In this video, the speaker recounts a marketing case study for the Chimney Cleaning Association of America, which struggled to sell a service that customers could not see. The core problem was that homeowners were unaware of chimney dirt and therefore did not perceive a need for cleaning. To overcome this, the team collected personal, named stories from past customers about memorable moments in front of their fireplaces—celebrations, winter storms, and a poignant tale of a 12‑year‑old girl whose father died by the fire. These stories highlighted the benefit of a safe, warm fireplace rather than the cleaning service itself. The stories were published on the association’s website with full attribution, leveraging the “power of names” to create social proof. The result was a dramatic traffic surge—from a single daily visitor to 50 the next day and 500 the following day—as contributors shared the site with friends, prompting more submissions and new business. The speaker emphasizes that customers buy benefits, not services, and that naming and storytelling can act as magnetic referral drivers.
Chapters
I got a call from the Chimney Cleaning association of America. You think pharmacy being a pharmacist, you think pharmacies is hard driving a chimney cleaner, that's a hard business. I get a call from them and they say, we're having a difficulty selling our services. No one buys from us. And I'm like, I'm not surprised. They said, here's our problem, Mike. When we dispatch someone to clean a chimney. If you have a chimney at your house, I'm sure you do for your furnace or a fireplace, you don't stick your head up inside the chimney to see how dirty is it today. No one knows they have a problem. And they said, when we render our services, we have to go up on the roof. And they don't see us actually doing anything. They can't see it before and after. And they said, and our mascot isn't so popular. Mary Poppins, she takes your children and runs away. They said, we got a real issue. In fact, the president of the association, who called me to help and our team to help address this systemic problem for all the chimney cleaners, said, our website, where we list all of our members is indicative of the problem we have. We have about one visitor a day, which was the association president just going on the website to see if it was still up and running. So here's what we did. We used the power of names. You can do the same, or a variant of this. We reached out to every past client that these chimney cleaners had and we started collecting stories. We reached out and said, we want to hear stories about your experiences in front of the fireplace. Now remember this, your customers never buy the product or service you provide. They buy the benefit it derives. No one buys a clean chimney. We buy a safe chimney for a roaring fire. So we reached out to customers, we collected their questions, I mean, we collected their comments about stories in front of the fireplace. And stuff came in from the northeast of these crazy winter storms that would come through and how people warmed up their bones in front of the fire. Stories of celebrations, sweet 16 birthday parties, and 50 year anniversaries, all in front of people's favorite fireplace. And one story that was a Tearjerker was a 12 year old young girl who shared that her father passed away in front of the fireplace and that that was his favorite spot in the house and the whole family had gathered there. And in her story, she recounted that as her father took his final breath, she couldn't bear to look at him, which I totally get. And she looked away at the fireplace and at that moment, the fire sparked. And she said, that's the day I believe that God existed. So these stories came in, and we collected them. Now, remember the power of names? We went to the Chimney Cleaning association site and we started listing all these stories, the celebrations and so forth, and we gave attribution to the people that contributed the stories. Well, guess What? With the 50 stories we had, how many visitors came to the website, do you think? The next day? 50. And the day after? About 500. Why? Because those people, just like a newspaper story, were telling their friends to check it out. And then their friends wanted to contribute stories and get attribution to their own name. Names are magnetic. And people started contributing, and business went.
