Episode 078: The one about Architecting Breakthroughs

Dean: I’m Dean Jackson, he’s Joe Polish, and this is the I Love Marketing podcast. Hey, everybody, it’s Dean Jackson. Joe: And Joe Polish. The Joe Polish.

Dean: The Joe Polish. You see, I caught you there. I stole your line.

Joe: Just slides off the tongue, doesn’t it, when someone says my name?

Dean: Yeah. So, here we are.

Joe: We are you sounding a little down, Dean? Even the way you just said “Yeah” just was kind of like “Nah,” you know, not excited to be talking to me, or whatever.

Dean: I’m very excited. I’m very excited. Yes.

Joe: Okay, well, we have thousands of people that listen to this, man, you need to put some enthusiasm into it.

Dean: Exactly.

Joe: Go for it. Show us what you’re capable of, Dean.

Dean: Well, I’m very enthusiastic about what we’re going to talk about.

Joe: Okay, good. What are we going to talk about? We’re going to talk about architecting breakthroughs.

Dean: Yeah, architecting breakthroughs. This is the thing. It’s really interesting now. I’ve been reading and going through all these emails that were submitted for our case study program that we’re doing over the summer here. And it was really interesting to me, because I asked people to send a summary of their business and where they thought the big breakthrough might be. So, I’m realizing that it’s really, I think, a great idea for us to kind of look at how you take the big picture view of analyzing your business, looking at your business, and deciding what the path is. Like everybody realizes, when you look at the 8 profit activators, that there are lots of opportunities to apply things to your business. But there’s just a few, and every business has a different opportunity that could be the breakthrough for you.

Sometimes, just knowing what to look for and knowing how to analyze your current business kind of gives you an idea of where the big breakthrough might be. So, I thought that maybe you and I could talk about how we would look at a business, kind of breaking it into the 3 parts of the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit, what we’d be looking for, and maybe some of the breakthroughs that we’ve seen that would be the easiest to architect in somebody’s business. You know?

Joe: Yep, Yep. I think that sounds like a grand idea.

Dean: A grand plan.

Joe: Yes.

Dean: I kind of mentioned the very first thing is looking at your business as 3 distinct units. That’s number one. Rather than just looking at your business as a whole, kind of dividing it into those 3 distinct units and knowing what to look for and knowing what to measure to see where you are and decide where you want to go, so that you can figure out how you’re going to get there. Those 3 simple questions. I love how you start every single 25K meeting, and these are people who are at the highest, highest level. You start with a simple one sheet of paper exercise that often, for people, even just thinking about it creates a big breakthrough before we even start the day. Where did that start for you?

Joe: Actually, those 3 questions came from Ken Glickman, years ago. I was watching Ken give a presentation. Ken Glickman, he’s done a lot of things. He ran the largest karate school in New York, years ago, for over 20 years. Marty Edelston was one of his students. And Marty Edelston ended up being the founder of Boardroom Inc, which was a really large publisher of many newsletters, including Bottom Line/Personal, the largest consumer non-advertising-paid-for consumer newsletter in the world. Ken became vice president of marketing for Boardroom, and then he created the IPower seminars and the Time Magic seminars. I first saw Ken speak in 1991, and he was amazing. He delivered a presentation and he talked about these 3 questions: “Where are you? Where do you want to go? And how are you going to get there?” And that was really impactful to me.

Over the years, Ken became one of my best friends, and he’s spoken at many of my events. I’ve interviewed him a bunch of times and we’ve constantly talked about just the simplicity, but the power of those 3 questions, because you can apply it to any area of life. Like if you want to get in better shape physically, it first starts, as Dan Sullivan says, “All progress starts by telling the truth.” So, where are you? Where are you in your life? Where are you in your finances? Where you are in your business? Where are you in your relationships? Any area of life that you want to focus it on. And the 25K group, of course, when I start the day with that form that says, “Where are you? Where do you want to go? How are you going to get there?” we usually, typically look at anywhere from a 3-month period to 12 months out, where they’re at in their business, where they’re at in their personal life.

So, everyone writes down where are they. Where are you? Where do you want to go? What are your goals? What are your objectives? What are your opportunities? What do you want to get rid of, personally, and professionally? And then how are you going to get there? And if they focus on where are you, where do you want to go, the how you’re going to get there part we can focus on in 25K. So, for everyone listening, it’s a great thing to get out a sheet of paper, or even start your day. In a day, where are you today? Where do you want to go? How are you going to get there? And you can literally use this for any particular area. It came from Ken.

Dean: Yeah. And I brought that up because it is so elegant, and I want to look at those questions as the starting point, when we start looking at each of the 3 divisions of your business. If we’re talk in your before unit, ultimately, what we’re looking for in your before unit is a way to deliver ready-to-buy people who are going to use the services of your during unit, which is the core offering that you have. So, if you’re a carpet cleaner, it’s delivering people who want to schedule an appointment now to get their carpets cleaned. That would be the during unit of your carpet cleaning business. And the before unit would be everything that we do to deliver those people at a cost that you can afford. So, it’s the same thing with any business. If you’re a restaurant, it’s delivering people who want to make a reservation for dinner. If you’re a chiropractor, it’s people calling to make an appointment to come and see you. If you’re a real estate agent, somebody wants to call you and talk about selling their house or buying a house.

It’s that moment where business starts in your during unit. The before unit is about delivering people right to that moment. And we’ve talked about this a lot, that the very best mindset is to separate that from your business as much as you can, even mentally, to start with, to kind of just look at it and say, “If that’s my goal, if I’m looking to create kind of like a business within my business, that’s only purpose is to deliver me people who want to do what it is we do, what would that look like? So, if you can set up a unit like that, in your business, that delivers as many as you want, or can handle, or desire, and you can do it at a cost that is affordable for you, then that’s really a huge breakthrough for businesses. A lot of times, people they look at their business, they’re very good at what they do, they’re excellent at they do, they put a lot of effort into doing a great job for people, but they often struggle with finding new people in a predictable way. They get lost. And I see it a lot. I see it with all the people who are sending in their case study emails. There are lots of opportunities there to create a machine.

There are lots of metaphors that we use. We talk about creating a vending machine as an idea for your before unit, that you decide who your target market is, who you want to attract, you decide what you can afford to pay for them. And when you put in that amount of money and push the button, out they come, and they’re delivered right to your during unit. The best thing for people to do to start looking at their before unit is to see what’s happening with what they’re doing already. A lot of times, people are spending money in their before unit. They’re spending money on ads or they’re spending money on direct mail, or on getting Internet traffic, Google traffic, on pay-per-click to their websites. They’re doing all these things, but they don’t really have a sense of whether it’s working or not, especially if they’re doing advertising that is kind of promoting their business, just kind of getting their name out there, and really making a conscience effort to look at it and say “What could I do that would just get people to raise their hand, so that I can educate and motivate them about doing business with us?” and really just leave it at that.

It’s funny, because sometimes one of 2 things will happen. They’ll either have a system that can generate business in a predictable way, and not even really know it. Sometimes, people get fixed up in their budget, where they say, “Well, we spend $500 a month or $300 a month on ad words.” And when they look at it, they realize that that $300 a month, or $3,600 for the course of the year, they look at it, and maybe they’ve made $30,000 or $40,000 from that advertising that they’ve done and not really realized that, “Hey, if I spent $600 instead of sticking with my $300 budget,” they could double the amount of business that they do from that vehicle.

Joe: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No.

Dean: Have you ever seen that, where people have got a winner, and they just don’t maximize it?

Joe: You see it all the time. You see it all the time. That’s one of the things that I used to talk with Gary Halbert about all the time, is when people have leverage points, if they really just look at their business and say, “Okay.” Every part of someone’s business and life has areas that are working and things that don’t work. And if you can identify the areas that are working and say “Okay. Can I really leverage this and exploit it simply by spending more money on advertising to increase the messaging or to increase the lead generation?” or whatever, people just get so caught up in activities that they miss the ones that are working, that they can easily replicate and duplicate. And your example of “Well, we only have $X for our marketing budget,” I’ve always hated that whole concept of business school budgeting as it relates to specifically the area of marketing. Because as we’ve talked about on previous issues, the only episodes issues, as if this is a magazine, episodes of I Love Marketing, is that the only time to budget your marketing is when it’s not working and you don’t want to go broke so quickly. And you’ve having to test it and figure things out, so you don’t gamble the whole farm.

That’s why I think looking at the before, during, and after units is so critical, because I continually run across people who are fantastic at say generating leads but terrible at conversion, or really good at converting but they are not generating enough, or they’re really good at the delivery of their business. Carpet cleaners are an example. Many of them are the nicest people; they deliver a great service. Their during unit, in terms of how they deliver it, and even the referrals are good, but they just don’t have enough people. So there are all different divisions to look at. And you know what’s funny? I don’t know if you can even hear this in the background, Dean, on this recording. I’m actually doing this call in my kitchen, at home. I’m flying to Chicago tomorrow for Strategic Coach, and it is pouring rain right now, at the time that we’re doing this recording.

Dean: Oh, really? Wow.

Joe: Yeah, I don’t know if that’s going to be picked up on the mic, but I’m sitting here…

Dean: I don’t hear it at all.

Joe: The mic may pick it up, so just in case.

Dean: That’s fine.

Joe: Just in case, that’s thunderstorm here.

Dean: That’s funny.

Joe: It’s quite distracting, right now, because I think it’s more interesting than listening to you.

Dean: Impossible. That’s impossible.

Joe: I’m kidding. I’m kidding. Nothing is more exciting than listening to you, Dean.

Dean: That’s about right. So when you look at it, I think having that mindset that you’re not going to get fixed into limiting yourself to a budget when you’ve got a winner. You’ve either got something that works, that you could duplicate or do more of, or you really don’t have anything, or you’ve got something that’s struggling, where it really is an expense, where you’re spending the money but you can’t point to a return on that money.

And a lot of times, businesses have a bunch of things that they do, because they’ve always done them. Like they always have an ad in this directory, and they always have this Yellow Pages ad, and they’ve always had this banner on one of the local sites, or something like that, where they bundle up all of these things that they’re doing and they don’t really look at – individually – are any of them actually getting a return on that investment. Are any of them actually winning? And unfortunately, they look at them, and the big pile becomes like a Jenga puzzle, where they’re really careful to like pull one piece out, because it might make the whole thing crumble.

Joe: Yeah, that’s right.

Dean: They don’t know what’s the one thing that’s actually working, and not tracking things, and knowing how that works. I look at that as really being, like Dan Sullivan says, “The first step is telling the truth. It’s knowing what the situation is.” You either have a before unit that you could predictably put money into, or you don’t yet. And if you don’t, than that’s where – potentially – the biggest breakthrough in your business could be, is if you could figure out how to get people to do business with you through a sequence of events of either a multi-step process of mailing a postcard or bringing them to a landing page, where they can leave their name and their email address. And then communicating with them in a way that’s going to educate them and motivate them to take that next step, really thinking through what’s the process that people have to go through to be delivered to your during unit?

One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making, in that before unit, is trying to do too much with the ad. I mentioned I’ve been going through some of these case study emails, and people have been sending me ads that they’re using. And I think about it, even just right away, I see people trying to convince somebody, from a postcard, why they should do business with this company. Or in their display advertising, which the most prominent thing in the advertising is the name of the business and why they’re more professional than the other choices that people have. Or, somebody else had sent me something where they’re doing a postcard sending people to a landing page with a video, where on the video they’re trying to educate and convince people to sign up for a continuity program. Knowing what to do first and knowing how to kind of break things down into baby steps, where you’ve only ever trying to get the next step in the combination.

That’s why, when we talk about the compelling people to raise their hand, compelling them to call, to identify themselves, the 3 profit activator is educate and motivate people. And they are meant to be 2 separate things. The only thing is to get somebody to engage in a dialogue. And now that you have their attention, continue, then, to educate them and answer all the questions that they would need to know. And that’s where the consumer awareness guides are a fantastic tool for that, for answering all the kind of overt questions that people have, the most common questions that they have, maybe even some of the questions that they didn’t even know that they have. And then, the motivating part, because educating is not enough, it’s not enough to just educate somebody about all of the things that you do, you need to motivate them by making offers to people, inviting them to take that next step, you taking the initiative.

We’ve talked about that as using that cookie idea. Like if I’m bringing you into my house, rather than just saying, “If there’s anything you want to eat or drink, there’s lots of stuff in the fridge,” instead of saying that, coming in with a plate of freshlybaked cookies and saying to you, “Would you like a cookie?” So, rather than just saying “Hey, if there’s anything we can do to help you, we’re more than happy to answer any questions. Don’t hesitate to call me or email me,” all those things where we’re kind of passively just hoping that educating people is going to be enough, it’s so much better if you really take the initiative for people and be a leader. It’s like inviting them to schedule a carpet audit, so that they can find out what’s going on with their carpets.

I like that whole audit idea. That’s probably applicable in a lot of businesses, just to see what’s going on. But getting people to raise their hand to get something, that’s really how you’re delivering people to the during unit. And there’s nothing more profitable and able to fuel rocket growth than figuring out and cracking the code on your before unit. Because once you figure it out, then it really is a matter of the more money you put in, the more money you get out, because it’s completely scalable.

Joe: Yeah, I heard a negotiation guy at a Visage meeting, that I went to earlier this week, talk about how if you go to a doctor and they give you a prescription with a diagnosis, it’s malpractice. I thought that was an interesting line, because if you go into a sales situation, and you immediately start saying, “Oh, you should buy our stuff just because you should buy our stuff,” but you don’t educate them, you don’t identify who list is, that sort of stuff, in a lot of ways you’re just creating marketing malpractice. And the audit process that I started using for carpet cleaners, going way back when, I thought to myself, “Okay, well, first I’ve got to get the call, and get people to invite me to their home, preferably. They’re going to call me on the phone first.” Sometimes, you can make the sale over the phone, and people will just want to book it. Other times, you have to literally go there in person in order for it to become a real sale. But even if you’re just going there to sell them, or they’re already sold, and you’re going there to deliver it, while you’re there, you are best served to actually give them something different than just an estimate and a price. You want to know a little bit about what you’re about to perform the service, the people, the home, the living habits, that sort of thing.

So, I came up with this carpet audit process, where I would evaluate the condition of their carpets, how old it is, how many times they clean it, was protection applied in the past, does anyone in the house smoke, do they have children, kids, any things that would be useful to know. And I created this robotic system of evaluating the condition of the carpets. And having a dialogue with the prospect, with the client, versus a monologue saying, “Okay, I measured it up, here’s how much it’s going to cost,” I wanted them to answer questions. So, it’s very Socratic, and it was very non-threatening. And also, while I was there, these people learned more about how to care for their carpet. And then, I gave them a prescription. And that was something I called the wearage. I made it up. I made up, based on if you are going to continue to care for your carpet in this way, based on what you’ve told me, here’s how long you can expect it to look like this. If you clean and maintain it, here’s what I think you can expect from it. I got great success.

Dean: It’s like that real age for your carpet.

Joe: Exactly. Exactly. So I started using this process, and it was very awkward the first few times, because I was trying to test something out. The way that I’ve approached a lot of this stuff, when it comes to selling, is how would I like to be treated? If I’m going to go into a situation where I don’t understand something, how do I want to be brought to a level of confidence in making an informed buying decision. It’s almost impossible to satiate this need and desire that I have developed in my own brain. I hate doing business with companies that do not have a process. And the problem is hardly anyone has a process.

So, when I come across a company or an organization that has a thought through process, architected in order to sell me, because then it’s never regret. You know exactly what you’re getting; you know how it’s going to go through the process. And I’m not talking about wasting my time. Nothing’s worse than someone trying to use clever marketing that they think is, “Oh, let’s educate people,” and they’re putting out boring videos and boring sales letters, something that could have been delivered to me much quicker. There are many differences, like at the last episode, when we talked to James Schramko. His name just bugs the hell out of me. I’ve known the guy for several years, and I still can never pronounce his name right. But James, Australian dude on the last episode, he talked about Spin Selling. And Spin Selling is really a book about making larger sales, more expensive sales than small sales, and the closing techniques and methods that are what most closing books are about. What Neil Rackham, Rackham, is that his last name?

Dean: Rackham, yeah.

Joe: That wrote Spin Selling, it’s really about the larger sales. And there’s a much different way that you process that. But they can all be broken down into before, during, and after. So, I think just looking at your business as if there’s a disease exists, a sickness, an illness, and your product or service cures it, what would you call it? And before you actually label that they have it, what is the disease your clients have? How do you get to that point and identify it? So, anyway, those are my thoughts.

Dean: They’ve got, let’s call it BUD, before unit deficit disorder.

Joe: Yeah, that’s so funny.

Dean: They got BUD, BUD.

Joe: You know what’s even more funny is that Dr. Edward Hallowell, while we were sitting here recording, he actually left me a voicemail. He’s the top ADD, ADHD psychiatrist on the planet. He’s speaking at my 25K group in New York we’ve got coming up, and the guy’s awesome.

Dean: And we’re lucky enough to have him as a friend.

Joe: Yeah, he’s a great guy. I’ve interviewed him several times.

Dean: He really is.

Joe: And he talks about attention surplus disorders. The type of people that ADD people want to surround themselves with.

Dean: It’s funny, because just today, I was listening to his interview with Darren, on the Success magazine CD from a couple of months ago.

Joe: Isn’t that great interview?

Dean: With __ (27:17) and Dan Sullivan.

Joe: Yeah, yeah. That was in the June issue of Success magazine. And Ned Hallowell and Dan Sullivan are both on the CD. And, of course, I introduced both of them to Darren Hardy, the publisher of Success. And then last month, of course, was me, and that’s in the July issue. The time that we’re recording this is in July. And then the August issue has got Richard Branson on the cover. What’s funny is that the CD in the August issue of Success is Daniel Amen, who we just put up as an I Love Marketing episode right before James.

Dean: Right.

Joe: And then, Frank Kern is on the CD too, the interview with Frank Kern. And that’s in the current issue in both of them. So, literally, Richard Branson, Frank Kern, Daniel Amen, Dan Sullivan, of course, they’re all episodes on I Love Marketing. So if you read Success magazine and you want more, type some of those names.

Dean: We know some pretty cool people.

Joe: What’s that?

Dean: I said we know some pretty cool people.

Joe: Exactly. We know everybody that’s worth knowing.

Dean: That’s exactly right.

Joe: If we don’t know them, then you don’t need to know them either.

Dean: That’s it. Let’s talk about the metrics for the before unit, because part of knowing where you are is being honest about it, looking at all the things that you would spend money on, all the activities that you currently do to get business, and really taking an honest evaluation of it. Is it really getting a multiple of the money that you spend on it? Are you getting new business at a level that is acceptable? The amount of money that you’re able to spend to acquire a new customer is really going to be determined by what’s the lifetime value of that customer. What’s the lifetime value of that relationship going to be? If you’ve got something where people are going to come in and spend $100 a month for 10 years or 5 years with you, you’ve got a $500 or $10,000 lifetime value with somebody, you may be able to spend more money than if you’ve got something where somebody’s going to come in and spend $100 or $150 and not continue to do business with you again and again, and again.

So, you want to just kind of really evaluate what’s the opportunity that you have. How much can you afford to spend? And what is the metric that makes sense for you? How much can you either multiply the money that you spend on there, or can you acquire new customers at a break-even in 30 days or 60 days, or whatever is a comfortable level for you? All of those things are really about having an awareness of what the dynamics are. What is it that’s actually in play, monetarily, for your before unit, then going and crafting a way that is affordable for you to continue to multiply money, where you’re putting it in, and it’s repetitively scalable, doing whatever level you’re able to accommodate. It’s pretty exciting, if you can really have an incredible before unit. We’ve talked a lot about our moneymaking websites for realtors or the getting listings program, where they’re completely-packaged solutions that are money multipliers. You just install it, and it continues to run. Like we know that when people are going to spend money on sending people to their website, that we can spend $300 or $600, or $1,000 a month, and know that that money, at the end of the year, is going to multiply itself by 15 times, on average.

So, you know it’s just a matter of how much money do you want to multiply? And that’s the kind of confidence that is really possible in your before unit, if you dial it in. You’ve got ultimate confidence, Joe. If you were opening up a new carpet cleaning operation in any city in the country, you know immediately, not that you would ever do that, but you know, 100% confidently, that you could be up and running and generating business, and have a very profitable business in the first year, even though you’ve had no exposure or activity in that market. I’ve got that kind of confidence in you. I think you could do that, couldn’t you?

Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, absolutely. It wouldn’t even be a question. And in almost any service business, for that matter, because I know so much about marketing.

Dean: Right. Exactly. And that’s the thing, is that what you’ve learned doing it for carpet cleaners, and what I’ve learned doing it for real estate agents, and now, we we’ve been doing it for all kinds of businesses, all those principles are still the same. So, the before unit is really your ticket to the stratosphere, or whatever level of growth you want to have within your business. It really is. And looking back at all of the episodes that we’ve done, all about using consumer awareness guides, using direct response, using free recorded messages, it goes on and on and on, how many different strategies we’ve talked about here. And picking those and applying the right ones can make all the difference.

Joe: Yeah.. I want to actually share with you a story of what is taking place with Tesla, the new cars made by Elon Musk. And basically, I’m going to do a little search here. Let’s see if I can find on this server. Okay, Tesla Motors. They’ve got all these “Your official model S reservation is complete.” I don’t know, about a month ago, or whenever it was, I was in Santana Row in the San Francisco area, where they have a Tesla store, and I was with… Who was I with, Dean?

Dean: I’m not sure who you were with. Was that when up at… With Brendon?

Joe: It wasn’t with you, because I was down there with you once before. Who was I with?

Dean: Were you with Brendon?

Joe: No.

Dean: Brendon, maybe? No?

Joe: Trying to think who. You’d think I would know this. Oh, I was with my client. Okay, my client, tech guys who get marketing. So, we had just gotten done with a 2-day Singularity University event. We were up there hanging out with his girlfriend and my girlfriend, and we went to Santana Row. And the gals went and got massages, and we were just walking around this really kind of cool area. And we were actually at a 2-day Singularity event with Tony Robbins, who brought his Platinum partners to Singularity University. These are all the people that are in Tony’s $65,000-a-year group. We actually did schedule the I Love Marketing episode with Tony, so that’s going to be coming up shortly.

Dean: Very soon.

Joe: Assuming he doesn’t have to reschedule, we will be interviewing Tony Robbins for I Love Marketing.

Dean: In a month.

Joe: So, anyway, just walking through there, I had called Peter Diamandis, who’s friends with Elon Musk, and I said “Hey, is there any way that you could get him, if I was to get a Tesla, to move it up,” because there’s a long waiting list. And said that Elon said, “Every time someone asked him that, he’d just laughs, because everyone and their brother that knows him or has a link to him is trying to get their car quicker.” So, we’re walking, and we go into Tesla’s store, and what’s cool is that the Tesla store has been designed by George Blankenship, basically. He worked for Gap, and then he designed the Apple stores. And now, he basically is the VP of, I think, customer experience for Tesla. So, he designed the Tesla stores just like the Apple stores. So, they’re reinventing the way that cars are sold. They’re not having car lots, they’re actually putting cars in shopping malls.

So, it’s really elegant, and it’s really cool, and it’s very much like an Apple store, because he’s taken the same model. Because Apple has the most profitable, one of, if not the most profitable, retail stores in the world for the square foot of space. And so, he’s taken the same concept to Tesla. So, we go in there, no intention whatsoever that I was going to buy a Tesla, and I just loved the experience. They take me to a computer, they kind of show me the whole thing, kind of walking me through it, and I’m like, “This is pretty cool.” And I had met Elon very briefly, in February, at the Singularity University event that was at Fox Studio’s. He was there, speaking. There was a bunch of famous people and billionaires, and it was cool. I really think what he’s doing with Tesla is pretty awesome. His goal is he would love to make any gas-consuming vehicle disappear off the planet. But anyway, so we go in, and I put a $5,000 deposit on a Tesla model S. Which, if someone goes to TeslaMotors.com, they can see the new car. I think it looks really awesome. It’s 4-door. It’s a cool vehicle.

Dean: It does; it’s sharp.

Joe: With 300 miles on a single electric charge, it’s just totally bad-ass. The price is around $50,000 for the base model, all the way up to $90-something-thousand, and you get a few thousand off for incentives because of the environmental battery-operated car sort of thing. So, going through the whole process, they’re like “Yeah, you put down a $5,000 deposit, but it’s totally refundable. When it comes time for us to deliver your vehicle, if you decide you don’t want to do it, that’s fine.” And I’m like “That’s pretty risk-free, right?” You have to put up the money, of course, but it’s not like you feel like you’re going to get screwed. So, you enter all your information into the database. So it’s done all online, through a Mac, of course, although I think George designed the Microsoft stores too.

So, basically, they capture all the information for you, and you’re now put into the system. And then a series of emails, this is the before unit, of course, really well at work, a nicely-designed store, smart, nice people, unlike any other car experience of buying a car you’ve ever gone through, and taking you through this whole process. So, what they do is they make all the reservations. Of course, I’m piecing this all together. I actually had an email yesterday, to see if I could set up an interview with George Blankenship, because I think that would be really cool. That’s one of my goals, is to get him to do an interview and pop it up on I Love Marketing. But basically, I get an email for… And I’m going to see if I can find the exact one. See, I wasn’t prepared to actually quite talk about this. But it says “Hi, Joe, you’re model S test drive is confirmed. Please bring 3 passengers.” So which one was that? Alright. It’s so funny. So “It’s time for you to drive Model S, our get amped, Model S store is coming to Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re very excited to get you behind the wheel. We have the Model S with different blah, blah, blah.” I’m going to skip through things. “You’re driving session will be about 7 to 8 minutes.” Mine was actually 12. This is what I’m trying to pull up. I’ve got so many of them. I’ve got different emails here.

They basically sent me an email, and it’s like “We have a store grand opening in Scottsdale.” So, they opened one up at the Scottsville Fashion Square Mall. And it was this week. So, I didn’t go to the grand opening, but I set up a reservation just like you would if you used an Apple, and you go to their Genius Bar and you want to set an appointment. It looks the same as Apple. It’s like really cool. You set up an appointment and you go there, and you test-drive the car, which I did the day before yesterday. No, actually, I did it yesterday, at the time we’re recording. I did it yesterday morning. Alright. So, I shot some videos. If we have our wonderful friend who has a first name that starts with J, do some fancy editing for me, maybe we could pop these up online sooner than later. But I videotaped like the whole drive inside the store. Ivan videotaped it, which I’ll have to find the videos when I was in San Francisco, actually purchasing the thing. So, I’ll have to look and make sure I’d be comfortable with putting that stuff up there.

But nonetheless, I videotaped this, because I’m just thinking, “This is such a cool before, during, after setup with these guys.” They have an architecting of how they’re going to sell Tesla’s that is just brilliant. So, what they do is they look at where they got reservations, and if they’ve got enough reservations, customer’s support in a particular area, they focus on setting up stores in those areas. So, it’s a stick strategy. So, here I am, in Arizona.

Dean: I like how you said that they asked you to bring 3 passengers for your drive.

Joe: Exactly. Yeah, well here, let me see if I can get… If I had my regular browser, instead of an iPhone, because the email actually comes in HTML. “It’s time for you to test drive your Tesla.” Okay, it says, “Reservation holders will be limited to one test-drive to test the product. Specialists will accompany all drivers to answer questions and ensure you optimize your time in the Model S. You may bring up to 3 friends to ride in the backseat during your drive. Please arrive 30 minutes prior to your appointment time to receive a brief but very informative pre-drive overview.” And then, of course, it tells you where to go. And then you sign up, and then they follow-up with a really cool thing. And they’ve got stores in Tesla Fashion Square, Hilton, Washington D.C. So, they’re opening up stores everywhere. And they’re in malls. “Join us for an exclusive event at Fashion Square.”

Dean: See that process, when you look at that – we talk about the going into the during unit now – when somebody puts down a deposit on something, you’ve moved into the during unit. You got to the point where you’re sort of in-process now. And it’s a matter of really architecting the experience that you’re going to have between now and when your car is ready, so you’re completely satisfied to make the decision that you’re going to keep it. So, you look at everything you’re describing there, somebody architected every visual encounter, every audio encounter, every email encounter, every physical encounter that you had. Somebody architected that whole process. You described how when you set up the appointment and they told you to arrive 20 minutes ahead of your actual time for your orientation, somebody architected every word that’s uttered in that 20 minutes. The things that people point out in your test drive, all of those things, when you look at your during unit as a timeline, a great example of that was the episode that we did with Anthony Melchiorri from Hotel Impossible, he’s a master at architecting these guest experiences.

And it’s kind of a very rewarding thing to work on your during unit, to get the core things right. Like we always talk about that whatever it is, if you’re a carpet cleaner, the core experience has to be that the carpets get clean. Or if you’re a chiropractor, the core experience has to be that your adjustment helps you. Or if you’re a restaurant, the food has to be great. I mean, you look at the core things are one thing, but what really sets things apart, what really makes it and takes it over the top are the things that add surprise and delight in that experience, where now you really get a chance to wow people, to create that kind of environment.

Joe: Well, yeah. You talk about your interview with Anthony from Hotel Impossible. What are the core experiences of a hotel? Cleanliness, a good bed.

Dean: And, hopefully, good food.

Joe: Yeah, yeah. Good everything, hopefully. But you know, the thing with the Tesla experience, which is really smart and very strategic, is they’ve got all these deposits, and they want to assure that they get as many of those to result in full sales. And if they can start bonding with people well in advance, invite them to come to the store, do a test-drive, be chummy with them, it’s really hard to reject someone or a company, or a product or a service that you have connected with it, if the people are treating you well. It’s just a car.

Dean: And, there’s a level of commitment and consistency, for sure, in that. You’ve put down a $5,000 deposit on something. You don’t do that on a whim, really.

Joe: No, no. Exactly. They’ve got about 10,000 reservations. Maybe more even, right now. And now that these stores are popping up, they’re going to just be getting a ton more reservations. Now that the car is out there, you’re just going to see… And still, there are a lot of people that are betting this company is not going to work, that it’s going to fold, they’re never going to be able to pull it off, blah, blah, blah. But I definitely would bet my money on Tesla doing something very big.

And basically, I don’t know what their average sale’s going to be, but for myself, I’ll probably get every possible option on the car. I’ll probably get the $90,000 version. And if you just say that they average of all of those 10,000 reservations are going to be worth $70,000, how much money is that? And it’s huge. And it’s financing the development and the production of more of these vehicles. And I think everyone would be really well-served, if you’re in a particular area, to just go check out what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. There’s much applicability to how they set it up. And I think George Blankenship is just a genius, in terms of the way that he’s kind of laid out this whole retail experience.

Dean: I agree. Everybody has that opportunity within their own business. You talk about where are the breakthroughs? We talked a lot about the before unit. But the during unit, there are big opportunities in the during unit, too, to really leverage the things that you’re already doing. You look at the things that are possible to monetize the increase in your during unit, the breakthrough in your during unit is really having the leverage to either increase the unit of sale, add more value to somebody, increase the things that you’re able help them do, and raise your prices or your average ticket. Also, the leverage of turning one piece of business into another piece of business, whether it’s through a referral or if you’re in a business where it’s a local business where you’re doing service on somebody’s house, and you’re able to get another job within the 10 houses right around that house, those are the kind of things that are opportunities because of your during unit.

But you have to really kind of architect those ahead of time. You have to really understand where is the opportunity for me to either increase the unit of sale or to leverage this into another piece of business. Especially if you’re talking about referrals, that really depends on and really is enhanced by your ability to surprise and delight somebody during the process. The smoother the process can be, and the more thought that you put into really kind of anticipating what that experience is going to be. I love, love, love the book Raving Fans, by Ken Blanchard, for talking about creating incredible experiences in your during unit. And you look at anything that Walt Disney does, and you look at the Apple stores, and you look at what you’ve described in Tesla, you’re surrounded by people who are really passionate and visionary.

And I think that those are the 2 things that really everybody wants to be about their business. Everybody would love to feel that pride of creating an incredible experience for somebody. And that’s what the opportunity that you have is in your during unit. So just like I look at, in the before unit, monetizing and measuring the return on the money that you’re spending to acquire new people, in your during unit I look at it as how are you leveraging that? I would consider a breakthrough to be increasing the value of your during unit by 50%. You can get to that level by either increasing the average sale or the average ticket of whatever it is that people buy from you, or turning that one piece of business into an additional piece of business, through a referral or strategically doing some marketing as a byproduct of actually doing that.

Like, if you look at Tesla, if they’re saying invite 3 of your friends to come on a test-drive, if you look at that, if 1,000 people go on these test drives, you said they’ve got 10,000 deposits. But let’s say 1,000 of them bring even 2 people to come and test drive with them, what are the odds out of 1,000 test-drives with 2 extra people, on average, they’re being introduced to 2,000 people, that some of those people are going to buy a Tesla of their own?

Joe: Exactly. You take the dealership in Scottsdale here, that I have… They own a dealership that I’ve bought a couple of Mercedes, a couple of Land Rovers, and a Jaguar from. I’ve actually bought 6 automobiles from this dealership in the last decade. I have never once received an email saying “Hey, come do a test-drive, and bring your friends.”

Dean: Yeah. But that, somebody, architected that. Somebody architected that experience and really thought that through. That’s why this using that timeline experience is an incredible visual tool for you to look at everything. You know?

Joe: Yeah, so Dean, we’re getting towards the time where we’re going to be ending this episode, and I know people, like they probably usually do after an I Love Marketing episode ends, they feel really sad, I mean, maybe like a dopamine or something.

Dean: We haven’t even talked about the after unit breakthroughs. We still have to do that. We’ve got time for that.

Joe: Alright, well, go for it.

Dean: Yeah, because, when you look at it, we talked about the before unit, looking for your breakthrough there, talked about the during unit, looking for the breakthrough and seeing to yourself how, and setting yourself a goal of what could I do to increase the value in my during unit by 50%? That would be a breakthrough. And then in your after unit, again, we’re looking at this as a separate division of your business, something that the whole goal of the after unit is to do 2 things: nurture lifetime relationships with the people who you’ve already done business with, the people who know you, like you, trust you, and orchestrate referrals. And I look at those as 2 separate missions. You can do everything you can to continue to add value to the people who you’ve done business with. What additional services could you offer them? How could you package up things that turn a one-time or occasional sale into a monthly recurring billing sale, that covers them for the whole year? I’m sure there are people who do that with carpet cleaning, Joe; that people, rather than just occasionally hope that somebody will call them to get their carpets cleaned, some people would appreciate the opportunity to have their service done on an ongoing basis, where they know that that’s handled.

If you think that way, you start thinking about what other things could I do for people? What other things could I do to add value for them? How can I stay in touch with them, so that at the very least, when they do whatever it is we do, that they’re going to do with us? There’s a lot of power in being the incumbent in whatever category you’re in. As soon as somebody comes and gets their teeth cleaned in your office, you are their incumbent dental hygienist. You’re the one who holds the position of their dental hygienist. Or, if you sell somebody a house, you’re the incumbent realtor. If you’re the last one to clean their carpets, you’re the incumbent carpet cleaner. So, there’s a lot of value in that; that if you just maintain that relationship with people, they’ll continue to do business with you. And so, when you look at it…

Joe: Can I mention something? Let me mention something to that, too, because that’s what we teach all of our cleaners. Everyone’s probably heard something similar to it’s 5 or 6 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to maintain an existing one. Who knows what the exact figure is. But I would say that’s probably pretty accurate. Once you’ve acquired a client, maintaining that relationship is far easier than creating it. It’s much easier to maintain momentum than it is to create it. For instance, there’s a presentation on I Love Marketing, where I spoke to like 1,200 people at Dan Kennedy’s conference last year, and it was lessons I’d learned from Gary Halbert. People can watch it on I Love Marketing. Just type in “Dan Kennedy” or “Gary Halbert,” and you can find my speech.

I had the highest close of anyone in Glazer-Kennedy history, from that presentation. People can see my close there and everything. Also, we’ve gotten like no refunds. The only refund that I’m aware of actually, someone at the conference, they didn’t even get the package. They just decided, “Well, I don’t think I can do this. I don’t want to do it, blah, blah, blah,” whatever. But we’ve had people that I’ve talked to that have bought lots of stuff from events, from websites, and things like that. And I had one person tell me that, “Your follow-up, after we bought this from you, was so amazing. How could I ever like refund it? Not only was the product good, but the way you followed-up and explained how to get the most out of it was really great. Your company followed-up and said, ‘Thank you,’ and they didn’t try to sell me anything else. They just made me feel appreciated for being a client.” And I was like “Yep, that’s really cool.” Not that everything’s always done perfect at any company, or mine, it’s just I really strive to let people know that when they buy something from me, I’m not trying to sell them a transaction. We make a sale to acquire a client, not so we can make a sale.

Dean: Right.

Joe: And that’s what the whole after thing is.

Dean: That’s value. Like you look at that, and you and I are both very aware of that. And you know that somebody who has bought the Halbert program, or bought anything from you, is now a very valuable asset. And we talk about, in your after unit, to really look at the people who you do have that kind of relationship with, people who have purchased from you, people who are currently still purchasing from you, and the people who you know, the people who are your sphere of influence or even partners who are in complementary businesses, that you could serve their clients or your clients could be served by them, that would enhance their experience. There’s so much opportunity there to really manage that relationship portfolio for an annual yield. So, I talk about measuring your ROR, your return on relationships. We treat that after unit, that relationship portfolio, like you would any valuable asset. Any valuable asset that you have, that you can measure the investment that you make in those people and measure the return, in terms of repeat business and referrals that you get from those people.

So, when you look at it, it doesn’t take very much, often, to move the dial on your after unit, because these people already know you, like you, and trust you. There are a lot of episodes that we talk about, on I Love Marketing, about referrals, and orchestrating referrals. And we did the interview with Ivan Misner about referrals. And we talked with John Jance about referrals. There are lots of opportunity in your after unit. It’s probably the one where you can get the highest return for dollars invested. A lot of times, people don’t look at that as their first course of action. A lot of times, people want to spend the money in their before unit because it seems sexier to do a new ad and get new people, as opposed to making an investment in the lifetime value of the clients that they already have.

Joe: Right. Right. Do you have anything else you want to add to this, Dean? Because I think we should summarize what we talked about, because we’re at the time.

Dean: Okay, let’s. So, here’s the summery. If you’re looking for a breakthrough in your business, it just takes a little architecting. And I say, “architecting” in the sense of really kind of creating a vision for what you could have. Looking at the visions of your business, if it’s the first time that you’ve done that, dividing it into the before unit, and really looking at what am I doing in that before unit? Are the things that I’m doing and spending money on right now providing and delivering people to my during unit? And then, is it doing it in a way that is profitable for me? It could be that you may be happy to bring people into your during unit at a break-even, or maybe even at a slight loss. We did the episode with Dean Graziosi. The whole thing of selling a $19 book on an infomercial, he’s happy to do that at break-even, or even lose a little money on selling somebody a book, because he knows in his during unit he’s got so much value to offer people that their lifetime value becomes thousands of dollars. Knowing what you’re particular business situation is and judging yourself accordingly, so that you can invest in creating the right kind of marketing for your before unit.

Then, in your during unit, looking at everything that you’re currently doing right now, from the time that you first meet with somebody, all the way through the transactional process, and then adding that little step of the after-sale experience to architect a wow experience for somebody, and to measure that in terms of how close can I get to increasing this by 50%? And I look at it; you can have an easy win by looking at the last 10 people that you did business with, the last 10 jobs you did, the last 10 patients that came into your clinic. When you look at it, what was the total value of those 10 transactions? And then, going forward, looking at the next 10 transactions, what could you do to increase the value of those next 10 transactions by 50%? What could you do to increase the unit of sale by adding more value? What could you do to get a referral from somebody during that transactional process or in the providing after sale service section? What could you do to leverage and turn one job into another job, but looking at that during unit and saying “How can I increase this by 50%?”

And then in your after unit, looking at and getting all of those relationships that you have already into one place. A lot of times, everything is all mixed into one database, where you’ve got your prospect, and you’ve got the jobs in process right now, and then you’ve also got the people who’ve done business with you in the past. Clean that up. Have a way of tagging people or sorting people within your database, so that you can treat this as a relationship portfolio. And, when you look at it, what’s the yield that I’m getting from this relationship portfolio? If we look at it, how many people are referring you? How much money are they doing in repeat business as a result of sending them a newsletter, or keeping in touch with them, or sending them birthday cards, or doing all the things that you can do to nurture those relationships? And how are you doing in orchestrating referrals? What’s your process for presenting people the opportunity to introduce you to their friends? Those 3 things, if you look at those in that broad scope, that’s where your breakthroughs are. It’s just a matter of really identifying which one is going to be the biggest breakthrough for you first, and focusing yourself on taking action with what you know already, or getting some coaching on it.

Joe: Yeah.

Dean: Okay, so this week, Joe, we’ve got an opportunity for people to really, if they want to spend the next 10 weeks with us, architecting those breakthroughs in their business, we’re going to be starting our breakthrough blueprint program, leading up to the conference in October. So, we’re going to spend 10 weeks going through the before unit, the during unit, the after unit, really going in-depth on the 8 profit activators, with exercises and homework, and Q&A calls with you and I to really spend what, for most people, might be a little bit of a downtime in their business, where they may have a little bit of time to kind of think through things. And spend this 10 weeks really architecting a breakthrough and creating a blueprint that they can use to really explode their business over the next 12 or 18 months. I’m pretty excited about that.

Joe: I’m super-excited about it, because I know it’s going to freaking be life-changing for everyone that goes through it.

Dean: If you’re just listening to these episodes here, go to ILoveMarketing.com, and you’re seeing all the information about the breakthrough blueprint program. And we’d love for you to join us, too. The main reason that we’re doing this is to create breakthroughs that we can brag about at the conference in October. And we’re not charging any money for taking part in the breakthrough blueprint program. We’re including it with your registration for the conference in October, whether you’re going to come live and join us in Phoenix, or whether you just stay where you are and live-stream the videos. We’re going to be video streaming every minute of the conference so you can do it from wherever you are. But you can take part in the 10-week breakthrough blueprint program. So, I’m very excited about that as an opportunity to really create some breakthroughs for people over the next 10 weeks. I think we’re going to see some incredible things.

Joe: Yes, it will happen. So, check out the site, ILoveMarketing.com, and get yourself hooked up. Your life will never be the same. Today is the last way. How do you say it, Dean?

Dean: Today is the last day of the way…

Joe: Today is the last day of the way you used to be.

Dean: That’s exactly right. There you go.

Joe: What if I say the last way of the day you used to be? That doesn’t make any sense.

Dean: It’s tricky. It’s really kind of tricky.

Joe: Tricky.

Dean: But I think people know what we’re trying to say.

Joe: Awesome.

Dean: Alright. Let’s wrap up. We’ll look forward to seeing you guys in Phoenix, and joining us for the breakthrough blueprint. And we’ll talk to you next week.

Joe: Goodbye.

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