Weekend Favs October 30

Weekend Favs October 30 written by Karen Cutler read more at Duct Tape Marketing

This month Startup Page by Buffer has sponsored our Weekend Favs. As a part of the sponsorship, Startup has taken over this week. Enjoy!

The past year and a half has shown many of us that small businesses are too often the unsung heroes of our world. For almost 11 years now, we’ve remained committed to serving small businesses at Buffer. Earlier this year, we decided to make an expanded effort to help small businesses by making something even more accessible for people starting out and going broader in the types of problems we help solve.

Today, we’re launching Start Page by Buffer for anyone who wants to create a beautiful, mobile-friendly landing page in minutes, update it in seconds, and share it anywhere, and it’s free.

We’ve built Buffer’s publishing, analytics, and engagement features with small businesses in mind. Now, we’re exploring something adjacent to social media to help with another big challenge we know small businesses face — properly leveraging that one key link that we all get on our social media profiles.

There are a large number of link-in-bio tools available but we wanted to build something different, something that gives small businesses and individual creators the flexibility and power to create a beautiful page to showcase their brand through products, content, events, or announcements, all from one link.

Start Page lets you quickly generate a landing page and URL for your business, no matter what type of business you have. Combined with our social media tools, Start Page creates a powerful toolset to start marketing your business.

How Start Page works

Simply go to buffer.com/start-page to begin building your Start Page, if you don’t yet have a Buffer account, you can set one up for free.You can start adding boxes for text, images, videos, social links, and more, right into our editor to create the layout you want, or you can choose from one of our pre-made templates. From there, you can customize page colors and style as well as add your own images, GIFs, and logos.Once you’ve created and customized your page simply hit publish to claim your unique URL and start sharing it in your social profiles, email signatures, and marketing campaigns.

Unique benefits

• It has flexibility and customization options to create a beautiful page, no matter what type of business you have.
• It prioritizes your brand. The first thing you see in the URL is your name, not ours.
• It comes free with our social media tools – which creates a powerful combination to start marketing your business.

List of features

• Claim a unique Start Page subdomain that puts your name at the start of URL
• Build your page with a simple and intuitive drag-and-drop editor
• 5+ pre-made templates
• Customize page colors and styles
• Mobile-optimized
• Upload your profile photo or logo
• Use blocks to add links, videos, social profiles and more.
• Share your unique URL anywhere; for example in your social profiles, email signature and marketing campaigns.

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How Small Business Owners And Entrepreneurs Can Succeed

How Small Business Owners And Entrepreneurs Can Succeed written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Barry McCarthy

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Barry C. McCarthy. Barry was named President and CEO of Deluxe Corporation in November 2018 and is a member of its board of directors. He’s also the author of  Small Business Revolution: How Owners and Entrepreneurs Can Succeed.

Key Takeaway:

Whether you’re just starting to plan your new business or you are a seasoned veteran in the small business trenches, there are many challenges that small business owners face – especially in the unprecedented climate we’ve been faced with over the last two years. In this episode, I talk with the President and CEO of Deluxe Corp., Barry C. McCarthy, about how to quip your small business for dramatic growth and success in any environment.

Questions I ask Barry McCarthy:

• [1:21] What were you trying to convey with the word ‘revolution’ in the title of your book?
• [3:56] How do you define small business?
• [5:43] Your new book was very much informed by a series that you called the SBR series. You called the SBR series — could talk a little bit about that entire project?
• [7:08] What has gotten harder for small businesses in the last decade?
• [8:27] How hard was it doing more in the digital space for an organization like Deluxe?
• [12:27] In your book, you cover some of the main areas such as HR, marketing, and finance – what are some of the key lessons I’m going to learn?
• [14:01] Most entrepreneurs are really not born leaders, they’re visionaries. And then when it comes to being a leader, hiring, and managing that’s really the biggest area where they struggle. What’s your advice?
• [16:29] What are the most important numbers that you really need to get your arms around early on in a business?
• [19:09] The epilogue of the book is when to abandon the dream. So what advice do you have to somebody that is facing that?
• [20:49] Where can people find out more about the Small Business Revolution and even check out some of the series that you did along with the book?

More About Barry McCarthy:

• His book — Small Business Revolution: How Owners and Entrepreneurs Can Succeed
• The Small Business Revolution TV series can be found at:
  • SmallBusinessRevolution.org
  • Hulu

More About Certified Marketing Manager Program Powered By Duct Tape Marketing:

• Check it out here.

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the MarTech podcast, hosted by Benjamin Shapiro, brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Ben's episodes are so awesome. They're under 30 minutes. They share stories with world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success. Ben is a great host. I've been on his show. He's been on my show. He always really digs down and gives you actionable stuff that you can take away and do. And he's always bringing up new stuff. The science of advertising, how to figure out what to automate, just things that marketers are wrestling with today. Check it out. It's the MarTech podcast. Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:51): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Barry C McCarthy. He's the president and CEO of deluxe corporation, the payment solution and biz technology company, and is a member of its board of directors is also the author of small business revolution, how owners and entrepreneurs can succeed. Very welcome to the show,

Barry McCarthy (01:18): John. Great to be with you. Thanks for the opportunity. You

John Jantsch (01:21): Bet. So I have to ask first right off the bat, why revolution seems a bit dramatic or what are you trying to convey there with the use of that word?

Barry McCarthy (01:29): I think one of the biggest things that we all learned through COVID and the COVID crisis was the absolute essential nature of small business to the U S economy. Something north of 90% of small of businesses are small businesses that the primary driver for employment in the country, and then the leading indicator of overactive overall economic health. And so I think that maybe as a country and as a nation, we haven't paid enough attention to small business. And small business really is revolutionary for communities that they serve. And at our core, as a company deluxe, fundamentally believes that's our mission statement, the work champions for business. So communities thrive because if business particularly small business does not succeed communities can't succeed because a small business hires people, those people have needs for other services, whether it's a pizza on Friday night or a dry cleaner car service that create other jobs that create even more jobs that create resources for communities to be invested in schools and parks and roads. So it really does come down to helping small businesses succeed. So communities in turn can thrive.

John Jantsch (02:39): Yeah, it seems like, unfortunately it did take a pandemic maybe to shine a light on that. It seems like unfortunately about every four years in the fall, a lot of presidential candidates seem to talk about small business being the backbone, but then we get away from it. Don't we?

Barry McCarthy (02:52): We do John and I, we wrote this book. I wrote this book because I'm a small business guy, myself. I started small businesses myself, and I know that the excitement, but also the challenges of, of doing that. And there's, there are really, aren't very many how to practical guides written in the voice that someone can read. And then my books, while business revolution, you can read a chapter, put those lessons to work and come back and read the next chapter. It's not a textbook where you have to read every chapter to know the punchline. Every chapter has conclusions of things that you can go work on today to make your business successful or more successful. And it's intended to be a user guide and for people to use it, um, pick it up, put it down, pick it up, put it down in the normal operation of their business. Cause it's a small business person, myself at different points in my life. The one thing you never have enough is time. You never have enough time. So you've got to be ultra efficient and it's gotta be ultra convenient and easy. Otherwise you're just not gonna be able to use the book.

John Jantsch (03:56): So it was just, I'm curious how you define small business. I get the assets question all the time. I've worked with small businesses for 30 years. I've written seven books on the topic, and I'm curious, you look at the SBAs definition, doesn't really apply in my view. I'm curious how you view, is it size or is it a point of view even?

Barry McCarthy (04:13): I think that's such a great question and I, I don't think there's any magic on when you go from being a small business to a medium-sized business. Yeah, the most important thing to remember though, that every business started as a small business. And so every business has to deal and even large businesses have to deal with some of the same challenges as a small business, finding the next customer, uh, managing efficiently, accepting payments in a us in easy, in an easy way. And so I don't have a, you know, specific snap the line. And this is what a small business is. I think about thinking about them as neighborhood businesses or maybe multi location businesses, short of multi-state and dozens of locations. And those are the businesses that the, that the book is written about it. I, John, one of the things I'm guessing what your listeners would be interested to know is why the heck would the Lux and the CEO of deluxe it's a big company. Why would the Lux write a book about this? And the simple answer is that our company supports more than 4 million small businesses, and we've been helping small businesses for over a hundred years. So we have really unique insight and understanding about what it takes to be a successful small business owner. And we thought it was important to share that insight, especially in the face of COVID. And as we, as obviously, hopefully here we're exiting COVID, but all the more reason to help businesses understand some fundamentals and some tactics that can help them succeed.

John Jantsch (05:43): Th th this book was very much informed by a series you called the SB or series. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that entire process?

Barry McCarthy (05:52): Sure. A company deluxe supports, as I said, a minute ago, 4 million small businesses, and for the company's hundredth anniversary and created a program called the small business revolution, that was simply how to, or fix it show just like you would see in real estate make-overs these are business make-overs and go to a small towns and help six or eight businesses in those towns understand how to make their business better and turn it into a TV show. And along the way, we turn it into the number one lifestyle program on Hulu prime video. And we've even gotten an Emmy nomination for it because it tells the story of small businesses and the common issues that every business faces we showcase. And we bring deluxe experts to the show to talk about it. And the book goes far more than we can do in a TV show has meant for people to use as a guide and a tool and a template for their business, where the small business revolution television program is enormously entertaining. And it gives you quick soundbites about the biggest issues. The book goes, nanny steps farther than that, to help with a real nuts and bolts of have the how to, and for deluxe, we thought that was important because this, these are, this is the market we serve. The products we offer are all designed to help small businesses succeed.

John Jantsch (07:08): So let's just think back maybe the last decade or so, what in your view has gotten harder?

Barry McCarthy (07:15): So many ways it's so many ways small businesses have had to face additional struggle. So forget COVID for a minute, right? Even before COVID the advent of large scale commercial enterprises that can increasingly compete with small businesses for that market share. It's not just the big boxes. It can even be boutiques that are creating multi franchise locations or multi-store locations of huge issue. And of course, everything e-commerce has put a extra challenge and exclamation point after the challenge for small businesses. And of course, a number of small businesses have found brilliant ways to differentiate against these big competitors and also to harness the internet. And in our book, the small business revolution, there's a whole ton of information, several chapters in the book about how to position your in e-commerce or even just in the web in general, if that's not going to even be your primary storefront, how to leverage that, how do your social media channels to drive foot traffic to a physical store? These are common challenges. Every small business owner faces.

John Jantsch (08:27): I think I became a deluxe customer at least 30 years ago. So many people I bought checks. I bought a stamp to endorse those checks. I'm curious, obviously deluxe does so much more now than it did three years ago. I'm curious about if you were part of the, what I'm guessing was internal struggle to say, Hey, we have to be doing so much more. We got to beginning. And the stuff we never even thought about was our space. How hard was that internally for an organization like deluxe?

Barry McCarthy (08:56): Sure. It was a major pivot point for the company, but just remember this is 106 year old company and its founder wr Hotchkiss got a $300 loan because he was a small business person and it created the checkbook and the modern payments ecosystem. And I've had the great fortune of I'm only the ninth CEO and the company's 106 year history. And so the predecessors did a great job of starting the diversification. But on the three years, since I've been here almost three years, we've really tried to focus on things that would really make a difference for business owners. So we're very focused now on payments and we help businesses, especially small businesses, except credit cards, debit cards, manage their payroll effectively to do electronic payments for their disbursements or their payables. And we even have great tools for accounts receivable management. And then we also help businesses managers that manage their website and their web presence. And we help businesses use data to find their next customers. And we have promotional products where you've got a great logo. We can put the logo on merchandise, which is a very cost-effective way to promote your brand and to have customers engage and use a product with your name on it. And of course our legacy business checks, but checks are less than a third of our business today. It's still about our business is so much more than that really around payments data and cloud services, promotional products as well.

John Jantsch (10:20): I, for one can thankfully say, I write very few checks anymore. I know you don't want to hear that, but that has a bit, that's a big part of what's changed in the world. I mean that, and obviously I think that clearly that drove the desire deluxe to make changes to

Barry McCarthy (10:34): Absolutely. It's not one of the things I think that is, I think most listeners would be surprised to understand is that personal check usage has declined significantly over time, debit cards, et cetera, have had a material impact on that. But business checks are still, we still, we still ship 150,000 packages a day of checkbooks. And that is the biggest customers there of course are small businesses because there is no viable substitute. If you're a restaurant and you've got a truck delivering provisions at your back door, you got to write a check. They don't take a debit card. So you've got to write a check and those checks are gonna be around for a very long time. And so that's a great product in our portfolio of services. We can offer small businesses

John Jantsch (11:18): And now let's hear a word from our sponsor. I talk a lot about tools and strategies to track customer loyalty and satisfaction, whether it's predicting consumer behavior or diagnosing the many Watts, hows and whys of marketing, the HubSpot CRM platform has customizable solutions to help your business go from why not to what's next. I love all things duct tape, as you know, except for when it comes to a CRM platform, many CRM platforms are either over-engineered or clunky and unreliable costing you more time and money than they're worth a HubSpot CRM platform means that you have purpose built solution. That's tailored to your business and your business alone. So whether you're just getting started or looking for a robust system, HubSpot is flexible and customizable, meaning it scales and grows as you do with new features like business units, association labels, permission sets, and more HubSpot admins can tailor their accounts like never before and now with sandboxes admins have access to a production like account, allowing them to test iterate and experiment without risk. Learn more about how you can customize your CRM platform with HubSpot @ HubSpot.com.

John Jantsch (12:27): So you cover clearly some of the main areas, HR, marketing, finance, in some areas. I'm wondering if we could just bounce across a couple of those, what are what's? What are, what am I going to learn? What's the key lesson in marketing that I'm going to learn from a small,

Barry McCarthy (12:42): The probably the most important thing is that you need to deliver what the customer wants to buy. Not what you want to sell

John Jantsch (12:52): Seems obvious, but it's

Barry McCarthy (12:54): Challenged many small business owners. They start with a dream. They like baking cookies or making hats. And the example is maybe you started and you've got a really great pink cookie. That's terrific. But if the market really wants green cookies, make green cookies, don't try to sell them pink cookies. If they want to buy green cookies, Sallome green cookies and you'll be a whole lot more successful. And I think a lot of small business owners sometimes get lost in and get so in love with a particular product or a flavor of a product or a design that they lose. The fact that their, their, their business can only exist. If it satisfies a customer need. And at some level they have to give up on their own sense of what do they want and get really focused on what the,

John Jantsch (13:44): Because I work primarily in marketing, I see a lot of the struggles that people have around market, especially with all the digital things changing so rapidly. But I will tell you that I think the one area that actually causes more stress and strain, whether they admit it or not is the whole hiring and managing of people. Most entrepreneurs are really not born leaders. They're visionaries. They figure out how to do stuff. And then when it comes to being a leader and hiring and managing, that's really probably the biggest area where they struggle. What's your advice really as a, a way to move forward, because obviously if you're going to grow a business, that's going to be a key area.

Barry McCarthy (14:19): Absolutely. So in the book of two different places in the book, I go and discuss this at some length, small business owners start businesses because they have grit and they're can do they're doers, they're doers. But at some point you've got to go from being the doer to being the leader. And you need to find people that can, can do for you so that you can do more and expand your business. And in the book, small business revolution, I talk a talk at some length about characteristics that make great employees. And part of it is by passion and person and personability, and a previous experience that can be applied and use the cookie shop analogy. Maybe you're not going to find something that's working in a cookie shop before, but you can find somebody that loves cookies. You can find somebody that enjoys being with people, someone that has worked in a retail environment before, and you can get many of the attributes, but I think small business owners don't always think about it that way.

Barry McCarthy (15:17): They think about what is the first available body that will come and work for me rather than being a bit more strategic in what are the characteristics that I'm looking for? Not just to do the job, but that I want on my team that I want to spend my time with eight or 10 or 12 or 20 hours a day as small business owners can work crazy hours. What are the characteristics of those people that I want on my team beyond being able to do the job, a lot of people could serve a cookie out of a counter and take money. But as that may be not be the only, that shouldn't be the only requirement it should be looking for somebody that has passion for the product that people would like that's reliable and wants to be part of something bigger than themselves.

John Jantsch (15:58): Yeah. Because those things are hard to teach. You can teach somebody how to read a recipe. Can't you ask

Barry McCarthy (16:02): Exactly right. Exactly. Yeah. How to make change, but they have to want to be there. They've got to have passion for it. They got to be excited. They got to like what you're doing, and that makes the hiring process more complicated, but worth waiting to get the right people than simply staffing your business with people that don't care.

John Jantsch (16:20): So, uh, another area that I find a chunk of business owners out there that are not as comfortable they're creatives, maybe in the whole numbers part, isn't really their thing. What are the most important numbers that particularly early on in a business that, that you need to really get your arms around?

Barry McCarthy (16:36): Do you know what I'm going to come back to that really quickly? But I think that there is are three things that I think can determine a small business's ability to succeed or fail. Now doesn't mean this is a guarantee, but first you've got to have the right mission, purpose values. You need to be clear on why you're in business. A part of that has to be, it must be that you can earn money from using your talents and labor to do this. If you're not doing that, then you've got a hobby. So mission purpose values. What you're trying to do has to be clear second, um, the business has to make money. If it doesn't make money, it's not a business. It's a hobby. And the third is you have to make sure you've got the right product for the customer that you want to serve.

Barry McCarthy (17:16): And so where we started on this was the financials and the financials using the cookie example. Again, a lot of people think that if I'm just going to cover the cost of the flour and sugar to make a cookie, I've covered my expenses. And if I can make a little bit on top of what the flour and sugar costs, I'm making money, but no, you've got to be able to cover the rent and you gotta be able to cover the power bill and you have to be able to pay your people and you have to pay your taxes and you have to pay yourself. And all of that has to go into the economics of a business. And if you can't pay yourself again, you don't have a business. Now, the things that are most important to understand, I think from a financial perspective is, but what are all the costs of running the business?

Barry McCarthy (17:58): First, second, what can you charge so that you can afford to make a profit and most small business owners, especially those that are very community focused. They don't want to charge fully for their product because they feel like they're part of the community and they can't charge Charlie, Susie, Betty, Bob, Mike, a full price because they're their neighbors or their friends, or they, they teach their kids are on the same soccer team or they go to church together on Sunday, or they see each other kids in the school play. But a business owner has to be steely eyed about the value of the product is to the customer and charge appropriately. And I think small business owners often get confused thinking that, gosh, I want to sell it for the lowest possible price. And now they need to think about what is the value they can, what the value they create for the customer and charge appropriately, because I promise you the neighborhood would rather have a cookie shop than no cookie shop. So charge the right price for cookies. Cause if you're not charging the right price, you're not going to be a business. It be back home, baking cookies in your kitchen and you don't have a business. And the community can't thrive. If that's what happens.

John Jantsch (19:06): All right, let's wrap this up on a down note. Shall we? The epilogue of the book is when to abandon the dream. So what advice do you have to somebody that

Barry McCarthy (19:15): Maybe it was facing them? You know what? This is a really hard thing for people to get their head around, right? Because no one starts a business thinking about it, not working out. They only start a business about how to make it great, but some businesses can succeed, but many businesses have to go back to being hobbies. And that the that's hard to, it's hard. That is very hard. But first people, I think, need to celebrate the fact that they started at all. Because so few people, as a percentage of the population have the courage, the grit, the gravitas, the drive to actually do it. And we need to celebrate that whether or not the business succeeds. The second though is you need to be absolutely honest with yourself about the economics of your business. And I think you need to look at the next thirty, sixty, ninety, a hundred eighty days.

Barry McCarthy (19:59): Can this business actually deliver the profit that I need to continue investing my time, my talent, my resource, because if it can't, that's okay, but you need to stop. You need to stop that before you pour your entire life savings into something where you can't get out. And another book, I outline things. You can, you pay your taxes. Can you pay your people? Can you make your rent payment? You need to stop before you're out of money and not able to meet the commitments that you've made. And you got to have a real grownup Tufts spine to, to get yourself to the place where you're paying attention to that and not fall victim to wishful thinking bias where you think tomorrow will just be better and I'll be better and be better. And it may not be. And you just need to put a real milestones in place so that you don't drive yourself and your personal life and your family's life off a cliff pursuing something that may not work.

John Jantsch (20:49): So Barry tell people where they can find out more about the small business revolution and even check out some of the series that you did

Barry McCarthy (20:58): Absolutely the best place for people to go is our website deluxe.com. And there is of course the lush products there, but there are also many case studies and tools for small business success that are available for free on the website. Additionally, you can buy the book, small business revolution at Amazon Barnes and noble, and of course, neighborhood book sellers as well, small businesses themselves. And of course the TV program, small business revolution can be viewed@smallbusinessrevolution.org at Hulu or prime video. And of course it's also available@thelux.com. Awesome.

John Jantsch (21:32): Thanks for stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on

Barry McCarthy (21:37): The road. Look forward to it. Thanks John.

John Jantsch (21:39): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I want to thank you so much for tuning in, feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you've got employees, if you've got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It's called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at duct tape, marketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.

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How To Create Remarkable Experiences For Your Customers

How To Create Remarkable Experiences For Your Customers written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Dan Gingiss

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Dan Gingiss. Dan is an international keynote speaker and coach who believes that a remarkable customer experience is your best sales and marketing strategy. His 20-year professional career included leadership positions at McDonald’s, Discover, and Humana. He’s also the author of – The Experience Maker: How to Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can’t Wait to Share.

Key Takeaway:

How can companies stand out in a crowded marketplace that’s constantly evolving? The answer is customer experience. And the best part about customer experience is that it’s delivered by human beings who are unique to your company. No one else has your human beings, which means that you can provide a customer experience that no one else can. It’s time to make your customer experience a competitive advantage.

In this episode, I talk with keynote speaker and coach, Dan Gingiss, about how listening to and engaging with your customers will actually help you acquire new customers. Instead of spending more money on marketing and trying to acquire new customers, you should focus on providing your existing customers with a remarkable experience.

Questions I ask Dan Gingiss:

• [1:25] “86% of people admit in a recent survey to paying more for a better experience.” — what do you think about this statistic?
• [2:58] Why is providing a better experience for companies to make a priority – is there some sort of deep-seated, psychological reason why we don’t do it?
• [7:43] You have a framework in your book that you call Wise R – can you unpack that acronym for us?
• [12:05] It’s hard to track ROI for customer experience. Nobody gets a quota for creating evangelists that they have to meet. So what is some of the work that you’ve done with the idea of tracking and measuring it?
• [14:21] Can you talk more about the dramatic cost savings in having a better customer experience that you cover in your book?
• [16:01] What’s your impression of the role technology plays in all of this?
• [18:58] Is there an example of a good IVR system that you’ve ever encountered?
• [20:51] Are we ready for an ‘Experience Maker’ to be a role at a company, and should every company have one?
• [22:31] Where can people find out more about the Experience Maker or any work that you’re doing that you’d like to share?

More About Dan Gingiss:

• The Experience Maker: How to Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can’t Wait to Share
• DanGingiss.com

More About The Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network:

• Check it out here.

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:01): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the MarTech podcast, hosted by Benjamin Shapiro, brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Ben's episodes are so awesome. They're under 30 minutes. They share stories with world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success. Ben is a great host. I've been on his show. He's been on my show. He always really digs down and gives you actionable stuff that you can take away and do. And he's always bringing up new stuff. The science of advertising, how to figure out what to automate, just things that marketers are wrestling with today. Check it out. It's the MarTech podcast. Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:52): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Dan Gingiss. He's an international keynote speaker and coach who believes that a remarkable customer experience is the best sales and marketing strategy. His 20 year professional career includes leadership positions at McDonald's discover and Humana. We're going to talk about his latest book, the experience maker, how to create remarkable experiences that your customers can't wait to share. So Dan, welcome

Dan Gingiss (01:23): To the show. Thank you, John. It is an honor and a pleasure.

John Jantsch (01:26): So I'm going to read a statistic and then you could just talk for the next 20 minutes, 86% of people admit in a recent survey to paying more for a better experience.

Dan Gingiss (01:37): Yeah, that's the reality today. And in some ways I blame it on the millennials or rather give credit to the millennials who really were the first generation to declare that they wanted to have a relationship with the brands that they spent, their hard earned dollars with when you and I were growing up there, wasn't way to have a relationship with a brand. We could write them a letter, but that wasn't much of a relationship. And then social media came along and it was the first marketing channel where people can talk back and guess what customers talked back. And they said they wanted a better experience. They wanted interaction and engagement. And so if they're not getting it with you, the company, they're going to go find another company that will give it to them. And I think one of the biggest challenges in almost every industry today is that it's become almost impossible to compete on price. It's a loser's game, race to the bottom, and it's also become almost impossible to compete on product or service because all because everything's become commoditized. So even a company that everyone would agree is one of the most innovative in our generation. Uber today, if you get in a car, I dare you to tell me whether it's an Uber or Lyft. And the answer is it's probably both. That's true. And so that's how undifferentiated the product has become. So what's left is

John Jantsch (02:57): Experience. I don't think anyone argues with this 86% is most of us. I don't think anyone argues with that. Why is it so darn hard to do it is really there are books written about it. There are people bring in experts all the time, but companies just can't seem to focus on that or make it a priority. Have you on earth really? Is there some sort of deep seated, psychological reason why we won't do it?

Dan Gingiss (03:19): It's definitely connected to our employee base because ultimately it's our employees that have to deliver the experience. And so oftentimes it starts with the employee experience. Are they happy to be where they are? We've all had the experience of walking into a fast food restaurant and that person behind the counter, it looks like you're interrupting their otherwise pleasant day by wanting to place an order. And so you're not going to get a great experience there. You compare that to a place like Amazon, which I know people love to love and love to hate. I happen to love them, but Amazon is so customer centric in everything that they do, they have ingrained it into their culture. And they've understood for a long time that it's not about one individual transaction. It's about the lifetime value of the customer relationship. So I tell a story in my book about how I ordered a set of pots and pans, and one of the glass lids of one of the pots arrived shatter.

Dan Gingiss (04:17): So I called up Amazon. I was just looking for a replacement lid. I was disappointed that one of them was broken, but I figured they would just replace the lid. The customer service woman tried for a few minutes and clicked and clock down on her keyboard. And finally said, you know what? I have no idea how to replace the lid. So I'm just going to refund your money and you go ahead and keep the pots and pans. Now I went from in the span of a couple of minutes from being disappointed that I had a broken lid to being like whew, free pots of bands, my whole mindset changed. And I can certainly attest to the fact that of the 200 or so orders I've made since then. I think Amazon's probably made up for the lost pots and pans, but they're so good at what they do because they intentionally make every part of the experience easy and a pleasure to do our mutual fund.

Dan Gingiss (05:11): Our mutual friend, Joey Coleman, who is my podcast, cohost told a story once on our podcast about how he and his wife downloaded a movie from Amazon prime and their internet. Wasn't real, wasn't working really well that night. So the movie was slow and pixelated, the next day, he gets an email from Amazon unsolicited saying, Hey, we noticed that you didn't get a lot of good quality in your movie last night. So we've gone ahead and refunded your money and enjoy your next movie. Wow. I want to keep doing business with a company like that because they get me, they're paying attention and

John Jantsch (05:45): I am a marketer marketing consultant. People hire my firm to do marketing. This point gets driven home how this entire journey is so connected because one of the things that we do standard fare that we do is we do tracking and things so that when somebody calls in and a lot of marketers, it's like, Hey, I got the phone to ring and the job I, we record those things and I'd listen to them. And I show a business owner. This is why you're not converting because, and all of a sudden it's like, oh wow, I don't care how good your marketing is or what people call it, marketing. If it's fallen out the back end in service or in sales or whatever the metric is for what an actual growth is. So nothing's gonna, nothing's gonna really happen in a positive sense. So this idea of really seeing this end to end journey is what marketing is today. It's not ending at getting the sale as it.

Dan Gingiss (06:32): Absolutely. And it also happens even after the sale, right? Is that we've got people that stay with us just for a short period of time and then leave. And I think the reason for that is that marketing has become not only is marketing the first part of the experience, it's like the experience before the customer experience, because how do we become aware of a brand in the first place we start getting

John Jantsch (06:56): Today? I think it's how the experiences before you even know that they exist.

Dan Gingiss (07:01): Correct? Correct. And also marketing's role, I think has evolved to being the promises of the experience. So a lot of marketing today talks about what it's going to be like to do business with us. How are you going to feel when you use our product or service? And if marketing is promising something that the rest of the company can't deliver on, and then you've got a big problem. And so I definitely agree with you that holding marketing and sales accountable for not just acquiring the customer, but keeping the customer is one of the ways that we can connect with,

John Jantsch (07:34): Oh, good consultants. You have a framework in this book that you call the, I don't know how to actually say this wise within our, is that how you would say that? So why don't you unpack that acronym?

Dan Gingiss (07:46): Sure. So I teach people how to be wise to customer experience. And then the secret is I teach them to be wiser than their competition. And so wise stands for witty, immersive, shareable and extraordinary. And these are four elements to customer experiences that make them remarkable or literally worthy of remark where the, of talking about, because we'd all prefer as marketers that other people talk about us, instead of us having to talk about us, we know that word of mouth marketing is the most authentic, most genuine, most trusted. And my belief and this, I got to remind you, I was a marketer for 20 years. And so I've worked in many of these marketing channels, but my belief is that the most powerful way to get people talking about us positively is to give them a great experience. And so why is helps you do that?

Dan Gingiss (08:38): It gives you the elements. You can use one of them or you can stack them. And then once people are talking about you positively, you gotta be part of the conversation. And that's the R which is being responsive. And one of the things I find in social media is it took a long time for companies to even on board with responding to questions and complaints. But what they're not doing still is responding to compliments. And the reason is there's no system for that. We've never gotten compliments in the call center before nobody's ever called the toll free number to say, Hey, you're doing a great job. And yet we've got all these fans on social media and people that are sharing their positive experiences and they're hearing crickets back. So the R's really about being responsive and how powerful it can be to be part of that.

John Jantsch (09:23): But they're doing it in a reviews by him. That's the place. I think a lot of people, just what you said, everybody gets all off about the negative review and they go and fire back. But look at all these affirm all these positive reviews that you're getting to. Absolutely.

Dan Gingiss (09:38): Yeah. And remember that in social media, it's all about your social capital. And so my social capital grows when a big company likes my tweet or responds to me, I feel really important. And I feel like they care about me. And just a quick example of that actually happened after the book was published. But I sent somewhat of a humorous tweet at my friends at Skittles because I'm a big Skittles fan, but I was upset with them for the last few years because they replaced the green Skittles, which used to be lime. And they replaced them with green apple, which I thought was a horrible replacement because line was my favorite and green apple in my humble opinion is disgusting. I send them a tweet saying, Hey, when's the green apple experiment going to be over. And they write back and they say, we're thinking Wednesday. And I'm like, what the heck does that mean? And Wednesday, they send me another tweet that shows the announcement of a brand new, all lime package of skills that they're bringing back by popular demand because so many people have been asking for it. Now, I know my tweet had nothing to do with that decision, but that it felt like I made magic happen. And so of course I love the brand even more than I did before.

John Jantsch (10:53): You've now shared this story numerous times,

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John Jantsch (12:05): I'm sure that one of the pushbacks that happens in customer experience discussions is that it's very hard to track the ROI. Nobody gets a quota for creating evangelists that they have to meet. So what is some of the work that you've done? I know that you talk extensively in the book about this idea of tracking it so that it becomes a priority. How do you talk to companies who, who really are struggling with, oh yeah, it's nice to make people happy. But does that

Dan Gingiss (12:32): Let analogy I like to use is actually back to social media because my friends in social media and I ran multiple social media teams at big companies. So I'm pretty familiar with this. They love to brag about what we call the vanity metrics, how many followers we have, how many likes we got, retweets shares, whatever it is. And executives, frankly don't care because they don't, there's no connection to the bottom line. Okay. So what you put out a tweet and 20,000 people liked it. How did that help sales this month? And the answer is it probably did it so much like in social media where what we really have to do is we've got to show here's how many people clicked on our post and came to our website and purchased. Now you've got a line to the bottom line. We have to do the same thing in customer experience.

Dan Gingiss (13:20): And so we often get stuck on metrics like NPS net promoter score. It's a wonderful measurement. It tells you how you're doing at one moment in time, but it doesn't tell you why you're doing that well or that poorly. And so what happens is we track NPS over time. And as it goes up, we all cheer and high five and pat each other on the back. And as it goes down, we come up with all the rationalizations and excuses, the weather, the pandemic, whatever it is. But the truth is we have no idea when it's going up or down. And so connecting customer experience metrics like NPS to business metrics like increased sales retention, rate referrals, things that actually have a bottom line value, especially if you know the lifetime value of every customer, then you can prove that you're getting more customers who are spending more staying longer and bringing their friends along with them. Now.

John Jantsch (14:21): So one of the things you write about in this book, and I really haven't ever heard anybody say this, but it makes so much sense. And I think this would get CFOs maybe on board a little more with this is everybody's focused on oh, retention and it, or revenue goes up if people are happy and they talk about, so we get new customers, but you talk a little bit about, there's also quite often dramatic cost savings in having a better customer experience. And I don't think enough people are talking about that.

Dan Gingiss (14:49): Absolutely. One of my examples of that, and it's in the responsive section is duke energy, which is a utility company in the Southeastern us. It should be noted that they're a monopoly. So customers don't have a choice of whether to do business with them. And Hey, we all have our own feelings about our utility company and not often is it positive? What they have done is they actually hired a guy whose title is storm director. And he is responsible among other things for going on to social media and recording videos, telling people that a storm is coming, telling them that they might lose power and telling them that duke energy is on the case and that they don't have anything to worry about. If they lose power, we're working on it. And then he gets updates through the storm on what's going on. Guess what? When customers lose power, they don't call customer service because they already know that duke is working on it. That's a huge cost savings. And especially the last thing we need when the power's out is to have our call center be bombarded with calls. And there are, that's a great example of how a company reduces costs by focusing on experience, which in this case, it's really just proactive customer. So

John Jantsch (16:01): I'm curious your kind of impression of the role of technology in all of this. So for good and for bad and how we should be viewing it rather than some of the ways that maybe we're using it.

Dan Gingiss (16:16): Technology is a great thing, especially when it makes things easier for the customer. So there's a stat in the book that the number one stat or the number one element of customer loyalty is actually ease of use. It's simplicity. It's about, uh, reducing customer effort. And so the extent to which we can use technology to reduce customer effort and make things easy. I am all for it. When we start to look at technology as a replacement for human interaction, then I put up the stop sign, especially because of what we were talking before, that, that I blame the millennials for that people want a relationship with the brand and they want that human connection. I think actually the pandemic exacerbated that we all craved more human connection and interaction. And so sometimes we don't want to talk to a robot. We just want to talk to a human other times, the robot is totally fine. We use Google every single day. That's a robot and it, it gives us what we need, but ultimately when we need to have a human conversation, that's gotta be available to us as well. So I definitely, I think it plays a role. It's just, we gotta be careful with.

John Jantsch (17:27): And I think that's the distinction. Is the role providing better service or is it a way that we don't have to talk to people? And I think that's the how to make a decision about does technology solve that? Does it create less friction here, go for it or does it just make it so that we can have fewer bodies

Dan Gingiss (17:44): Talking to people always wondered. I always wondered why companies don't want to talk their customers without customers. We don't have a business. So they are our number one asset. Why would we not want to talk to them? Why would we not welcome the opportunity to talk to them? Especially by the way, if they're upset because we're not giving them what they expected from us. And so I definitely agree that if the whole idea is just, we don't want to talk to customers and we'd like to save money by firing our customer service staff. That's not going to be a successful strategy as far as I'm concerned, but technology can play a great role in redo call length. For example, because if I always imagine a contact center rep sitting next to IBM Watson, the one that went on jeopardy and knows the answer to every question ever, right? Think about how intelligent you've now made your agent because they have, they can answer any question that comes to them in the world. And they're confident in their answer. Now, all they have to do is do what humans do best, which is engage with people and be human. And in the, in, in that sense, you're actually going to use technology to reduce the call length, which is a cost savings, but not by.

John Jantsch (18:58): So is there an example of a good IVR system that you've ever encountered?

Dan Gingiss (19:05): Ah, the old IVR system, I will say that knowing your customer is the best way to build your IVR. So the best way to build any experience. So when I was at discover, for example, we found that there were literally hundreds of thousands of people every month that called just so they could press one to hear their balance. And then they hung up. Cause that's just all they wanted to do. They didn't want to go online or they weren't comfortable going online. So they called, they pressed one and they left, Hey, that's great. That's why it was number one was because we knew that book, that the vast majority of people calling we're calling for that reason, in that sense, an IVR can be great too often though, an IVR is built based on a company's org chart. And the reality is customers should not be responsible for understanding your art org chart. They look at you as a single company, not as a series of departments. So really the purpose of the IVR is not to help the customer it's to more efficiently route the calls, which is a benefit to who, to the company, not to the customer. And so in that sense, there are not many great.

John Jantsch (20:15): My one wish would be that they would start off by saying, look, we're going to route you through all these things. It might make your experience better, but if you just want to talk to a person hit five, that's what I want because sometimes I didn't know.

Dan Gingiss (20:29): And some companies have started doing that where the first choice is to talk to somebody, press zero. And then they go into the other choices. I love that it's so much better than the inevitable we're pounding on zero or screaming operator and hoping it's listening.

John Jantsch (20:44): We both know what my mother's first dog's was. All right. So are we ready for an experience maker to be a role at a company? Should every company have the experience maker?

Dan Gingiss (20:59): Yes. And I think that experience has got to be a combination of a group that leads it usually via a chief experience officer, because they're the ones that have the 30,000 foot view that see the whole customer journey start to finish while everybody else is siloed into their one little spot. But also we've got to enable and empower every employee to be in customer experience, to have customer experience, be a part of their job. Even a person who's in finance, who never actually speaks to a customer has a huge impact on the customer experience if they just paid attention to it. So that invoice that they're sending out every month, does it make sense? Does the customer understand all the line items and why they owe what they owe? Does it allow the customer to pay using the method that they want? What kind of other policies do we have around when and how people pay? These are all finance questions that have a big impact on the customer experience. I know that from working at discover, right, some companies back in the day, didn't accept discover card. And that was a frustration to me as a customer. And so we think that a finance guy, because, or gal, because they don't talk to the customer really have nothing to do with CX. But in fact, what they're doing every day does same with the lawyers, same with the operations people, the warehouse people everyone's got an impact. It's really not a

John Jantsch (22:26): Department. It's almost more of a culture issue, isn't it? Yeah. So Dan tell people where they can find out more about the experience maker or any, and he worked at you're doing that.

Dan Gingiss (22:37): The good news is I have a unique, last name, but if you meet anyone else with my last name, they are definitely related to me. So I'm at Dan gingiss.com on Twitter at D Gangas, LinkedIn and Dan Gingiss as well. And the book is the experience maker available at,

John Jantsch (22:51): It was great to having to stop by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we'll run into you one of these days soon after.

Dan Gingiss (22:56): Thanks for having me, John. And I would look forward to meeting you in person sometime.

John Jantsch (23:00): All right. So that wraps up another episode. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and you know, we love those reviews and comments. And just generally tell me what you think also did you know that you could offer the duct tape marketing system, our system to your clients and build a complete marketing consulting coaching business, or maybe level up an agency with some additional services. That's right. Check out the duct tape marketing consultant network. You can find it at duct tape, marketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that offer our system to your clients tab.

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Intention Plus Mechanism Equals Results

Intention Plus Mechanism Equals Results written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space. Each episode is designed to spark ideas you can put into practice for your agency today. Check out the new Spark Lab Consulting website here!

About the episode:

In this episode of the Agency Spark Podcast, Sara interviews Krystal Zellmer. Krystal is co-owner of the leadership training company Klemmer and Associates. She is a transformational facilitator in experiential leadership training, author and platform speaker. Her book, Life By Intention, is an Amazon Best Seller. Krystal has professionally been in the personal development field since 2012. She is the daughter of the internationally recognized leading trainer in leadership and Character Development, Brian Klemmer. Since his passing in 2011, Krystal is committed to upholding Brian’s legacy while continuing to positively impact lives all around the world.

Krystal is married to Adam Zellmer and they are the proud parents of two bright boys. Wherever Krystal goes she is an advocate for contribution, personal responsibility, honor and truth. Her experiences in the personal development field have provided her with powerful insights and wisdom beyond her years. She is a bold, personable woman with a compelling message to share.

Questions Sara asks Krystal Zellmer:

• Tell me a little about your story and background?
• What are some of the key concepts in your book, Life By Intention?
• How do you help someone who is feeling stuck professionally?
• What is the formula of champions and can you break it down for us?
• How do you help people fulfill their intentions and meet their goals?
• How do you help people develop happier and healthier relationships?
• What are some first steps one should take when trying to make progress on their goals?
• What other advice do you have on goal setting and strategic planning?

Show notes:

• Klemmer Seminars Website
• Klemmer Youtube
• Krystal Zellmer Instagram
• Life By Intention Book

 

Like this show? Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts here!

 

This episode of the Agency Spark Podcast is brought to you by Monday.com, a powerful project management platform. Monday.com helps teams easily build, run, and scale their dream workflows on one platform.  I personally am a user and big fan of Monday.com – I start my workday pulling up the platform and spend my day working within it for everything from task management to running client engagements. Learn more about Monday.com at ducttape.me/monday. 

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Weekend Favs October 30

Weekend Favs October 30 written by Karen Cutler read more at Duct Tape Marketing

This month Startup Page by Buffer has sponsored our Weekend Favs. As a part of the sponsorship, Startup has taken over this week. Enjoy!

The past year and a half has shown many of us that small businesses are too often the unsung heroes of our world. For almost 11 years now, we’ve remained committed to serving small businesses at Buffer. Earlier this year, we decided to make an expanded effort to help small businesses by making something even more accessible for people starting out and going broader in the types of problems we help solve.

Today, we’re launching Start Page by Buffer for anyone who wants to create a beautiful, mobile-friendly landing page in minutes, update it in seconds, and share it anywhere, and it’s free.

We’ve built Buffer’s publishing, analytics, and engagement features with small businesses in mind. Now, we’re exploring something adjacent to social media to help with another big challenge we know small businesses face — properly leveraging that one key link that we all get on our social media profiles.

There are a large number of link-in-bio tools available but we wanted to build something different, something that gives small businesses and individual creators the flexibility and power to create a beautiful page to showcase their brand through products, content, events, or announcements, all from one link.

Start Page lets you quickly generate a landing page and URL for your business, no matter what type of business you have. Combined with our social media tools, Start Page creates a powerful toolset to start marketing your business.

How Start Page works

Simply go to buffer.com/start-page to begin building your Start Page, if you don’t yet have a Buffer account, you can set one up for free.You can start adding boxes for text, images, videos, social links, and more, right into our editor to create the layout you want, or you can choose from one of our pre-made templates. From there, you can customize page colors and style as well as add your own images, GIFs, and logos.

Once you’ve created and customized your page simply hit publish to claim your unique URL and start sharing it in your social profiles, email signatures, and marketing campaigns.

Unique benefits

• It has flexibility and customization options to create a beautiful page, no matter what type of business you have.
• It prioritizes your brand. The first thing you see in the URL is your name, not ours.
• It comes free with our social media tools – which creates a powerful combination to start marketing your business.

List of features

• Claim a unique Start Page subdomain that puts your name at the start of URL
• Build your page with a simple and intuitive drag-and-drop editor
• 5+ pre-made templates
• Customize page colors and styles
• Mobile-optimized
• Upload your profile photo or logo
• Use blocks to add links, videos, social profiles and more.
• Share your unique URL anywhere; for example in your social profiles, email signature and marketing campaigns. 

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