The One About GREAT (And Bad) During Unit Experiences - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #98

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish. Merry Christmas, Joe.

Yeah, well, it's Happy Holidays now, the New Year.

Happy Holidays.

That's right. Almost here.

Yeah.

So hopefully everyone has been having a wonderful holiday season.

I'm kind of happy that the world didn't end, actually.

Well, I don't know, some people maybe are upset about that because, you know, they're in the business of wanting the world to end. Pharmaceutical companies, certain governments, I mean, you.

Know, there's probably a lot of people.

That are pro let the world end sort of thing that are probably really bummed out right now.

All the preppers. The prepper. What do we have to look forward to now for the preppers?

Yeah. Well, we'll come up with another crisis because there's always plenty of those.

There is something.

Yeah. So speaking of crisis, why don't we talk about the good and the bad and the ugly of experiences And I know that you probably have more in your head right now than I do and so let's just roll with this and we'll see what we come up with.

Well, it was pretty interesting because we were talking before we started here and I was sharing with you and I'll share with everybody something that, you know, I'm really starting to observe now. Becoming hyper aware of experiences during unit experiences because all the greatest marketing in the world that gets you to try something for the first time can be completely wiped out with a bad experience or somebody, you know, dropping the ball. And I, you know, it's, it just kind of made me aware of what's been happening in my own thing, you know, seeing experiences that I've had. So a couple of days ago I took my car into an auto body shop, got rear ended and just a little damage to the bumper. So the other driver's insurance is going to pay for everything. And by the way, don't ever text and drive because that's exactly what happened. They weren't paying attention and texted texting away and just banged into the back. And so couple of things happened at this auto body shop, it's right here in Winter Haven. And the experience was fantastic. Everything about the experience was great. The Geico insurance is on site at this auto body shop. This is one of their repair shops that they do all of the repair work if it's their fault or, or their insureds that are having the work done. So they call to confirm everything. They have Enterprise Rent a car Right there on site. And so you go in, it's all very smooth. You're met by the nicest Geico guy you could imagine. He's got explaining everything, how it's all going to happen. We want to get you in and out of here as fast as possible. We've got your rental car right over here. And they go through and they take the time to look at the damage with you. They highlight everything, they tell you what's going to happen and then introduce you to the Enterprise dude who's got your car right there all gassed up and ready to go. You walk around the car, out you go. I've always had really great experiences with Enterprise. They go sort of overboard to make sure that you do have a great experience. And we've talked about it before because whenever I come into Phoenix and rent a car, it's Enterprise. And I did the same thing in San Diego and we talked about how they're really anticipating what you need. And then on the way out, they're always really conscious of asking you, how did we do? Just not in an annoying way or an obsequious way of trying to point out. But you do kind of notice that, yeah, they actually did do a great job. But I think the reason they do it is they sincerely want to know how did we do if there's anything we could do better. I've noticed this a couple of times now and just really kind of dawned on me this time that I actually said something about it. Because when they give you the key for your rental car, on the key tag, they've got a plastic tag with. You can insert a little cardboard piece of paper in there and it's got all the details about the car, the serial number and the barcode and all that kind of data about the car. But on the backside of this in big letters, it says, average key replacement cost $225. So they're essentially saying to you, listen, dumbass, you better not lose this key, because if you do, it's going to cost you $225. That's essentially the message that they're sending in big bold letters so that you're not going to be able to say, I didn't know it would cost me $225. So it's like getting that message across loud and clear. But it dawned on me the first time that this happened, it dawned on me that why couldn't they, in that same amount of space, instead of saying, average key replacement cost $225, why couldn't they say, if found, please call 1-800-and-help somebody out? That would be a much more helpful message, wouldn't it, if it ever came to a situation where you did lose the keys? Because I thought about it and I looked at the key tag. If I did lose them or if I found these keys, there's no indication of what to do with them. You would think that it was a rental car, but there's no Enterprise logo on there. There's no Enterprise information on there. There's no phone number. There's nothing to indicate what to do if you find this key. And I thought, you know what? It would be such a better experience for somebody who actually loses a key and somebody finds it for them to know what to do. I mean, it's just. Not a detail that they maybe have thought through, I guess. Have you ever noticed that or seen that when you've rented a car?

Yes. Well, you know, my best rental car experiences are when I'm dropping off one of my cars at the auto dealership, mostly Penske, where there's a big auto dealer named Penske, where I've bought quite a few automobiles from. They own a bunch of different dealerships here in Arizona. Now, granted, they're very successful because they're big. They probably make a lot of money. And what my experience is, they could be infinitely more successful if they had their act together and really viewed this stuff from their best clientele's perspective. Because I buy luxury cars every.

Like, they're going out of style every year. Every two years, I'm buying a new car, right?

And I've bought, like, six automobiles from this dealership. Two Mercedes.

A Jag.

A few Land Rovers. Even my current Fisker that I drive, Penske, owns the Fisker dealership. And, you know, I had a. I think we've even talked about this on an I love marketing episode in the past.

It may have been when you and I went and test drove a bunch of cars at the Penske complex there.

Yeah. Yeah. So we may have talked about this already, but I'll talk about it again because of the context here. It's important. But what always struck me, this isn't for them. I think this happens with a lot of dealerships. And there are certain cases where it would make sense for them just to have a regular rental car place and have regular rental cars. But when you're driving a car, that's. I'd say any dealership where people are paying more than 50,000 bucks for a car, you should really upgrade Them in the rental car, not downgrade them. Now, I know there's logistics involved in all of this, so it's real easy for someone to be on the other end and not look at the financials. And of course there's bean counters that look at all this stuff and say, well, you can't really be taking brand new cars and giving them out as rentals. Because that's true.

I was with you that one day and we took one of your cars in, I seem to remember that, and we got some kind of like Honda or Toyota or something that we rented.

There's one thing you do not let logistics dictate marketing. Certain logistics have to dictate certain things. But if your main motivation for marketing is like, oh, it's logistically hard so we can't do it, it's like the stupidest thing in the world because the people that do. I mean, could you imagine that the Four Seasons being so good at service ever saying, well, you. We can't ever let logistics dictate service. I mean, we're going to let logistics dictate service because this is hard. Four Seasons has awesome service because they've figured out that people that are willing to pay those prices have a different expectation for service. When people are going and buying a luxury car, it's usually associated with status and with luxury and with wanting the best and being willing to pay for that. So when the people go to drop their car off, you should give them a car that is equal or better than the one that they're dropping off because these are the people most likely to buy the better car because they've exhibited that through their already current spending habits. You even take me as an individual, if this dealership ever looked at their computer and saw that this individual keeps buying cars from us and he has this car that's one year old or two years old. Why don't we let him drive the brand new model of this? You know, he'll probably. It will entice them and excite them to maybe upgrade, trade in their current one buy, you know, whatever. I mean, that would just be common sense. I mean, you'd have to be an idiot to not be able to put two and two together to figure that out. That almost everyone that is dropping off their current car, if you want to sell them a new one, just give them the new one, right? And they don't do that. And there's been a couple of dealerships that I've encountered that do that, but they're so rare. And I say I've encountered a few because I actually license my marketing materials to somebody that sells to the auto industry. And so, over the years, over 1200 dealerships throughout the world have bought a licensed version of one of my marketing programs, right? So I get to encounter a lot of people that are in the auto industry. And the auto industry, unfortunately, has earned the reputation that many dealerships have, which is they're salesy, they're scummy, they rip people off, they don't treat you well. And not all of them. I've met some dealers that are awesome. I mean, they really care. But I'll tell you, even with Pinske, it's like, give me a break. The last time I was in there, the guy that sold me my last Land Rover, I was looking at a new Range Rover, and I was ready to buy a Range Rover Sport, literally. He was like, oh, I'll get the information to you tomorrow morning. This is a person that I had literally bought the car from and in the past, I mean, and I paid cash for it. And not only did I not get a phone call the next day, I never got a phone call at all. It, like, didn't even happen. And I was like, wow. And he's a nice guy. I mean, it's like, I don't know what, like, did he forget? I mean, how did. How do you forget? I mean, he gave me a test drive in the car. We spent probably 35 minutes together, and I was going to call you the next day. And his wife even showed up in their car, which wasn't a Land Rover or a Range Rover, which I thought was funny, because this is a guy who's been there for a while. And I think the dealership should even make it a focus that the people that are selling the automobiles, they should.

Figure out drive one.

If people meet a certain quota, they.

Should figure out how to have the.

People drive the car they're representing, because they would probably become better salespeople of the car, right? I never got a call. So my chances of buying another Land Rover or Range Rover, which I probably will because I love Land Rovers, will probably not be from that guy, let alone that dealership. I might go to another dealership in Tucson or somewhere outside, just because I'm so annoyed with that experience, because this is my fourth Range Rover Land Rover bought from Penske. Now, I'm not here to publicly complain about Penske. It's their big dealership, and they probably do a lot of things right. And there's all kinds of different managers at Their different dealerships. And I'm sure that, you know, the, I think it's a BMW dealership that they own. I've had phenomenal experience over there, so it might be, you know, but again, I'm not sure if they actually own the BMW dealership that I went to. I'm not sure. I wish I would have had that information before I decided that I would start talking about this here on. I love marketing, but none of that, you know, it could be, you know, it could be a dealership to dealership, individual thing. And when you're a big company, you know, you can't keep track of everything. But the thing is they certainly could have a better job with that. More so. Not because I think it's just the right thing to do for creating a better experience, but my God, the marketing that they send me, it's never really personalized. It's like I'm getting, I mean, they should fire their ad agency or have their ad agency. No, they should really fire their ad agency. I mean, obviously they should get someone that looks at it differently and see the challenge of telling some companies things like that is when they're already successful, they'll argue with him. They'll be like, well, you know, we're kicking ass, we netted X number of millions of dollars this year. What the hell are you marketing guys going to tell us about how to do better service? You can't argue with success because sometimes people are successful in spite of themselves, successful because of supply and demand. So no matter how valid it is, it falls on deaf ears. And I think that would be one of those sort of situations here. But I mean, if I was the owner of that dealership, I would, maybe there's many owners of that, I don't know. But the thing is, when it comes to all of the different things that I've seen them do advertising wise versus if they just looked at their own existing clients that are repeat buyers and treated those people differently, gave them special attention, made sure that if someone has bought one car, they should just do this with everyone. But they should certainly do it for repeat buyers because it shows that they, these people are buying vehicles because I've given that dealership several hundred thousand dollars and when I go in to drop off my car to get service, I should get a really badass car. I shouldn't be downgraded. And that's why people spend the money and do that stuff. So one of the things I wanted to share with you is, and again, this isn't just for this dealership, this I know applies to a lot of them is because of the service lady there. Cheryl is awesome. I've always gotten wonderful service from her. And she's literally one of the main glues that has kept me going when I've got annoyed with other stupid stuff that's happened. She wasn't there one day and I called up because I had a nail in my tire and I wanted to see if I could drop it off there and get a plug in the tire. It didn't look like the tire needed to be replaced, just this nail in it. And they're like, sorry, you know, we can't do that. We can't, you know, only thing we could do is sell you a new tire. And I'm like, okay, let me get this right. I just paid sixty something thousand dollars for this car and I have a nail in it and I'm not far down the street and you can't, you know, remove.

Help me out.

And they're like, no, no, sorry. All we can do is sell you a brand new tire. And without giving me an explanation why. And so I'm like, well, what do you recommend I do? Well, you know, discount tires. So I go to discount tires and the fricking. It was discount tires in Phoenix. And you know, not only did they get me in and out very quickly, but I, you know, I go to, I go to pay for it and I'm like, yeah, how much owe you? Oh, it's nothing. And I'm like, yeah, I didn't even buy any tires from this particular one. Although I've always gotten treated really well from discount tires where I've bought tires before. This is just their policy. If you have a. They just fix it for free. It's one of the ways that they create goodwill. And they are awesome. I mean, just an awesome company. And I was so impressed. And so I highly endorse and recommend discount tires. If anyone ever had that type of experience that I have, I think they just do an awesome job. And you know, the dealership where I bought my own vehicle wouldn't do it. Now, later it was explained to me by Cheryl that, well, there's been insurance situations that don't allow dealerships to do that. Unfortunately, they want to. So she explained to me why the dealerships are like that. And they literally would have to certify all of their mechanics. I believe in like changing tires or wow.

Oh yeah. The liability of it, right?

Yeah. But had someone explain that to me in the beginning, I would have not been like, well, okay, you know, because when I first called in and she was not there and I was just talking to someone's like, God, I mean, you guys really don't give a shit about. I mean, really, you know, can't fix a freaking. So. So that made sense, but it wasn't properly explained to me. Although I'll tell you, I think they should figure out how to keep someone on staff who's certified all the time if you're going to be selling luxury cars. Because this is a dealership that sells cars that are not only, you know, over 50,000, they've got some that are several hundred thousand dollars, you know.

Right.

Yeah. And so anyway, that. That was, you know, that. That did not make me very happy. So that would be, you know, so the good. The good positive part is the discount tires. The negative part is, you know, a place that I've bought getting better treatment from a company you've never paid a penny to versus not getting service or less than adequate service from a company you've paid several hundred thousand dollars to. It's a contrast.

And you look at that as like a situation where that is going to carry over. I mean, if you can be nice to somebody and it doesn't cost much money to do that, it's like, that's insurance. Who's going to leave discount tires and not tell that story?

Right? And here we are telling it now. It's going to be heard by. In the next three weeks at the current downloads we get on itunes, there'll be a couple hundred thousand people that hear about this.

Exactly. Yeah.

And I'll tell you this. You take the dealership like Fisker. I have a Fisker that I'm literally using as an incentive for genius network referrals. 25k group.com, by the way, if you want to pitch anyone. So, you know, I recently went to a Captain Planet foundation event in Atlanta. This was just a few weeks ago with my girlfriend. And they had, you know, it's a Ted Turner event. They were giving away environmental awards. And Henrik Fisker was there. First time I got to meet him in person. So I shot a short video with him about the Fisker and a guy named Mike, who actually owns the Fisker dealership in Atlanta, was just an awesome dude. And from talking to this guy, I mean, you know, just enthusiastic, telling me all about how they take care of their clients, how, you know, unless this guy was completely making stuff up. I mean, you know, my whole impression of him and experience and again, I've never bought A car from him. But he seems to be very successful at what he's doing and just loves his clients and, and was talking about how important it is to take care of people and service them. He was giving me all these stories about how they take care of their people and why they do better than other dealerships because of their focus on service. And I was thoroughly impressed.

So it's like when I was sitting.

There thinking, man, when it comes to buying another Fisker, getting it from the Atlanta dealer, what an awesome dude. Richard Branson was even there too, which was funny because Henrik Fisker drove him back. I ended up taking Sona Chambers, who actually is very involved with Ted Turner, with their foundation and stuff. I brought her to Necker island, and that's how Richard Branson ended up speaking at this Captain Planet foundation thing. And I ended up sitting with all of these dealers, auto dealers, because there's a lot of people in the auto industry there. And the guy that ran Cadillac, ran the entire company of Cadillac for many years. I was sat, you know, sat next to him after the party, at an after party for a couple hours just talking about the auto industry. And it was fascinating, you know, hearing his perspective and, you know, how, you know, what's working, what's not working, and, you know, that sort of stuff. So there's a lot to be learned from car, you know, the car industry in service.

Well, and so much so that, you know. Right. Even last week we were together in Orlando and somebody was talking about going to Atlanta to get their Acura because the dealer there, they just loved the dealer so much more there than the one in Orlando.

Right, right. Which actually is a point about, you know, I mean, I think we sort of talked about this too. And I'm sorry if I'm interrupting. Like, you take Harley Davidson. You know, there's very few companies that their customer base will tattoo the name of the company on their bodies. Right, right. You know, I mean, you're talking about serious loyalty with Harley Davidson. But I'll tell you, like, what else would do that?

I mean, so Harley Davidson.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, what else would people tattoo?

Yeah, I've seen a couple that tattooed like Nike on their, like, bodies, but that's nothing compared, you know, I mean, that's just someone that was really drunk or something one day or like got paid a huge sponsorship, fears, just a die hard sports fan. I have no idea why. But you know, the Harley thing I can do.

Temporary tattoos count because we had all the people at the Isle of Marketing conference with the isle of marketing temporary tattoos. Does that mean. Well, we are marketers.

We can exaggerate it a little bit and try to embellish it and say.

That we got 500 people to tattoo themselves.

Yeah, we did have a lot of I love marketing tattoos. Now if someone makes it permanent, that's a whole other thing. Although we're not recommending that. I'll make a great video if someone wants to do it.

Yeah, right.

We'll make it permanent. Don't blame me 20 years from now for that sort of stuff. So anyway, you take people that will tattoo Harley, but I know a lot of people that, you know, buy Harleys and they're loyal to the dealer, to the company that has the best before, during and after unit experience. Not per se, just to the brand. Right. So I love Land Rover, but I'm gonna do, you know, I'm gonna buy Land Rovers from, you know, whoever I feel actually cares about me.

Yeah. So.

And same with Four Seasons. Like, you know, I was recently in, you know, this year I. I was recently in Chicago and stayed at a really beautiful Sofitel hotel downtown. And I'm there with my girlfriend and we actually did.

It was a beautiful hotel.

I mean, there was, you know, a couple people in the hotel that were awesome and a couple people that were not that, you know, as service goes. And, you know, I actually even had to mention a couple things because I am not a per se, a difficult customer. At least I don't think of myself that way. When I mention things to companies to take a look at how they do stuff, it's not because I want to bitch at them. It's actually because I want to give them advice. Sometimes one of the things about complaining is you usually don't complain unless you feel on some level someone can do something about it. I don't complain to people that I think don't care about their companies, nor do organizations. And when I do complain, I try not to do it in a, you know, oh, I'm just bitching at you sort of way. I really, you know, do my. Try to take a diplomatic, compassionate approach to pointing out something that if I was the owner, you know, I would want to know about it. Since I'm a business owner, I tend to approach other business owners and talk to them as if, like, boy, you know, I'd be really happy if someone would have pointed something out like that. Just like when someone has something to complain about my company, you know, as is it toxic criticism or is it constructive? So I always try to Operate that way. And I made a couple of recommendations. But one of the things while I was there, which was funny, I was doing this with my girlfriend. When you get off the elevator, they have an area where there's a phone, a house phone, a chair, and some sort of dresser, table like thing that has a notepad on it. So if someone happens to be sitting waiting at the elevator for someone and they want to write something down on the phone, they would do that. So we actually scribbled something on the notepad, and I made a comment, let's see how long if they notice this. Because we were noticing things that they just weren't noticing at this hotel that were so obvious that. How do you not notice this? We were there three days, and by the third day, no one had ever come by and removed that thing on the notepad. I mean, it was like, right there, the whole service staff, and we're talking dozens of people that are walking through that area every day.

Nobody even paid attention to it.

No one even paid attention to it. Did the same thing at the Four Seasons Hotel. The thing was gone within an hour. Just to test, let's see how attentive they actually are. And, you know, so it's like there's a huge difference now from looks. The Sofitel in downtown Chicago is beautiful. I mean, it's a beautiful hotel. The only difference between, like, beautiful hotel Four Seasons, beautiful hotel Sofotel is what the experience of happening there is. Now, having said that, I did mention a couple of things to the manager, and she was, you know, so appreciative and said, you know, we'll look into all of this. Thank you so much. You know, just very happy that I shared that. And if there's anything, you know, in the future, I'd love to have, you know, so, I mean, handled very well. It's just that, you know, certain. Certain people kind of get it and other people don't.

You know, part of it is looking at the experiences somebody, you know, going through and looking at the experiences through the eyes of somebody who's actually going to have the experience.

Oh, wait, by the way, can I mention this? Because my girlfriend will get pissed off if I don't do that. It was her idea, actually, to write that on there and do that little test of the Sofitel. And if she happens to listen to this podcast and I don't give her proper credit, she will kill trouble.

Yes, I gotcha. Way to go, Renee. Great.

And she's way more attentive than. Yeah, absolutely.

She's a detailed.

By the way, we. I don't mind mentioning her name. I'm just trying to protect her, you know, for. Oh, did I, you know, I guess I. Yeah. You know, this could be bad for. I mean, she's a very high level, smart, intelligent, wonderful woman and you know, dating someone of the likes of me with, you know, my despicable personality and reputation. I mean, I'm just trying to, you know, just trying to not make her look bad.

I gotcha.

Yeah, well, you know, anyone need some spiritual healing?

There we go.

Do awaken your source.

Calm. Really awaken your source.

Source. No, they should. I mean, because absolutely there's someone there that can really fix you up in a good way. And I'm being serious.

Okay, okay.

What are we going to say?

Well, I was going to talk about that idea of how valuable it is to every once in a while just kind of audit your experience. Experience. Your experience. Like somebody would be going through it as a client. We've talked about Anthony Melcori from, from Hotel Impossible, which season two just started back up on that. That's the whole thing that he does is come through and look at every element of the guest experience. The hotel industry, the hospitality industry is such a great metaphor for that in any business. It's such a. It's easy to see where the difference is, but it can apply to any business. I don't know whether I've mentioned this before, but if you start your during unit experience right from the moment somebody presses the order button or says yes or sets an appointment or wherever that starts for you, there's a great example of this from CD Baby. And Derek Sivers, who started CD Baby, realized they were sending out a pretty vanilla confirmation email when you ordered a cd. You can imagine this from anywhere. You order anything from anywhere and you get a confirmation email that says, hey, we got your order. Here's the details, here's the tracking number or your confirmation number or whatever it is. He really just looked at it one day and thought, this is an opportunity to do something remarkable. Let me read you the email that they send when you buy a CD from CD Baby. So they say, hey Joe, your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition. Before mailing, our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as you put your CD into the finest gold lined box that Money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved bon voyage to your package on its way to you in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Tuesday, August 17th. I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as customer of the year. We are all exhausted, but can't wait for you to come back to cdbaby.com thank you once again, Derek Sivers, President, CD Baby, the little CD store with the best new independent music. Now, that email, he talks about that taking 20 minutes to write an email like that. But the impact of is that that confirmation email went viral. Everybody who got that email would share it with people. They'll post it on their blog, post it on their Facebook. They can't help but spread the word about that. That word spreading got the message about CD Baby out into the world. It's such a simple experience, you know, it's such a simple thing, but when you really. It takes an architect to actually look through your experience and see where that opportunity is and then make that happen.

Yep, that's what I'm trying to say.

That is what you take.

It takes a marketing architect.

Well, it really does, you know, and I wonder how many opportunities are there like that?

There are tons.

There are. And that's the thing. Sometimes it's the simplest things. How could somebody. What would be some action steps that somebody could do to really make this work?

Well, there's a tool that I. That I have in the Genius network mastermind my 25k group, which is funny.

25K group dot com.

Yeah, yeah. 25k group calm. And if someone wants to see a really cool video, they can go to the 25k group.

Oh, see, that's Daniel.

Amen. You're on there. You're on that video with David. Dean Graziosi. Dan Sullivan's on that video.

It's all there.

Everyone talking about how great the group is in case you want to brace yourself for a pitch.

I'm a fan.

So I have this tool called 10 Coolest Things About Me.

Dean Jackson.

No, about me is what it says. It's not about me, Joe Polish. It's about the person filling it out. The way we actually use the tool is to just put people into a good mindset. They can write 10 close things about them, that they play an instrument case. I can ride a unicycle, which I think is pretty cool, which is a silly, stupid thing. Or you can have something really amazing like you've.

Can you juggle?

I cannot juggle.

I can juggle. So we'd have something going there. Maybe I could sit on your shoulders and juggle while you're riding a unicycle. That would be something.

Dude. If I could hoist you up on my shoulder. Well, I am Batman, so I guess in a lot of ways I probably could. But we'll try that. We'll do a video.

I need a few more pounds to lose. I'm getting lighter and lighter, Joey. Someday we'll get there.

Trust me. I'll be doing. I'm going to share some personal experiences too, in a moment here about some things that is going to seem weird, but I'll talk about it anyway. All right, so what was I talking about? Let me make sure you paint.

You were Talking about the 10 cool things about me.

Right? Good. Okay. So we've got this tool, and the reason that I get people to fill it out is it puts people into a confident state of mind. And then it leads into a discussion and the punch line ends up becoming like, do you really focus on what are the coolest things about your company that you're maybe not highlighting, that you're maybe not going deep, that you're really not thinking about, that you do, that you've developed, that you've created? And a lot of people just like, if you put a mission statement up on the wall and people go numb to it, there's a lot of great things that you may be doing that you're not really treating highlighting as great. We'll identify certain things that companies will do, but they don't really make a big deal about it. They may have an amazing guarantee or a return policy or a customer service, but they don't use it as a lead as to why someone should do business with them or reinforce it after they make a sale where it's a really important sort of thing. Some of the things that people can do is, for one, have a DOS conversation with their clients. What are their dangers, what are their opportunities, what are their strengths? And really get clear. Dan Sullivan wrote a book called the Dan Sullivan Question, which you can get on Amazon or you can go to strategiccoach.com and get the book. Real short book, totally worth reading. You must read it. Go buy it now. Seriously. But he talks about a DOS conversation. So what are some of the things that people can do? Well, they can do that they can figure out. What are people frustrated about? What are the worst experiences that someone has had in your industry? Many of my carpet cleaning clients have asked their clients, through mailing out a monthly newsletter, a survey. What are the frustrations that you've had with carpet cleaners in the past? What are the things that really annoy you about service businesses? If you could have anything happen that would make working with any service business more pleasurable, what would it be? You'll hear things like, I hate the range of we'll show up at your house sometime between 8am and 5pm that doesn't work. We need shorter time frames to, you know, with the way the phones are answered to, you know, the way the technicians are dressed. I mean, so there's all. There's all kinds of feedback. So identify the good things that are super cool about your company and the things that are not super cool about your company and then take steps to fix the things that you can. And, you know, again, we say this till people are probably sick of hearing it, but, you know, enter a conversation that's already existing in the prospect's mind. You know, I'm amazed that no one at the Penske dealership ever really questions the fact that, yeah, it'll be logistically more expensive to probably give people a Land Rover when they come in to drop off their Land Rover, but what.

Will it do for repeat sales?

Will they buy and upgrade their car more frequently? If they do that, will they feel better when they're driving around while we're servicing their car?

Especially.

There may be a criteria for this. If someone is, you know, coming in for something that was a bad situation, it was the fault of the dealership, meaning something was faulty. I mean, those people should be treated differently than someone that maybe ran their car into a curb or something and blew the tire out or something. I don't know. But I mean, think about the conversation that's going on in the prospect's mind and respond to it accordingly. Part of this is just simply how you respond.

It really is.

Let me give you an example of something here. Let me see if I can find this email in my own company. I was here earlier and there was a refund that came in for a carpet cleaning course, and it was given to me with all of the packages of stuff during the holidays. Because I get sent all these gifts. I won't mention the person's name, but basically.

Let'S see.

This person wanted to refund the carpet cleaning course that we sell, the rich cleaner system. He had contacted my office and spoke with Victoria, who works for me, who's awesome, and she Wrote an email because I asked Alex, who works for me. I got this refund and I usually don't look at packages. We have a system here on how we when someone sends something back, we will find out why they sent it back. Was there something they didn't understand, did they not like it, did we screw something up, etc. So we do our best to handle things. She sent an email to this person that says, hi there, name. Thanks again for sharing with us the challenge you have with our product. It's rare that we get a request for a refund, but our products are not for everyone. I sincerely hope you're able to find an alternative product that demonstrates what it is you see aspire to learn to grow from your business. Once your package is received, I will happily refund you for the amount you've paid, excluding shipping. Generally, the refund process takes up to three to five business days, so long as the purchase date does not exceed X number of days. If this is the case, the check will be cut and sent to you via ups, blah, blah, blah. So she sends that. So I asked Alex, I said, send me the information on this individual. And so he writes me and says, the guy's name called today because he wants to return his rich, cleaner system. His reasoning is that following the program would require completely changing the direction of his company. He also claimed that he had met with his marketing team on the matter and they had decided it was not a right fit for them. However, it seems to me that he was reluctant to send it back. So I did my best to edify Joel and then transferred this person to Joel's direct line. And Joel is the one who runs the cleaning division here. He's one of my former clients from 17 years ago who just has built and sold two cleaning companies. Knows the industry inside and out. Ethical, just super awesome marketers, him and his wife Julian. So they are very involved with running that area of the cleaning niche. He's like, here's the information you asked for because I want this guy's information because I would make comments. So I sent an email over to Joel saying, let me know if you talk to this guy and if not, and you need me to, I'll call him. Which I rarely do. But I was just, for some reason I was like, yeah, I want to see what this is about because it's good for me every once in a while just to hear what someone else say. And so the email I got back from Joel is like, I showed him every benefit of keeping it and what Sucks is he knows that he's shooting himself in the foot, but he was stuck to his limiting belief that what he currently was doing was going to work. It's like he was all excited to use the stuff, but it got vetoed by his partners and experts in quotes he pays to help him market his website. I literally was on the phone with him for 30 minutes and showed him why he would benefit from keeping it. It was almost like he lost the battle with his partners, and it was a greater pain to tell them he didn't return it than it was to just go through with it. The outcome was that he is still returning it. And so I sent back an email saying, you know, I may call him. And so what's interesting is I got it in my mind right now to maybe call this person and say, hey, would you, you know, I'm not going to try to talk you into keeping the program. What I'd like to do for your own benefit and for the benefit of your, you know, partners is can we record the conversation? Would like, would it be cool? And I'm literally. This is what I'm thinking about. Not 100% yet, but I'm more like 95% that this would be a good idea to do because, you know, like, you can't argue with people. You can tell them you got the best thing in the world. That doesn't mean people do things for their reasons, not for our own. What I would like to do, though, is help this guy who obviously ordered the very best marketing program in the world for cleaners, but somehow has people that are supposedly getting paid to help him with his marketing, that are somehow threatened by it, don't understand it, whatever, because clearly these people are dangerous to this guy. Even if he doesn't keep our marketing program, whatever on earth, they would cause them to, tell them to send it back. I already know the answer. These people are idiots. But telling them they're idiots is not going to be a good thing. But I really would like to talk with him. But what I'd like to determine is say, well, first off, what's your outcome and objective with your cleaning company? Do you want more customers? Do you want to better position yourself? Do you want to get higher prices? Do you want. Do you want to make better offers? Because we have the best before, during and after strategies on the planet that have been. Millions of dollars has gone into the development of this course, and he has an entire year, you know, 100% guaranteed to use it. So it's like he gets it but, you know, he has these people that want him to send it back. And that's sad because it's more than just getting someone to keep our marketing kit. You know, my company is not going to, you know, not going to lose sleep in the least over the money. The thing that bothers me though is, you know, when someone sends it back that doesn't even try it because I think of my own self and my own business when I was struggling, going, my God, if someone like me actually existed right when I first got into the business, I could have saved myself a couple of years of total misery. And I know our marketing program reduces suffering. It doesn't just make people money. I mean, it literally reduces suffering and it, it saves businesses and it makes businesses and stuff like that. But that aside from my own bias, viewpoint and perspective on how great I think my stuff is, I'm more interested in what is the perspective of how this individual experienced interacting with my company. Because I know Joel is awesome. I know my team here really is empathetic and compassionate. No one's pushy. You know, like some telemarketing companies have saved departments where they sell crap in a box, but they will do anything to hype people up and, you know, give them a motivational speech so they can get them to keep the crap that they sold them, you know, but we're not selling that sort of stuff. I mean, we sell stuff that really works. So my whole thing is identifying, you know, what, if anything, can we do so that there is, you know, a better educated client going into this? Or is this just one of those situations where, you know, you do your very best, you can't please everybody sort of thing, which is true. So what are your thoughts on what I just rambled about?

Well, it's all in paying attention. I'm starting to see now how you could literally do this every week. I mean, you could literally look at your the during unit experience and say, what could we do this week that would make our experience better? It's interesting because one of the things that I would always do is have, you know, make my life better days and look for ways to make my life better, pay attention, you know, to the friction in my life or to things that would be, that would be a better experience and look to implement those on one day that I would call make my life better day. And, you know, it's very interesting how if you would, if everybody would kind of shop the experience as a, you know, as someone who is going through it and even I like your Idea of, you know, talking to find out what's really going on with somebody like that too. Every once in a while. Go in and actually look at the whole, you know, what's happening with somebody.

Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, part of the thing too, when it comes from sales, you know, there's. There's reality and then there's perception. And.

Right.

Perception is reality to people. You know, even if their perception is completely off. It's, it's their, it's, you know, it's their reality. And so, you know, part, part of, you know, looking at what's going on in your own company is removing yourself from what you live, eat and breathe and think about and seeing it from someone else's perspective. Because there's, you know, there's physical dangers and then there's psychological dangers. And the psychological dangers, like, you know, it's. I can overcome many things for people, you know, in reality with like my marketing systems, as can you. I mean, we know for a fact that if someone sends out the nine word email properly written to their list, there's almost, you know, always going to be an improvement or dramatic success as a result of doing that. Me and you have had situations where someone has taken just one simple strategy of ours and has made more money with one direct mail postcard or email than everything me and you sell. Like in 10 years it would pay for like that. I mean, like, massive return. And you will still have people that will be like, send back a book that has hundreds of those things in it. So it's like, well, is it because they don't have the money? No, it's psychological stuff. They're busy, they can't implement it. They don't understand it. Their life is complex. So part of it is looking at what are the things that you really can do something about because you take Southwest Airlines, they do a really good job. I love Southwest Airlines. Compared to every other airline, they're awesome. They actually have people that, you know, I am getting to the point where I like flying first class. I fly first class as much as humanly possible whenever the flights are more than two hours because I can, you know, I mean, I, you know, I like doing that. And I am at the point where flying on Southwest, even for longer distances is usually easier and more pleasant than flying first class on other airlines simply because if I ever need to change my flight.

Yeah, that whole. To that. But let's not go crazy about the flying cross country like that.

No, no, no, It's. I mean, it's not.

Which we did from Evans wedding, remember?

But, well, look, you also got to look at the size difference between me and you.

That's why you have to be so hurtful today. It's just like, you know, I'm on my way. I am here. Focus. You're living in the gap, Joe. You're living in the gap.

No, when you start painting this whole picture of me like being on a unicycle with you juggling on my back, I mean, that psychologically is scarring to me.

You got to understand where. But you know what? It would be better than you with me from a year ago on your back. That's true. So you see, you're living in the gap. You're measuring against the ideal. That's what's happening. No, no, but look, you're not looking at. You're not measuring. It's progress, not perfection. But you got to understand, I'm a bad person, okay? You really are. You just like, you take every opportunity to like, you know, kick my self esteem. That's what you do, right?

Right. Well, I'm not like Tucker Max.

I mean, come on. So that being said, but you know what, here's the thing I want to say something about. This is the difference. Here's the thing. Southwest positions themselves, they're on your side. It's almost like the entire company is your advocate. Virgin Airlines is on your side. They look at you, they look at the airline industry and they hate the same things you hate. And they're on your side. That's why on Southwest, bags fly free. Because they know that sucks about travel. Right.

And see the thing.

Pretty interesting. It's like almost that that's the sense maybe that's the magic, right? Is that there are certain companies that are on your side that everything is to your advantage. Like discount tire is on your side when it comes to you get a nail in your thing that it's only going to take them a minute to fix it and doesn't really cost bunch of money, no charge. Yeah, because we know that happens and we know that, you know, we're not going to stick it to you now because you don't really need new tires, but you're going to need new tires at some point and we're going to be here selling tires and we'd love to have you come back. Right.

So the thing I was going to say about Southwest is that they have lots of people that have said, why don't you guys serve meals? Why don't you do? There's a lot more that they could do, but they also know their business model. In order to be the low price airline and do a good job. There are just certain things they can't do because they wouldn't be able to do the things they do really spectacularly well, really well if they tried to do all these other things. So they don't try to be all things to all people. There's a recent interview with Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple in Bloomberg. I think it's Bloomberg magazine, totally worth reading about. Like how much if you want a different perspective of very high end and how they think about Apple and how they're only. He makes this comment where he goes, every Apple product that we sell could fit on this table. And he's referring to like doing the interview with this reporter. Like we don't sell 4 million things. I mean, we do a really good job. You know, we sell an iPad, we sell an iPhone, we sell an imac, we sell a MacBook. You know, I mean we don't have a lot of stuff but build the very best stuff we can. And it's, you know, it's higher price than other things, but my God, do we make sure it's the very best, you know, user experience that you can. Whereas going back to the airlines, you know, Dan Sullivan said their motto is, you know, for the airline industry is we're not happy till you're not happy.

Right.

And I swear to God, I mean some airlines, you talk to their people, you see the way that they, the culture, I mean they really live that out. I mean, they want to make sure that, you know, you just have a very unpleasant experience. Whereas Southwest in Virgin, you know, Virgin doesn't fly out of, you know, I've flown Virgin Atlantic, of course. But what's funny, you know, I'm the largest fundraiser in the world for Richard Branson's you know, foundation currently. And I can't fly Virgin America because they don't have a hub here. And I've never actually yet been in a city where I have been going to another city where they. Oh, funny.

Eben and I flew Virgin America from San Francisco to D.C. it's great. It's a great, great airline.

Well, I mean, when I fly Virgin Atlantic. Yeah, I mean they're awesome. But the thing is, JetBlue, I really like JetBlue. I think JetBlue does a really good job.

I've heard.

Yeah. So anyway, we could talk about the airline industry all day long, but we.

Need to, I think we stumbled on something there, that, that, that there's that's a company that is. Is on your side. And I'm wondering, you know, it's like all those things are, you know, they look at things and sometimes companies are completely on their own side. They're trying to make things better for.

Them.

Trying to make things so that they're not going to get screwed or inconvenienced or hassled. You see signs that are set up for no refunds, only in store credits, or all these things where they're putting up signs to protect their position on this. And it's kind of an interesting thing. Maybe that's part of the ideal in the during unit. It's looking at things and taking the side of your client, the person who's experiencing it.

Well, I want to put something out there then too, because we're going to have a live in person meeting. And of course everyone that's coming to it is pretty much an avid listener of I love marketing. So all the people that are going to come to this meeting, think about that and bring your thinking on it and we'll have a discussion on January 10th, 11th and 12th. We're doing a meeting here at our office, so that'll be cool. And then what else was I going to say? Oh, I just want to mention Costco because I think Costco is really a company that thinks about, you know, being on the side of the client, the customer. And I think they do. There's many. We can talk about that further because we're kind of at the time now with this episode. But they do a lot of really good Costco stories just in terms of how they position themselves and how they communicate.

Let's go with one.

Well, first off, their magazine. You ever seen the Costco magazine?

I have not.

Okay. It's actually, you know, I mean, I must guess piles of, you know, how much direct mail I get because I have a million list and I'm in the direct mail business. So I look at all that stuff and there's a lot of companies that put out, for lack of a better word, rags. I mean, it's just crap with their company name on it that's whipped together and thrown together. But they actually have really good articles, really good interviews, really insightful stuff. They have a ton of member benefits and the way that they do point of purchase in the store where everything from credit cards to blinds to buying a car to taking vacations, I mean, they have just the way they do sampling, you call them, they answer the phone very quickly. They can track anything. They're Just very service oriented. And that's not even mentioning prices. What's really funny is I buy a ton of stuff through Amazon. I really like Amazon too. What's funny about Costco is with smartphones, I can look at anything that I'm going to purchase. Also, they're called discount stores. But I think it's virtually impossible to walk in there and not spend like $12,000 because you go in there for a bulk box of paper towels and you walk out of there with a whole house worth of crap. I'll look up an item on Amazon to read the reviews. And I am constantly amazed at how you can get really good prices on Amazon or different places online. And Costco, they figure out how to sell stuff cheaper. So not only do they have great prices, but they just do a really good job of service. There are more Costco stores, but I'll.

Save them for a different time, I guess when you think about it on their side. Our guiding question for the during unit is what would be a dream come true for your target audience? I guess Southwest has all of those. That's really the same kind of thing. It would be a dream come true. As if I didn't have to get. If it wasn't such a hassle to change my flight or if I didn't have to pay, you know, extra for my bags to fly.

Oh, wait, let me mention one last thing which will maybe make us go over. But I have recently, you know, because I'm kind of a neurotic freak, you know, I've gotten brain scans from Daniel. Amen. And we'll do maybe a longer episode. We'll show pictures of my brain scans and what's wrong with frontal lobe damage and everything that's, you know, makes me who I am. And so I did this. I think it's called a qeer, where they measure electrical activity and things going on in your brain. And you wear this cap on your head and they put electrodes on your head. I went through this series of testing and from a person who's very highly credentialized and came highly recommended and the person is really pleasant, definitely knows his stuff. When I first went there, great conversations, but a little lost on understanding some of the stuff. But since I have difficult comprehension and things like that, that would make sense that I have trouble because I'm very high ADD and, you know, learning stuff that I already knew and then learning other stuff that I. That I have markers about me that I didn't know. So I'm trying to improve my Functioning of my brain, my anxiety levels and stuff like that. So I'm doing all these tests. And what's interesting is along the way, it's. I'm realizing I'm getting nickeled and dimed. Now. This individual that runs this thing is dealing with sick people all the time. So I think he's lucky. Learned this whole shtick about how to get someone into the testing and then you can kind of upsell them into different things. And I don't even believe he feels that his method of upselling is like over the top or pressure. It's just kind of his way of learning how to lead people into it. But I'm really, you know, I mean, we write books and courses and been teaching this stuff for 20 years. And so I started, you know, I had a couple of experiences where I went to the other day with my girlfriend and, you know, she had done some tests too. And there was like this one test that cost $495. But when we're done with the test, it was like, oh, if we want to have someone look at it, it's another $195 or $165. I can't remember what the price is. It's like, well, why didn't you tell us that up front? And it's like, well, because we usually, most of the time don't even need to recommend it until we actually see the test.

But it's like.

And it was said in a way to where like, oh, I mean, we're not trying to hold anything back from you. We wouldn't have known. But it's like we. Well, yeah, you could have said though. And there are some situations where if you want to have some, you know, that just should have been set, I mean, there's no reason to hide that. And then there. There was another thing where if I wanted a copy of my files, it's $35 for copies. Where it's like. And I've already paid them, I think over $3,000 just for testing, you know, and it would lead to neurofeedback. And now I'm in a situation I had. I tried to have a conversation with, with this guy who actually owns the clinic to give constructive criticism and say, look, man, this ain't about the money. If I go through all of this neurofeedback sort of stuff, it will cost me less than what I charge for an hour of consulting. It's not about the money. It's about my time. And when I went there, they forgot to call. I Mean, I literally waited 45 minutes. So now that is worth the entire 45 minutes of my time wasted is what I would literally charge for the entire cost of doing sessions of neural feedback that I would go through, which I want to do this anyway. I actually want to try neurofeedback because I've heard very positive results about how it affects people. And now I'm like, going well because of the experience that I had, which was less than what my expectations were, especially for the money that I've already put out. I'm now going well. Although he may be, or they may be one of the best people to go through, I'm questioning if I even want to. To go back there simply because of the experience I had. But I also feel trapped because I've already paid for tests there, there's still explanations. And right now I feel very uncomfortable even going back there from a client perspective, just because even when I tried to voice what, you know, my feelings about it, I don't really feel like they kind of were listening, you know, they weren't thinking about it from my perspective. It's just been that is a recent bad experience that I've had that I really want to be a good experience that I really want to, you know, but I feel like I'm getting just mistreated. And the challenge is, from taking this person's perspective, I don't think they feel there's anything they're doing wrong. And now I feel that anything I would say, I would come across as, oh, just like some difficult client or whatever and not realizing that if a guy like me has a great idea experience there, I will tell everyone on the planet about it. It's just one of those things, and we all have that. I'm not sharing anything that everyone has not experienced in any way, shape or form. But the whole point is that hopefully people can now look at this as a mirror to their own business. And what makes sense for you to take a look at and change and improve.

No, no, that was good. That's all good stuff. So what's the takeaway like? How do we take some action on this today? Like, I think it's really about taking a good look with the experience and having that guiding thing of how could we be on. On their side? What would you know? Is there anything where this is where we could improve this? Just looking at the experience, I mean, there's lots of great. These are all great examples and everything that could be addressed by really taking a look at the whole during unit experience.

Right, right, Totally. I will say too, if anyone's got any examples that they want to share, good or bad, post them underneath this episode at I love Marketing and I'll also share this thing too, which could be potentially a negative for some of our listeners, is we had to switch over the commenting on I love marketing because we had a plugin app that we have, just a Facebook plugin that we've had so many problems with. And we tried to fix it. We tried to hold onto a lot of the comments from the past. We've had to rig it in certain ways to not lose a lot of the comments. Some of the comments from members we've lost. And I mean, there was literally, you know, we exhausted every approach we could think of with, you know, our web guys and different web people and experts. And, you know, we kept getting reported back the same thing. You know, that it's a screwed up. We can't contact the company, they're not answering their phones, we can't get any support, blah, blah, blah. So it also goes to show that, you know, even in that world, that's been a huge learning experience for us because we, you know, we discovered things.

We did great.

Yeah. So, yeah, so that's one of our works in progress on I love Marketing. And of course, if we want to be jerks, we can always say, well, we don't charge for the podcast, so we don't really need to do anything.

Right. We certainly pay for it.

We'll just talk about good customer service here because of our free podcast, we won't try to make it a great customer experience or anything. So hopefully the quality of our comments and my insulting of Dean is worth any sort of shortcomings of our website.

Gotcha.

And if you're listening to us on itunes, then you need to hop your butt over to ilovemarketing.com and check it out, because there you can watch videos, you can download our breakthrough DNA report. If you haven't read that yet, we.

Got big plans for the Isle of Marketing actual website for 2013. I haven't even shared some of these things with you, but I would hope so. It will be all very exciting.

So, that being said, I just want to wish everyone an amazing 2013. Thank everybody for being a listener. Me and Dean really appreciate it. We hope that you find this really useful for your business and that.

You.

Are as resourceful as I'll get out and really focus on the highest and best activities that you can in 2013. And we hope that our podcast and our episodes have helped you improve the before, during, and after units of your business. Those of you that are running meetup groups, thank you for putting that effort into it and doing it. We know that that works really well for a lot of people. We really appreciate everyone that listens to us talk. Yeah.

There we go.

Okay, we'll talk to you guys next time. Be cold.