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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill talks about his experience watching recent pharmaceutical commercials, we come up with a great idea to prove that fishing lures actually work, and we talk about the mission-critical idea of customer experience.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, your home for weekly tips, strategies, and a little bit of entertainment.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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I m Brian Neal.
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And we are happy to be with you today.
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By the way, if you haven t told a friend yet, we just got a nice note from Angela, who we took her question here a couple of weeks ago.
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And she sent us a note that said, thanks so much.
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You really enjoyed the answer that we did on the air.
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And she sent a text to all of her friends saying, hey, look at me.
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Isn t that nice?
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Yeah, it s very nice.
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So she was really happy about that.
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And we love it when you tell your friends, your neighbors, your colleagues.
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You can either do it through LinkedIn.
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You can share some of our episodes on our Facebook channel.
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And if you haven t done that yet, just go to Advanced Selling Podcasts on Facebook.
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There s a group there.
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The fan page I mean and just like that and we ll make sure that you can share that with others So that s how we grow it.
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We ve grown it over the last 10 years to Lots of people listen every week and it wouldn t have happened without you guys.
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No, yeah Thousands tens of thousands of people really listen every week and it s a great thing.
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We ve not we ve never promoted the podcast
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We ve never bought an ad.
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We ve never gone out and advertised it.
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I ve always thought about maybe doing one of those airplane things that flies around a stadium with a tail dragging thing.
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I bet that would be effective.
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Like advancedsellingpodcast.com, probably pick up 15, 20 listeners per.
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What do you think?
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Or over Daytona Beach, Florida, once it gets cleaned up.
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Or sky writing.
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You know the sky writers?
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That s right.
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ASB.
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What s he spelled?
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ASB?
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ASP?
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What is ASP?
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You can find out more about us at advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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And by the way, as Brian always says, we always say we re on the road.
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This time of year falls a great time for sales retreats and sales meetings.
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And we re booking events right now from October through probably March of next year.
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Also, the first of the year is also a good time.
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So if you want to get the ball rolling there,
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Send us a note at listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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Let us know a little bit about you, what you re trying to accomplish.
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You can either bring Brian and I in or Brian or I in.
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Depending upon our schedules, we ll decide what works for you.
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I m on the road this week.
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Are you?
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Chicago Tuesday, Wednesday, Des Moines, Iowa.
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Thursday.
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Oh, yeah.
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Des Moines, Iowa.
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Yeah, yeah, Des Moines.
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Going to speak to a group of what they call Best Places to Work, Best Places to Work group there in Des Moines.
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So we d love to come visit.
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We like to go out and give speeches and talks and hang out with our people live.
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You know, one thing that I ve noticed, and I know that you re an observer of marketing and advertising, and I think I ve mentioned on this before, but maybe not this angle, is you ever listen to the pharmaceutical ads?
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Yes.
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Usually, it must be a 5 to 7 o clock window where people in the afternoon, people who are in need of pharmaceuticals watch TV because that s one that seems like they all are.
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It s the nightly news, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.
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Isn t it?
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That s right.
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It is.
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It is.
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That s the wheelhouse when all the people, they re done with dinner, right?
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That s right.
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They went to dinner at 4.30.
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They re back now.
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And I always like it when the disclaimer
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actually warns against the very thing that the medicine is supposed to be protecting.
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So I heard one the other day, it was called Trin- Trintilex or Trintiles or something, and it s an antidepressant.
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And of course, what was the number one side effect of this drug?
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It may cause depression.
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It s like, why did it say that?
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What you re doing is you re playing the numbers.
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You re playing the parlay here in football terms.
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You re saying, well, are my odds better of curing depression?
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Are my odds better of getting more?
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And we ll just have to play the numbers.
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Really smart people, these pharma people, and they know their businesses and the numbers.
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But I m so interested when I see the ad that says, if you have left-toe recessed gout in your left toe, you may be a candidate for da-da-da-da-da.
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I m thinking, how many people have this that are watching Wheel of Fortune right now?
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Because there s 40 million people watching it, and they just need eight people that have this left-toe gout or whatever.
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40 million?
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I don t know, maybe.
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That s bigger than I thought.
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I wonder.
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Doug Drozd, in fact, checked me on the weekly viewership of Wheel of Fortune and told me exactly how many viewers.
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I bet Doug will come up with a number.
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Wheel of Fortune viewers?
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40 million.
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I bet it s closer to a million and a half.
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A week?
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Oh, a week?
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I was thinking a week.
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Oh, every week.
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OK.
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I bet it s a million and a half a night.
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An episode?
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Yeah.
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We re catching up.
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I don t know.
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Maybe I m way off.
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We should see how many we measure downloads per episode or downloads per week.
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What TV shows we outperform.
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That would be a fun little thing to do.
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There s some cable shows.
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There s some cable shows that we outperform.
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That s great.
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As our listeners know, and if you re a new listener, you may not know this, Bill and I are junkies for efficiency.
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We don t like to waste time.
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We don t like to spend time doing tedious tasks that other people could do.
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That s why our friends at stamps.com are our
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OK, topic today.
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I am always interested in how people come to Brian and I. We have our own separate consulting and training coaching businesses.
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And they come to us, and typically what they want is more sales.
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They want more at-bats, more opportunities, more prospects.
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And so lead generation enters into it, closing, managing the sales process, et cetera.
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What typically does not
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come into it, although at some point it does, is this idea of referrals, A. And B, how do we grow from the inside out?
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So if we ve got 100 clients doing $10 million a year, and yet those 100 clients could be doubling their purchases from us, we could get to $20 million without generating another new client.
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But how do we set it up so that we generate more business from our current client base?
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That s where companies fall down.
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They fall down huge, big time.
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And they fall down both on the referral side.
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So where do these things map back to?
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Well, they both map back to, has your customer, has your client, however you refer to them, have they had a really good experience with you during the sales process, and more importantly, after, during the onboarding process, or after they ve committed to buy, so that they can t wait to give you referrals and can t wait to buy more?
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Yeah, if you re not paying attention to customer experience all the way through the sales process, you re going to be left behind, is my opinion.
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I m really, really bullish on this idea.
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And we re not taught it.
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No one really thinks about it intentionally.
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I think some companies are starting to.
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I know some companies are starting to.
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But I think most of the people listening to this show probably aren t tuned into that.
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No.
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idea.
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And what they are especially not tuned into is what you said, Bill, is what it what it can do for them from a feeding standpoint, that if we create wonderful customer experience, people will go out of their way to tell people right now, they ll show you got to talk to these people are great.
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So really important topic here today.
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So we also know that
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Our listeners are probably 70% of our listeners are sales professionals, and 30-ish percent are senior execs, either sales leaders, VP of sales, or CEOs.
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So I don t know what the exact breakdown is, about 70-30.
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This is for everybody listening, but it s especially for the 30% or the highly ambitious 70% who say, you know what?
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I need to do something.
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I cannot wait for my company to do something.
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I ve got to do something.
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And so the point today is that Brian and I are going to give you a handful of ideas on ways that you can start to improve the customer experience beyond what it is now.
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And maybe you feel like you already do good things now.
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That s good.
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But there might be some ways to improve it.
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Absolutely.
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One thing you can do, and I mentioned this to Brian before we started, is if you re in sales, go to your leader or go to the marketing team and say, what is our budget for customer experience?
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I mean, who oversees that budget?
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How much is it?
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We all will know the budget of what it costs to acquire a client.
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Yes.
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So what does it cost us to keep and grow that client and grow it into referrals?
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I bet nobody will have much of an answer for you.
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I bet no one will have an answer and they also won t know who to ask.
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to get the answer.
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They ll say, customer experience budget.
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Who would I ask about that?
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You don t know.
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And they re going to think, well, is that marketing?
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Is that ops?
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The answer is yes and yes.
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It s everybody.
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It should be everybody should be involved in this process.
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So each of us have three things that we re going to share.
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And Brian, I will give you the honors.
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Oh, I can go first?
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Yeah, you had a better score on the last hole.
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I did.
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So you had a three.
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I had a four.
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I don t play golf.
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On a par five.
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All right.
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So go ahead.
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Yeah.
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So the first thing is, it s really just a mental shift.
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And to understand.
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Don t sell yourself short about that I don t play golf thing.
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Don t sell you.
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You re being very modest, my friend.
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Every seven years, Bill and I, we re like the locusts this 17 year.
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Every seven years, Bill and I go and play in a golf outing together.
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And then I leave my clubs in his car and never see him again.
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It s a great cycle we have.
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This is a mental shift.
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Everybody, you included, have to see the whole thing as an experience, and you have to evaluate every interaction to that degree.
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You have to evaluate every interaction you have with a customer all the way through the sales process, including the post-sale process, as contributing or detracting from customer experience.
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Does it add to or does
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attract from.
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And I m talking about all your emails, all your follow-up phone calls, your closing, the handoff from you to the account team or the customer success team or whatever that looks like in your business.
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All of it adds to customer experience.
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You ve got to evaluate the whole thing.
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So what you re saying there is that I need to write or map out what are all of those touch points and make sure that I m
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I m living up to what I want the customer to experience.
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We often send sales emails with the intention to move the sales process forward.
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So we said we send the sales email.
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Did it get a response?
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And did the response, was it favorable to move us through the sales process?
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That s one way to look at it.
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The other way to look at it was,
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Did I send eight emails that didn t get a response?
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And what was that experience like for the other person?
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Is eight too many?
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Was the content of those things not valuable to them?
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You talk a lot.
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We both talk a lot about value in the sales process.
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That s something that creates experience.
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Like, gosh, not only did we end up going with them and buying from them, but, man, we learned so much along the way about our own business.
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It was wonderful.
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Something like that.
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That s good.
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Here s one, and this is after the sale.
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So this, Brian started a little bit during the sale.
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I m going to go after the sale.
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And the question is, do you have any kind of an onboarding map?
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And an onboarding map is very simply when the customer says yes, or you get the order, or whatever that transaction looks like, what happens then?
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And you should have, I think, and of course every business is different, but you should have a 60 to 90 day onboarding map
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Because that s the time in the process where I think everybody s the most vulnerable.
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Obviously, clients we re talking about here.
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They re the most vulnerable because they just made a decision.
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They re probably excited.
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How many times have you made a decision, and it s been a gut-wrenching, heart-wrenching decision, and you make it, and you re excited.
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And then a month later, you re not quite as excited.
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And then three months later, you re like, I don t know if I made the right decision.
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Happens all the time.
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It s called buyer s remorse.
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Well, the seller can stop that from happening by having a mapped 90-day onboarding plan.
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Not every day that you re going to send something, but maybe once a week.
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You just think through what are the different areas and kind of taking Brian s idea here is just map out what are all the elements of that.
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So the first step is maybe thanking them for supporting you.
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Second element is,
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Maybe it s you sending them a list of the people who they re going to be in contact with.
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Maybe it s a meeting schedule where you lay out the first 60 days of meetings.
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Maybe it s a bouquet of flowers.
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I mean, it could be something emotional.
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It doesn t have to always be business-y.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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And that map is mission critical.
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And you have to involve other people in your company, too, as a sales.
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The other teams, other people have to be involved in that process.
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But you ve got to do that.
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It s mandatory.
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OK, next one.
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This is going to sound to you like, what does he mean?
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I said Amazonize it.
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You have to Amazonize the onboarding process and the customer experience post-sale.
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So when you think about Amazon these days, if you re an Amazon Prime member, which I am, a lot of people are, $99 a year.
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And I press a button for anything that I want.
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So I go look for a fishing lure, and I find it.
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It s $4.
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And it s Amazon Prime.
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I press the button, and that s all I do.
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Then you know the new thing that Amazon does?
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They actually, after they deliver it, they take a picture of it sitting on your front doorstep to show you that it s there.
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Oh, I didn t know that.
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They just started that.
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Isn t that an interesting thing?
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More experience.
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And we just did it over the weekend, and we got our first picture.
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I m like, look at that.
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Isn t that cool?
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And I m like, how is that any different?
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But it is.
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You took the picture?
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No, they took the picture.
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You can see the picture.
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Is it a picture of the box?
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Of the box sitting on your front doorstep.
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Or in the mouth of a fish?
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Yeah, that would be even better, wouldn t it?
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It works!
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Yeah.
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We went out in your pond out back, and we took an eight-pound bass and strapped it to this lure just to show you this was a good purchase here, man.
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No, that was a great day.
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That is going above and beyond.
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That is going above and beyond.
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Someday, you can do that.
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I got the UPS guy sitting on my dock out back, like, what are you doing?
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I m trying to test your lure here, man.
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But that, so think about everything with Amazon.
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Another example when I m teaching customer experience is Uber.
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Think about how simple it is, how great the experience is.
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And all of that should be compared to what yours is like, how Amazon-ish is yours.
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I ve got a couple of clients who are working on this.
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And when you go through their onboarding process, it is an absolute train wreck with the number of, they send a list over like, hey, I m going to be your account manager.
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So I need the following things.
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And they give a list of like 40 things to fill out.
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do here and go there.
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Are you kidding me?
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Amazon doesn t do that.
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You press one button.
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So Amazon does it.
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That s what happens.
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That s a great example of, we think we re doing the right thing because you do need that stuff.
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Yes.
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But the question is, are we doing it in the right way?
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Yes.
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Oh, that s so true.
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There has to be a better way.
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You just have to continue to Amazonize it.
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When you get it down to Prime, you got it.
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Amazon didn t start with Prime either.
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They got there over time.
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So you can get there over time, but that s your goal.
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One touch.
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You re onboarded.
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Just go ahead and press this button.
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Everything will work for you.
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Boom.
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Okay, my second thing is some type of a 90-day survey, assessment, check-in.
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You re going to have to make this work for your business, but if you sell hundreds of things every 90 days, then you re probably not going to be able to show up and do a check-in or assessment.
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But if you have a limited, you know, your ticket price is high, your fee is high, and you re working with people on an ongoing basis, just do a check-in call.
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after 90 days and take them through a rigorous five to 10 question survey.
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What worked?
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What didn t?
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How would you recommend we improve the process?
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What surprised you about how easy the process was?
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What surprised you about how difficult it was?
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You start to get that kind of information from a dozen or so clients.
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SPEAKER_00
It doesn t take a thousand, it takes a dozen.
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SPEAKER_00
And now you, as a sales professional or sales leader, start to own that.
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SPEAKER_00
And now you can go back to your team and say, look, you know what?
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SPEAKER_00
Over 80% of the time when we send that thing out where we ask for 1,900 items, people are pissed about that.
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SPEAKER_00
And so now you ve got data and you can go in and make things happen.
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SPEAKER_00
If it s just your opinion, hey, you know what?
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I don t think people like that.
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SPEAKER_00
It ain t going to change.
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SPEAKER_00
So it s your chance to, A, find out what is missing and fix it, and B, start to assemble some data.
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SPEAKER_00
That s brilliant.
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SPEAKER_00
Everybody, this podcast is so valuable.
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SPEAKER_01
It just is.
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SPEAKER_01
If you do what Bill s talking about, you re going to find out things that no one in your company knew.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re like, like you said, everybody hates the checklist page or whatever, that they have to fill out this form.
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SPEAKER_01
And you re like, really?
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SPEAKER_01
They hate that?
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Like, yeah, everyone complains.
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80% of people.
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SPEAKER_00
But that took us a long time to do.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, we need that data.
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SPEAKER_01
I m like, well, we ve got to find a different way to do it, because 80% of the people hate doing it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because it s always about us, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
It s really, really, really good.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
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SPEAKER_00
Now, who d you ask, Brian?
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SPEAKER_00
We need that data.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, you asked John.
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SPEAKER_00
People say that.
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SPEAKER_01
John doesn t like anything we do.
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SPEAKER_01
We need that data.
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SPEAKER_01
I love when that s the answer.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, we need that data.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, OK.
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SPEAKER_01
OK.
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SPEAKER_01
Last, I m reading my things here.
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They seem kind of vague, and I tried to make them tactical for you.
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SPEAKER_01
The next one says unsolicited love.
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I want to find any way I can across the experience to show my client unsolicited love.
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Sometimes the mistake that we make, so we grew up in the 80s, everyone s like, the customer s always right.
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SPEAKER_01
Whatever they ask for, they get, that sort of stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
Now we have to go past that, and we have to show them things that they didn t ask for.
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SPEAKER_01
And we have to give it to them.
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SPEAKER_01
And so we have to pay close attention to anything like that, whether it s something that they said that they enjoy doing, enjoy reading, something they re interested in.
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SPEAKER_01
I m not talking about if someone says they re interested in golf, you send them some golf balls.
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SPEAKER_01
That s OK.
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SPEAKER_01
This should have to do with the solution that you re selling, specifically to say, hey, I took the liberty to put together.
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SPEAKER_01
We ve got a user guide that we deliver, and it s good.
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SPEAKER_01
Because what you told me about your team, I took the liberty to put one together to customize just for you that s a one-pager.
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SPEAKER_01
And I laminated them, and I sent them over so your people can actually carry them around and have them on their phones.
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SPEAKER_01
Hope you don t mind.
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SPEAKER_01
It s that sort of thing.
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SPEAKER_00
That s exactly right.
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SPEAKER_01
Unsolicited love.
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SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
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SPEAKER_00
That s exactly right.
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SPEAKER_01
Thank you for taking the time to do that.
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SPEAKER_01
Even if they don t use them, the fact that you took the time to think and do it on their behalf, to me, enhances the experience.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
That s a good one.
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SPEAKER_00
That s an example, though, of you said earlier that you ve got to get your team together and make this a team.
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SPEAKER_00
Because you can t think of all these things.
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SPEAKER_00
Because if you get five people on your team and somebody raised their hand and said, you know what just happened at the Apple Store last week?
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SPEAKER_00
I was getting ready to go in, and they did this, and they did that.
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SPEAKER_00
And you say, well, hell, we can use that.
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SPEAKER_00
That s a great idea.
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SPEAKER_00
So get a team together and start to look at these things.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is great.
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SPEAKER_00
The third thing I had was probably the biggest of the three and it is the hardest but drumroll it well and but it might be something that we we pick on in a different episode and that s the idea of Have you clearly laid out the success path?
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that
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you will help your customer embark upon.
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SPEAKER_00
And a success path is they bought something from you.
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SPEAKER_00
I do a fair amount of work in the capital equipment business.
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SPEAKER_00
And companies or organizations will spend $200 to $500 to $1 million in capital equipment.
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SPEAKER_00
And I think a lot of times what happens is we just expect, well, they know how to use it.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, they ve been using it.
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SPEAKER_00
It s a replacement for an old piece of equipment.
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SPEAKER_00
And I think, no, maybe they don t know.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not that they don t know technically how to use it, but they might not be thinking, well, how is this piece of equipment going to lead this company to ultimately more success?
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SPEAKER_00
And I think this idea of a success path is really critical.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s not something you email to the customer.
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SPEAKER_00
It s something that probably gets worked through with your customer and with some of your smart people inside your firm.
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SPEAKER_00
But I think it s huge, and if you can
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SPEAKER_00
If you can embark on that success path, on that journey, they will never let you go because it almost, in a way, it never ends.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, you re going to get to different milestones of those successes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And will you say what you said again about emailing it?
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SPEAKER_01
Please.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
I think emailing dilutes the power of the things you email.
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SPEAKER_00
So if it s something worth doing, it s something worth sitting down and discussing.
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SPEAKER_01
I see so many of my clients, this whole thing, they want to email it, and they make all these excuses.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, they prefer email.
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SPEAKER_01
And I m like, don t.
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SPEAKER_01
Don t.
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SPEAKER_01
Don t.
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SPEAKER_01
Call them.
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SPEAKER_01
Even if you call him to tell him you re going to email him, call him.
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SPEAKER_01
You just call him and say, hey, wanted to check in, tell you you re going to get an email from us.
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SPEAKER_01
It s a success path.
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SPEAKER_01
Here s what that is.
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SPEAKER_01
And then you ll get it.
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SPEAKER_01
Maybe you and I can talk through it for five minutes after you take a look or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_01
Don t just email it.
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SPEAKER_01
I have so many clients that do that.
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SPEAKER_01
It s an awful experience, I think.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
It is.
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SPEAKER_00
And when you figure that only,
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SPEAKER_00
20% of emails are even open.
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SPEAKER_00
Now you say, well, but mine are because they re in business with us.
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SPEAKER_01
Don t be so sure.
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SPEAKER_01
They see mine.
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SPEAKER_01
Ours, they need to look at mine.
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SPEAKER_01
Ours are red.
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SPEAKER_00
Ours are important.
2
SPEAKER_00
Ours have like Christmas colors in them and really big fonts.
2
SPEAKER_00
Huge fonts.
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SPEAKER_00
Huge fonts.
2
SPEAKER_01
OK, so that concludes it.
2
SPEAKER_01
What do you think?
2
SPEAKER_01
Again, power episode.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is just great stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
And take bits at a time.
2
SPEAKER_01
But really, I would prefer our listeners start the path to this customer experience.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t want them to think that, again, like I said, Amazon got to Prime over time.
2
SPEAKER_01
Get to this over time.
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SPEAKER_01
You be the starter.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re the one that drives the, I d love for sales to drive this within our company.
2
SPEAKER_00
Once again, as we said earlier, we are out and about.
2
SPEAKER_00
Brian s heading to Chicago and Des Moines.
2
SPEAKER_00
Des Moines.
2
SPEAKER_01
At this listening, I ll actually be done.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll be back.
2
SPEAKER_01
You ll be done.
2
SPEAKER_01
OK.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So welcome back, man.
2
SPEAKER_00
How was it?
2
SPEAKER_00
It was great.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was a phenomenal speech.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, man.
2
SPEAKER_00
I knocked their socks off.
2
SPEAKER_00
So if you do have a retreat or a sales meeting or some type of group discussion and you d like to have one of us come out or both, make sure you send us a note at listener at Advanced Selling Podcast.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can also go to advancedsellingpodcast.com and check out the all in product.
2
SPEAKER_00
And of course, we d love to have you, if you re not already on the LinkedIn group, go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash LinkedIn and be a part of our 8,600 plus people.
2
SPEAKER_00
See you next time.
2
SPEAKER_00
See ya.
2
SPEAKER_00
Bye.