A Tale Of Three Salesmen

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to a late night Marketing in Your Car. Welcome to the Marketing in Your Car podcast where you can increase your traffic, conversions, and sales in just 10 minutes a day. And now here's your host, Russell Brunson. Hey guys and gals, it's been a while since we've done a late night one, but I'm actually heading home from the new house. Actually, well, I'm kind of lying. I'm heading over to the from my new house to the new office and then heading back to the old house. Anyway, it's been a fun-filled day of running errands and getting things set up and all those things that happen during a move while packing boxes and shipping things and packing. Anyway, I'm a little beat up. Anyway, I just left the house and heading back to the office to go get one more quick thing done. Because I'm in the office this whole week, it's like these little things that have to get done that I haven't done yet, they have to happen late at night or else they They just don't fit in anywhere, so we'll make it work, right? But today it was interesting. I had a chance to work with a lot of different types of people, different businesses, and really interesting how different people responded. I just want to share some with you because I think there's things to be learned from all of them. First business I interacted with today was a company called Love Sacks. You guys may have heard of them. They make big bean bags and these couches. They call Sactionals, and a bunch of things like that. I've always wanted some love sacks, so we had a whole bunch we were going to order. And so I went and found them online, found the ones I liked, and then a little support agent popped up on the side and asked if he could help. And I was like, okay, so I kind of asked him a couple questions, and support side was amazing. He came through and answered my questions. It was actually yesterday that I talked to him the first time. He went and, you know, figured out my questions. He actually went online and, like, based on what I told him, found a whole bunch of variations and options and sent me just different pre-built couches that would kind of fit what I had told him. It's really an amazing experience. He gave me his personal cell phone number if I had any questions. It was just an awesome experience. So this morning I was ready to go buy. I went to call, I was in order, and he had given me his cell phone, so I called him and just, "Hey, I'm in order, man, just to make sure that that's fine." So he said, "Yeah, jump on orders." We start ordering, and then I asked him how long it would take to get them to me. He's like, "Oh, it'll take 6 weeks." I'm like, "Ugh, I don't want to wait 6 weeks, man, 'cause then I can get them in 2 weeks." 'cause I'm kind of an impatient entrepreneur. And he's like, "Let me find out." So he gets off the phone, he calls, who knows what he does, he calls a bunch of people, calls me 30 minutes later, he's like, "Okay, we can't get 'em in 6 weeks, but what we can do is ship you 1 couch so you can have it in time for your party you're trying to do in 2 weeks. And then when it's done, then you can ship it back to us and I'll ship you out the new one. We'll be making the new one, but we'll just basically give you a loaner you can use during the time." And I'm like, "Really?" I was like, "I don't know if I'll ship it back. I never do those kind of things." He's like, "Well, I'll set 'em," "I'll put a notification on my calendar so I remember on July 5th to call you back and make sure you get it shipped back." I'm like, "Dude, this is insane." I was like, "I don't think I'm going to do that." He's like, "How about this? We'll ship you this and then we'll ship you out the covers and then you can change the covers to the color you want." Totally was doing everything possible to make sure that I could have a great experience. Then I went to go buy and he's like, "Oh, by the way, when you're buying, use this coupon code to save $1,000." Put in the coupon code, boom, saves me $1,000, which then I ended up buying another LoveSac, which put me back to zero. I didn't actually save any money, but I got an extra LoveSac out of it. It was an amazing experience. A+++. This guy did amazing. Next experience, so that's something hopefully that you can learn for your business and your customers. I was just like, wow, I wish all my customer support agents were like that. We try, we got I think the best support team in the industry, but it was just above and beyond. It was really impressive. So there's that. Moving on to the Oh, and then also I screwed up on— I put in the wrong shipping address, so he went and fixed all that for me. Anyway, just awesome. Next experience, I wanted to buy a Sub-Zero fridge. I heard they're the best and they're amazing. I get all excited and I want one today. I don't want one tomorrow, I don't want one in a week, I want it today. So I find out there's a place close to us that sells them, so I drive down there. I get there and the lady greets me at the place and I'm like, "Hey, how's it going?" I'm like, "Good, I'm here to buy a Sub-Zero fridge." She's like, "Okay, well come back here to the showroom." I'll send back a consultant. I'm like, alright, so I'm going back there and I'm walking around the showroom looking for probably 15 minutes at fridges, which is only like 10 fridges in the whole place. So I'm like spending, you know, 3 minutes on each fridge and just kind of like anxious because like I want to, like I have money burning a hole in my pocket. So lady comes up to me, she's like, hey, sorry, I'm the only consultant here. I'm about to leave an appointment on the other side of town and the other person's gone, so I don't have any time for you right now. But if you write down your name and number, I can get back, I can get back in touch with you. As if I was like a phone call. I was like, "Okay, well, I'm here because I want to buy a fridge today. I want to leave today with a fridge." She's like, "Oh, well, what kind do you want?" I'm like, "Sub-Zero." She's like, "Oh, well, that's going to be a minimum of like $10,000. So I don't want you to have sticker shock. It's probably going to be outside your budget." I'm like, "What are you talking about? You're like blowing me off. I'm telling you all these buyer questions. I'm trying to write you a check for $10,000. You're telling me I probably can't afford it." All these things. And then I'm trying to ask her questions and she's trying to rush me out because she's got to go. I had all these notes that I was trying to ask her. She photocopies the notes and then says, "Either me or someone on my team will call you tomorrow." And then she just scurried off and left. And I'm standing there in the store with nothing. I'm like, "Are you kidding me? If someone comes in your store with money burning a hole in their pocket, where's the entrepreneur? Where's the salesperson that wants my money?" I was so frustrated I drove across to this other place and I bought Fridge, side-ons, just bought the fridges right there. So she calls me tomorrow, I'm gonna be like, you know what? I told you I wanted to buy it right then and I did buy it right then. I bought it 5 minutes later across the street at your competitors. So there's like salesperson number 2, right? Who just doesn't care and just lost a huge commission because just not paying attention. Like just not, so busy, she needs to get some other appointment that she's not looking at the cash sitting right in front of her. Like if there's cash there, pick it up. Anyway, it just drives me crazy. So there was that one. And then the third person, and this guy I got a lot of compassion for, he's the guy who's cleaning the carpets in our house. And so, man, he came in today at 8 o'clock and he left at 11:30. So he put in 12, 15, 16-hour day today cleaning carpets, busting his butt, and did an amazing job. Like, just really impressive. He's coming back tomorrow morning at 8 AM to finish up the project. But just awesome guy. What's funny is that I actually did a podcast about him probably a year ago. Some of you guys may have heard it. But he, we had bought, it wasn't a Groupon, it was a CitySmart, but that's, which is a, anyway, similar to a Groupon, we bought from him and he came and did our carpets. And then since then we had him do it 3 times for us then, then we just had him do it again this time. And I remember last time I had a conversation with him, he was talking about how bad of a deal Groupons and LivingSocial and all these things were for him because he lost money and blah, blah, blah and all these things. And I'm like, I feel bad 'cause this guy who's working so hard and he's spinning his wheels and he still, I don't think he's noticed the fact that I bought a Groupon and since that Groupon, we've spent, man, we've probably spent $3,000 to $4,000 in carpet cleaning with him since then. And I don't think he realizes that, like the lifetime value of a customer, he's totally just missed that part of it. And so today, he asked me, "Well, what do you do for a living?" In fact, I had 3 people today that came to the house for different projects ask me what I do for a living, which kinda made me laugh. They see a punk kid in a t-shirt and shorts and flip-flops in a big house and they're like, "What in the world?" Anyway, it's kind of funny. But he asked me, "So what do you do for a living?" I'm like, "Oh, I'm an entrepreneur and I just, you know, kind of talk about what I do." He's like, "Oh, I'm an entrepreneur but I'm just not good at it. I can never make money or sales or anything." And it made me laugh because one of my friends, someone I really respect, is a guy named Joe Polish. Joe was a carpet cleaner for years and I actually bought his carpet cleaning course and went through it because I wanted to learn what he was teaching his carpet cleaners. So this is probably 5 or 6 years ago. That's how much of a nerd I am in marketing. I study marketing in other industries just so I can see how it applies to what I'm doing. So I've studied all Joe Polish's stuff and carpet cleaning and really good things. And so I understand like how to run a carpet cleaning business, how to get sales. And so every time he's come to my, to my house to do our carpets, I was asking the same, again, a buyer question. I was like, hey, how much would it cost to have you come back every 3 months and just spot check and just re-clean things up? 'Cause one of the big things Joe Paul teaches is like, hey, customer's good, but you can put them on a continuity and come back every 3 months and they're worth 4 times as much money to you, you know, and all these things. And so I keep asking him, he's like, uh, I don't really do anything like that, but you can just call me in 3 months if you want me to come back. Anyway, I asked him again tonight, I was like, what would it take for you every 3 months to just show up here and I don't think about it, you just show up, clean carpets, and just every 3 months you're here, like clockwork. He's like, ah, we don't really do that, call me in 3 months. And so anyway, tonight after he was kind of talking about, you know, how he's struggling and his business and stuff, I was trying to like have some compassion on him and just see how I could help him. I asked him, I'm like, have you heard of Joe Polish before? He's like, oh yeah, I got his stuff, piranha marketing. I'm like, have you gone through? He's like, oh yeah, I've gone through it all. I'm like, that stuff's really good, man. Like, have you studied? Have you like looked at it? He's like, oh, you know, I've gone through it all, but you know, I just, whatever, like whatever the reason, you know, I'm just one man band, so I don't have time to be able to do all those kind of things and everything. And I was just like, Man, I felt so much compassion for this guy because he's trying, he's working hard, he's busting his butt, he's trying to do the best, but he's missing the basic marketing principles, the basic things that could exponentially grow. And the sad thing is he has them, he bought them, they're sitting there probably at his desk, and he hasn't cracked— I mean, I'd be shocked if he's gone through past the intro CD, you know? Because just the questions I was asking him were things that are in the course that I've gone through, like I know what— he needs to be doing to maximize his revenues and just isn't and wasn't. And my heart just goes out to him. And so anyway, I just want to share it with you because there's so many, such different experiences. One that was just 100% spot on perfect. One that was 100% spot off horrible. And one who's trying and working but just doesn't understand his craft. He's awesome at what he does, but is so, not oblivious, I don't wanna say the word oblivious because it doesn't sound right, but oblivious, but that's kind of it, like oblivious to the marketing principles that make his type of a business grow and expand. I wanna tell him, I wanted, for all you guys who are funnel hackers out there, I wanna be like, man, you just gotta funnel hack what Joe's doing, funnel hack what all these people are doing. That's the process in any business. If I was a dentist, I'd go find the richest dentist on earth and I'd funnel hack him, I'd figure out what in the world he is doing. What his people are saying when they, you know, when someone comes to the front door, like what he's doing to generate leads. I would be doing that like crazy. Same thing if I was carpet cleaning, if I was, whatever business I was in, that'd be the first thing I was doing is funnel hacking every single person to figure out exactly what they're doing. And so anyway, I'm gonna see him tomorrow and I might talk to him a little more about it. I just got to the new office and the alarm's going off. Hold on, I gotta remember my password. Sorry. You guys are in for a live show. Boom, got the, got the, got the password right. So anyway, I said tomorrow I'm gonna kind of pull him aside and hopefully try to share some of these things with him a little better and help him to understand because, because he's, he's close. He's got the hard work, but the hard work with the right knowledge, like the information, when you have that correct, then that's when everything exponentially grows and, and that's where he could get results like he wants and and without putting in more effort, actually putting in less effort, he could achieve a lot more with it. But it's just really understanding the core marketing principles. So for you guys, hopefully you learned something from those 3 different people I interacted with today, and hopefully it'll let you, hopefully you'll think a little bit more about what you're doing and focus more on the marketing and the sales principles. Funnel hack your competitors online, offline, wherever you're at. Because those are the principles you need to grow and be successful in this or any business. Okay, I got some projects to do, I gotta bust them out. Appreciate you guys listening in. Have an awesome day, and I'll talk to you guys again very soon.