How To Build A Stronger Connection With Your Customers with Craig Handley

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap them in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business, pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

Alright, welcome back to the show. It is a pleasure to have all of my loyal loving listeners baconators as my as my guest today just skyped me listening to the show. If this is your very first time ever listening to Bacon Wrapped business. Well, I am the host, Brad Costanzo and and this show is my platform to get on the phone and talk to some pretty amazing, insightful, entertaining entrepreneurs, business people and other folks and you know, really pick their brain and find out not only kind of their backstory, what makes them tick, but what's really working for them and share the information with you. I don't have one particular topic that I dive into. If you listen to this, we talk about everything from financing and crowdfunding to direct response strategy and branding and a little bit of everything in between. And as a result, you will get a much more well rounded understanding of some of the opportunities that are out there, whether you're taking advantage of them or not, as well as find out who some of the leaders in these spaces are. Quite often I've turned people on to some areas that they never even knew existed and it's made a tremendous impact on their business. That being said, at any time, if you want to send me an email, whether it's a recommendation or a question or you just want to tell me how amazing my voice sounds coming through your earbuds, you can always send me an email to askbradaconrappedbusiness.com I do get those emails. I read every one. I try to reply to all of them, but the email address is askbradakenwrappedbusiness.com Today's guest is a close friend of mine that I think I met back in 201010 in the jungle. Well, it was actually a resort of Costa Rica. You can hear him laughing in the background. This is Craig Handley and in just a second I'll bring Craig on so that you can hear the soothing sounds of his vocal tones. But I met Craig at an event called Awesomeness Fest hosted by another mutual friend named Vishen Lakhiani, who's the founder of Mindvalley. And it was an amazing event. We had a Lot of fun. We got to sing songs on the bus. We got to.

Share a lot of beers and drinks together. And throughout the years, I've really gotten to know Craig when I saw him and always, always been very interesting from a business standpoint, but even more entertaining from a personal standpoint. I think I'm not going to read his entire bio because it would take the whole show. But you've got to read it. It's in the show notes about some of the crazy things he's done professionally. Crazy. Craig is the founder and CEO of a company called listentrust. They are a call center and they focus on direct response marketing for companies of all different types who are doing phone sales, especially if they've got outsourced phone sales. And I'll let Craig go into this and tell you a little bit more about it. They have a core competency in the Hispanic market. So people who've got products that sell to the Hispanic market but their call centers can't handle that. This is one of the things that they specialize in. But as you'll hear him talk about, that's not the only focus. In fact, they have a lot of stuff. Craig has been to Necker island with Richard Branson many times. He's one of the most connected, interesting people you're going to meet. And today we're going to find out a little bit more about what he's doing and more importantly, what some of the big companies out there who are utilizing call centers are doing. So without any further ado, Mr. Handley, welcome to Bacon wrapped business.

Thanks, Brad. How you doing?

I'm doing great, brother.

That was a good intro.

Thank you. Off the top of my head, but yeah. Man, can you believe it's been like five and a half, six years since we met?

Yeah, yeah. It's been a long time. And it's funny, a lot of the people that I've met over the years were, you know, just brand new entrepreneurs. And today some of these people are the most successful guys on the planet. Like Vishen, you know, with his business and, you know, and yourself and, you know, my businesses today we have over a thousand people and we do over $20 million in revenue.

Yeah, that's amazing. So tell us a little bit more about, you know, we'll get into some of the more fun and entertaining stuff in just a second. But did I describe Listen trust correctly or.

Yeah, for the most part. And so we started in the US Hispanic market and we kind of stayed in that lane for about nine years and about two Years ago, we decided because we were doing customer service in Spanish for a lot of our Spanish clients, they thought we were better at customer service than the companies they were using for English. So they started asking us if we could do English CS for them. And we weren't sure how we would hire people in Mexico that have no accent and have good English speaking skills. And so we really kind of brainstormed and put together a hiring process that not only hires for our core values and our culture, but we actually do kind of like. Like the voice where you hit the button if you like what they're singing. I actually have my mother and my father listen to recordings of people who read sales scripts, read Dr. Seuss, and read some different things that I've kind of found over the Internet to kind of see how people speak. And. And if my mother and father would be happy talking to this person on the phone, we end up putting them through the next stage of our hiring process. So we were able to.

Awesome.

That's really fun. Yeah. So we were able to hire people that didn't have access, and then we put them through. I did sales training and consulting for 10 years before we opened our call center. And so I know how to do sales training. And we kind of look at the customer service today is roi, but it's return on interaction. We don't look at it as return on investment. You know, we know that every interaction is an opportunity to create a raving fan or to create a revenue stream with your customer. So we started building out English customer service, and we were three times better at saving someone who wanted to Cancel. And with one client, for example, they were sending us 10,000 calls. We were selling 50 to $100,000 a week in new sales, while the other two call centers they used together weren't hitting 15,000.

Wow.

So we kind of struck on something that worked well.

Yeah, completely. That's amazing.

And then to get into the sales side for English, it wasn't even part of our plan to get into English sales, but we started working with a big company that sold flowers, and they wanted us to ramp up for Valentine's Day. Well, we ramped up. And then they decided they didn't want to pay us almost a million dollars. So not only did I have a cash flow issue, but I also had 100, 200 employees that I didn't have a job for. So I said, well, why don't we try English sales? I know how to train them to sell. Even though they were hired for cs, really, it's Kind of the same thing. Well, the first campaign we took, they were doing $8 revenue per call with another call center. Three weeks after we took over the campaign, we were doing $24 revenue per call, and they had 10,000 calls. So they had an increase in profit of $3.7 million annualized by switching their calls over to us. So all of a sudden we were an English sales center. And we've today grown to over a thousand people, over 20 million in revenue. Half of our call volume is English, the other half is Spanish. And we're seeing some real huge growth. And the growth primarily because of our culture and our core values.

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, that's some dramatic bottom line impact to a company that is utilizing you. Speaking of that, like, types of companies, just so people kind of understand, run through, you know, the types of companies that, you know, typically you, you know, your clients and some of the ones that you guys really know that you can deliver for.

We do a lot in the charity space, so we take a lot of phone calls for, like anything that's a charity asking for a donation through the Internet or through tv that drives a phone call. We take the calls for an awful lot. I may say maybe eight or nine different charities that are sizable. During December, we actually do a three day event with Teleton where we end up answering over 170,000 calls. So it's a pretty big call spike, but so a lot of charity. And then we do all the product transaction stuff that you see. If you see something being sold on tv, there's a good chance we're taking the phone call.

Oh, that's great. That's great. Like infomercial stuff.

So, yeah, call infomercial stuff. And then of course, there's the clients that only sell online, and there are customers that are looking to buy online that want to pick up the phone and call. And so we end up. That kind of falls into a customer service bucket. But customer service today is really more of a sales function as much as it's a CS function. It's really all in one.

Craig, what kind of volume does a company typically need to be doing in order to be a client for you?

It all depends. I mean, if we're doing customer service for somebody, it really doesn't make sense for them to outsource it. If they don't have a need for like more than three to five people. It's kind of almost better to do it in house and figure out what you, you know, what your major issues are. And you know what I need to learn to be able to train my agents. And for me to do one or two is difficult because I have to staff for long hours. And if I have one person, I need three and I need a manager and a supervisor. So for us, you know.

Five and up is kind of a good starting point for dedicated. But if it's inbound sales, we can run it into a shared network and there we could take a couple hundred calls a week and have good results because we'll use our shared agent pool and they really just flat out know how to sell. They know how to talk to a customer, build rapport, walk them through the sales process and turn to a raving fan.

So what about. So on the sales side, like, if somebody is already getting like, is there a kind of a rule of thumb here? Like, all right, I'm getting 20 calls a day versus 200 calls a day. At what point should I typically think about working with somebody like ListenTrust?

I guess it all depends on your growth plan. I mean, I wouldn't hesitate if someone had a plan to grow to start with their 20 calls a day and make sure I monetize them properly for them so they don't have to build out a whole center in house.

Is there like a minimum fee? Like, how do you, how do you guys typically charge your clients?

It's funny, we're pretty flexible. We look to partner with people. We have a marketing mindset. We know, we know a lot about marketing, so we don't hesitate to look at an opportunity and say, should we do this on a per order basis? Should we do this on a per minute basis? You know, what's the right way to price this? And if it's really small volume, we'll probably do a per minute until it turns into something bigger.

But we're risk takers, we're entrepreneurs and we're marketing minds. And we're not afraid to look at a deal and maybe figure out how we can take the risk out of it for our partners and help them grow.

That's cool. That's cool. So, yeah, the answer is really, it depends. But you're willing to be flexible enough to where if you feel as though there's a lot of stuff that you can do to add value, you're willing to work with them to grow together.

Yeah. And you know, and funny in some cases. So a lot of people over the last five years moved calls into an interactive voice platform like a computer generated call response. And a cost per order in an IVR is probably $3. Well, if you tried to send that call to a live agent in the U.S. it might cost you 11. Well, we're near shore. We're right in three hours south of Tucson. We're in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. And all of our agents have really good English skills. But because we're in Mexico, we can actually take that call for maybe $6 or $8 or depending on the call length per order. So it might cost a little more to send a call to us if you want to bring it out of a computerized system. But the funny thing is that when you give it to a live agent, we triple to quadruple the revenue per phone call that you get.

So you're saying it may cost more to take it to you versus to keep it in the US or in house or. What was the.

Yeah, that was confusing. What I'm saying is that we're going to be cheaper than live agent in the US the live agent. But a lot of people recently decided they were going to have their phones answered by a computer.

Oh, I got you. I got you. So, yeah, the computer is the one that's like. Oh, it's like $3. Right. But. Yeah, but you're giving up all the money it's costing you money on the other side of the call.

Yeah. Because we started doing customer service, we were able to recognize that when people send calls into an IVR or an interactive voice response, it's not the best experience for a customer.

Everybody hates it.

Yeah. So, yeah, it's funny, that's been one of our big growth areas, because in the past, you couldn't take a campaign in the US and take it from IVR to live agent, because the live agent was going to cost $11 an order versus three. Well, we're kind of a little bit more than three, but at the same point, we're much less than this 11, and we're able to make sure it's profitable. I mean, we've even done guarantees with our clients, and we've killed it every time.

Oh, that's cool.

So here's a question. Maybe you can answer this, because I know you've got more experience directly in this industry than I do.

Just think about the world of Dr. TV and infomercials.

Right.

So you take. You take some of the calls there, like.

Right.

Like. So if I want to. If I want to buy one of these new fandangled things that I see on. I said fandangled. I've never said that word. If I. If I want to Buy a gadget I see on tv and I decide I'm going to not buy it over the Internet. I'm going to call, I might talk to one of your people.

So.

Your people are there to not only take orders, but also to make potential upsells, right?

Yeah, yeah. There's a process. We have a process that I like to think, you know, that our process is really unique, and I really do think it is. An example would be when the phone comes in. If we see a 310 number come in, we will tie that automatically to our rapport map. The rapport map pops up and it says, okay, that call's coming from California. These are the major NFL teams in California. These are the major baseball teams. This is the weather. This is, you know, current events. It's kind of like a USA Today for California. And once we zero in on where in California they are, it shows what the most likely favored basketball teams are, what have you. So our agents, we actually teach them. Most companies measure call centers based on average handle time. How long are you talking? We kind of threw average handle time out the door, and we end up on sales. We actually end up with the same talk times as a lot of companies. But because we build rapport on the front of a call, when we get to upselling and cross selling, we're no longer trying to sell. We're having a conversation with someone and being an assistant buyer and helping them make the right decision based on what their needs are. That's cool. Which we found out at the beginning of a call. If you do it the other way, if you just say, hey, what's your name and your address and your credit card. Okay. Oh, by the way, we think you'd also want this.

Yeah, it's really personal. Yeah.

Yeah. It's almost like walking up to a girl in a bar going, so you want to go, homie, before you even tell her your first name. Which would work for you, but not necessarily.

I had to do magic tricks to get these girls.

Magic tricks.

You. And I love that. It's kind of funny, like, I think about mine because. So I've got a 214 area code on my cell phone because I lived in Dallas for 14 years and now I live in San Diego. So it's kind of funny. I pick up somebody go, how about them cowboys?

Although it's cool, because I'm like, oh, obviously you're saying that because I've got a 214 area code number. And I said, well, no, I used to live in Dallas. Now I live in San Diego. And they'll probably be like, oh, that's cool. And they pull it up, oh, sorry about them Chargers. But no, that kind of stuff matters. It matters big time. Especially in these days where everything is so impersonal and people are doing everything over text, et cetera. Speaking of.

And they probably say, I see you're calling from a 214 area code. Are you in Texas? Yeah, exactly. No, I'm in San Diego. Okay. So are you a Dallas fan or a Chargers fan?

Right, exactly, exactly. So I've always just been curious because I look at some of the things that are purchased just in infomercials. I look at some of the stuff that they're shown, and maybe it's like a household gadget. Maybe it's whatever. And I'm always thinking, as somebody who builds sales funnels and whatnot for a living, I always want to know, okay, well, what's in their sales funnel? How are they making money off of this? So, you know, with some of these household gadgets and other stuff, what kind of stuff is really being upsold? In a lot of cases.

Kind of behind the scenes, the stuff that we don't know unless we go through their funnel and get upsold. It's a very broad question, but I'm just like, industry wise, I'm like, man, I would love to funnel hack what they're doing.

Yeah. And it all depends on the product. So, I mean, if you are looking at the rabbit ears, like the clear TV rabbit ears, or, you know, some of the. And there's four or five of those now, it's just like the rabbit ears of old, but now they're enhanced. The upsell is a more powerful unit. So for an extra $10, you can get something that's a little bit more powerful. Now, if you don't handle that sales process right, people are gonna say, well, is what I bought junk? What am I?

Yeah.

So we actually say, you know, you have to be careful with how you pitch these upsells. The reality is, the product, the original product, is incredible. However, if you live in a valley or if you live behind a bunch of buildings, you'll still get a lot of channels, but there's a chance you won't get as many as someone with a unit that has a little bit more power around it. So it's just like kind of upgrading your power for an extra $10. And so that's why a lot of people do it. If you want to keep what you have, it's great. But guess What? No matter which way you go, it's 100% guaranteed for you to be happy.

Yeah.

They upsell that, and then they might upsell.

You know, maybe something so they could do it wirelessly and leave this unit. Instead of plugging it into the tv, there's a wireless adapter that they can bring the unit, put the antenna by the window, and then have it wirelessly attach the tv.

And then there's sometimes some unrelated upsells. If a client has around Christmas, when they're trying to empty their warehouse out, maybe they'll have a blender or a soup.

That was my next question, by the way, which was, how often do you get unrelated stuff? And do you ever do cross promotions? Where are there ever opportunities where it's like, well.

I mean, this could muddy the waters. But it's not. You're not necessarily upselling your client's product, but they're in an agreement to upsell something, somebody else's stuff, or like, does that even happen behind the scenes, or is it.

Sure, yeah, it does. It doesn't. And how it works is the clients that are trying to upsell their product behind the primary product will pay a fee either for a read or they'll pay a fee every time a sale is made. And so it helps offset for a client, it'll help offset the cost of that call.

Nice.

Sometimes they have their own products. So one of our clients was famous for doing some mini knives or whatever, and they had a lot of these magic blade knives, and that was a good upsell behind their cookware product. They had a great cookware product that they were selling gangbusters on. And the upsells for that is, you know, you call in to get the 1995 pan, and you end up with a $250 pan set along with free knives and free covers and, you know, and all kinds of stuff.

So that's pretty cool. So they basically do companies who want to do that. They typically contract with the company who's using you, or they contract first through you.

Well, that company actually had the pan that they did an infomercial on. Paul down did our pan, and then when they called, they had all the pans created. So the first pan was essentially their loss leader. If you just bought the 1995 pan, they would probably lose money on that. But in theory, if you hire a good sales company, you're gonna buy an additional pan, or maybe you'll get some covers, you know, or maybe you'll get some additional items around it. Our average ticket on a 1995 pan was around $60. Huh. Huh. So it just turns out that a certain number of people buy additional pants.

Yeah. Have you now? So when did you originally start in this business? What year?

I remember. What's funny is I remember talking to people and they were like, you're so young. And I didn't have any gray and nobody. I didn't have any credibility because I was too young. And so I guess, God, I did door to door sales and insurance. Then I was a phone repair and I was actually on the phones. I started consulting in this business around 22 or 23. And I'm 44 now, so I've been around for 20 years in this business. Anyway.

It makes me sound so old.

Well, the reason I ask is because.

I'm curious what you've seen as far as. Because of the Internet. And you've probably gotten this question a lot. How dramatically has that affected your business, especially from the inbound sales.

Aspect because people are buying more and more things online. Are you getting less inbound sales than maybe you did five or 10 years ago?

You know, the thing is, TV will always exist in some level, but as the demographic of young kids starts to age to a mature level where they're actually buying products and services.

Mm.

This is where this whole return on interaction really becomes more relevant. My kids are only watching Hulu and Netflix and Amazon and they don't watch tv. And so they're not gonna see an infomercial unless my clients figure out a different way to get in front of them. And so that's where the Internet comes in, where a viral video on YouTube or, you know, maybe figuring out how to get an ad through Hulu or some of these. When you watch a viral video, there's a pre roll on the front end. So we've had to do a lot of education with our clients, but our clients are the biggest and the best in the world at bringing a product into the market and bringing it into the retail stores. And so it's not like they were going to not figure out how to integrate digital marketing with their tv. It just took them a little bit longer than I think I was hoping it would. But TV is always going to be the king of drive. It'll always exist in some form. And a lot of times they're just taking their content today and they're cutting into smaller segments for pre rolls, so they're using it for YouTube and creating a channel. Again, return interaction. Today you run a contest if you're selling the pans Run a contest where you give away a free set of pans if people are shown doing a recipe with them on the Internet. And that way you can create interaction on YouTube with recipes. So they're figuring it out, Figuring out how to integrate, Figuring out how to sell more product by using the Internet as a resource along with. Along with tv.

Nice. Yeah, The.

I like that. I like that pan example as well. The.

I'm trying to think. I've got a whole bunch of questions swimming around up in my head and I don't want to do dead air time here, but.

Have there been any, like, what's been some of your favorite, I guess, products or clients or things to work with? I mean, you're a man with many stories, but just professionally here, has there been anything that you were just so fun to work on because it worked so well? Anything stand out well.

That you can discuss?

I don't know. I mean, some of the scripts that I've written, you know, have taken a product where people were getting a one month supply and I was able to get the average up to three months and we were able to double the ticket. And they went from spending 200,000 a week to spending over a million a week in media.

Oh, wow.

That was kind of cool. The biggest thing, the biggest thing that I'm proud of today is for building a culture and a sales team down here that I think is unparalleled to none. We just recently launched a program called Dream Trust. And I read the book Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly. Highly recommend reading the book.

I've heard of it.

And then I met John Butcher. And I've done some sessions at Lifebook through other groups like the Genius Network with Joe Polish.

Yeah, I did a Lifebook session.

Okay.

It was awesome.

Okay. So I've kind of taken the Dream Manager and combined it with Lifebook and we've created a program for our employees called Dream Trust where we basically start our training off by spending time learning about what our employees dream about doing and what would make a dream life for them. And we, and we share that with their managers. And so we don't just motivate people with money. We have dream coaches that help them build out their dream life. We find people who want to own a house and we put them into a group and they interact with each other and we talk to the banks and we say, look, we've got 20 people that want to buy a house. Here's what they're doing each week. They're putting money aside for savings. They're working here. What we'd like to know is at eight months, will you let them get a house?

That's so cool. I mean, talk about a way to create custom. I mean, employee loyalty, too. Man, that's awesome.

Yeah. And when we train them, we say, look, every phone call, every time the phone rings, you're going to make anywhere from 10 to 40 pesos. Well, guess what? If you're doing really good at ListenTrust, we're going to send you more phone calls. Your calls come based on how good you do for our clients, which are the people that you know like that we have to service. So these guys get really fired up to know the sales process, to become experts in the sales process, to learn what our core values are and show really to. I call it markers. They live markers. They exhibit markers that show they're living our core values. And as a result, they end up making more per phone call. And then they want. They end up getting more calls and they end up getting to their dreams. We might put a timetable together to show them that they can have a dream come true in six months, but they might do it in three months because they learned how to talk to their customers and do a good job learning our business, which benefits them.

Yeah, that's powerful, man. I like that.

Obviously, it's those things that contribute to the success of your employees and which, I mean, and their success which contributes to the success of your clients. Because it kind of starts really at that foundation that bottom up. If you got really happy phone sales and customer service people, they're going to be incredible. And then it's going to show on your clients. So that's really cool. And it's obviously something that differentiates you and your company from just especially like a, like the interactive voice recorder as well as just anybody who can set up a call center.

Yeah, we try to differentiate ourselves in a lot of different ways. We even get our clients involved with what the dreams are and allow them to help fulfill a dream. Imagine if you're working for a client and they say, hey, guess what? Your wish is granted. We're going to send you to Disney World because you did a great job.

Yeah, it's amazing. That's amazing. And you guys have a thousand employees.

Over a thousand.

Wow. It's a lot of dreams to fulfill, baby.

We're changing the world, man. We have a woman that works for us, and she's been in the banking industry for 30 years. So she knows exactly how to manipulate the finance system for all of our employees to make sure. They can get things that they can't get at any other company.

No way. That's so cool. So cool.

In Mexico, credit is not credit. It's how long have you worked for someplace? How much money have you saved? So if we have a savings plan for our employees and they agree to have part of their paycheck put into the savings plan, she feels like she can get them an automobile in three to four months. Oh, wow.

Yeah. That's probably unheard of.

Yeah. I mean, you know, we're doing things for our employees that people are just like, what? You know, and that's why they're lined up outside the door. You know, we have some of the greatest opportunities to hire people, and that's why we get the best people. That's why our clients are so the best service.

How often, just personally, how long or how often are you spending in Mexico versus Maine, where your home base is?

I'm probably spending about two weeks out of the month in Mexico to really manage through this growth. I mean, there's been. A few years ago, I went to Mexico twice for the whole year. Oh, wow. But while we've seen this growth in English, you know, what's funny is, as good as we were in Spanish, we didn't have the same talent level in English. So I wanted to come down and make sure I did all the training and everything myself.

I wanted to make sure you have managers that recognized talent, because I know internationally, in most cultures, talent is someone who shows up on time and leaves after their shift. And in the US Culture, talent is somebody who shows up five minutes late but kicks ass all day long, then decides they want to stay an extra hour. And, you know, they're typically manic and hard to manage. Those are your best performers. And so as I'm working with my managers, I'm like, when you send somebody home who's five minutes late, you're actually hurting yourself because that person is typically your best employee. And not everybody who shows up five minutes late is a great employee. But if I were on the phones, I would show up five minutes late, and they'd probably send me home, and I would be like, you guys just killed yourself. You guys just cost yourselves a lot of money. Because I'm really good on the phones.

Oh, yeah. I imagine talking about upsells, what is. Because I know that a lot of the listeners here probably have upsells or should in their products and their funnels. What does make a good upsell script?

Now, if you're talking about online scripting, it's different from offline scripting in a phone center. Like I could write a book and I have a book that's coming out soon, but.

I could write a book about how to sell in a call center. You actually write scripts with run on sentences. You don't want to allow, you don't want to breathe in the middle of, at the end of a sentence so your customers can interrupt you. You want to use first and third person in the same script. When you write copy in an upsell form funnel for the Internet you can write similar copy. You could say most people do this, you probably want to too. That's first and third person in the same position. For us though, it's tone of voice on the phone center. It's, you know, Brad, most people actually get the entire PAM package. It's a $500 value. We're actually offering this for just an additional $220 for you today. And you're actually going to get the entire package which includes this, this, this, that and the other. It also comes with covers for the four bigger pots which you don't get with your, with your basic pan. And we're going to include some of the other things. Now most people do this, you probably want to do it as well, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. So we got your credit card as 543-211-1234. We're going to go ahead and build it to that same card. Does that sound good to you?

Sounds amazing.

Terrific. Awesome. I knew you'd love it. Cool. I like that.

See, I just bought it.

It's just down, tone, downtone, downtone, down tone, assumptive. Assumptive. And we're really good at it in the phone center. You know, I'm not really the expert on how to do it in a funnel online. I would use the same type of language. Yeah, I would use first and third person. I would say most people do this, you probably want to do it too. Click. Yes, I do. Be very assumptive. I would talk about a guarantee. You have a 30 day guarantee with a product for any reason you don't like it, we'll give you 100% of the cost of the product, less shipping back. I would be above and beyond in making sure my disclaimers and my disclosures were complete. Because today people buy with trust.

I might use like I might use maybe a 3 to 4 minute video in my upsell. I just got talking to a friend of mine who does a lot of Facebook ads and in his funnel, in his thank you page for his upsells, he has a 72 hour process where he uses both email marketing that offers the discount for three days straight and retargeting combined. And he'll take his upsell close rate online in his funnel from 3% to 26%.

Okay, so explain that a little more detail. So, so rewind, rewind those stats. I was going to, I was trying to write them down and I missed. So start over.

I just came from a meeting with, called Archangel Summit with Giovanni and so they had a Facebook expert there, Nicholas Kuzmich. Yes. And Nicholas was talking about his process on the thank you page after he gets them into the funnel and he said, you know, if he's gonna upsell some content or a lower priced object, he'll say you should be getting an email confirming your order in the next three to four minutes. Why don't you watch this email while you wait? Why don't you watch this video while you're waiting for your email to come in to confirm your order? And so he gets a high watch rate on the email, on the, on the video. And then he has a 72 hour strategy for his thank you page to upsell different products. And his 72 hour strategy is to send them an email saying, just so you know, the deadline for you to order the additional pans or the additional product is 72 hours. It's a 50% off deal. You have 72 hours from today. Don't miss it. You have 48 hours left. Don't miss it. You're down to your last 24 hours. Well, during that timeframe, he's also using retargeting. So when people are on Facebook, they're seeing the ad, they're seeing retargeting.

48 hours. 24 hours.

Yeah. He said that the retargeting combined with the email marketing generates his upsell rate goes from 3% to 26%.

That's insane. I know Nick, Nick's been, Nick's been a guest of the show as well. So I'll put a show, I'll put a link for all my listeners out here to the, to Nick's episode.

Yeah.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Did he say any, you know any of his, like who that was if anybody wanted to go buy product?

He didn't say who the client was. He just said that's one of his basic Facebook strategies that he uses a lot.

I love that. That's really cool.

So there's a lot of things you can do on the shopping cart online that you should test. I can tell you that I heard from somebody else that when they put a CNN banner at the bottom of that four minute video and they put white text, it increased their conversion by 3% more. I mean there's so many people who are doing cool stuff in me in the cart.

So that's where. That's on the video sales letter or the upsell or where.

So if they had a four minute video, like if you said, why don't you watch this video while you're waiting for your email during that, during whatever length the video is, four minutes. Or if you had a 30 minute video by putting a black banner with white text just like a CNN banner at the bottom, at the bottom of your video while it plays, people watch it longer and it increases conversion by 3 to 5%.

And the text probably just like scrolling text.

Talking about scrolling, scrolling text. Actually just talking about what the same people are talking about in the video. It's just subtitles. It's subtitles.

Well, and what I like about that too is people are used to seeing the news and kind of trusting the news. Although that's another topic for another time. But they're used to seeing that. So probably, you know, it's a familiarity thing. Like, okay, this is like what the news does.

Yeah, let's talk about Donald Trump. If we really want to push the listeners off, let's bring his name up.

Right, Exactly.

Where are you going?

Probably piss a third of them off, make a third of them happy and the third. And the third of them will be people like me gone. You know, it doesn't matter who we're talking about. They all crazy.

Somebody's gonna be upset no matter what's going on. And yeah, we just gotta. As entrepreneurs, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are entrepreneurs. We get a deal with the backlash no matter what it is.

Well, especially. And I saw your Facebook post the other day just about because you are like your, your company is based in Mexico. So I know that there's. That opens up a whole new can of worms for, you know, your employees and probably thinking like, what's your country doing up there? Yeah, but they're probably like, man, but life is so good with listen, trust. I don't even want to come to your damn country.

They trust me, man. They, they ask me, they're like, are you guys gonna move or we'd never move. You know, I mean, and they trust us as a company. They trust us to do the right thing. And.

Well then realistically, like even if, even if Trump's a lot of his protectionist tariff based policies, et cetera, those shouldn't affect somebody like you, like a service based business. I wouldn't think. Right.

They should. Look, here's what I know. I know that I just made a tax payment a few days ago of over 400, $450,000. I am not avoiding tax. I wish I could avoid some more tax. I probably need to learn from Trump how to avoid some of the taxes I'm paying. I'm sure I'm doing it absolutely wrong. But I served my country in the army, in the U.S. army. I was in the infantry. I, you know, I believe in this country. I don't mind paying taxes because I think it helps. But I just think, you know, I don't think I should pay 80% tax.

Well, but I mean your company wise, because I know that like if you're manufacturing products too. Right. Like you're manufacturing products and Trump wants to put like an extra 20 or 30% tax on imports, but you're not, you're importing a service. Right. So it's.

Right. So I don't think it would affect me. However, they did say that they may tax 20% on someone working in the US sending money back to their families in Mexico. And we do send, you know, we pay people in Mexico. I've got a payroll in Mexico. I do ship, I do wire money into Mexico for employees. So if he were to tax my $300,000 payroll 20% and I had to pay 360,000 in payroll, you know, that's, that's, what is, that's 20%. I don't even have a 20% margin on my business. You know, we operate with 10% margins. So it would, it would definitely be painful. I mean, I don't know, I'd have to, I don't know what I'd do. I just, I'd have to figure it out. But so there's definitely a lot of risk in the, in the politics side. I was stupid to even bring it up. I was just, I was just trying to harass you a little bit.

Well, no, but it's actually a bit, you know, somewhat congruent like the fact that you guys are based in Mexico, although you're a service based business and all the stuff that's going on right now, it is kind of somewhat apropos and fun to talk about. So.

People listening out there right now, we kind of talked about this. You're the ideal folks to get ahold of you. Is there any businesses that you really don't touch or like, you know, red flags besides, you know, you know, we.

Like to look at who our clients are. We want people who want to work with us. We don't want people that. There are some people that are just way too demanding and they don't, you know, I don't want to worry about it.

Like industries.

Yeah, I'm not too concerned about industries. We just want to work with people who I can have a beer with.

Nice.

And I. So we don't do tech help. We're not, you know, we're sales oriented people. We're not going to do technical support. It's not that I don't think think we could do a good job. It just doesn't excite me.

Right. Is there ever like a kind of a revenue minimum that somebody like, listen, if you're only doing half a million dollars a year or a million dollars a year, you really shouldn't call us. Or is there. Does a revenue minimum not really fit your.

Well, here's our model. Our model is to support entrepreneurs and to support small business. And so if someone wanted to call and to ask if we do business with them, if we didn't, we'd tell them how to do it and where to go and how to. I mean, we'd advise them. I mean, if I were hired as a consultant, I'm sure I could get 50,000 a day. But I would be more than happy to talk to someone and just give them my opinion. And if we could work with them, great. But if not, I want to see people succeed, you know, so I would help them to the best of my knowledge and kind of point them in the right direction.

Yeah.

So. And that's everybody in my company has that same mentality. We, we have a mentality of giving. And when you give, karma comes around and you end up having greatness come right back at you. So I wouldn't worry about being too small or anything like that. I mean, everybody in my company, or listen, trust is humble and respectful.

And will give you 100% effort, 100% heart, which is one of our values. And they will give you the advice that you need in order to be successful. If that advice has worked with us, then it's real advice. But you know, if that's work with somebody else, we're going to point you in that direction too.

Right. I love it. So if folks are out there and they think, well, you know, stuff Craig said, there may be an opportunity here for me, maybe there's not, but I don't know. I just kind of want to go fishing and figure this out. What's the best way for them to.

Explore, you know our website listentrust.com, they can find me on Facebook. I'm Craig Handley, Facebook. On, on Facebook. I'm not shy. Definitely not craig@listentrust is my email. Craigissentrust.com find me on LinkedIn. I'm Craig Hanley on LinkedIn. I'm pretty easy to find around, especially.

At a live event.

Yeah, I also hosted the porn awards one year. So you be careful what you search for.

This is by far, by the way been the most professional conversation we've ever had.

Yeah, well, I opened for Coolio in 2010 at the event in San Francisco. I actually had a record contract and I've written two rap albums.

That is so awesome.

Yeah. So when people want to know, you know, why you said that I was very interesting. You know, I've jumped out of an airplane for 32,000ft. I've opened for Coolio. I've met Richard Branson. I almost got arrested by Paul McCartney Security for no reason. I was just talking to Paul McCartney when I wasn't supposed to be in that area.

Were you wearing your American flag bikini, Mankini?

Nope, I was wearing. I was wearing a tuxedo, I think, maybe, I don't know. But Branson, Richard Branson said I could come up and say hi to him and he was sitting with Yoko Ono and everybody else and I think it was just the drool coming out of the bottom.

Maybe this guy is not where one of these things doesn't belong. Richard Branson, Yoko Ono.

Six foot bodybuilder.

He looks like he belongs in the back of the room.

Exactly. That's so awesome. So folks can find you at Listen Trust. They can find you at dot com. They can find you on Facebook. He's definitely not shy. Any other cool stuff coming up? Any things you're excited about? Personally, professionally, anything. Are you going to TNC this year?

Traffic Conversion Summit? Yeah, yeah, we have a. We have a booth at Traffic and Conversion.

Nice.

Yep.

For those of you who don't know what that is, there's a big event coming up here in March in San Diego. Traffic and Conversion Summit. Probably Dot com.

Will you do Digital Marketer. Will you do some tequila shots with me?

Only if it's good tequila. I've become a tequila connoisseur since I've been living in San Diego.

So what's your favorite tequila?

I cannot find Anything that Beats 1942 by Don Julio. Like, it's just my favorite.

I have a tequila that beats don Julio in 1942, which it's called Jose Cuervo Familia Reserva. Really? Yep.

Not a chance. I know that's their, like, high end. I've heard of it.

It is delicious.

Because Jose Cuervo, I think, just hands down, I think just the name makes me kind of throw up in my mouth a little bit from college Shenanigans.

See, think 1942 with a little bit more vanilla and oak.

Okay, I'm sold. Because that's the thing that makes 1942 so amazing is how smooth the vanilla finishes. And.

Yep.

So. So family. And how much is a bottle of. Or even a shot usually of the quail?

A shot at a bar is probably 30 to $40, but.

Okay, so it's coming with 42.

Yeah. Here in Mexico, I can buy a bottle for $70 now. A bottle. If you can find it in the US and you. You may not always be able to find it, but I found it in New Hampshire at the liquor store. It was $130 for a bottle. Wow.

Yeah, I know. When I. Last time I was in Mexico, I found some 1942 for, like, 60 bucks. Especially now with the exchange rate as awesome as it is. But, man, I'm gonna have, like, I take your advice on it. But I love. Yeah, I love. I love 42. Class Azul's. Great.

Class Azul's. Good for a twist. I like Class Azul as a spin. I found a bar once that didn't have the. They had the platinum class A Azul, like, the bright purple bottle. Never tried that. And they did. Well, they didn't know how to price it, and so they didn't have it in the computer. So they basically said, we'll just give it to you for the same amount as the Class Azul. I'm like, what's that? They said, oh, it's just $15 a shot. I said, pour the bottle. Just line up that bottle, and I will buy the rest of that bottle. Because that bottle is like $300 for that bottle. And I'm like, these guys are dumb. Please line up every. Just pour that tequila. Do double shots across the bar, and I will drink every shot you got or hand them out to other people because I am a tequila whore like you are.

Oh, and I never realized that. Good, really good tequila. You don't get hangovers from.

Well, no hangover. And it actually gives you energy.

It's the only alcohol that's actually a stimulant. Right.

Yep.

So love of that.

No calories. Yeah.

Or at least not many comparison.

I don't. Oh, there's no sugar. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Which is probably why you don't really get hungover from it. Yeah, I know. I'm a big fan. Do you know Anthony Trister?

Yep. Of course.

Yeah. So Trister and I went down to Ensenada, Mexico, here recently, the day after Thanksgiving. And that's where we found the bottle with our wives and somebody else and found a bottle, bought it for 60 bucks. And we each, I think just two of us probably just came short of each finishing a half a bottle of Don Julio. And I woke up the next morning just like my eyes open at like 7:30 or 8 in the morning at this Airbnb in Ensenada. And I was expecting for the pain to hit. And I was like, I actually, actually feel good, you know, Like, I felt amazing. And it was. It was nuts. Half a bottle of tequila.

Yep.

So don't drink, kids. If you do drink the good stuff.

Well. And it's good if you put bacon in your tequila too. It's good.

There's got to be a bacon flavored tequila out there somewhere.

There should be. If there isn't, we should make one.

With my name on it.

Yeah. A bacon jalapeno tequila. How about that?

I love a jalapeno. Like a spicy mar. Spicy skinny mar.

Like. Like an infused.

Yeah.

I hope people are learning a lot about business from this part of the conversation.

Well, they, you know, it's. We're like a mullet. We're like business up front, party in the back.

That's right.

Party on the back end. That actually should be. That should be my new theme. Or it could be a new podcast, mullet radio.

That's a good one.

Business up front, party in the back. So you got to listen to the business to get to the good stuff.

I could go back to business. I mean, look, we did four turnarounds when we had a client not pay us a million dollars, you know, and we're at 150ft. My payroll is 300 grand a week. I mean, that's some action.

Yeah.

You want some excitement in your life.

Yeah, that's true. That's more excitement than a bottle of tequila, for sure.

I'll tell you, man, I love it.

Well, this has been a blast. Craig, I really appreciate having you on the show.

I encourage every single person to not only drink a shot of tequila tonight or today, but to go check out listentrust.com. reach out to Craig. And if you have a business or know somebody who does that might fit, reach out. Craig's a friendly guy, as you can tell, and the nice thing that he said, and I think this is great, is like, listen, we'll point you in the right direction. We'll help you. We'll let you understand if this is right for you or not. And for some people out there listening, this might be the thing that takes you over the edge from losing money or being flat in your revenues to actually being profitable and surviving. You heard some of the numbers of going from $8 revenue per call to $24 revenue per call. He shared an example from our friend Nick Kuzmich, who takes a 3% upsell to 26%. So you can tell Craig's a wealth of knowledge, just like your host. And I encourage you guys to not squander the opportunity to reach out and see if there's an opportunity for you guys to potentially work together. So, brother, I will see you in a little over a month.

Yeah, I know. That's exciting. You know, the last thing we could leave your listeners with, I could tell them my best pickup line. Yes, my best pickup line. Hi, I'm Craig and I'm Rich. Nice to meet you.

It only works 100% of the time.

Yeah.

You know, that reminds me of. And you guys can go use it. You fellas and you ladies listening can probably. You know, you'll get a kick out of this, too, but my old boss, years ago, when I was in finance, my old boss would do this. So one time we went out, and it was me and him and maybe one other guy, and we were. We just happened to start talking to, like, two or three girls at the bar. And it was very casual or whatever. These girls were not really into us. They were friendly, but, you know, I wasn't getting really the time of day. They were just being friendly. So at one point I said, hey, I'm gonna go to the bar. Like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go get drinks. What are you drinking? Like, round is on me. So I go, I get it. And I. When I come back and I give the drinks, this girl is so into me, it's crazy. Like, now she's flirty and everything. I'm like, what the hell just happened? Then later on, like, I never found out. Like, I'll let leave the rest of the night as a dot, dot, dot. But we went out a few weeks later, and I saw what happened because I was on the other side. Because our other buddy comes back from the bar, the same thing happens, and now the girls are into him. Because my boss at the time was like, man, he's such a great guy. Like, you know, when I went to the bar, he's such a great guy. Like, he's so humble. And it always makes the girls go, huh? Like, what do you mean he's so humble? Well, yeah, no, he's always doing stuff like this. You'd never guess he's worth millions, but, you know, buying drinks and just. He's cool. You'd never guess. So what were you. But I love that you'd never guess he's worth millions. And they come back, and instantaneously. In fact. Do you know Kurt Malley?

Yeah.

Kurt's a good friend of mine and big time Facebook ad expert. I think he'd love it if I'm sharing this with all my listeners.

But he does love it. He wears this like a badge because it was hilarious, because we were at a bar in San Diego about a year ago, and he was blitzed. He was drunk, and it was me and him, and I don't know if you know Rob Burns, and we're all out drinking, and the waitress was super cute, and she was being very nice, but not super flirty. And.

So Kurt's background is he's a big guy, like, Facebook ad manager. He doesn't work for Facebook, but he's a Facebook ads guy. And she at some point said something like, what do you guys do? Or whatever. And I go, well, you have a Facebook account, right? And she goes, yeah. I go, well, you know what Facebook ads are? And she goes, not sure. I go, have you ever seen the things that sponsored posts? Like, it's companies who, you know. Oh. She goes, oh, yeah, no, totally. I was like, yeah. You know, that's, like, the reason Facebook is worth all the money is they make money off ads. She goes, oh, yeah. And I. And I kind of, like, nodded over to him, and Kurt wasn't listening at the time to me talking to her. I go, yeah, he invented that for Zuckerberg. And her eyes got so big, especially because Kurt's sitting there, like, almost drooling. He's so drunk. And the next thing you know, this girl's, like, sitting in his lap, and she's being friendly, and she's the waitress.

And he had no idea until the next day that we told her that he invented Facebook ads. So, yeah, that stuff is fun and it works.

That's so funny.

Sorry, ladies. Sorry to sound misogynistic, but that's so funny.

Yeah, you're definitely a bad guy. I'm sure.

Terrible. Well, we're gonna sign off now. But Craig, man, thanks a lot for coming on the show and I will not only see you on the Book of Faces, but yeah, see you when you come to town for tnc.

Yeah, we don't get together enough, man. We need to, need to hang out more.

100% agree. Alright guys, thanks for listening to the show. Go back and check out some of the other episodes we mentioned such as Nick Kuzmich's episode. If you're very interested in direct response TV and infomercials and you think that's cool. One of my absolute favorite interviews with my good friend and guest Ron lynch. And I'll put a link to that too. So Ron has sold like 3 or 4 billion dollars worth of products on infomercials over the years and we did like a two hour interview where just went into depth about the way direct response TV works and that's a big part of Craig's business as well. Well, so I highly recommend you check out those episodes if you like these and stay tuned for the next one. Got some good stuff coming up and I'll talk to each one of you guys real soon.