The one where you can’t help but make more money just by listening

Dean: Hey, everybody! It’s Dean Jackson

Joe: And Joe Polish. Like nail polish. Like shoe polish. Like my last name.

Dean: Somebody asked me, today, whether you had ever been referred to as toe polish.

Joe: Toe polish? You know, I can’t recall.

Dean: I can’t either.

Joe: I’m sure people refer to me as all kinds of things: jackass, moron, marketing genius. There’s a variety.

Dean: Your name is perfect for the carpet cleaning industry.

Joe: Yeah. I got made fun of, my name, my entire childhood. And then as soon as I get into teaching professional cleaners and restorers how to market and run their companies, everyone thinks I changed my name.

Dean: All of a sudden, it’s perfect. People think you made it up.

Joe: Alright. So, everyone out in I Love Marketing land, Dean, it sounds like you were trying to interrupt me while I was talking. So, I’m going to let you kind of set the stage for what we’re going to share today.

Dean: Well, I’m excited that it’s just you and me today, actually. It’s been a while. Seems like the last little while, we’ve had like this cavalcade of the world’s greatest marketers coming through the doors here. It hasn’t really been just you and me.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah.

Dean: I miss you.

Joe: You should. You should miss me. What’s not to miss, right? So, for people that are listening because they want to, obviously, improve their marketing, fall in love with it more, better understand it, allow it to open up many doors and opportunities that cannot be opened up otherwise. How are we going to help them do that?

Dean: Well, you know what would be great for us to do? Let’s talk about what we’re going to talk about at the I Love Marketing Conference in September, in Phoenix.

Joe: Okay. I’m happy to do that. Why am I happy to do that? Because we’ll finally make some money off these people listening, and just feed off all this advice we’ve been giving everyone. Right? Seriously.

Dean: You know what I love? I love to see the comments, and how people are really taking all the stuff we’re sharing, and they’re applying it. I love that. I love that more than anything.

Joe: Yeah. I’m going to pull up the comments here. Right under the Bill Glazer interview that we put up, there’s several comments, and there’s one that I think is kind of interesting. It’s from Jane Sinclair. And it says, “Again, delivered impeccable and totally applicable, by you guys. By the way, I’m going to comment every episode, because I’m addicted. I now make it mandatory for my staff to listen to this podcast every Monday, so keep delivering. PS: I will buy anything you sell me, so bring it on.” There we go. We’ve got permission now.

“Just last week, we set out to develop our direct mail multipart series funnel for our prospects, and are ready to roll this week. With our first sales staff recently onboard, we need the most qualified leads for her to convert into cold and hard cash. We are segmenting the over 20,000 prospects into mailing 200 per week, and then sequential mailings every 2 weeks, for a total of 4 mailings, with the last being an aggressive special offer.” “As Bill stated, we have integrated both direct mail, leading to both phone and Web landing pages, trying to cover all bases. Hopefully, these techniques will deliver when used on the inherently slow-to-change veterinary community.”

So, it’s just super-cool. And yeah, one of the things me and Dean have talked about a lot, and we talk about in between these calls, of course, is that we always want I Love Marketing to be filled with so many darned ideas, that if no one ever buys anything from us, ever, they’re still learning, that we deliver more valuable stuff – that was a weird sound in the background, but we’ll just ignore that – that we deliver more valuable stuff for free than what most people charge for. That’s our objective, is our goal. So, we are going to have a conference, though, coming up, and it’s going to be September 21st and 22nd, in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, which is actually really nice that time of the year. And we’re going to do a conference.

So, we’re going to talk about a lot of stuff, and spend 2 days immersing everyone that comes into effective marketing that works and makes money and is ethical, and that you will enjoy, and that will allow you to go deep with your clients and create a community, and bond with them, and just basically help you be very, very effective and powerful marketers. So, there’s a formula to that, and there’s modules to that. And it’s something that me and Dean have used for years. Right before we started this call, Dean, you said that the modules have brought in at least $150-million in revenue, just in the real estate industry, since you’ve actually taught them.

Dean: Yeah, exactly. This whole framework. A lot of the things that we’ve been talking about on I Love Marketing, they’re all based on this framework. I have an overriding context or formula that I use for everything that I do in looking at business. And I know you do this, too. We look at things the same way. We’ve talked about it a little bit before, but the basic context is that we look at businesses in 3 parts: we look at business as a before unit, as a during unit, and as an after unit. And that is the simplest, broadest context that we can apply to it here. When you look at it, it gets deeper and deeper, but when you really look at your business in those terms, looking at it as 3 independent units, each with their own sort of measurable monetary goals, their own impact areas, you’ve got the formula.

What happens with a lot of people is that they’re able to triple their business, just by making it 3-dimensional, instead of just thinking about their business as this one thing. If you really get this idea and you really get this concept of looking at your before unit as the unit of your business that is in charge of finding, identifying, educating and motivating people to come into your business for the first time, that’s really what your before unit is about. If you look at your during unit as the unit of your business that delivers the experience that people have when they’re doing business with you, starting from – if you have a retail store – the moment that they walk into your store, until the moment they walk out of your store. That would be your during unit experience.

As a real estate agent, the during unit could be the moment you start looking at houses with somebody, until they close on the house and that they’ve spent the first 30, 60 and 90 days in that house. And then, the after unit is all about nurturing lifetime relationships and it’s about building a lifetime relationship with all of the people who already know you, like you and trust you, so that they do business with you again and that you can orchestrate referrals. That’s sort of the broad picture there. And there’s so many different ways to apply this, so many different ways to kind of diagnose where a business has the biggest opportunity.

When you look at it, what I find is they’re usually focused one of the 3 as their primary focus. Like sometimes, people only focus on their current clients. I find that with a lot of medical practices or sort of in that type of a field, where they just have their patient list and they just work with those people, and they’re kind of focused on the during. Those kind of businesses are ones that say, and are sort of proud about it, they say, “Well, I don’t advertise. I don’t do any marketing.” It’s almost like a badge of honor. That’s how they feel about it, that they don’t have to. But every time I hear it, it just makes you so sad, to think that they’re just limiting themselves in so many ways.

Joe: No, completely. You said something early on, where you said, “You can start looking at your business 3-dimensionally and have a huge impact.” And yeah, I cannot imagine anyone not adding a tremendous amount of revenue and income to their business just by looking at it from this framework, for this reason. You hear a lot of people talk about lifetime value of a customer, lifetime value of a client, and most people can speak to it, but do they really do it? And one thing, for years, that both me and you have always shared and taught, and we first had to get and understand this in our own businesses. By the way, I want to mention this for any new listeners to I Love Marketing. If you happen to find us on iTunes or however you happen to be listening to this, me and Dean are both converts of our own system. All of the things that we learned, we never learned thinking we would teach this stuff to other people. We learned it because we needed to survive – in his case, as a real estate agent years ago, and in my case I was a dead-broke carpet cleaner, living off credit cards.

I learned this stuff because I needed to pay my bills. I needed to survive. And I fell in love with marketing. And so did Dean. If you want to hear that whole story, start from episode one of our podcasts, which you can find at I Love Marketing or in iTunes. But nonetheless, when I first learned lifetime value of a client, just that concept of how much is a client actually worth, how much can you afford to spend to get a client, people, like you had mentioned, they make a big deal about, “Oh, we don’t spend any money on advertising.” Well, you’re spending something. You’re spending time, you’re spending energy, even if you’re not “spending money on an ad,” people are not just falling out of thin air. And if you happen to be in that type of situation where clients are falling out of thin air, just pray that it stays that way, because it usually doesn’t.

So, when you start thinking of how much is a client actually worth, if I start not just focusing on chasing new customers, new customers, new customers, but what do I do once I’ve got them, and then after they’ve done business with me, how do I get them to keep coming back? How do I get them to tell other people about me, not through manipulation, not through trickery, but through the strategic delivery of value and proper communication and educations, and simply asking them and directing them to do certain things? That changes your whole business. As a carpet cleaner, I remember back in 1992, when I used to look at getting a “carpet cleaning job,” a good carpet cleaning job, back then, for me, would have been like $150. And as soon as I realized that, “Wow, if this carpet cleaning job cleaned their carpets every year, for 5 years, it would no longer be $150, it would be $750. And if they referred someone just like them to me, only one person in an entire year that had the same sort of behavior as them, cleaning their carpets every year, that $150 job now became a $1,500 job.

When I started looking at clients that I was dealing with, it’s not just get in their home and service them so you can get your $150 and then go to the next job, it was like, “I’m working with someone here who’s going to pay me $1,500, pay my company $1,500 over the next 5 years.” And if they refer 3 people instead of one, now that job’s worth $3,000. If they refer 10 people, all of a sudden it’s getting up into the tens of thousands. And it totally changed my whole mindset. You’ve seen this many, many times, as have I. When we get business owners to understand just the arithmetic, because you are in the arithmetic business, no matter what business you think you’re in, Gary Halbert would always say, “You’re in the arithmetic business,” it changes everything. And there’s arithmetic before the job, during the job, and after the job. And the more you really start thinking of this as a 3- dimensional thing, all the different parts of your business will improve, not just your income.

See, that’s one thing I wanted to be real clear about, too. This isn’t just a great way to look at your business because you’re going to make more money, this is a great way to look at your business because this is how you impact people’s lives. For instance, Dean came up with before, during and after. It’s a simple way, but it’s so powerful. And I think some people may underestimate the power of it, in its simplicity. Those of you who are married, let’s say, for instance, what did you do before you even knew your spouse, your partner? Do you behave different now, than you did before you asked for the date or before you gave the person the ring and proposed?

If you still continued some of the great dating rituals and behaviors that you did before you got married, you’re probably in a pretty happy sort of relationship right now. And if you only use some really used some really good techniques in the beginning, just to get the sale, and then you neglect them after, it’s probably a completely different situation. Before, during and after applies to every life situation. I think if you start thinking about that, the customers and clients, the businesses you do business with that you appreciate the most, they don’t neglect you at any of those stages. They do things before, they do things during, they do things after. And the people that do a good job at all 3 are the ones you keep doing business with.

Dean: Well said.

Joe: I’ll shut up now, Dean. Say something really smart, so I don’t have to continue.

Dean: Okay, that’s my cue to say something really smart. The thing is, though, when you break something down to something that simple, and you know that that’s where you’re looking now, it allows your creativity to really flourish within that context. We’re talking about the before unit, and each level down that we go, we’re getting more and more specific and more detailed in how we approach this. So, underneath – this is what I was sharing with you earlier – those 3 overriding contexts of before, during and after, there are 8 modules that go underneath those 3.

When you really get right down to it and you start kind of examining each one of these units, there are so many ways to apply these modules to any business. I use these as a diagnostic tool. If I’m doing a consultation, we’ll have people come to the Evil Scheme Hatchery, put up, on the white board, this map of the business. And it’s really helpful for anybody listening to listen, to think about your business as a moving process. I don’t know if you and I ever talked about this, Joe, but do you ever see show, “How It’s Made,” on the Discovery Channel, where they go through all of these manufacturing processes and they show like assembly lines and how they make all these different things, like how they make screwdrivers or how they make jawbreakers? There’s any number of things. They just go around and they show manufacturing processes.

Joe: I’ve only seen pieces of it, but I do want to know how they make jawbreakers, though. Just the mere making of a jawbreaker would probably fascinate me for days.

Dean: Well, it’s amazing how complex these things are, but how simple and elegant it looks when you see all the stuff that went into engineering the process that makes these jawbreakers, or anything. That show is very sort of mesmerizing. I watch it a lot. I stumbled on it I don’t know how many years ago, but quite a while ago. When the show first came on, I stumbled on kind of a marathon of the show. And I watched maybe 3 hours of it at one time.

Joe: Wait, wait, wait! Dean, I’ve been over to your house, though. You watch a lot of weird things. You watch Martha Stewart.

Dean: I do. I’ll tell you. We’ll talk about that, too.

Joe: As an aside, why do you watch Martha Stewart? What’s your deal?

Dean: My mom likes Martha Stewart, so we watch The Golden Girls and Martha Stewart. My mom has Alzheimer’s, so every night we watch the same things. But I’ve learned a lot from watching Martha. So, let me get back to my…

Joe: You just made me look like a real jerk.

Dean: Let’s talk about one show at a time.

Joe: Okay. I was just saying now all of our listeners are going to think I’m a cruel human being, because you had to throw in you watched it with your mom sort of thing. So now, I’m just this insensitive dude.

Dean: Yeah, you really are. You’re very insensitive.

Joe: Okay. I’ll put my ADD on the shelf for a minute. So, go ahead and carry on.

Dean: This is the thing. When you watch that show, what I’ve found, for me, is that it stimulated a part of my brain that was able to think in visual, moving processes. There’s something that happens. I would highly recommend this anybody. You can go to YouTube, I bet, and type in “How It’s Made,” and see probably some episodes of the show. But I guarantee you, watching these processes unfold, you will have a different perspective on your own business. And you’ll start to imagine, “If my business was an assembly line, if my business was a moving piece, what are the raw materials that I need at one end, and what is the process that needs to happen to get through that whole assembly line? And there may be 50 different processes that something goes through, to come out the other end as a gumball or a screwdriver or a motorcycle helmet. And some of them involve people, some of them are completely automated. And wherever you can, in your business, it’s a great idea to think about how you can automate it.

But what I did with this whole idea is think about business underneath that before, during and after context, as a moving assembly line that you visualize as a living, moving process. What has to happen along the way? Let’s break it down a little bit. Underneath the before unit, there are 3 modules, 3 stations, 3 processes underneath that before unit, that are completely adaptable to any business. So, the first of the 3, in the before unit, is select a single target market, when I talk about the target market selection, it makes everything fall into place underneath that. You’ve seen it yourself. The big mistake that a lot of businesses make is trying to think about the broadest possible audience for their business, trying to be too much to too many people, trying to be one-size-fits-all, being broad versus narrow, thinking about the forest and not thinking about the individual trees, and not realizing that all of these individual trees have different needs.

Joe: It’s like being a pig farmer, versus an albino pig farmer.

Dean: Well, exactly. Well said. Well said, sir.

Joe: Not really.

Dean: Especially if you have a product specifically geared for albino pig farmers.

Joe: Exactly. Can I say this, though, before you kind of go into this?

Dean: Sure.

Joe: As you’re taking everyone through the modules of before, during and after, the 8 of them, I want everyone that’s listening – and not driving while they’re doing this – to actually take note of what these are. The first one being select a single target market. And listen, as Dean explains them, because this is what we’re going to go deep with at the I Love Marketing Conference on September 21st and 22nd. And if you’re there or not is irrelevant to the fact that these are still the things that, if you get an understanding and you master these particular areas, and if you’re just even aware of them, they will make you an infinitely more effective marketer and entrepreneur, because these are the stages, these are the ways that you communicate, identify and basically nurture your clientele through these different sort of modules.

When I first went into carpet cleaning, there were many people that purchase my carpet cleaning services. And it could be worldwide, it could be just the United States, it could just be Phoenix, it could be a certain town, just in the Phoenix area, such as Chandler, Arizona. It could be high-end clients, it could be people with pets, it could be people with allergy problems, or it could try to be everyone in every sort of price range, and then I would be all things to all people and be the whole master of none sort of scenario. That’s the whole point. Anyway, I just wanted to say that.

Dean: You’re right on track there, all of those different audiences that you were talking about, all the different reasons that people get their carpets cleaned, when you look at all of the different motivators that people have, the triggers that start somebody on the path of getting their carpets cleaned. It could be somebody who gets new carpet that, 6 months from now, they’re probably still pretty proud of their carpet and they want to kind of, when somebody gets something new, when you get a new car or you get new carpet or something, it’s, “Oh, take your shoes off!” You start treating it better. You’re like, “This time, we’re really going to take care of this.” They have a different motivation in the very beginning, than somebody who’s got carpet that they’ve had for 10 years, and they just want to kind of keep it presentable.

Joe: Exactly.

Dean: We use this with the real estate agents, somebody buying their first home. Somebody buying a move-up home is a different target market. Somebody buying a trophy home is a different target market. Somebody moving in from out of town is a different target market. And when you really start thinking about your business and you start looking at who are all of the different people that you could serve, who are all the different possibilities there, when you start really identifying them, some of them are going to jump out as potentially the most profitable niche in your market. And oftentimes, if people are just indiscriminately serving everybody that they possibly can, they may find that the top 10% or 20% of the people that they’re working with are providing 80% of the profit, and the other 80% are providing all of the headaches and none of the profit.

And knowing that gives you a complete freedom to focus all of your efforts on let’s just get more of the most profitable customers. And it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, there’s always different varieties of people that you could work with, different people that you could focus on, people with different needs, different motivators, different hopes and dreams and fears. And there’s a lot of sort of psychology in it, and sort of anthropology, where you’re kind of getting to know and understand who your target market is. And it may not seem like you’re doing any marketing, per se, yet, but you are laying the groundwork that makes each of the next steps fall into place. This one alone, if I sit down with somebody and look at all of the possible different types of people that they serve, it’s always an eye-opening experience for people. And we’re going to talk a lot about the real metrics and value of creating and choosing the right target market.

Joe: That’s what I’m trying to say. So, put that one down as select a single target market, is the first module in the before unit. And like I said, we’re only going to have a limited amount of time to touch on all of these, because each one of these we could talk at length about. But we’re just going to share with you, here, the curriculum.

Dean: The truth is each one of these, we could do a 2-day conference on each one of these – just each one of these modules. This is the thing. If you start thinking about this as the blueprint or as the map of where you’re headed, what you have available to you, this is a lifelong journey in your business, that you’re going to be addressing each of these areas of your business, you’re going to constantly improving, adapting, applying new technologies, new opportunities that come around under all of these. But this context is going to last you the next 20 years in your business. The context is not going to change. 20 years ago, you had to select a single target market, and 20 years from now you’re still going to have to select a single target market.

So, I’m very conscious of making sure that what we’re talking about here are sort of bedrock things. These are the things that are constant. These are the things that you can bank on being true years from now, in your business. This is the framework that you can look at. I always say I look at these like the stem cells of every business breakthrough. You take these stem cells, and they’re going to become very different functioning in a carpet cleaning business, in a real estate business, in a retail business, in a restaurant, in a professional practice, in a manufacturing company, in a transportation company. Any type of company is going to have this same sort of stem cells that are going to grow into the ideal scenario for whatever business you’re applying them to.

Joe: Exactly.

Dean: That’s what I thought you were going to say.

Joe: Yeah. What else could I possibly add to that, Dean?

Dean: Well, exactly.

Joe: You are Mr. Eloquence.

Dean: Okay. So, let’s talk about the second module.

Joe: Okay. You want me to start?

Dean: I’m looking at the time here. I’ll lay them out here. The second module is compel your prospects to call you. This now is where we start applying the direct response marketing principles that we have been talking about in all of these episodes so far. We’ve been talking all about it on I Love Marketing. It’s the thing that really, when somebody says, “I love marketing,” this is the thing they’re talking about is compelling prospects to call you. There’s nothing more exciting than transforming your life from being a manual labor prospector into an automated marketer. Now, your business becomes easy, lucrative and fun. It becomes an ELF business, when you really start applying the direct response principles that we talk about.

Joe: And there’s a lot of different ways that you can compel prospects to actually go to your website, pick up the phone and call you, visit your store. If you’re an online business, if you’re a brick-and-mortar business, if you are in any part of the world, it does not matter. Compel prospects to call you. And when we say call, it could be even if you never use a “telephone,” they can call upon you over the Internet, they can call upon you through many different means of reaching you, be it physically or electronically, or over the phone lines. So, compel is an interesting word. I remember Dan Kennedy would always talk about your advertising needs to be compelling, and compelling is like when you’re driving by an auto accident, and all the people in front of you are slowing down and people are screaming, “Idiots! Morons!” They have to gawk at the car accident, to see if anyone’s hurt, dead, maimed, whatever. And it’s kind of morbid, and all that. And people get angry because there’s a big, huge line. And then the moment you drive by it, you slow down, and you become one of those same people that you’re bitching about.

It’s compelling, because you cannot not pay attention. And if you want someone to respond to your advertising, to your marketing, to your website, you need to set it up so that it’s very hard, if you’re selecting the right target market – meaning they’ve been identified as someone that is interested in what it is you’re selling – then you want to be compelling. So, you want to compel people. This is an example. This is a simple headline, as an example. It could worth tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions to some of the people that are listening to I Love Marketing. I’m not going to go too deep in it. We’ll go deep at it in the conference. I was going to give a headline. There are a lot of people who are price-focused in the carpet cleaning business. And I knew, early on, that if I was going to teach them how to use education-based marketing, which we’re going to touch on here in a minute, that I would also need to address the fact that they’re so used to advertising price.

There’s a big difference between the lowest price and the best quality. So, what do people want? Do you want the best price or do you want the best quality? Do you want a combination of both? So, this headline that I created with Gary Halbert kind of covered both. It was, “Free recorded message reveals how to have your carpets cleaned properly, at the lowest possible price.” That’s a tricky headline, for some people. And I would ask cleaners, when I would first share it with some of my clients. I’d say, “Okay, what do you think is the most important words there, as it comes to attracting the right type of clients and not being in the price game?” And they’d be like, “Well, free recorded message.” “Lowest price.” They would always say that, and I’m like, “No, the keyword’s properly.” Because let’s say you’re not the lowest price, because the lowest price guy does a lousy job. But you clean people’s carpets properly.

But in order to clean them properly, you’re not going to bait-and-switch people. You’re going to go in and use proper chemistry, the right type of equipment. That’s clearly going to be more expensive than some idiot that’s advertising $5.95 a room, just lying to people, misleading them with the price to get in, and then charge them what a real quality job should cost. So, “Free recorded message reveals how to have your carpets cleaned properly, at the lowest possible price.” That compels people to buy. And no matter what business you’re in, if you’re a web designer, “How to have your website built properly,” or “effectively,” at the lowest possible price.” Or, if you’re in the auto repair business and you’re a really high-quality repair place, “How to have your transmission fixed or replaced properly, at the lowest possible price.” So, that’s just an example. There’s a lot of different ways to compel people, and we’ll go really deep with it. But I just wanted to give that as a context, so that people understand an example of something as simple as words, how they can compel people. So, what other thoughts would you have on that?

Dean: I think that’s fantastic. That formula that you just gave, literally that is a winning formula and can be applied in any number of ways. That’s the thing about these. That’s the thing that I really love about having a framework for marketing, that really can adapt to whatever business. This is what’s so fascinating about it, is that we’re constantly seeking out and developing and pioneering new ways to apply what we already know to different businesses or to compelling prospects to call. The big mistake that often businesses make is that they think that compelling prospects to call you means getting your name out there, getting people to know who your business is. And that’s not it at all.

Sometimes, the very best thing you can do is put your own ego aside and focus only on what they really want, only what your prospects really want. Robert Collier talks about entering the conversation that’s already going on in your prospect’s mind. Once you realize your target market, you’re not going to try and convince people to do something, you’re going to get their attention by showing them how to do something that’s already on their mind. They’re already thinking about how to do this. When you put your selfish needs aside and you’re able to focus just on them, that’s when the real magic happens. That’s when the real breakthroughs happen. And that’s what we’ve been talking about, any number of ways to do that, with offering people consumer awareness guides or offering free reports or free recorded messages that all have a compelling title that really articulates what they really want, in a way that they’re compelled to call and get that. And they don’t see that there’s any sales involved in that. They see that it is completely what they’re looking for. So, they feel safe to call.

But all the while, here you are now, thinking like a chess master. And you know, and world-class marketers know, that just taking that first step is going to set a sequence of events that within 2 or 3 more moves, they’re going to be meeting with you in your office, or you’re going to be meeting with them in their home, or they’re going to be in your store, but you didn’t put the pressure on the ad itself, or on the postcard or the sales letter, or whatever media you’re using. You don’t put the pressure on to make the full sale. You’re just starting with the process of getting them to raise their hands. You’re telling them to call, so they identify themselves to you. And then, you can move on to the next step. Did you have anything else? There’s so much we could say about getting prospects to call you.

Joe: No, no, no. There’s so much more. But I want to make sure that, in the time we’ve got, that we cover all the modules and at least speak to them. If you’re already seeing just the value of the first 2 things, select a target market and compel prospects to call you, look you up on the Internet, whatever, as being very important, we’re going to build our whole conference around the in-depth teaching of this. And it’s also what we’re going to continue to always talk about on I Love Marketing. Me and Dean, I can speak for myself, Dean, I’ve spent well over $1-million, personally, on my marketing education, just learning these things that we’re talking about.

So, what we want to do is impart them to you by the I Love Marketing show that we’re doing right now, through the conference, and through anything else that we put out. And we already have materials that we’ve been teaching to thousands and thousands of business owners all built around this. So, we know this works. None of this is our opinions. This has all been proven over and over and over again. This is what matters. None of what we’re talking about is theoretical here. Me and Dean have thousands of people that utilize these specific before, during and after modules, in order to continue to build and grow their business. Okay, so the third one, Dean.

Dean: The third one is educate and motivate your prospects to meet you. This is really about lead conversion. This is where the real skill becomes in knowing how to set things up, so that people want to meet with you. Let’s just use that example that you set, of even the price-sensitive thing, we’re saying how to get your carpets properly cleaned for the lowest possible price. And they’re calling and listening to a free recorded message. Well, that free recorded message, or if they’re going to get a free report, those things, that’s all starting that process of educating and motivating your prospects to meet you. And that meet you is the part where the actual transaction is going to occur, whether that’s going to be to come into your retail store, or it’s going to be to invite you into their house to give them a carpet audit or it’s going to be coming to your homebuyer workshop, if you’re a real estate agent, or any of those things where you’re going to get into a position where you can start your sales process. We talk about the difference between marketing and sales. This is really what you’re marketing is delivering people right to the process, so that when you actually meet with them, they’re already pre-disposed to wanting to do business with you.

Joe: Exactly. And just like I said in the headline, how to get your carpets cleaned, “Free recorded message reveals how to have your carpets cleaned properly, at the lowest possible price.” Now, that could be, “Free video on this website reveals,” it could be a variety of different mechanisms that you deliver information to. But basically, once they would call that free recorded message, they would hear 7 questions to ask a carpet cleaner before you invite him into your home, 6 costly misconceptions about carpet cleaning, 8 mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet cleaner, how to avoid 4 carpet cleaning rip-offs, the difference between value and price.

All of those things would educate people on how to choose a carpet cleaner, so that even if they never did business with my company, when they would listen to my free recorded message they would know what they didn’t know they didn’t know before calling it, so that they can make an informed, intelligent decision. And now, equipped with that information, they’re a more confident buyer. And a more confident buyer is exactly the type of buyer that I wanted. And I wanted them to have confidence with me, and that’s why I was providing that information. And since I was the one providing them that information, who did they have the most rapport and trust with? They had it with me. Unless they were price shoppers, and the free recorded message would sift, sort and screen the price shoppers, it would present to me the ideal sort of prospects. And the ideal prospects would love the fact that I presented them with that education, because it helped them make a buying decision, and they would do business with me.

This applies to anyone. I don’t care what business you’re in. I’m yet to find someone who can sit and tell me, “Oh, you’re better off not educating your prospects and clients, unless, of course, you’re in a business like if you sell cigarettes, which I would never recommend anyone do, but let’s assume that, you probably don’t want to educate them about how it’s going to kill them. So, if you’re in a business that actually creates value and delivers something that’s good and useful to people, then an educated prospect and client is the absolute best person, and it’s the most ethical form of advertising and marketing. That’s why I get so irritated, Dean, when you hear people talk about how marketers, all they’re trying to do is sell you something. Selling is not yelling.

Where many parts of the auto industry have it wrong is they think if you just blast with a big starburst in the newspaper, on a TV or radio ad, and you yell a huge low price, that that’s the most compelling thing that you can ever offer to people. And you’ve got an entire industry, in many ways, that screwed itself because their focus has always been on low price yelled louder and louder and louder. And they actually think that’s marketing and selling. I guess you can put it under that umbrella, but that ain’t the crap that we would ever use. We actually teach people stuff that works. We want people that are pre-interested, pre-motivated, pre-qualified and predisposed, and actually happy and confident to seek out our services. Honestly, I don’t know a more effective way to create the very best prospects in an ethical manner, than using these modules. Anything else on that, or should we go to the during stages?

Dean: I just want to give people the caveat that education isn’t enough. A lot of times, people start using – and you probably see this too, Joe, especially with businesspeople – free reports as their offer. They get the mechanics. They learn that, “Okay, I’m going to select my target market, I’m going to run a direct response ad offering a free report, and I’m going to send them the free report,” and then they don’t really think through the motivate part of educate and motivate people to meet you. They think that educating is enough, that they’ll send out the reports and then they kind of sit back and think that people are going to call me. I see this a lot in professional practices and in financial services type of things, where people are offering educational things, they’re sending out the free report, but there’s no motivator, there’s nothing to connect the dots that make it easy for people to want to meet you, who are starting that process.

So, I really focus so much of my attention on crafting the way that you can present something, that makes it easy for people to want to come and meet you, that it’s the most natural next step. We talk about it as offering cookies to somebody, rather than saying, “If you want something, there’s lots of stuff in the fridge. Go ahead and help yourself.” We want to make it so that you’ve done all of this stuff, you’ve got them into your living room there, it’s so much more effective to come in with a plate of freshly-baked cookies and ask somebody, “Would you like a cookie?” That’s where you’ve really got to think through the process of what are going to be the tastiest cookies for your target market?

So, that 3-step process really makes up the before unit. We talk about the arithmetic, we talk about the math of this, and what you can really do with a before unit is you are setting up a money multiplying system. You’re setting up something that every step in this process, you can automate, you can use websites, you can use free recorded messages, you can use autoresponders, you can use direct mail, you can use all things that are completely leveragable, that don’t require your personal time on doing them. You can completely delegate the process. The metric that you look at is how much money did I put in, and how much did I get out? It’s like how many appointments did I get from this, that I’m able to turn into sales in my during unit?”

Joe: Totally. One thing I will say, if you really think that educating someone just in and of itself is enough, then I’m sure everyone listening’s probably been in a situation where they’ve spent a lot of time trying to educate a prospect, but then they never ask for the sale. And then, they were frustrated because they’re like, “Why didn’t the person buy?” “Well, you didn’t ask. Or, you didn’t set it up in a way to where you have to take it to the next stage. It’s kind of like really romancing the heck out of a person, and then never asking for the date. You’re not going to get to where you want to go if you don’t do the other things, which is why we are fully equipped to share with you real-life examples, when we do our conference. That’s the reason we’re doing the 2-day conferences. We know that that level of emersion will speed people’s progress up, in many cases, by 10 years, just by getting exposure to all the different ways and people.

See, the cool thing is so much of what we’ve done now, at this stage in our career, Dean, has so transcended me and you. We’ve got so many clients that have just used this. So, those are some of the things that people will actually, when you come and join us, if you do come and join us at the conference, you’ll get an opportunity to meet people that have. Some are brand new to this and are just kicking ass and taking names, and other people that have been successfully doing this as a result of us teaching them for over a decade, or longer. So, it will be super-cool. So, let’s go into the during stage.

Dean: In the during unit, now there are 3 more modules to look at. I remember, now, the during unit is from the moment that you imagine like the best thing that could happen. The best thing that could happen to your carpet cleaning business or to your real estate business, or to any business, is that somebody were to come to you and say, “Listen, I’m going to go ahead and just deliver to you people who want to get their carpets cleaned. And I’ll just set up appointments for you. Would that be okay?” And that’s really what the before unit is really all about. If you imagine that, as a carpet cleaner, how different would your business be if all you had to do was you started in your during unit and you go to appointment after appointment, after appointment, all day, with people who are already pre-motivated, who want to talk about getting their carpets cleaned or want to get a carpet audit?” That’s what your before unit can do, and this is where your during unit starts now.

Your during unit starts when you have your first meeting with somebody who’s motivated to move forward and do whatever it is that your business does. So, that means the first time they open up the door at your retail store or they come into the office in your professional practice, or they show up at your office to look at homes, or invite you into their house if they’re going to be selling their house, that’s where your during unit starts. Module #4 is about presenting your unique service offer. So, we talk a lot about how you can present to people the service that you offer, in a way that makes it effortless for them to get started. A lot of times, like with your carpet audit, when you’re talking about that, I forget which episode we talked about that whole process, but when you go through and they’re already educated, they’re already a little bit motivated, you go through and you either do your free room of cleaning and give them the carpet audit to show them all the different things that you can do, it makes it so much easier for them to say, “Yeah, let’s go.”

Joe: Let me say that real quick, too, because this will help explain this. And if you’ve not listened to the episode where I did do that, then go to ILoveMarketing.com and listen to all of our episodes, because it will really teach you. They’re just so damned good, aren’t they, Dean?

Dean: Yeah, they really are.

Joe: We bestride the world like colossal. We’re god among men is kind of what I’m saying. What an arrogant person I actually am. So, for instance, educate and motivate them to meet you, which is the last module, then we go into present your unique service, would be after using a consumer awareness guide, I would make an offer: free room of carpet cleaning with a carpet audit, so you can go in and evaluate the condition of the carpet, and it’s a way to uniquely package the presentation and the service, so it’s new, better and different than any other thing that any other person has ever heard from a carpet cleaner. So, I wanted to do something completely different, because everyone was giving estimates and quotes, so I created this thing called a “carpet audit,” and I would go in and I would just present this very formulaic method, and I would offer them a free room. So, there’s no cost or obligation of any kind. They can try my services. But I wouldn’t just do the free room, I would always do it in conjunction with a carpet audit. Because when I did it that way, I was able to actually show them.

Now during, I’m there, we’re in the home, and we’re able to actually show them and educate them in person. It carries on the education. All of these stages kind of feed into each other, but it’s synergistic. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link. And if you do a great job of educating but then you have a weak link presenting your unique service offer, it’s not going to work as well. So, all of the things that me and Dean are sharing with you here are really so that you have the strongest marketing chain humanly possible, so that you can obviously close everyone that’s worth closing, and only spend your time talking to people that are worth spending your time talking with, where it’s going to be a win- win situation for you. So, yeah, when we go into the home, we do a carpet audit. So, every person listening, you have your version of that offer, or a carpet audit.

The other day, I was meeting with a printer who’s a very successful printer, but has been hammered, over the last couple of years, with the economy and with prices. His whole business is in the commodity business. And I said, “You know, if you want to get out of the commodity business, then quit selling business cards and letterhead and printing. Start asking Socratic questions of, “Why are you coming to a printer? What is it that you want?” You don’t want business cards and letterhead, you want what you think business cards and letterhead are going to do for their business, which is going to get them jobs. So, sit down and say, “What are you trying to accomplish? Let’s do a printing audit, and evaluate all of the things you’re trying to use printing for. And by taking them through the process, you can charge them money to do a printing audit. And then, if they end up hiring you as a printer, you can apply that fee, that consulting fee, towards printing. And you’re no longer viewed as a printer anymore. You’re now viewed as an advisor that’s serving people. For many years, Dean, you’ve taught that selling is serving people. If you set it up this way, that’s exactly what you’re doing, you’re serving people.

Dean: That ties in perfectly, because they do go hand-in-hand, with module 5, which is deliver a world-class experience. You’ve read the book Raving Fans.

Joe: Yes.

Dean: Which is a fantastic book. It’s probably 14 or 15 years old now, maybe even more. But the idea of visioning your business, visioning the experience that people have – and we’ve got lots of tools for mapping this and setting it all up – it’s almost like theater, in a way, that you create an experience that is completely orchestrated, that when somebody goes through that experience, they come out of it saying, “That was the best carpet cleaning experience I’ve ever had,” or “that was the best chiropractic experience I’ve ever had,” or “that’s the best real estate experience I’ve ever had.” We’re going to go through a whole way of mapping out that customer experience, that will not only deliver that experience but the end result of it will be that people will be so excited about it that they’ll want to introduce that experience to their friends, to other people, that you’re orchestrating referrals in this during process.

Even when you’re presenting your unique service offer, we’re planting the seeds that that’s what’s going to happen, because you know how all of this plays out. But you’re going to be planting that experience, planting that seed that they’re going to want to refer people. And you start referring to that all the way through the process here. Imagine what it would do for your business if half the people that went through your process, that went through your experience, referred somebody else to you before that transaction even ended? That is a powerful experience, if you do that, and you orchestrate that right into the experience, even from the beginning, in the expectation that that’s what’s going to happen. You’ve heard of Patty Lund.

Joe: Oh, absolutely. The happy client experience in Australia.

Dean: Right. So, Patty Lund is a dentist in Australia, and when people start with him, he sets it up right from the very beginning, that one of the expectations is that they’re going to refer 2 new patients to him. When you start presencing that, you start bringing that right to the front, right to the beginning of the relationship in your during unit, even when you’re presenting your unique service offer, then you’re delivering a world class experience. Then, as you move into module 6, which is providing after-sale service, that you are now going to be able to reap what you’ve sown in that world-class experience. It sounds kind of interesting, when you really start to think about it. We’re talking about the during unit, right now. And I’m saying providing after-sale service. People might initially think that that sounds more like the after unit, but I like to look at this timeline, I like to look at the experience that people have as the actual culmination of the transaction being the midpoint of the customer experience timeline, and not the end.

Like if you look at a carpet cleaning experience – I love how I’m talking about carpet cleaning experiences – you imagine that the experience is that when somebody does a carpet audit, when you’re doing their carpet cleaning right there, that can all happen in the same day. Right? You’re going, you’re doing the audit, you’re doing the cleaning right then, you collect the check, and off you go. That all happens in one day. But what if you start thinking about adding an element of an after-sale service, which could be a follow-up phone call or a pop-by, or something the next day, or within the next 3 days after that experience, just to check in on people, to maybe drop by and bring them something that’s going to keep their carpets fresh, or some bottle of stain remover stuff?

Something that’s an added above-and-beyond expectation element is going to have a much bigger impact. Because in people’s minds, everything that happens from the time that you start pitching what it is you do to them and the time that you start pitching what it is you do to them, and the time that they pay you for it, you’re doing all of that because you’re getting paid. But if you walked out there with the check, they’ve got no expectation that they’re ever going to hear from you again. They don’t know that they’ve just met somebody who’s looking to build a lifetime relationship with them, even if you said it when you’re presenting your unique service offer.

Now, what you’re doing is you are evidencing that that’s what your intention is, because everything that you do after you’ve already got the money, is so much more impactful because you’re not getting paid to do that. There’s no expectation that you’re going to do that. And when you do it, it makes an incredible impact on people. That’s where they’re going to have the desire, then, to refer their friends. If you really think about it, when somebody gets their carpets cleaned, when are they going to be most likely to refer somebody to you? It’s the next 5 or 6 people that come into the house, right? Because they’re going to say, “Oh wow, your carpets look great!” That’s when it’s happening. Right?

Joe: Yeah.

Dean: Or when somebody buys a house, the first 30, 60, 90 days after they move in to the house, that’s where all their inner circle, all of their friends are going to be coming over to the house. Or when somebody buys a car, they drive it home, they show it off for the first time to everybody. If you’re integrated into that process, if you’re ending your during unit, if you’re ending your experience with people the minute they drive off the lot or the minute you leave their house, or the minute they take the sold sign down and you give them the keys, if you’re ending your experience with them right there, you’re missing out on all of the best experiences that you have to get referrals and to make an incredible impact on your clients.

Joe: Exactly. And how many idiotic companies actually treat people that way? Like, boom, as soon as they got the stuff, all of the attention just ceases to exist.

Dean: And they just disappear.

Joe: Yep. And the sweet spot is right like you were just saying. Like when the euphoric feelings of joy and happiness are running through their minds, you have power. If you know how to harness and direct that. Yeah, I tell cleaners that all the time. It’s a timing issue. And as the saying goes, “The difference between lettuce and garbage is timing.” So, you want to focus on the timing.

Dean: The difference between salad and garbage, yeah.

Joe: I like lettuce better. Don’t try to throw in like a salad here. I’m not going for that.

Dean: Let’s move into the after unit.

Joe: Let me mention something. I was just in San Francisco, as you know. I went up there for my buddy Tim Ferriss’ silly party, and then I was hanging out with Matt Mullenweg, who there will be a future video and interview, and some really cool stuff we’re going to put up on ILoveMarketing.com. Matt is the founder of WordPress, the top blogging software in the world, and 30-million people currently use WordPress, which accounts for about 11% of all websites in the world use WordPress. So, this is a very successful 27-year-old guy, and he’s just the nicest dude. We went to 3 movies each day in a row. In the last week, I saw Atlas Shrugged, new Atlas Shrugged, Hannah, and Limitless. I saw Limitless with him and Tim Ferriss.

So, after Limitless, Tim had to go off and do a photo shoot, because he’s doing a feature for Outdoor magazine, and then me and Matt went to a late dinner. He calls up on his iPhone. He shows me this app called Uber.com. So, I’m implementing some of the things we’re talking about, by referring a company that I just thought was super-cool. Uber.com. It’s in San Francisco. It’s not everywhere all over the country yet, just San Francisco. On his iPhone, you kind of click, and then it shows all of these Town Cars, a private car. Basically, it’s not a taxi, it’s an actual nice, black car. It works on iPhones and Androids, and you basically just click on it, the app, and then it shows you the ones that are out there, and you click that you need a car at a certain location. You click right where you’re at, and it shows the closest one. All of these drivers have these iPhones or these Androids sitting on their dash, and, boom, they get pinged. And within minutes, a car shows up and picks you up. He’s like, “Watch this.” It was one of the most fascinating things that I’d ever seen. And no transaction. It’s automatically charged, boom.

I was there with a buddy of mine, Anthony, because Matt, we were with him the day earlier, he had like, “Oh, my car’s here.” And we thought, “This freaking guy is paying to have a car service pick him up and drive him around.” It was this thing. But the point is that is a unique world-class experience. And it was so cool, that now I want to talk about it. I just talked about it on ILoveMarketing, to tens of thousands of people that will hear this. And that’s the deal. I’m, real-time, giving an example of something I just saw 2 days ago, because I just experienced it, just like you said. So, it’s a timing thing. And I thought it was awesome. And every time I’m in San Francisco, you can bet that every way I’m going to get around the city, because all my other experiences with taxi cabs, they were getting lost, they didn’t have a Garmen or an iPhone. And I’m in the back with Anthony going, “These people do this for a living! How could you not have a freaking iPhone in front of you, so you can find where you’re taking me.”

Like half the time, and we were driving around in cabs all over San Francisco over the last 5 days, we’re having to tell the taxi drivers where to go. Some of them were getting lost. And we’re looking at our iPhones and we’re sitting there saying to ourselves, “They do this shit for a living!” Twice, I had to show a driver my iPhone, to say, “Here’s where I’m going.” “Oh, oh, oh, I see. I see.” Anyway, the point is when you can deliver a world-class experience: 1) you’re not pissing people off; and 2) they’re going to keep using you, and they’re going to tell others about it, which goes to the after thing. So, let’s go with that.

Dean: The after unit, you talked about when you started calculating the lifetime value. I always use a benchmark of 20% annual yield from what I call your relationship portfolio, all the people who know you, like you, trust you. People who’ve done business with you, the people who you would recognize if you saw them, the people who are your core customers, the people who you’ve had that kind of an experience with. You were talking about if you started looking at the lifetime value of somebody. If they’re going to be a client for the next 5 years, that takes them up to $750. And then if they just refer one person, that immediately doubles them to their lifetime value, to $1,500. And that’s where the 20% annual yield is, is one time in 5 years.

So, you start thinking about it, that either 1:5 of the people that you do business with will refer somebody to you, or that everybody will refer someone within the next 5 years, or they’ll do another transaction with you, that’s where your after unit is really coming in. It’s the least expensive portion of your marketing mix. It’s the one where you can have the biggest impact with the least amount of money, because they already know you. And in many cases, you’re the incumbent. You are their realtor or you are their carpet cleaner, or you are their chiropractor. It’s just a matter of keeping in touch with them and nurturing a lifetime relationship with them. And that’s what module 7 is, is nurture lifetime relationships. And that talks about with the people that you have now, that you don’t just leave it at a one-time transactional thing. It’s far easier to get somebody who has come to your restaurant and had a good experience there to come back, than it is to get somebody to try it for the first time.

Joe: Exactly. There’s been so much evidence to prove that it’s 5 to 6 times more expensive to get a new customer than it is to get someone that’s done business with you before to simply do business with you again. And if you just look at that, 5 or 6 times more expensive, and you look at most businesses, they spend the vast majority of their effort on how to get new customers, new customers, new customers, and they neglect the ones they’ve already got. And billions of dollars – billions of dollars – are never generated, never realized, simply because of the neglect of the after stage.

Dean: Right. So, I look at anything you’re doing in your after unit, in this module, in the nurture lifetime relationships module, is really about repeat business insurance. It’s what you’re doing. You’re making sure that when they have a need, that they are going to use you again. There are so many ways that you can increase the lifetime value of somebody, by talking about an ascension plan; where you’ve got a product line that somebody can use other products that you have; where you’re able to solve more of their problems or to offer a higher level of service for people; where you can deepen the relationship with them and they’ll want to get closer to you; where you’re building out your entire – if you’re in the info marketing business – building out your entire catalog of products that you have available for people. If you are a chiropractor or if you’re a carpet cleaner, a real estate agent, or any of the businesses, there’s so many ways that you can increase the lifetime value of those people just by focusing on them, just by communicating in even the barest minimum way.

By you thinking it through and knowing what that lifetime value map is going to look like, it makes it easier for you to articulate it to them. And then #8, module #8, under the after unit, is orchestrate referrals. The after unit is really about those 2 things: nurturing lifetime relationships and orchestrating referrals. And I kind of separate them, because you’re communicating in 2 different ways. When you’re communicating with people just to increase their personal lifetime value, to increase the way that you can add value to their life – because whenever you’re increasing their lifetime value, it’s definitely going to be on the basis of how much extra value you’re adding to their life – that’s really where it all starts. But orchestrating referrals is about really doing things that make referrals happen on purpose. So, a lot of times people get referrals, but when you really look at it, the referrals that people get are mostly either passive referrals, meaning somebody calls you up and says, “Hey, my brother just got his carpets cleaned, and he said I should give you a call to come and clean mine.”

So, it’s happening without you really doing anything to make it happen. Everybody gets those kind of referrals. Or, they’re reactive referrals, where somebody calls up and says, “Hey, my brother John is thinking about getting his carpets cleaned. You should give him a call.” Now, you have to react to that referral and do something to make it happen. But where the real value is, where the real opportunity is, the only type of referral that you can control 100% is the orchestrated referral, where you are asking for and getting a very specific type of referral. There are so many strategies with this. Literally, we could do a full 2-day event just about orchestrating referrals. And there’s so much depth to this.

But really, just knowing what and how referrals happen, what to do to orchestrate that process so that your best clients are constantly on the lookout for how they can refer people to you, and just realizing that the reason that people refer is not as a favor to you, but they do it to make themselves feel good. Nobody is referring you as a favor to you. And that’s something that a lot of sort of – I don’t know what the right word is – not shy business owners or most business owners, most people, are generally reluctant to ask for referrals because, in their mind, they’re positioning it that somebody is doing them a favor. But they’re not thinking about it, the reality of why people refer is because they do it because they want to feel good.

Joe: Exactly. The fact is if you’ve ever had a great experience with someone, it’s just natural human nature to want to tell other people about it. I do it all the time. When it comes to books, when it comes to movies, when it comes to restaurants, when it comes to businesses, if something’s going to make someone laugh, smile, fill their belly with good food, provide something that’s going to help them have a better name the category, and I know of a company, a service, of a person that can do it, I’m certainly going to refer that person because it’s just the way…

Dean: Even in our relationship, you see that. There’s always this sense of trying to one-up each other, in a way. Where like if I introduce a book to you that you haven’t heard of, and you read it and it’s great, and you tell me, “Oh, that was a great book,” now I feel superior to you because of that.

Joe: And I inherently feel that I’m better than you in every way, Dean. We always try to one-up each other. In this particular case, it’s just deserved on so many levels.

Dean: But you think about who do people refer. Right? Who do people refer? They’re much more likely to refer their closest friends, the people who they have the most influential relationship with. Right?

Joe: Oh, yeah.

Dean: You and I can be honest about that. It is true, that there’s a certain element of raising our status in each other’s eyes.

Joe: Exactly. One thing I’d like everyone, as we wrap up this and then tell people how to actually be one of the lucky few that’s going to be at the I Love Marketing Conference on September 21st and 22nd. We’re going to share that with you in just a moment. Write on a piece of paper, if you’re not driving, or find a piece of paper, if you’re on a computer taking notes, if you’re even taking notes at all. But if you don’t have access to pen and paper, just think about what I’m about to share. There’s 3 types of experiences that a prospect, that a client, that a customer can have. I call this process the “happy client experience.” I’m going to share it with everyone at the I Love Marketing Conference. But basically, you write 3 faces. Imagine a smiley face, 3 circular faces. Nothing fancy, just like the smiley face, a round circle with the eyes and the smiley face, that sort of thing.

So, the first one, you make a frowning face. The middle one, you make not a frown or a smile, just a straight face. It’s like you’re looking at a face that’s just like no expression. And then, the third face that you would draw is a smiley face. So, the first one would be an unhappy customer, the second one would be a satisfied customer, and the third one would be a happy client. I like to refer to clients, versus customers. A customer implies someone who buys something from you. Client implies someone you have a relationship with. Frankly, I’m not all that hung up on what you call them. What I’m really hung up on is that you actually make sure that out of the 3 experiences that they can have, either unhappy, satisfied or happy, that they land in the happy category. Because if they’re unhappy, they’re not only not going to do business with you again, they’re going to tell other people about how crappy you were.

The second experience, which is what most business situations actually are, where they’re satisfied, you don’t want satisfied. They’ll pay you money. They may come back and do business with you again, if you’re the only person they get something from. But they’re not going to become raving fans. They’re not going to go out of their way to tell other people about you. They’re not going to do the Uber.com car service in San Francisco, yelling out to thousands of people, that I just told you about. That exceeded my expectations. When you wow them, when you say, “Wow your customers,” that means they end up with a smile on their face. They got more than what they expected. All of the things you’re going to do with interacting with your clients is going to give them less than what they expected, exactly what they expected, or more than what they expected. And if you want to nurture lifetime relationships and orchestrate referrals, it’s only going to happen if you deliver world-class service after the sale and during the sale, and before, so they have a smile on their face and they tell other people about you.

So, all of these before, during and after stages, all 8 of them – 1) select a single target market, 2) compel prospects to call you, 3) educate and motivate them to meet you, 4) present your unique service offer, 5) deliver a world-class experience, 6) provide after-sale service, 7) nurture lifetime relationships, and 8) orchestrate referrals – you want to do that with people that have a smile on their face. And if you do all of these things, that’s actually how you have them end up with a smile on their face. Selling is not an event. It’s not just one thing you do. It’s a process. And to nurture and build and utilize good marketing, it is a process. So, what me and Dean shared with you today is just literally the highlights of the full, in-depth process that we’re going to go really deep with on September 21st and 22nd in Phoenix, Arizona. Dean, I know we’ve gone a little bit over on this particular episode. But how do they actually get signed up? Because I know we’re going to sell this bad boy out.

Dean: Yeah. Here’s what everyone should do. If you’re just listening on iTunes or if you’re kind of a listener only, go to ILoveMarketing.com, and on the right-hand side of the page you’ll see an opportunity where you can get mouth-opening marketing ideas by email. So, I want you to leave your name and your email right there, and that will let you become a subscriber to the I Love Marketing family here, where you’ll be on our email notification list. And then on May 1st, you will be able to get an email from us with all of the details about the conference. We’re going to post up on that, May 1st, an interview that Joe and I just did with Dan Kennedy, who’s going to be our only guest at the I Love Marketing Conference. We have spent a lot of money to get Dan Kennedy to come to this event. He even jokes about it on the interview that we did with him, describing the amount of money that we’re spending to do this.

Joe: I’m paying over $35,000 – we are, I should say – just on a private plane to get his butt out here. And I know Dan very well. He doesn’t hardly do this stuff at all anymore. Dan wrote the sale copy for many parts of my business the first 9 years I even started my marketing business. So, I know Dan very well. So, it’s not like it’s real easy to get Dan anymore. Years ago, much easier. Today, he doesn’t do it.

Dean: Right. That’s why we’re so happy about it, because he’s been so influential on both of us. And in the before unit, especially, Dan is really the master of this. And that’s why we’re very excited to have him coming to the conference as well. That interview will go up on I Love Marketing on May 1st, as our next episode. And then, that is the process where you will get all of the information about the conference. You’ll get the very best offer, the very best price to come to the event by being on that list. You’ll be one of the early birds who get the first opportunity to be one of our guests, to come with us.

Joe: That is correct. So, yeah. You know what, Dean? There’s so much more that we could talk about. But that’s why we’re doing a conference about it. And I hope that, everyone listening, this gave you a real good understanding of looking at the different stages of before, during and after, and also you see the importance of really going deep and understanding this, hence the reason why we’re making it available for the first time ever, the I Love Marketing Conference. And beyond that, we’re just here to deliver a great value to all of the marketers. So, please go to the website and make your comments on ILoveMarketing.com, on iTunes, and share the love. If you like this, share the love with people, Tweet it out, put it on Facebook. We even have fancy little buttons right on the ILoveMarketing website, where you can simply click and share.

Dean: It’s easier and easier. That’s great.

Joe: And there’s one I want to read, one more comment I want to read, from Roman. He wrote, “Dean, Joe, crazy dudes. Each time I listen, and I do it for the second time now, I think, ‘How can they give this for free?’ Real deal here. I do not believe in God. But if I would, I would say, ‘God bless you.’ I did a one-page conversion…” It’s kind of funny, actually. “I did a one-page conversion that does not work well, but I have to tweak it and make it better, and listen to the podcasts just to fire my mind each time. Please, continue this podcast for 30 years, so I will have enough afterwards,” which is funny. So, that’s a brand new listener. So, here’s the deal, Roman. If you keep listening to this and you implement it, like anything else, it took me and Dean a tremendous amount of time, money, effort and energy to actually hone marketing and learn it, and transform our businesses, and now do what we’re doing now in helping other people with it.

So, what we want to do is cut the learning curve and the effort and the energy drastically. And we basically look in the same way that both of us created our training businesses in marketing, in the beginning, is we want to provide the I Love Marketing strategies and methods and education with what we wish had existed when we first started in business, so we didn’t have to go through a lot of the hell that we both had to go through in order to learn this stuff. So, we hope that this podcast that we’re just simply offering to people for free really helps reduce suffering, helps you make more money, helps you have an ELF business that’s easy, lucrative and fun, and that you share it with other people, because we both love entrepreneurs that are ethical and do good work. And we know that marketing is literally the biggest moneymaking skill that you could ever learn in building and growing a business.

So, that’s why we love marketing. Share this with any struggling business owners or anyone that you think would benefit from it. And we really, really appreciate it. Please, give us your comments. Again, if you want to go to the conference, then go to the website, look for the guy with his mouth open, and it will say, right underneath him, “Want mouth-opening marketing ideas by electronic mail?” Put your name and your email, and you will be on the list. And that’s that. Anything else, Dean?

Dean: That’s great. Longest I Love Marketing episode ever.

Joe: Yeah. We’re probably going to lose thousands of subscribers because we went over.

Dean: It’s probably worth it. They’re riveted.

Joe: Yes. Exactly. Alright. Thanks, Dean.

Dean: Alright, Joe. Thanks.

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