Attending Conferences, Referred Trust, Pricing Tactics and More– Small Business Show 156

The Small business show episode 156 for Wednesday, January 31, 2018. Greetings folks and welcome to the small Business show here at BusinessShow Co the show by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton and in Lafayette, California.

I am Shannon Jean. How are you man?

I'm good. People are going to think that we went and boosted like the low mids on our audio for this episode because we're both sort of fighting or suffering from or getting over head colds. So there you go.

The rasp is still here.

The rasp and the resonance of the nasal cavity. That's right, yeah.

And here we are at January 31st. Time marches on, man. Either marches over you or you get in step with it. Keep hustling. And I always think it's like, wow, the month of January is already gone. I know, it's cool. So you know, as we're kind of wrapping up the month here, we have some notes that we're going through slack as we use to communicate on the show and keep our thoughts and things. And I thought it would be good to have kind of a grab bag show and discuss a few topics.

I like the grab bag episode. I know what I think we're going to talk about but we'll see where that goes. I'm almost hesitant to share that because I don't think we'll get to where we think we're going to go. So. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I always say when I describe the show I went to. Here we go on the segue. I spoke on a panel last Thursday night at ebay and I've mentioned here on the show before they have an event which I think is fantastic. It's called becoming ebay and for new employees. And it's a three day event and the culmination of the event is a dinner where they bring in, I guess there's usually between 10 and 20 of us. And I've been to a few of these sellers, they're customers and we get up on stage and they ask questions and we talk. And then after the, it's about an hour or so, we go down and we each pick a table and we have dinner with these new ebay employees. And you know, we get, you know, have a couple beers and hang out and talk and I've had different experiences. Sometimes it's pretty quick. Other times like this last Thursday, I mean, I basically had to be like, guys, we gotta go home. They're gonna shut the building.

Wow.

Because we were talking so much about. I thought it was great that they. Ebay just bought Terapeak. And if you don't know what Terapeak is, if you're in any kind of product business, you need to go search and learn about Terapeak. They keep all the data for ebay sales for basically forever. So it's a great way to learn about your product that you're interested in and what the market has been and what it's right now. Velocity sale prices and stuff. So I sat at a table. Yeah. With some cool ebay folks and also the controller for Terapeak that's just coming over to. To ebay and some other Terapeak. Think so, man. It was just fantastic. Had had a great time up there. That's kind of where I started this.

Like, no, like taking those opportunities to do one thing. You know, it's sort of the meta theme of this episode. Right. You do you head there to do one thing. And then like you said, you sitting there with the controller of this company. I mean, not only are there great things to learn from that person and hopefully to share of your own so that it's a, you know, participatory thing in that moment, but now you have this down the road.

Huge.

Might be huge. Yeah.

For them or for you?

Or for both. Yeah.

Yeah. One guy, there was a guy who was there, super nice guy, and he was kind of a. He was a purchasing procurement guy for ebay and had some really fascinating stuff to talk about. And, you know, he's like, oh, now I'm trying to buy buses, you know, because in the Bay Area it's crowded. And so, you know, a lot of these tech companies bus people around from the suburbs or from San Francisco to try to, you know, get them there so they can work on the way because it could take you, you know, two or some, you know, two hours, two and a half hours to get to work. So, you know, it was great. And I was listening, I was like, I'm not sure how applicable this is to me, but this is a super nice guy. And he handed me his card and goes, hey, you know, I know a lot of people here. If you ever need help with any problems, just let me know. And I. And I told him, I said, I said, hey, man, that's exactly why I come here. Not only do I love ebay and it's impacted my life in a super positive way, meeting, you know, folks like you that can help, you know, solve problems down the road as they inevitably, inevitably come up.

Yeah, right. I Mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So anyway, that was our segue, you know, my, my initial segue to start, but it comes back, you know, we, we did a show not too long ago about why you need to go to events like this. Yeah, they're really easy to ignore because you get busy and you know, it takes me, it took me an hour to drive down there and do all this stuff. But, you know, it's, it's priceless to, to make these connections in, within your industry or without. And, and you know, they come in handy.

Totally. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, and plus, I, you know, I had somebody a long time ago, this guy named Tim street, who, his first claim to fame that I knew of was sort of at the beginning of podcasting. He started French Made tv, which was this ridiculous thing. He, he's a, you know, an LA guy and so he was like, great. I understand tech. I'm going to have these women dress up in French made costumes and they're going to explain like how to configure your router or. I mean, it's just target marketing. Totally pandering, right? But it was a very successful thing for him. And, and then he went on to do a bunch of other things that I actually honestly forget where he is now. I think he's, he's, he's with, I think he competes with, with us at Backbeat Media actually now I think he's, he's with somebody that, that sells podcast sponsorships and that sort of thing. At least that's the last place I saw him. But, you know, that's how this industry goes. That's like, that's good. Like, it's good to have people you like in, in positions of, of competition because you can call them and talk to them. But he said to me once, you know, because I, we ran into each other at like three conferences in a row. I was like, dude, we gotta stop meeting like this. And he's like, yeah. I said, do you like, what other shows do you go to? And he started listening like, man, that's crazy. Well, you know, this is a full contact sport, man. And you know, I firmly believe that just getting out and doing this and like you said having dinner or even having a drink or coffee or whatever, like running into people. Yeah, there's the people that you're supposed to meet with that you schedule time with and that's like super valuable. But you know, any of these conferences is gravity, right? It brings some segment of people together and if you, if you're intelligent about Picking the right ones and you'll get it wrong. Sometimes you'll find yourself at a conference or a dinner or whatever.

You'll be like, okay, yeah, it's not that useful.

I'm not going to do this one again. This isn't good for me. But way better than sitting home and missing the one that was going to change your life. So. So yeah, that was his thing. And he's like, you know, and I know, like, I watched him and he moved around from, you know, from opportunity to opportunity. And it was all just because he was Tim Street. That was it. He was just that guy that everybody knew. And so you learn to trust him and there's no reason not to, but there's no reason not to trust most people. But the, the trust isn't implicit. Right. It's, you know, you have to, like, there's things that help you build trust and that's, you know. Yeah.

And yeah, like, you know, I think you mentioned. Or actually we had, you know, Ladan Davia on the show a few weeks back from, from b.com and she was talk this concept of referred trust. And you know, I, we should chat about that a little bit.

And it's actually on our agenda. I didn't even brought up Tim. I didn't even get segue, but I caught it happening, so it's good.

Yeah, that was pretty powerful. Yeah. You know, and it's. There's a, there's kind of this obligation. Right. When you refer someone to that if people ask you a lot, especially if you become a resource like you're talking about.

Yeah.

You know, or you become, quote, an expert or your, your brand, if you will, is, oh, I've got knowledge in this field. Hey, who do I call to get, you know, X done or to help me with, you know, with this and that referred trust. It's a, it's powerful. But it's also a big obligation that you can, that can go. That can sour pretty quick.

It can. And you know, in with Dan's case, it went really sideways and obviously the person. It was like the president of some university or something that, that referred these programmers to her that then screwed her out of 50 grand. Yep. You know, obviously that person isn't financially or legally liable for what happened there. Right. You know, everybody's an adult. Ladan took that. She took it on faith. She did some level of due diligence, which clearly in retrospect, not enough. Yeah, that's right. You know, but. And she totally groks that that's on Her. Right. As we all should. Like that' adult way to handle it. But.

Yeah. Yeah.

But will she trust a recommendation from that person the next time? And will. And will that person be willing to make a recommendation the next time? Right. I mean, not about these guys, obviously. No. But about anyone. Like, oh, you know, I hate to. You know, I. And I've certainly found myself in that position.

Oh, me too. Yeah, me too.

It's very cautious about when I lend my social capital to something.

It is. And, you know, I love to be a resource for people. Yep. But you do have to really be careful. And I've just recently had it where I was trying to help someone get a product that, you know, I'm. I have some experience with, but on a. On just a strictly, like, wholesale level. And, you know, they asked me for some help, and I. And I, you know, I really like this guy. I was like, you know, I want to help you out and, you know, get you this product. It's kind of hard to get. Maybe save you some money. And the whole thing just went sideways because the source I was trying was just not that reliable. And it just kind of fell apart and made me just realize this is why I don't normally do this, you know, because it's so easy for it when it's out of your control for things to go sideways. And I think your. Like you said, it's your brand or whatever. Takes a little hit. It takes a little shine off your superpowers, if you will.

It totally does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes people realize you don't actually have superpowers is what it is.

That sucks. And I hate that, you know, because I love to. To be able to go, oh, yeah, here, call this guy, or do this, and this will help you and all that stuff. It's, you know, I really enjoy doing it, but.

And some people are really good at it. I mean, I, you know, I. The. This guy, Mike Dunn, who used to work at Hearst, and now he moved across the country and is doing something. Something else over there. But he was like Mr. Introductions. He was the king of the network and really, really good at it. But in retrospect, kind of looking back at how he did things, he never recommended anyone to anyone. It was always, I should introduce you to, you might have something to do together, I should introduce you to. And he was very effective at it. And there's some business relationships that I, to this day, that I can trace. Right. Like, almost directly, some of them, in fact, directly back to him. But it's Always like, I don't, but I don't immediately think, oh, yeah, thank goodness, you know, for Mike, it's like, oh, that's, Wait a minute. Mike was at the core of that, you know, I don't, I give him credit for it, but it. Not so much that he's responsible. Yeah.

And I think that brings up a good point about the nuance.

Oh, it's all about the nuance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In, like, in my example here that I was kind of outlying, you know, I probably should have phrased it a little bit better in the sense of, oh, let me see if I can connect you with someone that can help you, versus, hell, let me help you out with this. And it got too complicated. And here I was trying to help somebody in it, you know, sideways. So I think that's a great, you.

Know, the nuance that you, that sort of, the nugget of that nuance is in one scenario you're just introducing two people that you think could help each other in some fashion, and the other you're putting yourself in as the role of middleman. Yeah.

And that's the problem.

Right. But the problem with those of us that are entrepreneurs is our initial gut reaction often is I see an opportunity where two people are going to make money. I can be the third one to.

Make money, even in this case. And I get that. I totally understand that. But in my example, I was just trying to help out a friend, like, well, the resource I'm trying to introduce him is not the most. I don't want to use reliable, but it's not the most.

Polished.

Yeah, polished. So I'm going to help in this situation, kind of ease things over and it was a disaster. Disaster. And at the end, I, I, you know, wound up not looking that great because I couldn't help the guy. And, and it took a little while to get to that point where I finally said, say, you know what, I'm sorry, I can't help you, instead of like, hey, here's a phone number. Call this guy. I'm not sure he can help you, but here's, here's a resource for you.

Right.

I have to, I have to remember that, you know.

Yeah, yeah, it's tough because, you know, if you, I, I, because I've, I'm guilty of this too. If you go back and look like, was that, was it really worth the headache for me to get involved in that, should I have just like, was there any benefit to me in protecting and isolating this, Relate these two separate relationships and Oftentimes the answer is no. There was.

That's correct. And what I ask. Yeah. And I ask myself that often, where I say, what value can I add to this?

Right. Are you adding value for anyone other than you?

Yes. And if I can't add any value, then I typically don't want to be involved because there is no reason to do it. I mean, and I think that's an important yardstick for me. It's a good lipstick. Stay out of things. Yeah. If I can really bring something to the table, if the deal won't happen unless I'm involved, you know, am I bringing the capital? Am I bringing the buyer? Am I bringing the seller?

Whatever it is.

But I think. I think you have to ask yourself that, because if you're just in it, if it's just like, well, I can get in the middle of this and make a few bucks, those I don't think are that great.

Yeah. When you're. When your only benefit is related to margin and specifically yours, oftentimes that's like the other parties are going to figure that out eventually. Yes.

And it can go bad for you.

Really bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we could do a whole show about being in the middle. I have a lot of experience with that and how to make sure your value is really there and how to explain that.

Bring value. Right.

You bring it. And also, you may need to occasionally, or more than occasionally, point out what that value is to your. To the other participants in there. And it helps keep things transparent and reminds them of why you're involved in the first place.

Yep.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Good, good. I had an interesting thing happen this week, and this will actually be, at the very least, the second podcast this week that I've talked about this on. I don't think I talked about it on macgeekab, but I definitely talked about it on giggab, the one we do for musicians. I played a theater gig, but it has. This is all in relation to pricing, and there's a very relevant lesson here. So I played this theater gig last week and it was a one weekend run. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, that was it. It's a show that I had never heard of before. Not that popular of a show called A New Brain. Very difficult show to put on. The people that saw it really liked it, but it didn't come with name recognition. Right. And so on Tuesday, the theater looked and realized this is a theater that holds north of 250 people. And I think they had, you know, 25 presales. Or something for Thursday night.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Now, now there's always walk ups too, right? But still, that number of pre sales was. Was remarkably low. And so they posted on Facebook and said, hey, look, you know, we've got a lot of people working really hard. We're paying them, don't worry about that. But we'd like them to have people in the audience. And we also think that you'd like to see this show. But we know that for some of you, you know, you can't afford to, you know, spend your discretionary income like this on something that you don't know about. So here's the deal. If you want to come see the show, come to the theater on Thursday night. Once the doors open, you know, well, anybody that bought tickets ahead of time or whatever, you get the receipts you reserved and that's cool. But once the doors open, come on in and pay what you can. And if that means you can't pay anything, that's okay. Like, we just, we just want, you know, butts and seats. I mean, they were a little more. They were very transparent about it. They were nicer about that, right, you know? Yeah, yeah. And they said, and you know, if you can, if the ticket. I think the tickets there range from 15 to 25 bucks or something, depending on, you know, where you are in the, in the room. And they're like, you know, if the ticket should have been 20 and you can only pay 10, totally fine. Like, just contribute what you can. And then they said, of course, you know, if, if you're feeling generous and you want to contribute more, obviously we'll take that too. Like, no problem.

Okay, sure.

And so the show went on, on. On Thursday night, and there were, I think, just shy of 150 people there, which was great, right?

Yeah.

Like, it felt like, oh, we're not just doing this. Like, we don't outnumber the audience. That's awesome.

Yeah, that's nice.

Yeah, that's good. And then the most interesting thing happened because they looked at the numbers and the average price for the tickets that, for the seats that people actually sat in. So the tickets that were distributed, the average price would have been $21. Okay, sorry. Okay. Would have been $20. The average price that we got through the door that night was 21.

Oh, that's cool.

We got more money than we would have if we had just sold those tickets to everyone for the prices that they had stuck on. And I say we again. You know, I was paid a flat rate to do the show that this didn't affect me. But. But still, you know, I like, pay attention to this stuff because it's fascinating. Yes. And, you know, it. It's really interesting because when you set a price, that's it. People are either going to agree with it or not agree with it, but. And you may lose business because of it. Right. If. If your price is too high or even if your price is too low, like, that can.

That's right.

Right. That can change people's opinion about the value of your service, but everybody has an intrinsic sense of what the value of that service that you're providing should be. Now, I'm not going to sit here and advocate to do that. Every single business in the world should do this like that. It's not going to work. But there are. There are certain businesses that I think could thrive from doing this across the board. And I also think that in any business, there might be one or two aspects of it where you may be able to do a little bit better, not only financially, but certainly in terms of goodwill, by essentially letting people choose your own price. It's very interesting. And I posted about this on our. Actually, I just posted about it because I shared the thing, and I said, this is great what they're doing. And then they continued that throughout the weekend. We sold out Friday and Saturday night for the show, and again, made more per ticket than we would have if we had just sold the tickets. Yeah. And I had one guy write to me, this guy, Billy Eli from Texas. He's a guitar player, tours all around the country. And he said, oh, yeah. He said, I started doing that with my merchandise years ago, and it's amazing how much money I make compared to what I would have made if I just sold everything for whatever I was charging previously. You know, 10 bucks a piece for whatever's in the merch box, whatever that is. He's like, yeah, I make way more because people think a T shirt maybe should be 20 bucks. He's like, my t shirts aren't worth 20 bucks to me, but if they are to you, no problem.

That's right. Yeah. Well. And I think it's all the, you know, comparison. Well, compared to the concert I just went to, where they were 35 bucks, you know, 20 bucks is a good deal. So if you're. If you're only charging that $10 or whatever it is, 15 bucks, in some ways, you're leaving money on the table from that customer. And I like that idea. I mean, it makes me nervous to say, you know, it would make me Nervous to jump in wholeheartedly, but certainly experimenting with pricing with particular aspects of your business or particular products that you're selling. That. That's really an interesting idea. I think you'd really have to think about because, like, art, you know, which is your show and everything, it's very subjective. And most people that are going to go to a show like that, I would argue, you know, feel some sense of, oh, you know, art is valuable. Right. And these people need to make. Be paid, and I want to come here and be entertained. So they would possibly pay a little bit more in certain other venues.

Fixing your iPhone screen, maybe not so.

Much, or consulting and fixing your computer, coming to your house and doing this kind of thing all depends on who it is.

It depends on. Yeah, like, I thought about that for, you know, for the consultants out there, like, would this be a better way? And, like, I'm not sure that people. Again, it depends on who the customer is, but, yeah, like, that one in.

The industry, because it's a perceived value. And. And again, I love the concept, and I think you could tweak it for certain parts of your business, but. And possibly make more money, like the merchandise thing and the music and all that kind of stuff. And also the theater, you know, those are emotional connections, right?

Definitely.

If you're buying merch from this artist, you want to be associated with them or represent that, hey, I was there. I saw this band or this and this event. And so you're emotionally connected, so maybe. Maybe it's more valuable to you. Right. You're buying a concert shirt.

Totally.

And so. Yeah.

Yeah, right. That kind of emotions. If I could quantify it, I would say something with emo. Translating emotional value to financial value almost becomes a calculation based on your, like, a percentage of your total, like, net worth or income or something like that. Right. Because if, you know, if someone's making $25,000 a year. Right. And. And there's another person that's making $125,000 a year and they both experience the same concert, you know, play whatever it is, you know, they're both going to have. Hopefully, let's say they both have the same emotional reaction. Well, you know, to the person making 25 grand a year, like, 10 bucks could be considered a lot. Like, whoa, I got to be careful. Like, that's, you know, maybe more than I'm making out of their budget.

Part of their budget.

Yep. Whereas the person making one, I might say, oh, you know, I'll kick in a hundred bucks. Like, that was great. Like, I want it to mean something to me. And so that's. Maybe that's where it is. Like, what does it mean to you? And I, you know, consulting business. I had clients who always insisted on overpaying me, like, more than my rate. I knew that I couldn't raise my rate in general because of, you know, all the other clients I had. But these people, I would give them a bill and they'd be like, yep, okay, well, as usual, I'm going to write it for double what you just gave me. Like, well, that's cool. And I think it's.

It's kind of. Yeah. And it's kind of localized, you know, especially. Or situational is what it is too. Because if you're, like, young, if somebody, you know, older person and you're helping them out and you're like, oh, I'm gonna charge you, whatever. It's. I mean, I've been in that position before when I was younger and they were like, oh, come on, you know, you're not charging enough. And, yeah, you know, let me, let me help you out here. You did such a great job. You're up and coming. Whatever. You know, it's true. You kind of get that pat on the back type thing, the pat on.

The back, $100 bill with it. Yeah, exactly.

That's right.

That's right.

But you can't do that when you get to be like, in. Well, maybe you can. It depends on how old your customer base is. If they say.

And it depends on how much charisma you got in you, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, I think on the flip side, one of the constant battles we faced at Tech Restore was shipping. And, you know, over the last decade, the value of shipping item has dropped to virtually nothing because the perceived value is, oh, I get it shipped for free, but in reality, someone is paying for that shipping, you know, and I think Amazon has probably done more to. And I'm using the quote sign here, you know, hurt. That perceived value.

They've diluted it for sure.

Yeah, yeah. And people forget constantly that they're paying either a hundred bucks a year or 12 bucks a month for that free shipping. You know, it makes sure it comes along with prime and video and other stuff, which is awesome and I think it's a great value. But if I let customers pick what they wanted to pay for overnight shipping, I don't believe they would ever pick actually. Even if they wanted to pay, they wouldn't be able to pick what it actually cost.

But how about this? Like, Is there? And I mean, this is just a crazy idea. I don't know. Remember, I've got a head cold, folks, so I got you nothing that I say is. I'm not responsible for anything. It's not my fault. But what if you had like ground shipping is free. Right. Or ground shipping is $5. Choose your own price for overnight shipping, like setting a relative value and then letting people say, hey, if you want this overnight, and that's important to you, we don't want to stand in your way. So you tell us what that's worth, we'll just get it to you. Like, I mean, I wonder if there's something there, because here's the way a lot of people will say, you know what, I don't need it overnight. Like, the ground is fine, but for the person that's really in a jam, they're gonna love the fact that you offer overnight shipping.

Oh, sure. But I would say, like, we typically, you know, do it in the opposite manner. We say, okay, ground us free. Yep. And then. Or the slowest possible, okay, it's going to be two to nine days or whatever it is, is free economy shipping.

Yep.

And let me talk about, you know, selling in marketplaces. Economy shipping is always going to be free. Because if you don't offer free shipping in marketplaces like Amazon, ebay. Oh, you're doing that kind of stuff. Yeah. You will not come up in the search results. So you have to do it.

Right.

So, but then what you do is, okay, if you want priority shipping, let's say it's two to three days. Most people in my experience still don't want to pay exactly what it costs because they don't know what it costs.

Right.

They don't know that if they take it to the post office and it's a two pound item, it's going to cost them 10 bucks or 12 bucks to ship it two to three days, which is still a pretty good value.

Well, it's a good value if you know what it's supposed to cost.

That's correct. But an overnight, like if you want to overnight a laptop and you. And somebody walks into FedEx or UPS and hands it to the guy and says, hey, I want to ship this overnight. It's going to cost him about 80 bucks. Yeah.

And no one wants that.

That's right.

That's the problem. Right. So you maybe. Yeah. So my example here doesn't work because people, people don't know what it actually shipped thing.

They don't have enough knowledge to know that's a good deal. And so what we do is we say economy is free. It may take up to nine days to get to you, but we show such a great value for priority. Two to three day, let's say, and we only charge them like nine bucks. And in reality, we ship everything priority because it's better. It's just a better service for us.

I was just going to say it's way more predictable.

It's way more predictable. If you ship economy that floats out there for a week or so, I guarantee you're going to eat up your costs. And customer service.

Yep.

Inquiries versus buying the service. And what we've found is that more than 50% of the people will upgrade when you show them for nine days is free, but for only, and it depends on the weight, but five dollars or seven or eight bucks more, I'll have it to you in two to three days. You're showing this big discrepancy in value and price and they jump right on it.

Yeah. So there's a lesson in here for those who are observant. Always choose the free shipping from Amazon vendors. That's the thing. Right. But if a vendor's got good star ratings, I bet. Yeah, yeah, they're exact. They're doing exactly what you just described. And. Yeah, and because I've experienced that where it's like, oh, I don't care, I don't need it. You know, especially like buying Christmas gifts or whatever. If you, if you're ahead of the curve, you can be like, oh, yeah, it take two weeks. I don't care. Whatever shows up.

Exactly.

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, but you know what you're trying, as a, you know what you're trying to do is like, okay, we're going to eat this shipping cost anyway. How do we show the value proposition between just getting a few more bucks out of them? Even if you only charge five bucks.

And that only covers the cost thing for you.

Yeah, yeah, you're going to go, okay, I'm going to pay the nine or ten bucks. So if I could get half of that from the customer, I'm ahead of the game. Versus every customer that wants free shipping. Plus, you're going to come up in the search ranking higher. Your deals are going to be surfaced more by the. Especially if you're in a marketplace. But I would argue even on your website, you capture their eye. Free shipping, and I hate to say it, free returns, which everybody hates from a business perspective. But that's the other hook that grabs people now is if they don't like it. You want to send them a label and have it. Excuse me, have it come back. It's just the way that's how you get customers, because they know, oh, there's no risk. And I would argue, and in my experience, it does not increase your return rate to offer free return shipping.

Oh, my guess is it increases your bottom line to offer that.

Yeah, it helps out. And it was one of the things we talked about at this ebay event last week, is that everybody gets mad. Oh, you know, ebay's making me do this. And it's like, no, no, this is just the market. This is the market that we operate in. And all your competitors are offering this. If you go to any major, you know, retailer or whatever, it is free shipping, free returns, because you want to eliminate any argument to buy that product.

Well, that's it. Yeah. There's a classic thing in. In sales, it where the. The concept is, find out what the objection is, quantify the objection, and then take it away. Right. Like, you know, if you're sitting there with somebody and. And trying to sell them something, and they say, well, you know, I just. I don't know if I can do this now or if it's gonna be two weeks. It's okay. You know what then is that really the problem? Like, make the. And this is the classic sales thing. You make them say it back to you. Right. Because now they are psychologically committed to that.

If I could eliminate that problem, would you buy it?

Would you buy it? Is that really the problem? Yeah, that's the problem. I just don't know. Okay, great. Then here's the thing. I'm gonna write the order. I've written the order. Here's the order, and you pay me in two weeks, and we're good to go. And now, like, they can still say no, but now they feel bad because they've already committed. Yeah, that's right.

And the richest guy in. Not just the richest guy in the world, the richest guy in the history of the world eliminated all those things to shopping. And it's Jeff Bezos, right? He figured it out. He created this. You can call it a virtuous cycle or a cycle of hell if you're in the business. But in his comment is your margin, your profit margin is my opportunity.

That's right.

And the free shipping and the prime and all that kind of stuff. He eliminated everybody. It's so easy. I'm just going to shop. And to many, many people, shopping is just pulling up the Amazon app and ordering it. There, because, you know, if I don't like it, they're going to take it and they're going to force. Even if it's a small seller in the marketplace, you have to abide by these rules, and you're not going to get burned as a customer.

Can I take us in a different direction with that for a second? Because Apple used to be the company that I always said, look, they will take care of you as a customer. Don't worry about it. And in recent years, my perception of that, and this comes from not only my own experience, but certainly the people that I hear from, is that Apple has gotten a lot worse at that. Are you hearing about that, too? And I ask this because Shannon and I both come from the longtime Apple fans, users and business. We've had businesses in this market. Some of us still do.

Yeah. I would argue that never has there been a better time to take advantage of the. What must be a massively overwhelming customer service, you know, nightmare that they face on a daily basis.

Yeah.

And, you know.

Right. That's the thing, is they've got so many customers, they can't handle it. They can't handle it the way that they used to.

Yes, correct. And, I mean, I bought my son a new iPhone for Christmas, and, you know, know, here we are 30 days out after. And part of the screen intermittently keeps, you know, failing. And, you know, darn it, I don't own a company anymore that could fix that. And I would just fix it. I'd be like, we're not sending it in. It's a nightmare just putting your screen on there.

Sure.

But so, you know, I jump online, say, great, now I have to go make an appointment at the Genius Bar or whatever, and literally at our local Apple Store, there's no appointments.

Well, that's the battery thing. Right? I mean, that's. I think that's a short.

Yeah, that's the battery thing, you're right.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the battery thing.

More about it than I do.

But. Yeah, but what I've. What I've heard from a lot of people, it used to be like. And not that long ago, even five years ago, you'd go in with a problem and, you know, you. You go in with something that might have been covered under warranty, and then you realize. They realize during the process. Well, actually, no, you know, this is bigger than you think. Bigger than we thought. And so, you know, and they're not there to screw you or anything, but it's like, no, no, this is. Yeah, this Is not a warranty thing. I would say Certainly more than 50% of the time it was, but we'll take care of you anyway. Yeah. And now, like in the last couple of years, that has gone away. There's no more. But we'll take care of you anyway. There's no more. It used to be, you know, that Max, you couldn't. Officially, you couldn't take them apart without voiding the warranty. But. But if you took it apart and put a hard drive in and there was a problem with the motherboard that was truly unrelated. You didn't like, you know, leave a screwdriver in there and short out the motherboard or whatever. Like, they would cover it. And I'm hearing now that they. They don't cover that kind of stuff anymore. It's like, oh, nope, we haven't any excuse they can find.

I would say. Yeah. The key word in my experience is hubris.

Yeah.

And I hate to use that, but, you know, I love the Mac. It changed my life dramatically. Same, you know. Yeah, absolutely. There's no doubt about it. But I've always battled with the company in the sense. And probably if I was involved with General Electric or some other huge giant corporation, it would be similar. So not just a single Apple out.

Right. That's what it is, though. It's now just like everything else.

It's like everything else. So I think that on the ground, they're good people that really do want to help you. But the further you go up and things are run by committee and procedures are put into place, that's where you run into poor performance. Because the people on the ground don't have the authority like they used to. Maybe.

I guess that's true. Yeah.

And everything is data driven. Right. So they're going to be. How many of these did you.

When the Apple stores, when the retail stores first opened, and their only history was that of phone support and depot support. And they had so much flexibility and freedom with that that they just took care of everything. It was like, great, if it's here, fix it. And I remember I would send my computer in for a new keyboard or something and I'd get it back and it was like, well, we replaced the screen and the motherboard and the this and that because we saw that those things might be kind of getting flaky. So here you go. You're good to go. But as. So when they first launched the stores, that's how they operated because that was their culture. And you're right, they've now like the stores are driving. It's the tail wagging the dog in that sense.

I think so.

I think so, yeah.

Yeah. Like I said, it makes sense. It's gotta be incredibly difficult to manage on a day to day basis. And like you said, this battery issue thing, which I think they handled terribly. But anyway, it's another show. It's crazy, but I think the customer service, like you always say, Dave, we're all in the customer service business and it's such an opportunity. When you have a problem, if you solve it correctly with a smile on your face and you pick the right token. And if you don't know what that means, go back. I'll link the episode in the show notes. If you pick the right customer service token, like our friend Jean Louis Gasse explains, you can have a customer for life. But if you pick the wrong token and plant your draw line in the sand, so to speak, then you can lose the customer for life.

Yeah. And a lot of time in the process. Yep.

Yeah, you got it. Good stuff, man. I enjoy talking about this stuff.

We almost hit things on our agenda. Even this is good.

Yeah, we got a couple more things, but we'll save those down the road and we'll move on. We have a great interview next week and another one on the week after. So we have some, some excellent folks coming on the show and we encourage you to stop back by next week and hear what they have to say.

Yeah. Should be fun.

It's cool.

Thanks for listening, everybody. It's always a good time. Make sure you visit us businessshow Co. Or our small business support group on Facebook@businessshow co. Facebook is where we do all of that. So that's all I got, man. You got anything else?

That's it for me too. We'll get our, our cops under control for next week. We'll sound a little more high pitched.

Keep living the charmed life. See you next week.