Ep 52 - "Remarkable Customer Service" with Joey Coleman

0:00 My friend, how are you, sir? Dude, that podcast was so fun. I'm just like, wow, we get to meet some cool people, man. Oh, hands down. We have lots of shows, especially with friends in the industry and stuff, where time goes by quickly because you're really just connected. You're just more hanging out with your friend than anything. This was one of those where the content is so rich. I felt like the clock was just chasing me the whole time because there was just so much more to get into. And that's why, obviously, we decided to just come out of the gate swinging and say, Hey, Joey, can we... Oh, I just let the name out of the bag. Can we get a round two? There was just so much here, man.

0:41 Yeah. And thankfully, he agreed. So we've got a part two coming later this fall. Joey Coleman. Yeah. Joey Coleman may not be a household name. It wasn't for me either. I've met him through a mutual friend, actually bought his course back in 2016, 2017. And we utilized some of that material at our last company. And so who is Joey? Okay, Joey, he's a very eclectic guy, very interesting bundle of experience that started out graduating from one of the top law schools in the world. Yeah. as a JD, and then ultimately ended up working with the CIA, working with the federal government as a criminal defense attorney, amongst other roles that in his bio, he says he can't talk about.

1:26 But he is just a fascinating character that early on in his career, at some point, developed this passion. and insight for customer experience. Yeah. And those people that have been following you and me, following my LinkedIn videos and stuff like that, I know that we're really passionate about customer experience. Yeah. I think in a lot of ways, it is the thing that we use to differentiate our restoration companies, right? It's like it's the only thing that really does ultimately differentiate. Yeah. And boy, do we get into it. He has a program called The First 100 Days. And that's what I purchased back when we were working together in the field. And it's just such incredible information. But I mean, he's worked with all kinds of industry verticals.

2:11 From healthcare, chiropractors, to huge companies like Whirlpool, Volkswagen, Deloitte, Principal Financial Group, Zappos, which I'm a huge fan of. I mean, you think about customer experience, you think about Zappos. And Joey Coleman is somebody that Zappos is bringing in to level up their game. Yeah. We just go, I mean, I don't even know how much we want to touch on. Yeah. I just think people need to buckle up and pay attention. This might be one that you listen to in the car and then come back later with a notepad and start hitting it again. You'll definitely want to hit the show notes. And you got to buy his book. In fact, I would just buy it now and then listen to the podcast so the book shows up from Amazon tomorrow or the next day.

2:53 It is that good. Yeah. So the book, Never Lose a Customer Again, author, obviously, Joey Coleman. Yeah. And his book is available everywhere. We're going to also... He's doing us a kind. And they're going to set up a joeycolman.com forward slash floodlight. And there'll be some opportunities there to pick up your books. And guys, this is probably one of those scenarios where we're literally encouraging you to get the book. It's a play-by-play book. It will be something that you go to and use regularly. forever. And it really should be a mandatory team read for your sales team members and those that lead your customer service delivery. Probably everybody. Yeah, your whole leadership team should definitely have this book on their shelf and in their brain.

3:35 Yeah. Okay. Well, without further ado, let's get talking with Joey. Let's go. Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. I don't know, what'd you think? I don't know, it was kind of serious. Should we laugh? All right. Well, Joey, thanks, man, for being here. I've been excited about this interview for a while. And just to kind of tell the audience, we've already done this awesome intro for you, but a little bit of background.

4:18 So I was trying to piece together, how did I first meet or get turned on to Joey Coleman? I'm pretty sure it was through a mutual contact we have, Jason Gaynard and Mastermind Talks. Brilliant friend, brilliant human, amazing guy, curator of experiences and people. Amazing. Amazing. And so I think he published your talk. It was one of the first times he's done that for a mastermind talk. He published this one segment of the mastermind talk experience. And I watched it and I was so enamored with your presentation. I actually bought your first 100 days course. And this was back when I was VP of sales at our previous company. And I just immediately started diving in and implementing some of those things in our own restoration company.

5:02 And I've just always been enamored. And then, yeah, I saw something more recently that you were doing on LinkedIn that you'd published. I thought, oh my gosh, we have to get Joey. So for those of you that are not familiar with Joey... Brandon and I both are real customer experience guys. And we've read all the books. And we were just talking with Joey about this beforehand, right? Like Purple Cow is one of my favorite books. It's a great sort of primer on customer experience and how to think about our businesses and differentiate ourselves and so forth. Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard, an awesome business fable that... The Bible in this industry, right? Totally. Everybody talks about raving fans. Yeah, totally. Purple Cow by Seth Godin, right? These are all great and I think familiar to our industry.

5:43 But what your book, your most recent book does is it really creates a playbook from a lot of those principles that tells you how to do that. How do you be a purple cow? How do you create this differentiated experience for people? Brandon and I are just, we're lost in it. So I've been listening to the Audible. I got the Audible Kindle combo. And so I've been reading and listening to your voice. You're great at voiceover, by the way. It was awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I always tell folks when we're on podcasts, if you like the sound of my voice, the audio book is me telling the story to you. If you don't like the sound of my voice, just buy the print or the Kindle and you'll be happy. Right? Get the print. You don't have to deal with me. No, it's perfect. But those of you that are listening, like saddle up. First of all, you agreed to do a part two.

6:23 So we're going to dive deeper on this later in the fall. But this is the kind of thing that you want to buy the book. You also want to give the book to your leadership team. Like this is meaty. There's lots of actual material. Again, it's a playbook. for customer experience design and optimization. And ultimately, how do we increase our customer lifetime value, the engagement, the depth of relationship that we're building with people? So with no further ado, let's just dive in, man. Do you want to kind of leave us out? Well, Chris, briefly, first of all, Thank you so much for the kind words. Thank you for that glorious setup and introduction. I'm flattered and so appreciative that that's the experience you've had of the book and the content. Because as a speaker and a writer, I believe that there are three types of speakers.

7:06 It applies to writers too, but I have a tendency to speak more than I write. I think there are speakers that make you think differently. I think there are speakers who make you feel differently. And I think there are speakers that make you act differently. Yeah. And while I certainly want my audiences to think and feel differently after they hear me, after they listen to a podcast, after they read one of my books, if they don't act differently, I don't feel like I've earned the amazing investment of time that they made. Because that's one thing we can't create more of is time. You can get more money, you can get more team members, you can get more customers. You can't get more time, at least that I haven't figured out yet. And so I so appreciate you making the space for that. And I so appreciate everybody that's kind enough to join us and listen in for the podcast.

7:48 My goal is going to be to give you a lot of things that you can actually put in place in your business after you listen to this episode. I don't want you to be like, okay, great. Now, what do I go do? How much homework do I have to do? Now, let's get some tangible things that you can just put in place right away. I think that's sweet. And I think that's what we'll end up ultimately doing with this part too. We know you're just jamming right now. And so we're going to look forward to that later in the fall. Let's start with this, Joey. Why? And I know it can be fairly easy for us to connect the dots. But as service providers, there is a massive disconnect between this working up to the point like, just give us a call, give us a call, give us a call. And then what? That experience after that, it's almost like we immediately slip into you owe us because we're the one coming to save your day and provide the service in the industry that we're in.

8:37 And we lose this courting period. We lose this focus. So why the stats that you were developing and reading into as you were writing your book, just lay the groundwork for us. Yeah. So basically, Brandon, there are, I would say, three giant buckets as to why this happens, right? There's the human piece of this, right? The emotional piece of this. There's the scientific piece of this. And then there's the operational structure piece of this. So let's look at each of those individually, the human piece. As human beings, we're going to be able to do this. We are biologically designed to love emotions, right? We love highs. We don't love lows, but we experience them, and it kind of increases the depth of our human experience.

9:20 So we spend all of this time wondering how can we create emotions? How do we interact with emotions? This is who we are as humans. And as a general rule, humans like to chase emotions. more than they catch and retain. Now we can switch to a little bit of a scientific reason for this, right? We are biologically composed to be hunter-gatherers, right? First always in that list is hunters because that's where we evolved from. We evolved from, oh, go find something to eat, get it, eat until you're full, then go find something else to eat. Then we turned into gatherers. Oh, look at what's going around. Oh, there's, we can eat these fruits off these trees or off these berries off this bush. This is exciting. And then we moved into an agrarian society. We started to farm instead of being nomads.

10:02 We started to build cultures, et cetera. So there's an evolutionary reason why we do all of this. And then there's a structural reason in that most of our businesses are designed to over index on acquisition over retention. Part of that is because scientifically we're excited about acquisition instead of retention. But another piece of it is the significant majority, and depending on whose research you look on this, it's somewhere between 50 and 70% of CEOs, of leaders, came up through sales and marketing. Now stop and think about that for a second. If your whole world is sales and marketing, you came up through sales and marketing, and now you're in charge of a whole organization, what parts of the conversation are you going to be most excited about? oh, that would be sales and marketing because it's where you feel most comfortable.

10:45 Very few senior leaders came up through the call center, came up through customer service, came up through frontline dealing with things. Pretty quickly, they moved into more of a managerial, big picture, how are we growing? How are we scaling? And so I think those three things combining... create the inertia for focusing on how do I get more customers as opposed to what I think is the more strategic and can be a lot more interesting conversation. How do I keep the customers I work so hard to get? You mentioned stats, Brandon. My favorite stat from all the research we did on the book is across all industries, online and offline, international and domestic, product and service, small, medium, and large.

11:27 You got a huge team, you got a small team. Doesn't matter. Across all industries, Somewhere between 20 and 70% of your new customers will decide to stop doing business with you before they reach the 100-day anniversary. 20 to 70%. Those numbers are staggering to me. What was more staggering to me is that when I started to talk to business owners, to business leaders, they had no idea what their percentage was. And to me, that represented a giant gaping hole opportunity for businesses to think differently about how they went to market, how they served the market, how they grew their businesses, how they thought about profitability, how they thought about experience.

12:07 And by shifting just a couple of things, the impact is enormous. Massive, massive. I think one of the interesting things, kind of odd things about our industry is a lot of the work we do is with homeowners, right? And how many times do we typically, as a company, a restoration company, get to deal with homeowners? Typically once. It's rare. And ideally once. Their hope, their hope is that they will never see you again. Exactly. Stop and think about that. The opening volley of that customer is, this is probably the worst moment in my life And if everything goes well, I will never see these people again. That's the opening volley for the emotional state of the customers in the restoration industry.

12:52 Yeah, literally starts in worst case scenario. Yeah, you are not wrong. Yeah. But what's interesting about where our industry is at now, because it's a relatively young industry, last 40 years or so. But one of the things that's happening right now is more and more companies are starting to figure out, how do we do B2B? how do we build a direct sales channel to hotel groups, senior living, all that kind of stuff. And it's a totally different environment, right? Because these real estate portfolios, they might have several damage events per year. So it's like the industry is just now starting to grapple with, okay, we've been in this environment where we have a one and done kind of customer relationship. And so the effort or even the curiosity of, about what that first 100 days looks like. We're just doing our project for them in those first 100 days.

13:35 And when we're done, we're never going to hear from these people again. And so the customer lifetime value and some of these other things, like we haven't been trained to think that way as an industry. But now, as we start servicing universities and school districts and hotels and all that kind of stuff, now all of a sudden the customer relationship, the customer lifetime value is like a massive opportunity and challenge that we've never had to grapple with. And so that's... Absolutely. That's where the industry's at. And here's where there's potentially an even bigger problem. So when you think about what the industry used to be, just the relationship with the homeowner, And I say this respectfully to folks that are listening. While it should have been obvious that an emotional play of the conversation should be part of your business model, acknowledging where they are emotionally, helping you navigate through that, there is going to be a tendency as we open up B2B opportunities to think, well, this is less emotional.

14:30 Right. This isn't the person's house that got destroyed. It's the nursing home that they invest in. Like this is all about bottom line dollars and cents. And while there is some truth to that, that the opening volley will be less an emotional play and more of a financial play, the reality is the people who operate in the B2B environments are still humans. Nice. This whole fiction of B2B, B2C, it's a fiction, ladies and gentlemen, that is often by folks who tout those acronyms or that model to give them permission not to care. That's the main reason why people use B2B. They're like, well, it's not as touchy as feely as B2C. We're B2B. We're grownups. You know, it's less emotional.

15:10 It's dollars. It's facts. It's figures. Folks, it's all H2H. It's human to human. And when you lose sight of that, that is the beginning of the end for your business. I don't care what industry you're in. Yeah, the H to H. That was something that stood out to me, obviously, at the beginning of the book, kind of relaying that groundwork. There's another thing I just kind of wanted to ping pong back and forth with you before we get into these, the actual phases. And that is, so in our industry, the other thing that's kind of interesting is that right now, especially in this B2B scenario... we're basically selling a relationship, right? Because it could be a long period of time. And this is why I'm so excited about your strategy is it can be a long period of time before they actually pick up the phone and call in the troops for a specific loss scenario.

15:58 So really, what's interesting is that specifically in our industry in this B2B environment, this 100 days is almost part of the sales cycle as much as it is an onboarding cycle. Because really what we're doing is just trying to use all this methodology to build depth with the relationship so that when finally something does happen, we are the call. And they could be onboarded with us for a long period of time before they pick up the phone. Have you seen other examples of this as you've been teaching this around the world? Absolutely, Brandon. And here's the kicker. What is the closest parallel? Yeah. in the typical customer's life to what the relationship with the restoration team is going to be like.

16:39 I'd be willing to posit that the closest parallel is their relationship with an insurance company. And stop and think about how your body just felt when I said you're like an insurance company. People are picking themselves up off the floor right now listening to this. Folks, stay in your lane. Don't swerve in the traffic and feel insulted that I just referred to you that way. That's the parallel that they're going to be looking at. Oh, we're establishing this relationship for if something goes wrong someday, we'll have help on speed dial. That's how we think about our insurance companies. But here's the kicker. Most people, when they have an insurance type experience, is it a positive experience? Is it the experience where they say, gosh, I got everything I was hoping for, everything that they told me I get. That's exactly what they gave me on the first try.

17:21 Or is it, oh, my God, I had to sue them. We had to go into litigation. We had to fight for years before I got the thing that the agent promised me would be part of my opening volley of my policy. Yeah, your story from the book about the ring, man. The whole time I was like, how common is the experience, right? All the time, right? Most people don't have a positive insurance company experience. Which, by the way, if you're listening and you're more on the insurance side, don't be insulted by that. See that as an opportunity. The bar for customer experience across all industries on the planet is lying on the ground. It is literally lying on the ground. If you are slightly better than sucks, you will get customers.

18:01 Sorry for being so blunt. No, it's not true. But that's the reality. And it should be motivating, right? Oh my gosh. Not only should it be motivating, but it should be something that you're like, all we have to do is be better than trash and life should work well for us. And we should just look at a way to wow our customers to do something a little special that cares about. The return on investment you get from showing a modicum of human decency to the people who pay for your family to have food on the table is astronomical if you're willing to put in the time. Yeah, and what's great about what you're teaching is it's not nearly as complicated as we think. It's just you have to be intentional.

18:41 That's really, it's like you just can't let it happen by accident. Okay, so that being said, man, I think this is a perfect transition. So again, just in case we didn't set this up well for our listeners, never lose a client again, right? That's the name of your book and really what we're talking about. Never lose a customer again. Whether you call them a customer or a client doesn't matter, right? And that's the key here, right? Just own it. Like we put in all this stuff. effort. We sell, we go get them, we spend all this money, and then it's a backdoor revolving. So that's what the premise of this entire conversation. You have eight phases of customer onboarding process, right? And you refer to this as the first 100 days. Go through it with us, start breaking these down.

19:23 Yeah. So let me set some context and then I'm going to fire hose through all of these and then we can dive deep wherever you want to take it. So there are eight phases to the customer journey from the time someone first hears about you to the point where they're a raving fan referring you friends, colleagues, contacts, business all day, every day. All of these phases start with the letter A. And the idea behind that is not to confuse you. And for those of you that love alliteration, this is going to be great. But the idea behind it is that if you get all of these right, it's like getting straight A's on your report card from the customer. They're going to look at all of these and say, yes, yes, oh yes, this part was awesome. This part was awesome. So let's break down the phases.

20:03 Phase number one, the assess phase. This is when a prospective customer is trying to decide whether or not they want to do business with you. In common parlance, we call this marketing and sales. They're looking at your website. They're checking out your brochure. They're talking to your salespeople. They might even be talking to people who've done business with you. They're trying to figure out, they're assessing, is this a relationship I want? We then go to phase two, admit. This is when the prospect admits that they have a problem or a need that they believe you're going to be able to help them with. They sign on the dotted line. They hand over their hard-earned cash. They enter into the relationship. They transition from being a prospect to being a customer.

20:43 This is day one. The clock starts ticking. Because by the way, that assess phase could last weeks, months, even years, depending on your offers, right? But the clock starts ticking on day one when they say, count me in, I'm a customer. We then go to phase three, the affirm phase. This is when the buyer, the customer, the person who's just decided to do business with you begins to doubt the decision they just made. Almost everybody listening to this podcast has heard the phrase, buyer's remorse. Let's do a quick little experiment. All of you listening, if you're driving, keep at least one hand on the wheel. If you're running on the treadmill, you're doing the dishes, it's okay. Raise your hand if you've heard of buyer's remorse. Oh yeah. That sound you just heard is a lot of hands around the world.

21:26 All the awesome listeners saying, yes, I've heard of buyer's remorse. Now, no one else is going to see you. Raise your hand if you have a system and a process in your business designed to address the buyer's remorse that we scientifically know every customer feels. That sound you just heard is tumbleweeds. Not as many hands being raised. So what are you doing to affirm their decision during this quiet period, during this buyer's remorse period? We then come to phase four, the activate phase, okay? I call it activate because this is the first real moment of truth and you want to energize the relationship. You want to kick things off in a way that the customer says, holy cow, doing business with these folks is unlike any business experience I've ever had.

22:07 By the way, they're not comparing you to your competitors. Pro tip, they are not comparing you to your competitors. Most of them will have never dealt with any of your competitors. It's not like they hired somebody for the first time their house flooded and hired somebody else for the second time it flooded. That's possible, but it's not nearly as likely as they are comparing you to the other remarkable experiences they've had in their life. What do I mean? Amazon, being able to have anticipatory needs, like recommend what I might need. Free shipping, get it immediately, no hidden cost, quick deliver to my door conveniently. Netflix, what I want on demand 24 seven, no questions asked, right? Those are the companies they're comparing you to, not to the other folks in the restoration world.

22:52 So if you're benchmarking against other construction companies or other home services companies, that's fine. But I promise you, that's not who you're being benchmarked against by your prospects. We are coming back to that. All right. We'll come back and dive into that. All right. Phase five, the admonition. acclimate phase, okay? This is after that first real moment of truth, the kickoff meeting, when they get your product, when they start to work with you. The acclimate phase is when you are making the customer familiar with your way of doing business. See, here's the kicker, especially in your world. When somebody is having a restoration, a disaster recovery type scenario, the likelihood that this is the first time they've ever done that is very high.

23:32 I don't know the industry stats. You guys probably do. I got to imagine it's north of 90% of customers have never had a flood, a fire, a disaster, whatever they're dealing with before. Yeah, I think just the only important distinction there would be for sure on the residential side, that's the case. For sure on the residential side, exactly. B2B, that commercial. B2B, they may have had that experience before, right? But on the homeowner, on the residential side, absolutely. Here's the kicker. Even on the commercial side, they've had fewer experiences with this type of scenario than you have. You've done this dozens of times, hundreds of times, thousands of times. But for them, their experience model is either zero... or a handful, not nearly as many as you have.

24:15 So you're trying to acclimate them to your way of doing business. And what do you need to do in the acclimate phase? You need to hold their hand. You need to let them know what's next. You need to constantly be reminding them of your process and how you're going to take care of things. Now, some of you listening are going, but Joey, I gave them a proposal and the proposal clearly outlined what we'd be doing every step of the way. Folks, they didn't read it. I'm sorry, they didn't. You sign stuff that you don't read all the time. And if you doubt the validity of that statement, think back to the last time you rented a car. You got to the front of the counter after waiting in a while and you're there and they're like, just keep clicking I accept on this screen. And you're clicking that like a rat trying to get a pellet of food because you want the keys.

24:56 Your customers are the same way. They don't know your system and process. You've got to remind them. At any even point, I should be able to go to any of your customers and say, what happened last? What is happening right now? And what happens next? And if your customers can't answer that question, that's on you, friends. That's not on the customer. Some of us get really irritated. They're like, well, they didn't read the proposal or they're not reading my emails. I know you're not reading your emails either. Welcome to humanity. Stop trying to expect more of your customers than you expect of yourself. Yeah, that's the whole play as good as you can to beat the ref, right? Totally. The rules are the rules. You can't ignore them and whine about them. It is what it is. Exactly. Yes.

25:36 So then we come to phase six, the accomplished phase. This is when the customer accomplishes the goal they had when they originally decided to do business with you. Now, here's the kicker. You might be thinking the accomplished phase is when we're all cleaned and we got the stuff out of their house. Right? We cleaned up all the flood disaster. We cleaned up all the soot. We got all the wet stuff out and now it's dry again. In their mind, the project isn't over till those walls have been redone, repainted, all their new stuff has moved in and it looks like it did before it even started. Now I get that that may not be part of your agreement with them. But that's their finish line. And if you cross the finish line of, hey, it's dry.

26:17 Woohoo, let's celebrate. This is awesome. Recognize that they see that as a milestone in the process, but not the finish line. You got to make sure that your finish line and your customer's finish line are aligned. That's insightful. Okay? Yeah. We then come to phase seven, the adopt phase. This is when the customer becomes loyal to you and only you. Now, I want to segue here and say, on the residential side, some of you are thinking, well, Joey, the likelihood of them having a flood again is very small. They're not going to come to us. By the way, if they're in the floodplain, the likelihood is actually really high and they're probably not moving. So you do want to maintain a relationship with them. But here's the kicker. Your residential customers know other people who are going to deal with disasters.

26:58 You want to be their referral source. And if you don't create adopters, people who are loyal to you, who are committed to you, who love you, who would come back to you if there was an issue, you never reach phase eight, the final phase. Holy grail, nirvana, the advocate phase. customer is a loyal, raving fan. They're singing your praises far and wide. They're your uncompensated, uncommissioned sales force, bringing anyone they've ever heard of to your door that needs help. They're posting about you on social media. They're singing your praises at cocktail parties. They're at the barbecue saying, oh my gosh, you see how good everything looks? Well, the reason it looks this good after that horrible flood, fire, disaster, tornado, fill in the blanks of whatever happened is because of X.

27:42 And when they say X, it's your company's name. And they're like, and particularly Y. And who's Y? The person at X that they have a personal relationship that they feel like is a family member because they've been with them through the most trying time in their life to date. And they trust them like a brother, like a sister. They're in. Those are the eight phases. If you do it right, you can create a customer for life. You know what's really kind of exciting about this? I mean, besides all the things is I think a lot of restorers, Joey, they get into this in a myriad of different ways. But one of the things that they experience early in their career is... is the superhero scenario, right?

28:23 Now granted, like you alluded to, we are dealing with people normally in their worst. And stress and all the things that are experienced by the client create sometimes a monster. But that being said, many of us got into this because on a day-to-day basis, you have an opportunity to save people, help people, be a superhero. Yeah. And the grind, the experience, the industry at large can really take that out of us. And I think what I want to just kind of connect the dots for people here is reviewing the experience that you provide to your client. Like really auditing this, not with your ego in place, but saying, Hey, what if we scrapped the whole existing process and started from scratch?

29:05 What would it look like? I think there's an opportunity for people to be re-excited about being a superhero again. Because I think we've gotten accustomed to, we kind of deliver a piss poor customer experience. Doesn't feel great for the client. Really doesn't feel good to us. And we do that now for two, three years in a row. We've forgotten why the hell we're even doing this. You are so spot on. You are so spot on. The thing that is in many ways excited me the most about my speeches, about my consulting engagements, about the book is the number of business owners, business leaders, entrepreneurs who have come to me and said, Joey, I've reconnected with why I got into this industry in the first place.

29:46 Because most people, I don't care what job you have, if you love your job, it's because you love The serving of others, the outcome, the results, the problem is, and this is a problem across all of humanity. The longer we do something, the more numb we become to the positive outliers and the more attuned we become to the negative outlier. Oh, that is huge. Can you just say that again, Matt? The longer we're in a business, the longer we're in industry, we become less attuned to the high points, the victories, the superhero moments, because they become normal to us. But we become more attuned to the negative outliers, the things that go wrong.

30:30 Take the typical business owner, entrepreneur, and you sit down and you say, I want you to list three things that are going well in I've done this exercise with thousands of audience members around the world, tens of thousands at this point. Almost all of them go to the negative list first and they start writing down what's wrong. And friends, I'm sorry if that's your life experience. And I have that experience too. I do that in my own business. I come off stage and the first thing I'm inclined to do is list the three things I do differently next time to make it better. Instead of listing the three things that were beautiful, that were amazing, that worked well, bubbling down into the positives. Okay.

31:11 If you are an entrepreneur, you don't need to worry about over-indexing on the positives. The great majority of entrepreneurs over-index on what's not going right and what they need to be and what they're not yet, instead of having gratitude, having appreciation for the things they've already accomplished. I think there's a huge opportunity here. Not only as it relates to serving our customers and serving our employees, but frankly, to serving ourselves. and to really enjoying our lives. I mean, unfortunately, I didn't even put that together. But this idea of proactively engaging this customer life cycle really can have a profound effect on how we feel about the business that we're leading, building, whatever the case may be.

31:53 I think that's huge. Hey friends, hey listeners. We're doing something a little bit different with our ads. So you've been accustomed to hearing some ads with our favorite partners and companies in the industry. Now we actually have a product page, our partners page on our website. So floodlightgrp.com forward slash partners. I want to give you a quick rundown though of the people that we're partnering with and we believe in as really go-to resources in the industry. The first one is restorationerp.com, right? ERPs are an important part of our sales process, our customer development process. And why reinvent the wheel? The Restoration ERP platform is awesome. It can be customized to your business branding and all that kind of stuff and has all the components to really create a value add for your commercial client.

32:36 Accelerate job management software. Everybody needs job management software. And we have just found Accelerate not only is their team just really great to work with. When they get ideas from customers, they throw it into the product roadmap and they implement it. They're really advocating for the contractor and trying to create a software solution that works for them. Actionable insights. We recommend actionable insights all the time. All of us as restoration operators are looking for turnkey resources and training solutions that we can take our team to the next level. And AI, when it comes to estimating and Matterport and a lot of the other essential tools we're using, They're an awesome resource and they're always coming out with new great stuff.

33:18 Yeah, super influential in the industry. Super Tech University, soft skills development training for your technicians, for your frontline personnel. Let's face it, frontline personnel are the heartbeat of our company. They are the ones that connect with our clients and create the customer experience. There's no better investment than investing in... the ability for those individuals to represent themselves, our clients, and our brands well. So Supertech University, surety, they essentially are cutting down this life cycle between delivering service and then getting paid, stepping in, removing the middleman in terms of mortgage companies, refining that pipeline, making sure that there's as least friction as possible.

33:59 So we can go out and do a great job and then our businesses don't suffer while we're waiting to get paid. The money's coming and it's coming quickly. And then the last one, guys, is Liftify. It's kind of a newer entry to the industry. They're driving Google reviews. So they're a turnkey partner that we can literally go out, provide a great customer experience, hand that name off to our trusted partner in Liftify, and have them go chase. Yeah. That Google review. 25% conversion rate, which is industry-wide. People tend to average 5% of the people you ask for review actually convert. Lift to five bumps, that to 25. We were such a big believer. We were a customer and they've been generating all of our floodlight reviews. And in a matter of a week and a half, we're up to, I don't know, close to 15 reviews in just a short period of time.

34:42 And I think people just underestimate what happens organically with your SEO search activity when you're getting these new and active five-star reviews from our clients. And we just can't let the pedal up on that because of the effect on our business long term. It's a big deal. So check it out. Check out our partners page. Do business with them. You won't regret it. We're confident in that. Floodlightgrp.com forward slash partners. Thanks, guys. So okay, eight phases. There's so much content here. We don't have you for the next four days. I think the best thing to do... Because there's not one that's a higher priority over the other, right? These are super synergistic. Let's just start at the top. Let's maybe try to get through the first three or four, Joey.

35:24 Some example stories maybe. And let's just unpack each one of these. So this assess phase. Lead us through that. What am I doing as a business owner during this portion of the process? So let's talk about what most business owners are doing today and the tweak that would dramatically change your conversion rates, the amount of interest in your business, and the success of your marketing and sales efforts. Huge. I think you just got everybody's attention. All right, good. Most businesses are focused on how do I let the world know I exist? How do I have a great website? How do I advertise? How do I promote? How do I sell? How do I fill the funnel? How do I narrow people down? How do I convert? All these things that were suggested to do in the marketing and sales world.

36:08 Quick aside, when I was writing my book, I went on Amazon. And I went to the category of books and I searched for marketing. Okay? And I wrote down how many hits I got, how many books came up. And then I searched for the word sales. And I wrote down how many books came up. And then I added those two numbers together. And it was just over 1.3 million books that had been written on sales and marketing. I then erased those search results and I searched for customer experience, customer loyalty, customer service, account management, relationship management, all the phrases you might come up with to describe what happens after the sale. OK, and even though some of those searches would pop up Purple Cow more than once, would pop up raving fans more than once, I still took them at face value, just the numbers, and I added them up and I came up with a total of 30,000 books.

36:58 So what that shows us is in the area of knowledge, in the area of information that's out there available for business owners. There are 47 books that are written on how to get a customer before there is one book written on how to keep a customer. That alone should be instructive as to what's happening in the assess phase. You're trying to figure out all the ways to get and none of the ways to keep. Here's what I think businesses should be doing in the assess phase. And this will move the dial in ways you can't even begin to imagine. Give the customer a preview of the experience of working with you. If the whole restoration industry is built on, we're going to take care of you. We're going to take your home, your office, wherever you used to love, your environment, your space that has been destroyed, that has been trashed, that is no longer the vision you had.

37:48 And we are going to get it back to what it was. The experience of selling you on that should feel as equally caregiving, as equally focused on you, as equally focused on things that you love and emotions. So quick story of what that might look like. Years ago, I went to an event at the Wealth Factory. Wealth Factory is an organization. Entrepreneurs are really good at keeping money or making money, not so good at keeping money. Wealth Factory helps them do that, right? They do investment advice. They do insurance modeling, risk profiling, tax advice, all the things you need to do to keep more of your money as an entrepreneur. And I showed up to the event, nine o'clock in the morning, three-day event. And the CEO is there and he's like, hey, Joey, we're super excited to have you here. This is a little gift.

38:28 And he hands me a six-pack of root beer. Now, if you know me and know me well, I drink two things, water and root beer. I'm completely caught off guard. It's nine o'clock in the morning. I'm at a business conference and somebody just gave me a surprise and delight moment of a six pack of root beer. I said, oh my gosh, this is so special. How did you know I liked root beer? They said, well, little birdie told us. I'm like, no, seriously, how did you know? Said, Joey, our job is to help you keep as much of your wealth as possible so you can live your best life. And our understanding is your version of Best Life probably has a good amount of root beer in it. So we wanted to give you a preview of what we're going to hopefully create for you should you decide to become a customer.

39:11 I said, this sounds fantastic. Where do I sign up? It's like, Joey, it's a three-day program. We kind of tell you about the options on the last day. I was like, sign me up now. I'll stay for the three days. But if this is an accurate preview of the experience I'm going to have being a customer, I'm all in. Oh, it's brilliant. Now, I'm not suggesting that you start bringing root beer to all your customers. Because for some of your customers, that's not going to work. But what I am suggesting is, what would it look like before you went on a sales call to go on that client's or that customer's Facebook page or their Instagram page? Now, some of you are saying, but Joey, how am I going to do that? Well, you're going to go to Facebook and you're going to type in their name. Okay, because most people are on Facebook or Instagram or they're somewhere. Okay, and you will be able to see pictures and posts of what actually matters to them.

39:57 When you work on this, and it doesn't take a lot of work, you can get to the point where in a five-minute review of somebody's social media pages, you can have a half dozen things to create personal connection with them about. Their kids, their favorite sports team, where they like to vacation, the movie they just went and saw, their favorite book, where they went to high school, who they root for on Saturdays in the big game, whatever it may be, you can create opportunities of connection. with just a little bit of work before the conversation. That single thing will change the dial. That single thing will make the experience completely different for that customer. So hanging in that pocket for just a second, because I know there's some distinction here.

40:37 What? is it about that root beer experience as an example that connected with you? What about it? Those little triggers? Because that's the key part. It's not how much we spend. It's not... Go for it. I know you got it. 100% it's not how much we spend. Let's put a pin on that. I'll come back to that after I answer the question because that's a huge piece of this puzzle. The trigger is you cared about me before you asked me to care about you. Bam, that's huge. You showed me that you did your homework enough to care about me before you asked me to do my homework and decide to care about you. That's what it was. It wasn't about the root beer.

41:18 The root beer was the vehicle of proof. It was the artifact of evidence of caring. That's what it was. Now let's talk about the price point. What do you think a six pack of Henry Weinhart's root beer, which is what it was, cost? Well, I can tell you what it cost, about $7. What was the program that I signed up for? If I'm remembering correctly, because this was a couple of years ago, I think it was a $3,000 a month program. It was a year long program. Not bad. Not bad. I mean, I'll go up against your Facebook click ad rate for a $7 investment for a $36,000 conversion, right? This is a no-brainer. But again, it's not about the money. Everybody listening, think of the five best gifts you ever got, the five best presents you ever received.

42:05 Okay, take your kids or your spouse out of it, right? Because I know sometimes we say, oh, that's the best thing I've ever got. Okay, great. I'm talking about a physical, tangible thing that somebody gave you. Now, you've already thought of at least one or two. Think of a couple more. Now, if I were to ask you to assign a monetary value to those items, statistically, it is less than $50. It's not that they gave you an expensive item. It's they gave you an item that when you received it, you thought, they know me. They know me better than I know myself. They did the homework. They got me something that I've been wanting, but wouldn't be willing to spend the money on myself because I thought it was an indulgence, even though it was less than $50. They got me something that's a nostalgia play, a blast of the past.

42:47 They showed that they actually paid attention to what I was doing. Quick story, I'm on a podcast. Somebody asked me about nostalgia and we're talking about fun experiences. When I was a kid, I was a big fan of G.I. Joe. I was a big fan of G.I. Joe action figures. And part of the reason I love G.I. Joe was kind of a weird reason, not just for the action figures, but on the back of the G.I. Joe package. Did either of you guys big G.I. Joe hands grown up? Okay, Brandon's locked in. Hey, Chris is like, dude, I was playing with Barbies, whatever. Totally cool, totally cool. Hot wheels. Hot wheels, all right, hot wheels, there you go. So the cool thing is on the back of the GI Joe package, there was a little dossier that told you about the GI Joe action figure. And you could cut these out and put them in a card and collect them.

43:27 Well, I'm a kid, I've got all the GI Joe guys, I'm excited. And I'm growing up in a little town, Fort Dodge, Iowa, in Northwestern Iowa. And I'm looking at all these cards and none of the GI Joes are from Iowa. I'm looking and I'm tracking every other state in the United States is represented with some GI Joe action figure. but none are from Iowa. I'm a little hurt. So I send a letter, dating myself here a little bit, a letter to Hasbro. And I say, hey, Joey Coleman here, Fort Dodge, Iowa. Just wanted to let you know, I have 47 G.I. Joe guys and none of them are from the state of Iowa. And even the ones I don't have, I've looked them up. They're not from Iowa. It would be amazing if there was a G.I. Joe guy from Iowa. I would love that.

44:08 Sincerely, G.I. Joe fan, Joey Coleman. And I never hear back. Now, as a kid, I'm kind of not surprised that I don't hear back because it's a big corporation. Long story short, about a year later, I'm in the toy store and I'm walking through. One second. Does he have it? For those of you keeping square at home, I had to go off camera for just a second. I'm walking through the toy store and I see this. I see an action figure hanging on the thing. And I turn over and his name is Crazy Legs. And his hometown is Fort Dodge, Iowa. Your life has changed. Oh my gosh. I moved the dial. So how does this relate to customer experience? I'm on a podcast. I tell this story. About two months later, I get a package in the mail.

44:49 I don't recognize who it's from. I'm just like, oh, this is weird. I open the package and inside the package is a vintage G.I. Joe figure in the box. Now, I will go on that podcast anytime they ask. I will promote that podcast anytime they ask. I will refer people to that podcast anytime they ask. The point is not that they spend a lot of money. Mm-hmm. The point is that they were willing to spend time to create a magical moment for me. And if you create a magical moment for your customers, who, by the way, as we already said in the beginning, are at one of the lowest points of their life, it will change the experience. What if you're on the Facebook page and you realize that their kids are really into Octonauts?

45:30 There's been a terrible flood. And you show up at the house to assess things with a little bag with maybe $15 or $20 of Octonauts. in the bag. And you say, hey, while we're walking around looking at the house, how long the kids are here, maybe they're back at the hotel or there's someone else, this might be helpful. You're getting that job. There's no competition because you did your homework. You gave them evidence that you cared before you asked them to care about you. Man, that is so stinking powerful. And it's interesting too, I think people to consider is like our personas that we use on social. So LinkedIn, for a lot of us, this is kind of our channel. Okay, it's going to be very business. It's going to be a bit more probably humanly neutral, possibly.

46:13 But man, we get into the Instagrams, we get into the Facebook, and then those lines get blurry. And now we start to see a lot more detail about the person versus what they're projecting professionally. Yeah. Brandon, 100%. And for those that are like me, LinkedIn skews more professional. Yeah. Here's where you find the personal stuff on LinkedIn. Ready for a pro tip? Scroll down. Get below their work history. Where did they go to school? Okay. They're an alum of what school? Chances are pretty good they're a fan. Scroll a little further down, it will tell you who they follow. And it's celebrities and famous people and things like that. Pay attention to that. So now you go to the meeting and you find out that somebody is a huge Richard Branson fan.

46:57 And you show up with an autographed copy of a book by Richard Branson. Or maybe more importantly, you don't show up at the assess meeting. That's what you give them when you're all done. And you say, hey, look, now that your house is ready for books again, I thought it might be fun to add this one to the collection. And they're like, oh, I already have this book. And you're like, yeah, I know. But this one is for you. And they open it up. And it says, dear Sally, understand you've been through some tough times. I have too. Oh, man. Keep believing, Sir Richard. Okay, guess what? That's getting posted about on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. And they're telling their friends, cost to you probably $100. Find a way to get an autographed copy, that kind of thing.

47:37 It will move the dial. And also, this is where it gets fun, doesn't it? Yeah. It gets fun to surprise people. And here's the thing. If you're listening and you're the type of business owner, you're like, Joey, what? I'm not a gifts and presents kind of person. On the five love languages, I score zero out of 12 on gifts and presents. I'm a words of affirmation. I'm a physical touch, whatever it may be. Fine. There is someone on your team that is really good at this. There's someone in your office that every time there's a birthday, they're on it. They've got the cake. They've got the balloons. Empower that person to live their best life doing research about your prospects and your existing customers and figuring out ways to love on them, to strategically appreciate the relationship that you have with them.

48:19 Number one, that employee will love you, will double down into the work and will go bonkers. Number two, if you tell that employee, we've only got $25 per person, they'll get creative as can be coming up with amazing ways to do this. And the return on investment you will see from referrals from additional business within your customer base will pay for any of these ideas that I'm going to give you during this conversation. Oh, yeah. Going back to Ritz-Carlton, I mentioned, I think, in our intro, we had this thing, we called it the Ritz card. So we actually imitated Ritz-Carlton's policy when we had a restoration company. And we gave every single employee a company credit card. to be able to create these differentiated moments, like these moments of truth with clients.

49:00 And what we found is it became a real point of pride. The fact that I'm empowered to create these kinds of experiences and use my creativity to enhance that customer experience was a real point of pride. People, you could see it on their face when they did a Ritz, we called it. It was a huge morale driver and culture builder for us too. Chris, I love that. I love that. Because some folks may be hearing this and saying, oh, well, we just need to create a Ritz card experience for our people. Give everybody a company card and have them do it. Don't miss this important part. You can't ask your employees to create a remarkable experience for your customers if they don't know what one is. Oh, man. Yeah. Now, here's... That's a two-day seminar, Joey.

49:43 Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, we could unpack this for hours. But here's the 35,000-foot view. Most of your employees have not lived the same life as the owner or the leader, the CEO, the group head, whatever it may be. They're at a different place in their path, their career, their life experience. So if you want them to wow your customers... at a CEO business owner level wow. You better be wowing them as employees with how you treat them so that they have a context and a framework for what a wow really feels like. Oh, that's huge. That's huge. So essentially what we're talking about here, guys, is building a process that...

50:27 that is integrating these touch points or these phases as critical elements to that process. So we're systemizing our ability to consistently create experiences like this. That's where the proactivity in this comes, right? 100%. People ask me all the time, Brandon, they're like, well, can you really systematize and automate care? Yeah. Yes, you can systematize it. Yes, you can automate it. The question is, how do you define care? Most people are defining care as, well, we sent them the email. No one is laying in bed and waking up this morning going, I hope I get more emails today. Yeah. No one, no one on the planet is hoping for that.

51:08 Even salespeople who are right now going, oh, but Joey, I wish I had some emails and leads coming in. Now, yeah, the right kind of specific email, but not the kind of emails you're normally getting. Yeah. Right? So how are we showing care? What does care mean to our customers as opposed to what care means to us? Sometimes we think, well, care is, I came in and I got all your stuff out of your basement and I cleaned it up and now you can put your stuff back in. No. Care is when the customer comes to you and says, oh my God, I think grandma's lamp was in there. I don't suppose you know which box that's in. Yeah, we do. Because when we found it, we noticed that it was wrapped in bubble wrap and it was up high and it hadn't gotten wet.

51:49 And our thought was, this must be something special. So that's over here in the super special area. Really? Now we're having a different level of conversation. Yeah, yeah. It's the true differentiator. I mean, we talk about this all the time. At the end of the day, we're all using the same kind of equipment. I mean, I don't care if you're leading edge on technology. There's not too much edge to be leading on, specifically in our industry, right? We're buying the same gear. We're following similar processes. We're following IICRC standards. At the end of the day, this... H to H connection that you talk about is the differentiator. This is what's going to make us stand out against our competition. Okay, we got to try to at least get one or two more phases in, my man.

52:30 Okay, admit. What are we doing here? Okay, so admit the first day when they sign the contract, they hand over their hard-earned cash. Here's the thing. They have decided that they're going to work with you. They've decided that they're going to spend money. And some of this may be coming through insurance. So they don't necessarily, it's not actually their money, but it's kind of their money and they're connected to it. There's lots of emotions in play here. What are you doing in the admit phase to let them know that they made the right choice? What are you doing to let them know that they were heard? So for example, if they've told you, hey, somewhere down in there are these three things that are really important to me, but I don't know where they are and I don't know how damaged they are and the water is so high and I'm just sweating it.

53:15 When you sign the agreement, what if the agreement said the top things we should keep our eyes open for and you listed those three things? Instead of giving them the boilerplate contract. And when you sat down to review the contract, you say, hey, by the way, we've listed out these three because we heard you mention those when we were going around talking. We didn't ask you, what are the three most important things that you want us to do so that we could boilerplate fill the contract? No, our people were trained to have their ears up and open at all times, waiting for the golden nuggets that might fall from the sky that they could grab onto to feed back to the customer at a later date to prove that they were listening. We say, here are the three that we heard you mention. Are there any others that we should add to this before you sign it?

53:55 You're not promising that those items are going to be okay. You're promising that these are the things that we really have our eyes open for. And then as you find them, tell them. Don't sit and hold it. As you go in, maybe somebody's in in the first hour and they find grandma's lamp. Pull it out, set it aside, clean it off a little, make it look a little better. Shoot a selfie video. Snap a photo and text it to the owner who's probably not in the house and say, hey, good news, we've been at it for about an hour. We found grandma's lamp. Oh. Oh man, that's such a rad idea. People are going to be like, oh my God, this is blowing my mind. Totally. And I think another place for some of our listeners, just for context, is if you're a fan of and or using this 24-hour job update methodology, where within the first 24 hours in our commercial settings, we need to provide some real specific input and data regarding the scope because there's a lot of decisions that need to be made, financial obligations, things like that.

54:51 And one of the things that we encourage folks to do is really take account these special pieces of conversation during the job walk. I.e., it sounds rudimentary, but access to a specific area. Who is it by name that will have the input in that particular category or item? And essentially what you're doing is you're helping the rest of the team understand, hey, these three, four, or five things that I've highlighted here are critical for us to deliver a customer experiences that matches or exceeds our... our clients' expectations, what we promised during the job walk. So again, it doesn't always have to be on this hearty-feely thing, except for when we deliver what we promise, we are going to impact that emotional connection.

55:33 It's like, oh, a release of anxiety. It's like, oh, finally, somebody did what they told me they were going to do. It's just highlighting these things that are on. scenario. Yeah, I love that example of actually listing in the... We call it a work authorization. Listing in the work authorization, these items of critical importance that came up from the customer. One of the things we coach all of our people to do when they first are on site is ask people, Hey, have you ever been through an experience like this before? Yes. It's a question that we often don't ask, but when we ask it, that's our opportunity to uncover. Have they had a negative experience? Are they afraid of something? Are they especially concerned about some aspect of this that they think is going to come down the pike? And then I love your idea of individualizing that work authorization because it becomes just a process step for a lot of us, right?

56:18 Right. And to customize, so to speak, that work authorization to the top of mind concerns they have in that moment and actually addressing them as part of the scope of work. Hey, I've heard you say, like, we already know what our scope of work is going to be. Like, we're trained. We assess. Exactly. Here's where the water damage is. Here's how the moisture moved. Here's what we do XYZ. But to be able to build into that, the customer's language, hey, I heard that your grandmother's items that were in the attic, that that's the most important thing. And actually listed on papers, they can say, I love that, man. I love it. Let's talk a little bit about the B2B side. Okay? Because what we've been talking about is, okay, well, how will the customer feel? Here's what probably happens more on the B2B side.

56:59 Now, in the interest of full disclosure, you guys jump in and correct me because my experience with this industry sits more on the residential side than the B2B side. Okay? But on the B2B side, When we're putting together a scope of work, when we're sending stuff, often, I imagine, the person that we're sharing this information with is not on site. Sometimes they're on site, but if you're talking like a big hotel group or a big nursing home group, they're not on site. Do most people in the industry send them video walkthroughs or are they still sending paper scope of works? You're seeing a shift. It's starting to shift, right? But it's starting to shift in a way that there's a huge opportunity. A good buddy of mine goes and he gets his car serviced, right?

57:40 He's got a BMW and they're going to do an oil change. He sends me a video that he gets after the change and says, hey, Dan, by the way, we did a 28 point inspection of your car. Here is the video showing what we found. And it's the technician going, okay, so we looked at your tie rods here and these look totally fine. See, what you're going to want to see, it's going to want to come in here. If it was coming in over here, that'd be a problem, but it's not. It's right here. They're educating the customer about their own property as part of the video, which, by the way, increases my confidence in the expertise of the person who's working. working on my car. And it allows me to say, hey, you did things other than the oil change. Because I'm willing to bet that the majority of folks listening, your teams, you've trained them to go above and beyond.

58:22 They do extra things. But do you ever share that with the customer? Do you ever report back? Not in a way of like, look at all the extra stuff we did for you. But hey, while we were in, we noticed this. If the water level would have gotten this high, it would have been a gigantic problem. But because it only got this high and we've checked the whole room, it's going to be okay. You're not going to have this additional problem down the road. Or, hey, here's something we found that you didn't mention, but this seems to indicate that there may have been an issue that's completely separate from everything we're working on. Here's a little video in case you need to share that with your insurance company or your building manager or your lawyer or whoever it is. We just wanted to flag it for you. And if you need us to do extra things with this, let us know.

59:06 Proactively, we're in the industry enough to know that this could be indicative of a bigger problem that is not part of our scope of work. Okay, now you're educating and informing and showing care. I love it. I think one of the things this ties to is, in many cases, the person that you're dealing with, the individual on site, there's an opportunity for us to create a scenario where they look like the hero because they have a chain of command. They have an organizational chart, right? So what are we doing? Like this H2H component is there's a real opportunity in this admit phase to work with that individual to create the stage for, man, their boss thinks this person's the best thing since sliced bread, right? The loyalty from that was powerful.

59:48 And Brandon, you know the best way to do that? Ask them. Ask them. It's a novel concept, okay? So brace yourselves, folks. What you actually do is you say, Hey, we've done about 150 of these projects in the last year. And what we've found is that lots of times, the person who's our point of contact here on site is actually reporting up to someone else. Sometimes that's a CEO. Sometimes that's a venture capital group. We don't know that we're planning someone else. What are the three things that we could provide you that would get you promoted after this scenario? Love it. And the person might say, oh, I don't know, just do your job. Okay, great. But by the way, If you think of anything during this process that we could do, maybe it's sending videos, maybe it's a typed up report.

1:00:30 We're giving you these status reports every three weeks. Maybe you'd like one every week. Maybe that makes the difference for you. If we could put it together into this, if we could keep the total budget under this, whatever it may be, let me know what makes you look like a rock star. When I was running an ad agency, I worked with a lot of chief marketing officers and After we had talked about all the scope of everything we had done, I would turn off the recorder. I would stop. It's just the two of us. I would say, okay, when you think about where you want to be five years from now, do you want to be a CMO of another company or CEO of this company? You don't have to tell me. If you want to tell me, I'm happy to help you with that, but you don't have to tell me. But what would help you get where you need to be in the future as it relates to this project?

1:01:12 Wow. Oh, man, that's powerful. Guys, the stuff that I would get in those conversations was gold. Sometimes people would say, Joey, I just need an advocate in the boardroom who will help me convince these people. I'd say, great. Would it be useful if I came in and did a pitch to the boardroom? Oh, my gosh, yes, that'd be amazing. Great, let me come in and do that. Because lots of times, people in the boardroom, when they hear it from a third-party consultant... are a lot more willing to accept it than hearing it from the employee they have. And the employee would walk out afterwards and they'd be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I've been telling them for years they need to do this. And they just greenlit a million dollar budget for you. I said, yeah. And when this is done, this is your portfolio builder. We're going to create the material so you can take this on job interviews in the future to somebody that will actually appreciate what you did.

1:01:52 We're going to pull testimonials from you, your guidance, your ideas, your creativity, and how it created all of this. And they're like, oh my gosh, guess what happens when they leave and go somewhere else? Who's the first person they're calling to work with? Oh yeah, that'd be me. Because I'm bested in their career and their development. On the B2B side, when you're working with people, figure out how to advance their careers and build that into your project and you will have all the referrals you ever need. Dude, that is a total pro tip. And guys, as a reminder, these three big fat sectors, the senior living, the property management, right? The hospitality, leadership moves around. It moves around. They often don't go out of the industry. They're chain climbing, right? They're moving from shop to shop.

1:02:32 And what a crazy way to advance that book of business by just creating mini superheroes every time you have an engagement with another person. It's just huge, man. Yeah, it is. I want to go back to another thing you said about the G.I. Joe story. When you discovered that there was a G.I. Joe character from Fort Dodge... You made an interesting comment. You said, I moved the needle. And I feel like there's something there that all of us, there's this old Hebrew saying. I saw somebody had a tattoo of it. I kind of latched onto it. It was Yadah, this Hebrew saying of to know and to be known. There's this desire to be heard and recognized that all of us have. We want that we're valuable. That something we said or suggested or offered was valuable.

1:03:15 And what I heard you say is there was that moment that Hasbro created, whether it was intentional or not, where you had a desire, something that you thought would be better for their company, for their product, and they heard you and they did something about it. And just how powerful that was in that moment of, Oh my God, I had an impact. Is that something that we can sow into as a business with our client? Is feeding those moments of you make a difference in our business, we heard you and feeding that stuff back? Does that make sense? Not only does it make sense, I am so appreciative that you called that out, Chris. Here's why. If there's one thing I know to be true of all humans on the planet in 2022 is that we are dying for proof that we matter.

1:04:04 We are dying for proof that we matter at work. We're dying for proof that we matter at home. We're dying for proof that our spouse cares about us and that we contribute positively to them. We're dying for what our significant other cares about us. Then we're contributing them that our children care about us. We're providing to them. Our parents care about us. We're providing to them. Our friends count on us. We're providing to them. Our coworkers count on us. We're providing to them. We are dying for physical proof. So let me give you the $2 solution. that will be a GameStopper artifact for every one of your customers. You've heard of it before, but I'm guessing you might not have thought of it this way. Let me begin by asking a quick question. Everybody is thinking, and we'll have Chris and Brandon play along here, and all of you listening, you play at home too, or in the car, in the gym, wherever you are listening.

1:04:47 In the last year, Brandon and Chris, have you received a handwritten thank you note? We actually just did. We just did. We just did. Okay, great. Perfect. Let's put a pin in that one you just did. Have you received any others that you can think of in the last year, maybe two, maybe three? Not to come to mind. Okay. So what's fascinating for those of you that can't see, Chris and Brandon are kind of shaking their heads no and saying, no, probably not. Some of you listening said yes. Okay. So... That thank you note you received, do you still have it? Guys, do you still have the thank you note? Yes, absolutely. Interesting. So you read the thank you note, you know who it's from, you got the emotional hit, but you kept the thank you note.

1:05:33 Why? Because humans are dying for physical, tangible proof that we matter. The reason we say thank you notes is because it is a reminder that we had such an impact on someone's life that they took the time to put pen to paper, especially if it's a handwritten thank you. Those are the best ones. And write out a thank you and go to the post office and buy a stamp and put it in the envelope and stamp and mail it to us. And it came in the mail and it was something we were excited to get in the mail. It was unexpected to get in the mail. And we opened it up and we read it. We had a feeling and then we thought. I can't throw this away. I want to save this. Now, maybe you thought I can't throw this away because it's like, oh, it's just, you know, I need to recycle it. No, more likely you thought I want to keep this. Even if you never go back and look at it, most humans today have somewhere in their house or in their office, a collection of the thank you notes they've received.

1:06:19 Why? Because it's so rare and it's proof. The fact that you only can remember one in the last four or five years says that this is low hanging fruit for everyone listening. You can write handwritten thank you notes. It will cost you less than $2. And the impact will be significant. That's huge. That's so funny. So shout out, Shirty, Watley. Their team did it. Good for you guys. You know what though? I'm staring at a thank you note from the blue collar. Oh, that's right. We had them on the podcast too. We have it up on our wall actually. Oh, I'm sorry. Chris, it's hanging on the wall. It's on the shelf. It has a place of prominence in your office. It has a place of prominence in your office. Yeah, it does. We almost built a shadow box, Joey, but we thought that was one. There you go. There you go. I love it. Here's the thing.

1:07:00 Whenever I talk about thank you notes, people are like, oh, really, Joey? Thank you. No, it's like, you know, my parents made me write those when I was a kid to my grandma for my birthday. Just stop and think about how you feel when you get a thank you note. And here's the thing. Some people are like, oh, Joey, but what do I write? It's so confusing. What am I going to say? How will it matter? I just get writer's block when it comes time to writing handwritten notes. I'll give you the script, dear blank, and fill in the name of the person. I just wanted to take a few moments to say how much I appreciate our relationship with I love that we get the opportunity to blank and fill in the rest of that sentence with something you do with them. We get the opportunity to help you find grandma's lamp.

1:07:41 We get the opportunity to get you back into your home. We get you the opportunity to get backing up with those four rooms in your hotel, get guests in them again soon. Something that you've actually done with them. You are a delight to work with. We're excited to continue working with you. Thanks for trusting us with something that matters so much to you. It matters to us too. sincerely, your name. That's it. That's it. Take this, transcribe those phrases, boom, use that. And that's all you need to do. You've now got a thank you note that they're going to keep that's going to move the dial. I think it's brilliant too, because I think sometimes with our sales team members, we struggle to connect the dots in terms of what do we do as part of the physical execution or delivery of service?

1:08:29 They almost feel a bit... hamstrung. They've gone out, they've turned over the rocks, right? They've gotten the door open, we've gotten some kind of agreement or relationship established. And then it's like, what do I do now? And these are all great examples of how we can continue to steward the relationship for depth, for consistency, right? Most of the time, our sales staff are the ones that are most likely naturally wired for this. They'll historically lean more into this category, which is great because that's why this is a team sport. And you alluded to this earlier, Joey. It's like, we don't need to force everyone into this new battle rhythm of this is how I conduct myself, although we want to certainly create shifts and changes there.

1:09:14 But it's a team sport. You've got some folks that are just dialed in on the beans and bullets and how to deliver that service. Great. And then we have our sales staff that can remain engaged and steward that relationship from that H2H side, creating some of these experiences and adhering to these eight phases. So just as a reminder for folks, let's divide and conquer. We don't all have to be the same. we have a team for a purpose. Absolutely. Brandon, if I may, two points to that. Number one, yes, I totally agree with you. And make sure that your incentives are aligned with your salespeople for retention, not acquisition. Man, huge. A lot of businesses give lots of bonuses and commissions on the first sale and do nothing for the later sales.

1:09:57 Yeah. Build commission into the lifetime of the relationship. In fact, the best companies I know actually increase the commission rate the more time goes on. Now, some people look at that and they're like, Joe, you mean we're going to make less money on each job in the future? Well, yes, because you're going to be paying out of commission, but you'll be making more because you have none of the startup cost. You have none of the admin running costs. You're already up and running. You know how things work. You've got the system set up for them to pay you, et cetera, et cetera, especially in more of the commercial side of this, right? So it's real easy to get there. Number two, use the whole team, yes, but remember that it is a team sport. And so pay attention to the handoffs. What do I mean by that? You've probably watched the Olympics or watched a track and field race where there's a baton handoff.

1:10:41 And I presume, is it fair to say, guys, what happens if on the baton handoff, they drop the baton and it falls on the grain? Do you guys know what happens to the runners? It's over. You're disqualified. You can't pick it up. You can't pick it up and run again, even though it dropped right next to you and you're right there. The game ends when the baton hits the ground. The same is true for our businesses. When we hand off from sales to the operational people who are going to do the job, if that handoff is not smooth, clean, and effective, the baton falls on the ground, any hope of a deeper, long-lasting future relationship with that customer is gone. It's huge. Gone. You've got to make sure the handoff is smooth. And what do I mean in a sales context, especially in this industry?

1:11:22 I mean, making sure that everything the customer told you mattered to them shows up in the conversation with the operations person. So when the operation person walks in, they say, hey, thanks so much. I know Brandon was in here working with you earlier. My name's Chris. I'm going to be taking care of everything. You know, Brandon told me that there were three key things that you were really focused on, A, B, and C. To make sure you didn't think of anything extra or on the off chance that there's maybe something that wasn't. Is there anything I should be adding to that list before I even step foot in your residence and start? The confidence that is going to give your customer. The things they already said were paid attention to and prioritized is going to be amazing.

1:12:04 It's kind of like the root beer example. When they show up with root beer, it shows me they were listening. They were paying attention. We want to make sure those things happen in the handoff. That's so massive. Wow. We're coming up to the end of part one. And I think everybody listening, including Brandon and I, is just like, okay, really excited about part two already. But Joey, this has been so fun. It's been so fun. And I think there's so much that listeners, including Brandon and I, frankly, can go back and start re-engineering our own customer experience and rethinking it in a fresh new way. And I think everybody's been chomping at the bit for us to dive into more. So we covered Affirm today. Next time, we'll get into Activate.

1:12:45 What do we do to energize the relationship? What are some creative ideas and so forth? We're going to dive into that more in our next go around with you, Joey. But holy cow. Yeah. So I want to point people towards some direction here because if we wait till October to talk to you again, there's some ground that people will lose. So obviously, the book that a lot of this conversation is based on is Never Lose a Customer Again. It's massively valuable. The book in general is just packed. And then we can send folks to your website, which is what? JoeyColeman.com. So that's J-O-E-Y, like a baby kangaroo or a five-year-old you know, Joey. Joey. Coleman, C-O-L-E-M-A-N, like the camping equipment, but no relation.

1:13:27 JoeyColeman.com. You can learn more about the book. You can see some videos. There's going to be new content there in the coming weeks. It'll be fun and speak to a lot of these things. So absolutely would love to have folks check that out. And the book is available anywhere that you might find a book. As we said earlier, there's an audiobook that I narrate. There's the ebook. There's the physical book. And since you're podcast fans and listeners, I have a podcast as well. It's called The Experience This Show. It's called The Experience This Show. It's all about customer and employee experience. It's little doses of delight. We talk about the positives. We are just getting ready to start recording for our 10th season. So there's a lot of content for you to catch up on if you want. And they're short episodes, like 30 minutes episodes with 10-minute segments, three 10-minute segments.

1:14:09 So if you've got a short commute or you've got a short workout and you want a little boost of customer experience delight, check out the experience this show. Oh man, that is so rad. And also the 8 phases of Customer Lifecycle. You have a worksheet that's available at your website for free as well. We literally are using it as we're going through this conversation. It is totally... I mean, just download it and start getting to work. It's super powerful. Man, you are a busy man and we value your time and your insights, your wisdom. Dude, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Oh, thank you, Brandon and Chris. So appreciated being on the show. And thanks to everybody who was kind enough to listen. I sense this one may have run a little bit longer than some of the episodes.

1:14:51 So I appreciate you putting in the effort and listening. Hopefully you got some things that you can go implement in your business starting today. Right on. Thanks again, man. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.