Ryan Dohrn tells Barb from Indianapolis that gifting keeps customers loyal during downturns. Make half your outreach non-sales focused, send thoughtful gifts on holidays like Thanksgiving and the 4th of July, and use platforms like Sugarwish. These small gestures build referrals and protect your business when competitors get cut.
Hey, friends and fans, Ryan Dohrn here answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. And I love getting your questions. And gosh, we probably get a couple hundred questions a month, so we always do our best to reply to those questions either personally or include them here in the videos and things like that. All right, next question comes from Barb in Indianapolis. Hey, Ryan, you talk about gifting a lot and retention plans a lot. I feel like I deliver what people pay for. Why do I need to go above and beyond the call of duty to the extent that you describe in your podcasts and your videos? So, Barb in Indianapolis, I just feel— this is just Ryan Dohrn's opinion, and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong— I feel like it does benefit me. For me, I work as hard to keep the business as I did to get the business. And I respect and appreciate what you're saying because I deliver what people people pay for. And if I don't, I really work hard to make amends. But pretty much everybody that's out there in the sales business is going to give somebody what they pay for. There might be a little sprinkle of extra customer service or something like that, but I'm always looking, what can I do to differentiate myself from every other seller that is out there? One of the things that I do is I'm just a helper. Now, I am a people pleaser by nature. Anybody around you would— around me Uh, would tell you that. But I also like to go above and beyond the call of duty because I hear people say on a regular basis, hey Ryan, nobody thanks me as much as you do. Nobody refers as much business as you do. Nobody helps you as much as you do. So one of the things that you might consider, Barb, is what can you do for 50% of the time? 50% of my outreaches, I try to make those non-sales related. Where I'm just saying things like, what kind of customers are you looking for? Any struggles going on at your business that I can be helpful with? Hey, if you're looking for a referral, what would the perfect referral look like? And then of course I use, you know, companies like sugarwish.com to send thank you gifts. Now one of the things that I don't do just for everybody, I don't do a lot around Christmas. And don't get me wrong, I'm a Merry Christmas kind of guy. I like to do things more along Thanksgiving because not a lot of people do that. And then I also follow the national— normally the national non-religion holiday calendar. So like Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day and Labor Day, those kind of things, 4th of July. I like to send things and use those as kind of a guide to remind me to do special things, you know, for, for my customers. So I guess to answer your question, Barb, you don't have to do anything more than what you're doing right now. I would just ask you this: are you different? What do you do to differentiate yourself from everybody else? What is the— what's that kind of reason? If we were to have, like, I hope it never happens, but if we were to have some type of pandemic again or some type of economic downturn again or something like that, why would people cancel you last? Like, if there's 5 other providers, what would be the reason they would cancel you at the very, very last? Like, there's certain people they'll just cut right away. I found during the pandemic, like, I was the last person for them to cut. And I think it's because they felt a certain level of— I don't know if the word love is right— a certain level of, you know, kind of feeling really good about me and feeling like, hey, I don't want to cut off Ryan because he does so much more for me than just sell me stuff. So Barb from Indy, I hope that is helpful to you, and I hope that you'll get out there and just do all kinds of really cool and exciting things that can also be very, very affordable. You can use websites like Postable To send just, you know, cards to people in the mail, all kinds of little stuff like that. So you also might consider reading the book Giftology. It will give you a lot of gifting advice as well. Keep your questions coming, ryan@ryandohrn.com. And never forget, friends, if this job was easy, I mean, everybody'd be doing it. Barb and everybody, it's not. It's one of those jobs that's going to feed your family for a lifetime, but it's not about working smarter and not working harder. It's about working really, really smart and being— working really, really hard about it. And part of that is differentiate ourselves. And that's why I love gifting and I love retention strategies. All right, friends, love to come to your office, come to your national sales meeting and pump your team up. Reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, we'll see you next week.
