perspective, I’m in the real estate space. In my marketing, I was talking the SAME way to a new married couple looking to buy a house in the city, just as i was to someone who’s looking to retire and wanting to move to the suburbs & spend the rest of his days with a peace of mind. BIG mistake!
You might be thinking “Dah, of course you should have different messaging!”. But THATS how most funnels are built today. Buck gets ten you won’t find more than 1 out of 20 funnels doing ANY type of front-end segmentation. Most of them have one message speaking to all of their customer segments.
Anyhow, so with the deep dive survey i have identified exactly who my customers segments are, the language they use and most importantly the different challenges/concerns/frustrations each has.
Now I’m able to craft unique sales messages that speaks to different customer segments in way they can identify with.
I got so excited about this, but only to find out that I had no way to effortlessly match the right message with the right customer segment without putting up a landing page for EACH customer segment and figure out a way to split the traffic etc... (which is a pain in the you know what)
This is when I came across the next two pieces of the formula which Ryan calls "The prospect discovery landing page" & "The micro commitment bucket survey". Those are two advanced techniques where you get your prospects to self-select and enter into the right sales funnel that is relevant to them off of ONE landing page (Ryan covers this on chapter 14 & 15 I believe. Super smart!)
With that, i now have a way to segment my customers into different custom tailored funnels without putting up gazillion landing pages and getting stuck dealing with complicated tech stuff.
If you have done ANY type segmentation before, you know the type of lifts you can get from doing stuff like this.
After all was done and implemented, I took my funnel in the real estate space that was in the red, to over $25,000 in less than 12 weeks (with a 40% profit margin).
This is not another thinly-disguised IM sales letter. Its full of insights and strategies you can put in action TODAY to increase your sales conversions.
This book (and anything Ryan teaches) gets my highest recommendation.
Your sales funnel is like a leaky bucket, and its leaking money.
By Yassin Shaar on April 22, 2015
If you have an offer that is proven to convert & you just can't seem to get a bump in your sales conversions (regardless of what you test), then grabbing this book and APPLYING the strategies Ryan reveals in it will most probably give you a big boost (especially if you don't do much segmentation in your funnel at the moment).By Yassin Shaar on April 22, 2015
You see, I have always been good at putting together average sales funnels, you know what i'm talking about, the typical squeeze page => email sequence => sales page type of funnel, but I always seem to plateau after a couple of rounds of A/B testing.
I knew I was missing on something because no matter what headline I test, or how long my email sequence is, or what type guarantee I have on the sales page etc... i can't figure out why I just can't seem to squeeze more money out of my funnels. What am i missing!!!
Long story short, I came across Ryan's material where he talks about something he calls the "deep dive survey" process, its a type of "pre-funnel' work he does BEFORE he starts building out a funnel or enters a market (he dives into the specifics of it in the book).
After I implemented this technique I fond out that i was attracting about 5 different customer segments, and each segment described their challenge very differently than the way I was talking about it in my marketing!
The problem?
My funnel was “leaking” prospects because the messaging was so broad it didn’t resonate with most of the customer segments. I was missing the mark.
To put it in perspective, I’m in the real estate space. In my marketing, I was talking the SAME way to a new married couple looking to buy a house in the city, just as i was to someone who’s looking to retire and wanting to move to the suburbs & spend the rest of his days with a peace of mind. BIG mistake!
You might be thinking “Dah, of course you should have different messaging!”. But THATS how most funnels are built today. Buck gets ten you won’t find more than 1 out of 20 funnels doing ANY type of front-end segmentation. Most of them have one message speaking to all of their customer segments.
Anyhow, so with the deep dive survey i have identified exactly who my customers segments are, the language they use and most importantly the different challenges/concerns/frustrations each has.
Now I’m able to craft unique sales messages that speaks to different customer segments in way they can identify with.
I got so excited about this, but only to find out that I had no way to effortlessly match the right message with the right customer segment without putting up a landing page for EACH customer segment and figure out a way to split the traffic etc... (which is a pain in the you know what)
This is when I came across the next two pieces of the formula which Ryan calls "The prospect discovery landing page" & "The micro commitment bucket survey". Those are two advanced techniques where you get your prospects to self-select and enter into the right sales funnel that is relevant to them off of ONE landing page (Ryan covers this on chapter 14 & 15 I believe. Super smart!)
With that, i now have a way to segment my customers into different custom tailored funnels without putting up gazillion landing pages and getting stuck dealing with complicated tech stuff.
If you have done ANY type segmentation before, you know the type of lifts you can get from doing stuff like this.
After all was done and implemented, I took my funnel in the real estate space that was in the red, to over $25,000 in less than 12 weeks (with a 40% profit margin).
This is not another thinly-disguised IM sales letter. Its full of insights and strategies you can put in action TODAY to increase your sales conversions.
This book (and anything Ryan teaches) gets my highest recommendation.
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Top reviews from other countries
Liz Yardley
Practical, hands-on stuff that you can do today to enhance your business
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 12, 2021
Federico
Great content and examples
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 6, 2018Andy
The guide to spamming from the guy who won't stop spamming you (Doesn't care about GDPR)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 17, 2021
The guide to spamming from the guy who won't stop spamming you (Doesn't care about GDPR)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 17, 2021
I friend recommended this book. I foolishly went to look at the additional online material mentioned at the start. Within minutes I getting bombarded with endless emails that I CANNOT unsubscribe from (it informs you that your information cannot be removed). Don't make the same mistake. Snake oil sales.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 17, 2021
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