Joe Troyer 0:28
Listening to a podcast this morning. And the guy was talking about how they took their churn rate every month on their subscription from like, you know, 18% to 3% a month. And he said, basically, one of the big things was that was the thank you, and was kind of the check ins and personalizing those check ins so that they didn't feel automated. And I definitely think, David, that this could be a great strategy to help people with churn and to, you know, help people know that you're thinking of them, and that you care about their account and your relationship, no matter what kind of business you're in.
David Wachs 1:03
Yeah, yeah. You know, we have clients, just to give you a few examples. One is a piano tuner. I love this example, because he's only in your house once a month, once a year, you don't your piano stays tuned for a year. So it goes in your house tunes your piano. A year later, when he sends you a handwritten note, automatically after tuning your piano. He's set up with his calendaring system to do that, a year later, when he returns to your house, that handwritten note is still sitting on the piano.
David Wachs 1:31
So not only is it open, not only is it read, but it is put on display in what when I was growing up as a kid, my parents called the fancy room, you know, the room that you're not allowed to eat in, and maybe there's plastic on the couch or whatever. But it's the fanciest room in the house, you know, their most prized room. And then the note is on your most prized possession in that price room for a year. And every time you go and use your lovely piano, you see that note and think, gee, this guy was really nice to send me that note, I mean, think about the brand, the impression value of that it's huge. And a lot of people say,
David Wachs 2:05
Well, what are you do with your thank you notes? Or, you know, why do you send thank you notes. And I say it's a full stop. Thank you. That's a term I want to coin because everybody's looking for ROI, right ROI, ROI. Well, thank you notes should just be Thank you. And you'll get the ROI later. And if you're asking for ROI, you're kind of asking the wrong question. That said, the ROI is there. Such as with the piano tuner, we have, we work with an online furniture brand that's chips you furniture to put together. They have people calling into their customer support crying because they received a handwritten note. I think a lot of that has to do with COVID, and the impact of loneliness, of isolation and loneliness.
David Wachs 2:49
But I don't think you can under understate the vowel overstate the value of a handwritten note, it just has so much impact these days, and really sets you apart from the 140 emails, the average person receives a day in an office and they spend, you know, 24% of their time just managing their email, you know, sending a handwritten note avoids all that and really gets to their heart. Yeah,
Joe Troyer 3:12
I love that. I mean, think about an easy way to stand out, right? Standing out should get you an ROI, in my point of view, and then like long term, you're right, like the piano tuner if just once a year he sent a follow up card have heard yet. It's about time to get your piano tuned again. I mean, how could you not get an ROI on that? $3.75 cent mailpiece?
David Wachs 3:34
Exactly. Yeah. And you know, people spend, you know, what's your cost per client acquisition? If we're if we're talking digital, you know, everybody only talks digitally these days. So what's your what's your cost per acquisition, you know, it's the cost per click, plus the, you know, the conversion rate per click gets you times the conversion rate per click or whatever it gets you your cost per acquisition, while isn't a cheaper to retain, retain your existing clients. And I guarantee you $3.25 is way less than a cost per acquisition. So I mean, we have automotive dealers that used to send out printed letters, and then switched to handwritten letters. And those handwritten letters generated 20 or generate 23 times the response rate as printed letters 23 times
Joe Troyer 4:24
now 100% agree. I think a lot of a lot of agencies a lot of businesses that tone deaf in the marketplace, though, right? It's super sophisticated, and they're leading with a message that's very elementary, and then they're wondering why, you know, the marketing message didn't work on it work two or three years ago. So love that. Tell us more about kind of this relationship based prospecting, I think is what you call it, right?
Dan Englander 4:46
Yeah, yeah. Relationship sales and scale is the way what we're trying to trademark right now we're in the process of and, and basically, it's it's the idea that it's like okay, the goal is to just direct that first conversation, you know, by any means necessary. Um, you know, get on the same page about who we're going after and do this that first first conversation. So then the question becomes, how do you do that best.
Dan Englander 5:06
And what I think a lot of people are doing is sending people information, send in case studies and that kind of thing, which we doesn't really work so well anymore, or they're doing kind of this, like uncompelled personalization, right? Where it's like I saw you tweeted this, I read in the news, you're doing that. And we, you know, if you think about it, that doesn't really, that's not really emotional. It's not it's easy to ignore that, that kind of email. So, so our hypothesis, and what what we've experienced as well is that, you know, relationships are really kind of this timeless thing, for better or worse. There's a lot of like, positive and negative connotations to this idea of tribe, but it is really compelling.
Dan Englander 5:42
And it makes that outreach way harder to ignore, and you're not trying to get everybody to say Yes, right away, but a much higher percentage, will it even the people that aren't ready to talk are gonna have trouble ignoring an email that indicates that you're within their circles right within your certain circles of influence. So that's what that kind of does to get more academic, and then I'll actually get to how well we're doing tangibly.
Dan Englander 6:03
There's this idea of Dunbar's number, right, which is like, we have these circles of influence, we have our family or friends, five people. And then it tends to go out by thirds pass there and Dunbar's number itself is about 150 acquaintances. So our whole feeling is that well, what if it keeps going out by thirds? What if there's another, you know, several 100 people that don't know you, but will be willing to talk to you because of a strong personal and or business commonality you have with them? So, for example, a very common campaign that we do for clients is we say, Okay, we're going after this list of whatever 1000s of specific companies that you really want to do business with your dream accounts.
Dan Englander 6:41
You have this great Rolodex over here, because you've been building up your business from referrals. Well, what about everyone they know, you know, the knows somebody within these accounts. So the problem is, up until now, we've all just kind of had to happen into those referrals sporadically. But there's, there's technology and tools to actually like go after them more deliberately. So one thing we do is we say, okay, export your contacts tell us everyone you'd feel comfortable connecting with, you know, already in order to get introduced.
Dan Englander 7:08
And for some people, it's 20 people, for others, it's hundreds, whatever, people that you actually know, not like your fake connections on LinkedIn you've never met or whatever, we all have those right. From there, what we're able to do is map those peoples connections into those senior roles and those ideal accounts. And then we do a campaign that might last a few weeks that says, Hey, Bob, hope you've been well, I noticed you're connected to these, like specific people. Can we get on the phone real quick? I was wondering if you might help me out. I'm working on some some business development initiatives here.
Dan Englander 7:37
And you know, not everybody says yes, but a very high percentage, maybe like 20 to 50%. Well, so yeah, I can help you out if you're specific enough about it. So it does take some work, it does take some hustle, but it's a much more deliberate way to get to get introduced and just you come in with a very high degree of trust at that point. So it's one of the best things we know. So that's an example of, of one thing we're up to.
Joe Troyer 7:57
That's beautiful. I love it, you know, coming in as a referral, and almost kind of a programmatic referral kind of approach is brilliant. I love that almost coming in on their endorsement.
Dan Englander 8:08
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And just doing it, you know, just doing it more deliberately. So what what we love about it is like, and we were part of the problem, so I'll take some, some ownership, you know, how many times have you heard, like, referrals don't work, you know, referrals aren't enough. And they're not enough alone, if you're just sort of sort of being in reactive mode about them. But at the same time, you know, there's this sort of like old school meets new new school, they know timeless stuff with the new stuff that I think is really, really cool about this approach. Yeah.
Joe Troyer 8:33
That's really interesting. Yeah, we, we have a marketing campaign that we've helped a lot of agencies from that's really similar, that I think you might like or get value from, or might have another idea from or say, Yeah, we do something similar. We, you know, let's say that we're working with a marketing agency that works with let's say, AC repair companies, right, we call up the supplier, right, and we ask them for referrals, right?
Joe Troyer 8:58
And we just say, we know you're not in the business of doing AC repair. But we really need to find two or three contractors in this area that can take care of customers, you know, yada, yada, and we just need somebody that we can trust and that we can count on who would you recommend? So we can cold call, get that? Get that person on the phone, get three or four referrals? And like nine times out of 10 with that person's information, get through the gatekeeper and book an appointment? Yeah, so I can see how this would work really, really well.
Dan Englander 9:30
Yeah, no, that's really cool. I love that approach. Because it's just like, it's so much leverage and so much bang for your buck. Because you're getting, you know, potentially referred to multiple people, and then you have this like, greater degree of trust. That's gonna put you further ahead, you know, and the other thing that I think is, like, less spoken about an approach like this, is this isn't like something that's just going to go out of style tomorrow, right? Like, we've all seen this sort of arms race of sales tactics, where it's like, the AI or the sort of like, I'm going to point to Some little publicly available detail on your site and reference it, but it's like, you know, then 500 people do it and sort of falls apart. But your relationships are something that, you know, is going to is going to continue to work. I think so.
Joe Troyer 10:11
Yeah, I love it. Like the, the method that we gave is kind of a cop out because the relationships aren't real, right? They're very surface level. Right? But but that works. So well. I can't imagine how well, like real relationships would work. Right? Like, it seems like that would be quite an amazing door opener. And this other campaign already works well for us. So yeah, in the, you know, the digital marketing world for 10 plus years, you start investing in coaching and outside help and masterminds and self help. And you have this kind of defining moment, and things take off.
Joe Troyer 10:46
You know, I love to say, like, you know, as as entrepreneurs, but as anybody, like, we don't know what we don't know, right, and like when we can get around people that have been there that have done that, that have hit the levels that we want to hit have done the things that we want to do, all of a sudden, we gain clarity on what it is that we don't know. And even if we don't understand the whole thing, we can then start to do research and to figure it out. But we have these aha moments. So I'm curious, like, what were one of those or two of those aha moments, those defining moments where you went from being in this business, you know, doing six figures to boom, like inside was 16 months, you guys go to seven figures? Like, that's crazy. So like, I, I know, my audience will kill me if I don't get this right. Like, dig into that? What was awesome
Azhar Siddiqui 11:32
question? That's an awesome question. And it's really hard to define that. But sometimes, like, especially, you know, I'm really blessed into the journey that we're going through right now. And for this to have happened, I can definitely go back and find that identify that aha moment for you. And this goes back to, you know, 8020, where, you know, what are the 20% of the things that you're doing that are getting the most results?
Azhar Siddiqui 12:01
And I would have to say that, you know, during the, just to get the ball rolling for rep stack, we signed our joint venture. And that's when how repsect got started. So you know, Michael, George Nelson is always saying that you're just one joint venture away from a seven figure agency. And and he's really true to that, because, and we're a testament to that, because it happened to us, we had our first client that turned into the first joint venture, and our second client turned into the second joint venture. So we had to write from right off the gates. And that got us the momentum. And, and yeah, that was a defining moment, man, that force and that force, VA, we call our virtual associates and not assistants, that still, he's still employed with our first client. And he's gone from an appointment setter, to a sales executive right now closing five figure deals on a daily basis for the client.
Joe Troyer 13:01
Yeah, man, that's frickin awesome. So I'm really curious, like, Did you set out with like, this grand vision, right? Like, these, we're gonna get them, they're gonna be the perfect clients, they're gonna be the perfect jayvees. And there's, they're just gonna blow this thing up, or like, did it happen?
Azhar Siddiqui 13:19
No. So in a funny thing is about vision. You know, I think as a lot of us entrepreneurs, we are dreamers. And we like to have these big, lofty goals. And that's amazing man, I identify with so many people like you, Joe, who are good, a great visionary thinkers, and who do these amazing things just by thinking about a future and then making that happen. And that's part of our jobs, as well as company leaders. But when it comes down to just start doing, and learning that first client, you don't have to be so strict about that particular vision, man, you just need to get that client.
Azhar Siddiqui 13:56
And, you know, and trust me, like we've gone through clients where we've, you know, broken, our entire systems bend over backwards to get these people in. And turns out that we don't even want to work in that particular space, let alone with that particular client, right? So it's going to happen especially early on, but that shouldn't stop us from taking imperfect moves, right? So get going close that first deal. You know, even if it's project work right now, get it done, close it, get the revenue in the door, and as you start getting the revenue, and you'll figure out how to streamline the service offering that you're going out to market with
Joe Troyer 14:36
100% 100% Man, so you said a couple things there that I think are really cool. And I really agree with I mean, I think you're right, you know, the having a conversation with a client, you know, a month after you you start working with them and like they're like, where are the leads?
Joe Troyer 14:53
Where's the return on investment? Show me the money it's like, man, like we just got started right? You know if it can and it can put you on the wrong foot, right starting that relationship with a client, right, and, you know, can put you in kind of an adversarial position. So I like what you said, like, if we get started with reps, I'm not in that position, right? When I sell reputation to start, I'm building the relationship, I'm getting them more reviews, I'm reporting on things that are easy for me to deliver, and they are going to get more results with it. I'm sure for you as well. You know, at that point, it's really easy to pinpoint. Who are the great clients gonna be? And who are the problem clients can be? Oh, I love that.
Anthony Devine 15:41
Yeah, I was just thinking about, just to give you an example, I have a Indianapolis personal injury law firm, came a client about probably about four months ago. And they were interested in all sorts of things SEO and all this other stuff, lead generation, we have some automated lead systems that we have. And I suggested, hey, let's, you know, your reviews they had I think at the time, they had a five star rating, but they had four Google reviews had been in business for about 10 or 12 years, something like that. And I said, Hey, you know, we can do all that stuff.
Anthony Devine 16:18
But you're not going to be happy with the results. Even if I get you ranked number one. And at the time, I think we I looked at two keywords just to give an example where their rankings are. So I had an idea. And one was like Indianapolis car accident attorney, they were like ranked 100 in the hundreds and 50s. And then Personal Injury Lawyer Indianapolis where the case may be there were like around I think around 80 or 90. And so within the first month, we got them about 60 or so, new five star Google reviews. So they went from five to 65. In what was interesting, within two months, without doing any SEO, there were in the top 20 for both those keywords. And that just shows you how important that is.
Anthony Devine 17:00
And so guess what the guests know, like, and then trust me, from the perspective, I said, What I you know, what I told him, I would do up front, we did, and it's easy to do with reviews, especially when you use automated systems. Now they know like, and trust me, and now those other services, hey, this is what I think we should do next. And they're like, you know, send me the invoice. It was just there was no question about it. Now, if I would have went back four months ago and said,
Anthony Devine 17:24
Hey, let's do all the other stuff, even though they're excited about doing all those other things. I don't know if I would have gotten the sale, if I didn't start out and really put their best interests first. And that's key. And reputation makes it easy. Because that's, that's really I tell them it's one of their most valuable assets at a law firm or any business can have its the reputation might be intangible or tangible Have you want to you can see them but could be considered an intangible asset, have to ask a CPA, but nonetheless, that is so critical to have that reputation.
Anthony Devine 17:59
Because that's what your potential clients, patients and customers, they're relying on that almost all the time when they're making a decision. We're all too busy, people are impatient, they want to get faster results, you know, in terms of who they want to pick up the phone and call in, you know, alleviate their concern their problem, whatever the case may be.
Joe Troyer 18:22
You said that math, you think reviews or reputation is maybe the second highest ranking factor. I agree. But I actually think it's the number one ranking factor. And whether it's reviews or directly like the number of reviews, right, whether that's the ranking factor, I won't argue or whether it's the click through rate kind of manipulation that happens because of the number of reviews.
Joe Troyer 18:45
And what I mean by that is, you have so many reviews, you stand out, people are looking for the best, they're scrolling through the results, and they look at you and they're like crap, man, I got to work with that guy. And they click through, right, because they're not finding what they want. I've helped a few people, including my father's company, he actually just sold his roofing company. And they're dominant, like they have like five times more reviews than anybody in their market. And guess what they rank organically. We've like basically never done SEO effort for them, right?
Joe Troyer 19:17
They've probably committed like the top cardinal sins when it comes to SEO to they changed their website. So many times changed all the redirects their title tags, like having, like they've made a lot of mistakes, right, and still consists consistently rank in the three pack for most of their keywords without doing any SEO. And the only thing I can say is like it's just the reviews, it's that, you know, whether it's the clicks, the click through rate kind of magic that's happening, because because of that, or whether it's the actual review count, I don't know, but I can see the effect.
Anthony Devine 19:50
It does really make sense. So if you really think about it from a common sense perspective, because who's better to tell you is Google better tell you because somebody manipulated Through SEO to get ranked or, you know what actual customers have said about a business, you know, especially when you have five times as many others, I think hands down, that's the most important factor. And perhaps you're right. Yeah, I think I had read, I can't remember his bright local or somebody says second biggest factor behind I'm thinking of they had to Google business profiles number one, and but that's, again, everybody's opinion.
Anthony Devine 20:29
Nobody knows for sure. And you probably are right just for myself from the My Indianapolis personal injury law firm client, how I saw just you know, by us getting a batch of reviews and continuing now to do continue to grow their Google review profile for them, I expect it to go up and maybe Hey, we don't have to do any SEO, so I may end up losing some money on that ground. That's okay. We were doing some other things for him to complain
