Field Guides / Positioning

How do I find out why clients really hire me?

Ask them, and record it. The ASK framework is three to five short recorded conversations with clients who already value you, five questions each, run to capture the words they use about their own problem. Sort those words into triggers, frustrations, outcomes and feelings, and they become your offer, your website copy, your outreach and your proposals.

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Why can't most video business owners say why clients really hire them?

Most video business owners write their marketing in production language, because that's the language they think in. Buyers don't. They think about the problem in front of them, in their own words, with their own stakes attached.

Most video production websites and LinkedIn profiles are about the filmmaker: their passions, their style, what they like. We do this, we do that, "we" all over everything.

That gap in vocabulary costs sales. The website says "cinematic storytelling and end-to-end production". The buyer was looking for someone who would take the whole thing off their plate before the annual conference. Both want the same outcome and neither can see it.

The ASK framework closes the gap by taking dictation: you stop inventing copy and start quoting customers. It also puts you back in front of clients you may not have spoken to properly in months, with nothing to pitch.

How to run the ASK framework: the method, step by step

The ASK framework runs in five steps: pick the clients, send the request, record the conversation, ask the five questions, then ask for a referral if it went well. Each conversation takes fifteen minutes, and the whole exercise about an hour and a half including the reading.

1. Pick three to five clients. Below three there's no pattern, only anecdote. Above five the same phrases start repeating, which is the signal to stop and start reading. Pick in this order: clients who came back, because repeat purchase is the strongest sign something worked; clients in the market you want more of; and the client who referred someone, because whatever they said to that person was your sales pitch. Leave out friends, family, anyone who has never paid, and any client who is unhappy right now.
2. Send the request. Short, no agenda, no pitch, and fifteen minutes rather than thirty. Keep the subject line exactly as it is. I've tested it many times and it works very well. If asking feels exposing, the conversation is almost always warmer than you fear, and clients are usually flattered to be asked.

3. Record it. This is the non-negotiable. Notes aren't good enough and memory isn't, because the exact words are the entire mechanism. Say the recording line at the top of the call, then drop it. Any capture works as long as you end up with a transcript. The payoff comes later: when your website or proposal goes back to that market in the market's own language, the response is "you really understand us".
4. Ask the five questions, in this order. The order runs from the past, to the decision, to the result, to the feeling. Don't rearrange it.

Question one gives you the trigger: listen for the thing that changed, such as a deadline, a new person in a role, a failure or a budget appearing. Question two produces the best copy in the whole exercise: concrete frustrations such as "the crew turned up on set looking a mess" or "nobody told us what was happening". Question three shows you the competition in the buyer's terms, which is often doing nothing, asking the intern or using last year's footage. On question four, push gently for specifics: what happened, who noticed, what it let them do next. Question five matters because people buy on feeling first and justify with logic afterwards. If that answer is thin, ask "What was different about it compared with the time you just described?"

Keep to fifteen minutes and let them do around seventy per cent of the talking. Don't correct how they remember things, because that's the version they repeat. Don't sell anything, and thank them afterwards with a note.

5. Ask for a referral, if it went well. Someone who has just described what it's like to work with you is well placed to introduce you. Gauge it at the time, ask who in their network might be a good fit, then wait. The wording, and what to do once you have a name, is in How to get more from referrals and networking.

How to turn the answers into positioning

Turn ASK interviews into positioning by reading every transcript together in one sitting and pulling four lists in the buyer's exact words: triggers, frustrations, outcomes and feelings. Patterns only show up when you read them side by side.

Highlight every phrase worth keeping, export only the highlighted parts, and sort them.

Use their words, not better ones. The temptation to improve the phrasing is the same temptation that produced the generic copy in the first place. If three buyers independently said "we had nothing to sell the next one", that sentence goes on the website exactly as spoken.

What if I only have one or two clients to ask?

If you only have one or two clients, interview several stakeholders inside one account. The marketing lead, the events lead, the partnerships lead and the executive sponsor all bought something different from the same work.

One member with a single major client, and two clients in twelve months, proposed exactly that: several short recorded calls with different people inside the one account. It supplies the buyer language for the offer, turns a single-contact account into a multi-contact one, and produces raw material for a case study he'd never written.

A worked example

Here's the sorting done on a real interview I worked through in a course lesson. A member's production company ran video training workshops for a large corporate client and interviewed the client afterwards. These are the passages I highlighted.

The interview didn't capture a trigger, so that list stayed empty. I then gave the transcript to ChatGPT and asked for a sales page for the workshop, which came back built from the client's own language. Do that only after you've read the transcripts yourself, and check the draft still carries their phrases.

The mistakes that undo it

The ASK framework fails in four predictable ways, and most of them come from the owner talking when they should be listening.

• Running good conversations and taking notes. This is the most common failure. Set the recording up before you book anything.
• Asking the abstract version. "What were you worried about?" gets abstract answers. A specific bad experience with someone else gets specifics, which is what copy is made of.
• Filling the silence. Silence works better than a sixth question. The best material usually arrives after the pause you're tempted to fill.
• Doing the interviews and never reading the transcripts together. Set your deadline on the four lists.

The rule of thumb for finding out why clients hire you

Ask, record, and use their words as they said them.

The benchmark: three to five recorded conversations of fifteen minutes, the same five questions in the same order, and every transcript read together in one sitting and sorted into four lists.

Hold yourself accountable

Which of these have you taken on or put in place recently?

• You've sent the interview request to at least three clients who came back, sit in your target market, or referred you.
• Every interview was recorded and you have a transcript of each one.
• You've read the transcripts together and filled in the four lists in your clients' exact words.
• At least one line on your website or in your last proposal is now a client's phrase.

Your one move this week

What's the one thing you can commit to implementing this week? If you're not sure, start here.

Write down the three to five clients you'd interview: the ones who came back, the ones in the market you want more of, and anyone who has referred you. Send the first one the email, with the subject line exactly as written.

One thing executed every week creates 50 strategic moves a year.

Related tools and guides. How do I write the one line that says who I help?, How to choose a niche for your video business, The marketing asset you already have and keep ignoring, How to get more from referrals and networking, When one big client owns your video business.