012: Predictable Results in Uncertain Times! A Conversation with Dave Blanchard

Hello and welcome to our 12th Conversation to Connect: Let's Get Real, powered by Exceptional Connections. I'm Cindy O'Neil-Deity, the founder and chief connector of Exceptional Connections since 2009. We'll be celebrating our 11th anniversary this year.

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So each week I nominate a different member of our community to be able to share meaningful conversation with. So be sure to make yourself comfortable, get yourself a cup of tea or a beverage of your choice, and take notes because we will be opening up the conversation about the 45-minute or 50-minute mark to be able to engage in conversation with you. So the inspiration of our weekly conversations to connect, Let's Get Real Talks, is to create purposeful conversations. We desire to be relevant during these challenging and uncertain times. And to support our Community to make an impact in the world and stay connected. So, so we, as we get started here, I invite you to set aside any distractions and invest yourself and your attention into the conversation that's about to unfold and look for one idea or one concept that you can be able to take away and implement into your business to take action on. So don't cheat yourself out of the time you've invested here. Our conversation to connect this week is with Dave Blanchard from Battleground, Washington. And the topic is predictable revenue in uncertain times. So I'm just going to read a little kind of background on what we're going to be talking about. What we're all looking for now in our businesses is a return to predictability. Amen to that. Now is the time to make preparations for a quick recovery by building in the 5 pillars of consistent scalable income. In this presentation, we'll take a look at these 5 essentials and how to implement them into your business. So before I bring Dave on to share with us today, it's my pleasure to share a little bit about his background and his journey, and then he's going to fill in the blanks for us. So Dave Blanchard, owner and founder of Cognizant Marketing, has helped over 100 small business owners get better results from their marketing budget. He is an innovative and customer-focused and results-driven marketing leader with expertise in startups, automation, and growth. He lives with his wife and son again in Battleground, Washington. So take it away, Dave.

Thanks, Cindy. Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you and your audience here. I know that you lead a great group of people who are committed to moving, advancing themselves in business, and I'm just happy to be a part of it. Thank you. So just a little bit more about me and my background and how I got here and why I'm talking about this. So I have had some significant advantages that a lot of people just haven't had that are in small business. I have a master's degree in management from a top school. I've worked with— at a top, you know, Fortune 50 company for 26 years. And I have learned some of the disciplines that it takes for businesses to get to the point where they have predictable revenue. If you think about how Wall Street works these days and publicly traded companies work these days, typically the business will have a call with analysts every quarter and they'll say, this is what we think is going to happen in the next quarter. And based on that, People buy and sell stock, the stock price hopefully goes up, and then they report earnings. And if those earnings reported are not what they predicted, the stock price gets punished. And so businesses, big businesses have had to learn how do we predict revenue in a way that's accurate. And it's absolutely critical if you're a publicly traded company. Obviously, small businesses have some similar— have some distinct challenges with doing that. We don't have staffs of accountants. We don't have specialists in marketing. We don't have teams of people. We don't have lots of resources, money to spend, that kind of thing. So clearly, we're not going to get to that point where a publicly traded company gets. But, but we are all investors in our own companies, right? We're investing, if not money, we're investing time, and we want to get a return from that. And we really want to be able to depend on that return because we have expenses and bills to pay. You know, we have a mortgage to pay every month, we have other bills to pay every month, we got car insurance, all that stuff. And unless we have a predictable source of income, it creates all kinds of stress in our lives. And so what I have kind of noticed was what those things are that big businesses do to create predictable revenue that small businesses need to adapt in order to get to that place. And a lot of the fact is a lot of small businesses don't know about some of these practices because they haven't been to school. There's no— I'm not aware of any small business training school. Um, they're— most small businesses that I know, I think most people in your community just started a business and they got inspired. They maybe got tired of working for the man or they just, they wanted to get some freedom or whatever and they just, they, they, they had that entrepreneurial itch and they jumped in and they got started and they didn't go to school to learn. So, so what I am, uh, feel like is a little bit of my mission is to bring some of that that I've experienced and learned and seen and share that with small business owners.

I love it. That's beautiful. And you're right, there is no school other than the school of hard knocks, right? We just learn as we go, glean along the way. Yeah.

So, so, um, you know, so this really is, um, aimed— this information is aimed at somebody, people who are, who've been disrupted by this COVID outbreak. I mean, a lot of businesses that had traditional sources of revenue, they dried up or they diminished. And really what I see happening a lot is kind of a continuation of a trend that started with the internet 10 or 20 years ago or whatever, but where people are shopping more online. And in fact, I just saw something recently, I can't remember exactly the statistic, But somebody said that as a result of COVID the levels of online purchases are the same as Black Friday. Which is the same, you know, that's like the peak time of the year for people making online purchases. And right now, and as a result of COVID they've reached that same level. So consumers are like no way, but like they haven't before shifted their buying behavior to looking online, shopping online, buying online. And really that was a trend that was going, that had been going for some time, but what COVID did is just pushed it, it accelerated the trend. So some businesses have sort of fallen off the cliff because they, you know, maybe they lagged a little bit behind in this. And so that's really, you know, why, who this is aimed at. If you're here and you've seen some of your revenue dry up because of that, you know, this is something that might be helpful to you. Also people that have, you know, maybe struggled with marketing, you know, they get, they get, they're maybe on the revenue roller coaster, up one month, down one month. They have inconsistent returns on the time and money that they invest and they want to get more, they want to get more out of what they're investing in attracting and keeping customers, or you're looking to, like I say, gain or regain some of that stability in your, in your income. So I, you know, I like to share a story about Emily, who is a client of mine that I worked with, and she owns a gym in Portland, and she was struggling for 2 years before I met her to try to figure out How can I break through a certain income level in my gym? She's a very ambitious woman, very hardworking, one of the hardest work ethics of anybody I've ever met. But whatever she tried, it just didn't work, and she could not get above that level. And the reason why is that as our businesses get bigger, they actually get harder to grow the bigger we get. Because, you know, when you're a small business and you're, you're, you're in contact with your customers daily, you have, you know, good relationships, they like you, it's a lot about your personality, your person. That works really well to a certain level, but as you get bigger, you, you can't keep up with it anymore. We, you know, we don't get— they don't manufacture more hours in the day for us. As our business gets bigger, Yeah, that's not part of the deal. So she really had to shift, you know, just working harder didn't work. Just hoping it would work out didn't work. Just putting in more time, more hours, doing more of the same didn't work. She had to actually shift what she was doing and the way she was doing it and the way she was thinking about it. And really, you know, needed somebody to come alongside her and help her identify the changes you need to make in your business and make those, make those changes. Because change is not easy. So I'll say that right up front. I mean, we as human beings, change is like the worst thing. I don't know why that's wired into us, but we don't like change. So it's not, it's not, it's not necessarily comfortable, but it's necessary. So, you know, we were able to you know, get her to the next level by making some critical changes in her business that made her business much, much more predictable and at the level that she wanted it to be.

So, Dave, you know, really in this conversation, I really am excited about this conversation because I think it's so pertinent right now. We're at a tipping point where people are going to be transitioning from, you know, sheltering in place with this COVID-19 to getting their business up and running again. And so I guess my question for you before we get going is, is it really possible in the midst of our shutdown, in the midst of COVID in the midst of, you know, really all the mandates of sheltering in place for a business to expect to have predictable income?

Well, yeah. So yes and no. I mean, there's certain things that are outside of our control, right? But there are other things that we can control and we can move more towards that predictability. And I mean, certainly, you know, if a hurricane happens or if an earthquake happens, that's going to, you know, or if another infectious disease breaks out, that's going to have an impact.

Sure.

However, the more prepared we are and the more disciplined we are, the better the better we will— the more resilient we'll be, the better we'll be able to withstand that. It's like, you know, it's like the old thing about, you know, if you build your house in the low area of New Orleans, when the flood comes, it's not going to be a good, you know, a good thing. But if you build on the higher ground, you might have a chance of succeeding. So that's really kind of along the lines of what we're talking about here.

Okay, well, let's jump in here. Let's review with our listeners the 5 disciplines you have for predictable revenue. That's your framework that you're—

Yeah, so that's what I call the framework for, for, for getting more towards predictable revenue. So the 5 disciplines are focus, know your numbers, set SMART goals, eliminate inefficiencies, and close the learning loop.

Great. So let's jump into the first one, which is focus.

All right, so this one is focus. So why is focus important? Um, and, and specifically talking about focus in our marketing here. Um, so we all only have 24 hours in a day, and we can't afford to market to everyone. The numbers just don't work out. It's just too expensive in terms of time and money to get in front of everybody. There's 7 billion people in the world. It's not going to happen. So we have to make choices. We— people tend to make choices, but they don't make conscious strategic choices. So I mean, every time you go to a networking event, you're making a choice. Every time you don't go to a networking event, you're making a choice. If you place an ad, you're making a choice. So all of these things are choices that we're making because we have to decide on what are the things we're going to do and what are the things we're not going to do. So the way we achieve focus, the foundational piece is having a marketing plan that's, that's clear enough to where it's written. And a marketing plan doesn't have to be 30 pages or 50 pages or something, and should not be something that you write and put on a shelf and never look at it again. What a marketing plan should be is, is just really at its essence, it's a, it's a recording of those strategic choices that you've made. Where are you going to? And, you know, we'll talk about what some of those strategic choices are, but it, um, the benefits of it is promotes consistency, and consistency, uh, is key in making an impression and being memorable. If you're not being consistent, people are— you're just not going to break through the noise. And it also helps you prioritize, and prioritization is one of those things, you know, a lot of small business owners that I know are almost constantly in a state of stress. But prioritization helps you let go of the things that are not important and focus on the things that are important, and so that, so that some of that stress can go away. It's a little bit like You know, if I wanted to get across a canyon, I could build 5 bridges 80% of the way there and not be able to cross the canyon. Or I could build 1 bridge 100% of the way there and be able to get across the canyon. So I think what we tend to do is we start 5 bridges. None of them quite gets us there. And so we don't get to where we want to. So by focusing, we can devote our time and resources and energy to the things that work. It also provides clarity, and I found— and I don't know if this is true for you, Cindy— but when I'm clear on what it is, what I need to do, I can take action. It's when I'm not clear that I, that I get caught up in procrastination and all that other self-defeating behavior, right? A marketing plan can provide that clarity. Aligns our activity so that everything we're doing reinforces everything else we're doing. So you start to get some sanity out of something. Right.

Well, don't you find also, though I totally agree with what you're saying, but as a small business owner myself, I have glimpses of clarity, right? I mean, they come and then they go. If I don't write them down like you say, that's important, or if I don't speak them out loud and proclaim them or have an accountability partner. But don't you find that for business, just like in life, that we need to take those leaps of faith? You know, we have just a glimmer of clarity and sometimes we need to just take action and take that step. And then with that step, we get more clarity.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think, in fact, I think you put your finger on it. That's how I find I get clarity is by taking steps.

Yes.

It's kind of like I take my best guess at what the next best step is and I take that step and then I learn, oh, well, that wasn't right, or I gotta do 2 inches to the right, or you make a course correction. And that is how you do it. And that's why I have this saying that I've said for many years, which I kind of like, which is always have a plan but write it in pencil. So you want a marketing plan But again, I don't— it doesn't— if you're spending so much time to write 30 or 50 pages, you're never going to want to change it. So it needs to be just sort of those, those little bits that you're clear about. And then over time, you know, you expand it, you can embellish it, add more clarity, add more aspects to it. Right. But having it written down to the point where it's clear enough to write down and then being willing to change it, because that— the other reality is we don't know what we don't know. And so, and the way we find it out is by taking, taking action.

Yes, it's interesting that, that, you know, I just so agree with you because the act of writing things down, and they say by hand, you know, that, that seems to trigger the brain in a certain way, but the act of writing it down does create clarity. So, you know, it's kind of one of those things where I'm waiting for clarity, I'm waiting for clarity, or write down what you're thinking and then that process helps you get clear.

So, um, yeah, when I write something down, it's like, well, no, that's not quite what I meant, right? And then, and then I reiterate and I edit it and, you know, it starts to get clearer. It's just, I don't know what it is about that process. I'm not a neuroscientist or an educator, but, but there's something about that process of, of writing something down and then thinking about it and, and and clarifying it. Yeah.

Right. And if you're a verbal processor like me, sometimes it's having a conversation with somebody.

Yeah.

And I notice that when I'm saying something, if I'm sharing something with, you know, a business colleague or my husband, I'm like, no, that's not quite right. But just me saying it, because that's my go-to for processing, it helps me to achieve that clarity.

Yeah. And we, you know, we all of us have these things that just run around in our heads and we kind of think we've got a concept, but it's not really it's not really crystal clear. And so it's not until we try to speak it or write it. And you're right, I mean, some people may have a different process. That's why I think partnerships are so powerful, because you can have a dialogue with people and say, well, here's what I'm thinking. And then they have a different experience. They're like, well, I'm not sure about that thing. So, you know, it gets clearer, it gets better, it gets more robust. Yeah.

I love that. 'Cause you know, they say too, you wanna be able to surround yourself with like-minded people, but at the same time, it's great to have people that think differently so that you have different perspectives when you're working through, you know, challenges.

Yeah. Well, I think, so I like to think about like-minded people. I've never found anyone who thinks exactly like me.

That's a beautiful thing, right?

Exactly.

That means we need you, Dave. We need your perspective. So tell us more about the challenges that are typically experienced to achieve focus in developing a marketing plan.

Yeah, so, well, one of the things in a marketing plan is who is your ideal customer, and that is a critical choice. And a lot of small business people just viscerally resist that one because, in fact, I was just talking to somebody, I was on a call a little while ago, and and he had a new partner. He's like, my partner dragged me kicking and screaming into a niche. And he resisted it because— and the reason why we resisted is because we think— well, this actually comes from a scarcity mentality at its root. But we think if we focus on one thing, we're giving up something else. And so we don't want to do that. We don't want to to give up that opportunity. But in reality, it's kind of a false opportunity. And I've seen the power of this. In fact, after I helped Emily, we actually started selling the system that we created to other gym owners. And we had such a tight focus. I mean, literally, she would go to her— she was part of a franchise. She'd go to the franchise owners' meeting 3 times a year. And everybody we wanted to sell to was in a single room. I mean, if you— can you imagine the efficiency of marketing if everybody you wanted to sell to was sitting at the same place listening to you? I mean, that'd be great. That's ideal, right?

Yeah.

And so Emily would get— she got up in front of— literally, this is what happened. She got up in front of the group and said, I was in pain, I put the system in place, life is so much better. And people are like, I want one.

Yes.

So it's, it's, it's a matter of your message being coherent, congruent with your audience, right, is really, really powerful in marketing.

Yes.

And we think we can have this, and it manifests itself in lots of ways. The words we use, you know, if I'm talking to a doctor and I'm talking about customers, I'm talking about patients. I'm not talking about customers because they don't think in terms of customers, think about patients. So having it, having an idea of who your ideal customer is, is really critical. And another reason why that's critical is because you really want to create your marketing messages with one person in mind. Now you can have multiple one persons, but when you, when you, when you write an email, when you create a video, when you write an ad, if you can in your mind think of, you know, at HP we had Betty Soccer Mom. She was our— she was one of our avatars. We actually had 4 or 5, right? And, uh, and so we had this whole thing written up about Betty Soccer Mom and how many kids she had and what she did during the day. And so when we write— when we wrote advertising, we wrote it Betty Soccer Mom. And it connects better.

That's brilliant. I love that. That's great.

Themselves in your messaging. And that's really what you want to have happen is people— in fact, somebody else said, you want— great copywriting is when the reader wonders if you're hiding under their bed.

Yeah. Are you talking about me?

How do they know that about me? That's really what you're trying to connect with. You have to be, you have to choose your ideal customer.

Yeah, you're reading my mail. Yeah, exactly. I love it. I love the idea of avatars and being able to actually, you know, 'cause they talk about, okay, my clients are over 50 or female or whatever, but to put a name to it and maybe, you know, kind of where that person, where you would find that person, I think that's brilliant.

Well, and it goes deeper too. You know, it's not just who they are and where they are, but it's what they believe. What it— what really motivates people to make it, take an action and make a change, which talk about change resistance, is, is emotion. And we need to be able to connect emotionally with the people that we're talking with. And that means we need to understand what keeps them up at night, what do they aspire to, what— who do they watch, who do they trust, who do they— I mean, there's lots of different questions In fact, I'm putting some videos together which people can get about how do you walk through this, how do you figure out who your avatar is, how do you really get clarity on that.

Oh, that'd be a great talk. I would sign up for that. I love it because yes, you need to know what their pain points are, right? What keeps them up at night, like you said. And so in order to do that, you need to be able to understand your second discipline, right?

Right. So the other thing is, and that leads right into this, um, good segue, uh, which is what makes you unique. But it's not unique to anybody, it's unique to your target customer. What makes you better than any other alternative that they have to, to purchase? And unless you have something that is, is better there's no reason to buy from you. And that's kind of a harsh truth. None of us likes to hear that. But that's, you know, one of the reasons why we don't have as many people buying from us as we'd like is because we're not as unique as we need to be in order for people to come to us. They've done studies that say people have room in their brains for like top 1 and 2. That's why there's Coke and Pepsi. There's Coke and Pepsi and then there's all those other ones, right? Or if you think of, you know, if you think of getting Chinese food, you probably can think of a couple of restaurants. And that's just how the brain works. And unless we're number 1 or 2 in our prospect's minds, we're probably not going to get chosen.

That's a great reminder. That's true. So I shouldn't give my husband 3 choices for dinner, right? It'll confuse him. That makes sense now that I know why he goes, hmm.

So, yeah, so, and then, you know, the next thing is who are your strategic marketing partners? Marketing is hard to do alone, but we can get tremendous leverage out of partnering with other people who have similar— who serve similar groups of people. But who offer different things and who share our values. So yeah, that's very, very, very powerful. It's a way of sort of sharing the load and making it easier.

One other point I'm going to go back to when you were talking about all your ideal clients being in a room and how, you know, that's the ideal scenario, right? But I was thinking the other piece to that is agreement in the community. So when you have people who are saying, oh, this is what I've done and this is what happened, and people can relate to that in their business and say, I need that. And if it worked for, you know, for Amanda, maybe it'll work for me. And if it worked for Rukshana, you know, so agreement in the community is huge. And that's another, I don't know if that fits into your Five Disciplines, but I feel like That's something I personally found in, as a relationship marketing strategist in my business has helped.

Yeah, well then we look for cues from other people as to what to buy. And if we see somebody like me having success, I think I have a higher likelihood of believing that I'm gonna be able to do that too. A lot of the resistance you see is like, you hear this all the time, it's like, oh well, That's not for me because you're that person and I'm this person. Or, and so people resist. That's one of the ways people resist change. It's like, oh, well, that's not, that's not for me. So you want people to be saying, oh yeah, that's, you understand me, what you're offering is for me.

Right.

Yeah. And if I see other people doing it, then I, you know, I'm going to conclude that.

Right. And that's another reason to be loud and proud with third-party testimonials, you know, to get testimonials from people who are like them. Right. And they've had success and to be able to, you know, envision themselves being able to have the same success.

Very powerful. Yep.

I love that. This is so great. Okay. So, you know, so the important thing is for— are you in, you know, really talking about knowing your numbers when you're talking about understanding people and where they're at? How does that fit in?

Yeah. So, well, so moving on to the next. Discipline, which is knowing your numbers. So once you've kind of got your marketing plan dialed in, and there's just a kind of— there's, there's some other parts to it, just to kind of touch on them briefly. But so what are your communication channels? What are your offers? What products are you going to offer and how do they work together? What's your buyer's journey? How do they, how do they make a purchase decision? Starting from I have a problem to here are my solutions, here are my Here are possible, possible narrowing it down and then making a purchase decision. And then you also need to understand what your marketing costs and return on investment are in order to be confident. So once you've got your marketing plan, you're kind of— your foundational choices made, then, then it's a matter of measuring what you're doing. And, you know, I had that quote, which is what gets measured gets managed. And this is really, really, really a true principle. So as we focus— it kind of goes back to clarity as well— as we focus on a thing, we can actually, we can actually change it. But, and if we can focus on it to the point where we've got— we can put a number to it, as opposed to, you know, I want more sales. No, I want $10,000 of sales this month. You see the level of clarity that you get to with that. And so as you're— as we're able to attach numbers to things, we're able to manage our activities around them and move the needle. So there are, you know, there are some key numbers in marketing that really I fully— I think that every business should know. And I call them— there's a term called key performance indicators. So these are the dials and knobs of your business that you can look at and tell that tells you if your business is on track or not and towards your goals. And for marketing, there are marketing key performance indicators, and there's basically 4 of them that are critical. One is lead flow, how many leads come into your business every day, month, or year. So if you don't have leads coming in, you're not gonna have customers. How, what's your conversion rate, which is how efficiently you're turning those leads into customers. What does it cost you to acquire a customer? How much time and effort? How much money do you have to invest in finding a new one? And then what's that customer worth at the end of the day? How much do they spend with you in a year? So those are 4 key metrics that are important to keep track of. And I think they, you know, all of us really do, hopefully all of us do keep track of our profit and loss. And we put a statement together, at least at the end of the year, the IRS wants to know what the profit and loss is. So you at least have to do it once a year. Hopefully we're looking at that quarterly. And that's a great thing to tell us if we're achieving our goals. But it's, it's, it's like the score after the game is over. There's nothing you can do about your profit and loss once the quarter's closed. So you need, you need numbers that will direct your activities towards achieving your goals. And these key performance indicators are those things in marketing.

When we were sharing, you know, in preparation for this conversation, you were talking about some analogies with football and how that works. Maybe that would be a good, you know, kind of baseline.

So it's a little bit like, you know, at the end of the game, it's 10 to 7. You won or you lost. Good to know, but it's over. There's nothing you can do. During the game, if you want to win the game, you need other information. You need to know what down is it, how far is it from a first down, how far away is the goal line, where are we on the field. Do— and, and from that information you can decide, do I need to run, do I need to punt, do I need to pass? Um, and so those are the kind— so there's, there's these indicators of where you are in the game and what you need to do to win that help you make the choices you need to make in terms of what your play is. And these, in the, in a similar sort of way, these marketing key performance indicators, they tell you, oh, I, you know, I, I'm not getting enough leads to reach my goal. I need to go out and drum up some more leads. Or I'm getting plenty of leads but I'm not converting them. What do I need to do to get more of those leads to convert? So if, so it helps you to sort of pinpoint where's the problem? Or like my friend Larry Briggs says, where's the kink in the hose? So if you can unkink the hose, then the water flows, flows freely.

That's great. Well, I'm not, you know, I watch football with my husband. I'm not a, you know, a huge, you know, knowledgeable about the game, but I always enjoy watching and enjoying it with him. I'm more of a tennis girl. I'm from a tennis family, but I can relate to it because you're always observing the other player, right? Whether you're playing singles or doubles, you're observing what their, if they have really good back, the backcourt strokes, or they come up to, if they rush you at the net or whatever. So it's important, I think, those analogies are so important to be able to understand being observant in the midst of it. Is important. Hindsight's 20/20 also, although I hate to use that term nowadays because 2020 has kicked our butt. But, you know, it's important to be observant and to realize in the midst of the game, if you will, to kind of be able to shift things, right? Even though you have a plan, to be open to making those changes, those slight shifts to keep you on course.

Yeah, and probably when you learn tennis, somebody taught you, here's what you want to watch for, here's what you want to look at, right? So, you know, and so you learn, it's like, okay, I— now I'm observing that, now I know what to do. So these are the things, it's like we're telling, we're saying, here's what you want to watch.

These are the businesses. Yes, I love that, that's great. Um, okay, so what are the leading, um, indicators when it comes to marketing?

Well, those are the ones that we just talked to. Those are the lead flow, conversion rate, customer acquisition cost, and average annual customer value. And if you actually— so this gets you to the formula of predictable revenue. If you multiply those numbers together, your lead flow rate times your conversion rate times your annual customer value, that is your predicted annual revenue. Okay, so if you control— if you, if you understand and control those 3 numbers, you know what your, what your annual revenue is going to be. And so it breaks down that annual revenue into, into, into things that are controllable.

Yeah, that's great information to keep you on track, right?

Yep, exactly.

So we reviewed focus, know your numbers, and so now what's the 3rd predictable revenue Bring more discipline.

The third one is setting SMART goals. So now that we know what we're measuring, now we got to set goals around those things. And, and, but in order for goals to be effective, they need to be SMART goals. And this is not something that I made up. This is, this is out there in the business community. Probably most people on this call have heard of SMART goals, but not a lot of people have implemented SMART goals in a consistent way, or they only do it once a year, right?

As the new year dawns, right?

Right. Or we have kind of vague goals, and vague goals don't really move you to action like SMART goals do. So just to review, a SMART goal is specific. SMART stands for— it's an acronym— it starts for— stands for specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound. So Specific means we know what it is— the needle we're trying to move. Measurable means we have— we can attach a number to it and we can objectively observe whether that needle is moving. Actionable means we understand the activities that are required in order to make the change. Realistic means we've got the resources that are required to do it, and the time-bound is is a deadline. So an example of that is I want to increase my current conversion rate from 10 to 15% in 90 days. So that's specific. I'm focused on my conversion rate. Uh, and it's measurable, 10% to 15%. It's actionable. I should know what activities increase my conversion rate. Um, it's realistic. I'm not saying I want to make it 100%. And I've given myself a deadline of 90 days so I know, so I can measure whether or not I'm achieving it.

Yeah, we need to know when we can celebrate. Yeah, exactly. Check off all the boxes, right? So yes, those are time-tested. That acronym is really good to keep us on track.

Right.

So You shared with us also, or you shared with me, a story about the red Honda story. Is that something that you can weave into as we, you know, move through this conversation?

I think we were talking about how when we, you know, everybody's had that experience where you say, you know, you see a red Honda or your friend has a red Honda and suddenly you see red Hondas all over the place.

Yes.

So, and that's reticular activation. Reticular activation.

So that's something that goes on in our brain, right?

When we focus on something. And so that's what, that's where these SMART goals can help us. If we're that clear, it's like the red Honda. It's like, okay, I know what I'm shooting for, and now I start seeing ways to accomplish it.

And you see it everywhere, right? It's an interesting phenomenon, you know, if you're looking at a certain make and model of a car or deciding the color and then you settle on what you like, then all of a sudden there's white whatevers everywhere.

Like, how did that happen?

It's amazing. So yeah, that principle is— I love the way it aligns, it brings, you know, home the power of the SMART goals. So when you meet those measures it makes it so that it's showing up all over the place, right?

Well, and it kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier. It starts to move you to action. It's like, okay, if I want to make $10,000 this month, what do I need to do? That's, you know, that's only going to get me $500. That's going to, you know, so it helps you sort of sort out what you do and moves you into that action. It's just that clarity.

Well, just like you were saying earlier, we can't control, we have to deal with We need to focus on what we can control, not what we can't control.

Right.

And then also, you know, we can't change everything at once. We can only change one thing at a time. So when we bite off more than we can chew, I think that's when I find out I get overwhelmed.

Yes.

So when I take things in small bites, I feel like I'm making progress. Then you've got momentum at your back and you feel really good about things.

Yeah.

Yeah, it happens and you have to kind of rethink things again, right?

But well, actually, that's a good point. If you have a SMART goal and something unexpected happens, what does it lead you to do? You need to revisit your goal. And so, you know, I know somebody in the real estate business down here and he's like, well, COVID happened, so we, you know, we didn't quite get to where we wanted to, you know, but we reset our goals. So now they have something realistic again to shoot for given the current reality. Whereas if you're kind of running without goals, a change happens, you don't quite know what to do.

So, right, you're, you're using an old roadmap.

That's a great way to put it.

No longer serves you because the, that road has been closed due to a tree falling down or something. So yeah, you have to adjust.

How do I get around it? Yep.

I love that. Okay, so give us some practical— you talked about like dog food supplements and one-time customers. You know, we were talking about different examples, roof cleaners. I mean, there's all these tangible examples of people who have been creative in their marketing.

Right. So I was just— I had mentioned when we were talking the other day about a guy, a client of mine who sells dog food supplements online and he was not— and so he had some people that would try the product and then disappear and he wasn't keeping track of them. And he's found himself wishing he had because if he could go back and find out why, he might be able to offer them another product. In fact, as we've talked through this, we're like, why would somebody say no? And he's like, well, one reason is the dog doesn't like it. Another reason is it didn't produce results. Well, if they— if the dog didn't like it, he might have a different flavor supplement that he could offer and he could get that customer back. But since he didn't follow up and find out why did people leave, he doesn't have a way to re-engage them.

So that's an important piece of a marketing plan is not to just have one-time customers, right? To have repeat customers and to be able to follow up with them.

Yep, which, which goes back to the, the, the customer journey. Um, and, and it also brings up discipline number 4, which is eliminating the inefficiencies. And there's 3 major areas of inefficiencies. And if probably if everybody on this call looked at their business, they could see these 3 things. It's true for me too. It's not like everybody's eliminated these entirely, but there's 3 things to look for. One is lost traffic or lost, you know, outreach where you've reached out to people, networked, advertised, whatever it is you do to reach out. You've kind of come in contact with people, but they haven't become leads. They haven't gone any further. They've just disappeared. The second is lost customers. So we're all really great at following up with the hot leads, the people that are ready to buy from us right now, but we tend to forget about the ones who said no or not now or later because we go back to, you know, finding more hot leads. But just because somebody says no to us today doesn't mean that they're not— they don't have a need for what we have to offer, it's just that they're not ready. And then the third is lost customers. We were talking yesterday about how a huge percentage of customers leave a business not because they had a bad experience with the product or service, but because they— because of indifference on the part of the company.

Yes.

So in fact, one of, one of the people on the call yesterday was just saying how they totally fell into that trap of chasing the next new customer and maybe not paying as much attention as they should have been to people that they could offer additional things to.

Oh, that's so true. I mean, a lot of times businesses focus on who's coming in the front door and they forget all the customers that are going out the back door. Yeah, right. They don't tend to those customers. And that's actually— there's a statistic for that. 85% of business people who stop doing business with, you know, with somebody, it's because they don't feel appreciated. You know, like you say, they feel like their business is being taken for granted. And, you know, when a business owner knows that or hears that, they say, wow, that doesn't really cost me anything. I just need, well, attention, time. Maybe you can send them cards or, or gifts or call them or email them, but it just takes focus, right?

Well, and the cost of getting a new customer is way more than the cost of getting a repeat customer. And so it just starts to be profitable. In fact, another example of this was I was working with a roof cleaner who does pressure washing of roof and exteriors. And we had a little thing. I do a thing called a Fastest Path to Cash consultation and we had one together. And I was walking through his business with him and I said, I asked him, how many of the people whose roofs you wash come back the next year to get them washed? He said about 20%. I said, well, how many people need their roofs washed every year? He said, well, they all do in order to maintain roof life. And so that right there was an opportunity in his business to go back and get more. Now, he's never going to get 100% of people to do it, but if he could move that 20% to 40%, he'd make $140,000 a year more. And then he started thinking, and that was an interesting conversation, he started thinking, oh, and I don't have to market to those people. Oh, and by the way, their roofs are clean. It doesn't take as long to do the job because I'm not cleaning 10 years of moss off the roof, I'm cleaning 1 year of moss off the roof. They're more profitable. So, you know, the goodness starts to really grow when you, when you think about serving those customers. Another example, I talked about how my wife and I had our windows cleaned at one point and the guy did a great job. We were very happy. Year later, year comes around, it's time to get the windows cleaned again. They're dirty. They don't stay clean. And we had forgotten, we had lost his card. We didn't know how to get— we didn't remember his name. We didn't know how to contact him. And so we started the shopping process all over again, found somebody else to clean our windows. If that guy had sent us a postcard in 9 months and said, would you like— you know, I'm guessing your windows are dirty again. Would you like me to clean them? We would have absolutely said, yeah, come on out and do it again. So that's a lost opportunity a lot of us overlook.

So true. That's a great story. I love that because it really drives home the power of follow-up in businesses and being able to, like you say, you know, to just keep that customer, to keep that top-of-mind awareness. And that same story can be told with realtors because, you know, the statistics are people don't sell their homes every day, you know. So if most people who even had a good experience with an agent they won't remember their name possibly, even if they had, you know, it went— the whole deal went wonderfully. But if they have a friend or a neighbor who wants to sell, they would be glad to give that referral.

Yep. Yeah.

Remember that person's name because they didn't follow up.

Yeah, I actually had a realtor tell me a story at one point where he gave refrigerator magnets to his client, you know, his clients, or even those non-clients, and they with his logo and all that stuff on it. And then what would happen is that, you know, grandma would pass away and the kids would be needing to sell her home and they'd see this refrigerator. Oh, that must be her grandma's realtor. So we'll give him a call.

So yeah, or it could be a nudge to do, you know, to give a referral. So that's— yeah, there's power in, in having physical marketing.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, as we wind down here to discipline number 5.

Yeah. So discipline number 5 is close the learning loop. So, and I introduced this concept by acknowledging its history. It came from a guy named W. Edwards Deming, who transformed the automotive industry in Japan after World War II. And obviously, I mean, literally, the industry had been bombed. To the ground. And he went in there and as part of the redevelopment that the United States did, it, uh, we, he brought that industry back to life and over the course of 3 decades toppled Detroit from prominence in the auto industry. And, and, and he, there were several tools he used, but one of them was called the Deming Cycle. And the Deming Cycle is, is a way to learn and get better. It's called continuous improvement. So there's 4 parts to it: plan, do, check, and act. So plan is make, make a plan in the context of marketing, make a marketing plan. We talked about that. Do is executing the plan. Checking is checking your results against those SMART goals and noticing any variance and then making a course correction by acting on your plan. Make, change your plan in order to in order to mitigate the shortfall or the difference. And by going through that learning loop, you actually dial in over time what a predictable marketing plan that will produce for you. And so that's how, you know, we kind of avoid the trap of the latest shiny object, the latest formula. There's people— I can't believe I've got it. I've been playing games on my iPad I get all these things about somebody who's got the latest formula for, you know, 3 email— you can copy my email marketing sequence and get $20,000 of people in your course. And, you know, there's all kinds of stuff on the internet that day, all these days of, you know, here's my formula, all you have to do is take my formula and pay me a bunch of money for it and it'll work for you. And it typically doesn't because every business is different, every set of customers is different, every situation is different. So we all have to learn for ourselves what works for our business. That's a hard message to give people, but it's the truth. And so really the only way to do it is by going through this learning cycle and making a plan, executing on the plan, checking your results, and then modifying the plan.

So what are— those are great and simple. I love things like that. So what are some actions that a business owner can take to achieve predictable— and you had talked about it like predictable revenue readiness.

Yeah, so, you know, kind of going back and looking at, at those 5 different areas, you know, do you have a marketing plan? Is it written down? Do you have SMART goals? Are you measuring your key performance indicators daily, weekly, or monthly? Have you looked at those 3 areas of marketing inefficiency and tried to eliminate as much of that as you can? And then do you have a method for probably quarterly reviewing your results and making changes and learning and moving forward? And I would say if you don't, if you say no to any of those, then there's an opportunity for improvement. And I, you know, it's, it kind of, they build on one another. The marketing plan is the foundational piece and then setting goals and then measuring those goals and, you know, eliminating the inefficiencies and rinsing and repeating.

Right. Well, thank you for that overview and this conversation. I just want to close with, for those who are listening, we, you know, most of, in most cases, you're a small business owner, entrepreneur, solopreneur, and, you know, there's, we don't think we need all this. Oh, I'm not a big business. I don't need to know all this stuff that Dave's talking about in terms of marketing. But in order to scale and grow, that's one of the— that's my takeaway from these conversations is we need these principles. And we may not need them now or at the beginning, but the awareness is important for us to be able to grow. That's what I'm— that's my takeaway, and I appreciate your insights and giving us the benefit of your knowledge and experiences.

I think that's right on. Thank you for the opportunity.

Absolutely. So, um, before we open up the lines and have a conversation with those who are joining us today, share with us ways that people can get to work with you, get to go deeper.

Yeah, so, um, there's a— I mentioned those videos. If people want videos on how to dial in their avatar, they can, they can request those. I also would be happy to share a set of slides that kind of goes over the material that I presented today, that I talked about today. And then I also offer the Fastest Path to Cash consultation, and there's no cost to that. And I don't, I don't think I've ever failed to identify an opportunity for making money pretty quickly in one of those, in one of those sessions. And that's where that, that's where that window or the roof washing opportunity came out of one of those sessions.

So Beautiful.

And then, so I— you can email me at dave@cognizismarketing.com and request any one of those things, and I'll send it your way.

Or go to your website, cognizismarketing.com. Yeah, right. All right, so if we can open up the lines here, unmute people, then we can involve our community and see if they have any questions or insights or ahas. Roxana, if you can help me, I'm trying to do it, but it's not— I don't know if people are unmuting themselves also. So this is a great opportunity for those of us, for those of you who had joined, to be able to enter the conversation and also offer your epiphanies or ahas or takeaways.

Or objections. Like, I don't believe any of this stuff.

Or stories. We want to hear stories.

Well, uh, I can start off here a little bit. I actually had the privilege of actually meeting Dr. Deming.

Is that right?

I met him in the early 1980s when I was a young man, and he gave a seminar at— I was in technical sales at the time. And he gave a seminar at this company and I got invited. I didn't know who he was. And I says, oh, gave me something to do during the day, right? So I went and I tell you, that guy, it was amazing. He was amazing. It changed my whole thought process on business because he was so right in that, you know, companies are just, a series of interrelated processes and systems, and you can't ignore it. And that's how you build efficiency inside your organization. All of us, small businesses, big businesses, and that's how it's done. So what you're talking about is just that, building systems and processes and documenting them and why they're important.

Yeah. Yep.

How fun. That's great.

Dave, I just wanted to share, I just wanted to thank you for doing this. And while you're giving us the systems and processes, my mind was going, you know, how does my business look like 6 years from now if I want to, you know, if I want to sell it, you know, how does the systems and processes look like, you know, And it just, you know, it kept reminding me that systems and processes and to go back and reevaluate. And that's something that I don't believe that a lot of small businesses do, you know, and, you know, listening to you yesterday, it got my mind just working today. And then today I wrote more notes as well. And, you know, and it's, you know, it reminded us that we're always evolving, pivoting, changing systematically, you know, and it made me realize everything we're going right now through due to COVID. And to make systems in place that we can always go back and look at it. You know, those numbers are important to go back and stuff. So I'm going to be on that and trying to figure out how I can track it. That's one of the things I feel like I don't do is tracking. You know, I track those check-ins and conversations, those connecting kind of conversations, but I don't track it. There's no measurable thing. How am I going back to review that? So that was really, really important and it was very helpful.

Well, congratulations on being farsighted and thinking about your exit plan because that's another thing a lot of small businesses don't do. And, and how that relates to this is when you sell a business, the valuation of the business is based on revenues, but it's, it's predictable revenue, it's consistent revenue, and It's based on the systems that you have put in place. If you are your business, it's almost worth nothing. And a lot of it— and in fact, I've recently talked to some people who are in the business brokerage business, and they often run into situations where somebody's getting— gets ready to retire, and they have been counting on their business being the source of retirement, and they find out it's, it's nearly worthless. Because they haven't figured out, they haven't thought ahead enough like Rukshana, you are, to think about what am I really creating here that's a value that I could sell. And systems are huge. If you have a system, that's basically what McDonald's sold. Mm-hmm. System.

Yep.

And some of it was automated, systems, but it's doc— it's like Chuck said, it's a series, it's a set of documented processes that are repeatable. And that's what somebody who's gonna— is interested in buying a business is ultimately interested in. So good job. I'd be interested to see how— what you learn as you go through the process. Also, I would say I've experienced— I think we all have— when you actually look at some numbers, idea insights come from that. It's, you know, it's like you're like, oh, I spent, you know, I went to 5 networking groups last month and I only came away with 3 contacts. Hmm, what do I need to do better next time? So, but so that just in itself, looking at those numbers, to me anyway, insight comes from that.

So that's so true. So if anybody else who hasn't been unmuted wants to share, just raise your hand or feel free to unmute yourself.

Yeah, sure. I will share. So what, like, a big aha for me is definitely those— just thinking about those missed opportunities. And that's something that I've been working on, kind of a contact system and tracking system of who I've connected with over kind of some of this downtime. So So it is, it's very true. Like if you don't, and I know myself, I've, I've followed up after maybe 6 or 9 months. And right now I know with COVID I'm going to have to do more of that, but I've done that myself and it's been amazing. And he's like, all of a sudden someone's like, oh yeah, I forgot. Or, oh yeah, the marketing budget, we're getting that set so we can afford to put you in it now. Or whatever, whatever that is. So it's very true that just that little bit of organization to be able to follow up is like huge.

Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because I didn't make that explicit, but implicit in all this is a higher level of organization. And it doesn't have to be complicated. It can be a spreadsheet. It can be just a list of people you've called in the last 30, 60, 90 days, and then what's the next action? And when am I going to do that? It can be that simple. At some point, I think every business needs something a little more sophisticated, some kind of CRM system, customer relationship management database, so you have, you know, a way to track and tick, you know, put ticklers and manage your pipeline and that sort of thing. But it doesn't have to start out that complicated. It can just be a spreadsheet. And I would encourage everyone, if you don't have some tracking system other than sticky notes, to just, to start figuring out what your metrics are. Go back to those, you know, what's— how many leads am I getting a month? Just start tracking that. How many, how many new contacts am I making? How many leads are coming from that? That'd be a great place to start. Put it in a spreadsheet, review it once a month, and I think you'll notice a tremendous difference.

So Dave, before we close here, I think we would be remiss in not being able to just kind of have you share with our listeners that you have a system, you have a process that you recommend to your clients, the KEEP Process. Share with us a little bit about that and how that can meet some of these needs.

Sure. Well, it's, it's really an all-in-one sales and marketing platform and it manages all of, and it organizes all of your customer communications, be that email, be that voicemail, be that phone, you know, all those things, be it text. And it automates a lot of it. And but when I say automated, doesn't— I'm not saying using robots. I'm saying a lot of times it automates you. It tells you it's time to call so-and-so so that you don't have to remember. So it saves people a tremendous amount of time and it allows people to scale and kind of get the stuff out of their head onto into a machine that can help them stay organized and stay on top of things. So if you'd like to know more about that, I'd be happy to share more with any of you. It's an amazing tool. The thing that people— it's like 95% of the population doesn't even know inexpensive tools like this exist, and the 5% who know are killing it. And I work with those people every day, and it's amazing what we're able to put together in terms of, you know, taking the marketing to the next level.

Right, because principles are important, and the principles that you've shared today, you know, are eye-opening for all of us, even if we've heard them before, because they're good reminders and reinforcers. But having actual systems and structures that have already been created that are plug-and-play and that we can use are really invaluable. Yeah, so awesome. So anybody else have anything they want to share before we, we close here?

I just like to make a comment on systems and marketing and management systems. I have a lot of experience with this. I was in the aerospace industry for over 20 years, and I had my own small business in the automotive industry for 13 years. And the one thing that I did in both careers was become involved in developing and buying management systems and marketing systems. And I did it both, and it saves so much time and effort. And as you enrich these systems with data, keep pouring your data into them, they get better and better. About helping you track your results and predicting where you're going. And so I had really tremendous— like when I was in the aerospace industry, one of the businesses I ran, we put together a proprietary marketing system and we grew that business from $1.5 million to $13 million. And it didn't happen until we had the system. Like Dave talks about. It's such a wonderful tool for a small business. As a matter of fact, in those days, small businesses couldn't have these systems. That's what's amazing about today. And that's why I always encourage everybody to get involved with some type of a management system based on my experience. And when I was in the automotive business, I grew a business from $300,000 to $2 million. And my central core was again a proprietary marketing management system because I could just push a button and have a report. What was my on-time delivery? What was my inventory? What was my average number of leads? How many customers did I need a month to make money? Stuff like, and I just push a button and about 30 seconds I had the report. And this is the power of these systems. It's just based on my experience, and I'm not trying to promote anything, just that it's very powerful. And I have rarely found a small business owner that takes advantage of these things, probably because there's a lot of them out there. But I think it's well worth the time to investigate for small business people, even if you're a solopreneur, because otherwise you're not going to sit there with an Excel spreadsheet and do this. I don't think people are going to take the time. So I think getting a management system that's integrated and you can just click the keys and get the reports you need and see the data you have would be very powerful. And it's something you can do every day, you know, right? So that's been my experience.

Well, and I just want to reinforce that because I find it, you know, you talk about saving time, what, what I see happening is more gets done. As like for, I mean, a simple example, you know, Cindy has banner season and I'm able to, when I get a new client, I enter them, I fill out a form in my CRM and they automatically get sent brownies. I would not send them brownies if I had to sit down and pack them up and ship them and it just wouldn't happen. So I'm able to create a better, better customer experience because of that. Or, you know, going back to Emily's example, people weren't getting those phone calls to keep them, to get them back in the gym because she did, she took them forever to figure out who to call. But by the system telling her, Susie hasn't been in the gym in a week, call her and say this, it got done. And so in less time, so more gets done in less time. It's really true. Thanks for that.

Well, thank you, Dave Blanchard, for sharing your brilliance, your wisdom with us today. What a treat. And for those of you who joined us on the line, thank you guys for your contribution and being here and listening and for your energy and also your questions and ahas and contribution. We really appreciate it. For those of you who are listening to this on the recording, encourage you to You know, check out the rest of our Conversations to Connect: Let's Get Live on our playlist. Subscribe, ring the bell, the notification when we drop the next video. And I hope you can join us. We meet every Wednesday from noon to 1. I nominate a different member of our Community, as I mentioned at the top of this program. And next week, Chuck Oxford is going to be interviewing me. We're going to turn the tables. And he's gonna— we're gonna be talking about lessons gleaned from my garden, and I'm gonna be sharing with our listeners how networking is a lot more like gardening than you might think at first glance. And so I'm an avid gardener, I've been digging in the dirt, and I have a 6-step process that I've— that has actually come to me in the midst of my digging that I'm going to be sharing, and the analogies to networking. So We hope you can join us next week. Thank you guys, have a wonderful day, wonderful week, and look forward to having you join us again.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye-bye.