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Successful Life Podcast
The Successful Life Podcast, hosted by Corey Berrier, is a globally recognized show that ranks in the top 2% of podcasts worldwide. It offers expert insights tailored for contractors, focusing on business strategies, sales skills development, and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.
Successful Life Podcast
The Blueprint for Effective Marketing in Home Services
Forget everything you thought you knew about marketing in the home services industry. In this eye-opening conversation, Ryan Chute, partner at Wizard of Ads, shatters conventional wisdom about lead generation and reveals the three essential components of effective marketing strategy that most businesses entirely miss.
Ryan breaks down why your marketing efforts must go beyond simple lead generation tactics to create meaningful customer relationships. Through vivid analogies and practical insights, he explains how brand activation, sales activation, and prospect portals work together to make your business the obvious choice when customers need your services. It's not about being the cheapest or having the most reviews – it's about creating emotional connections that position your business as the trustworthy solution.
The psychology behind customer decision-making takes center stage as Ryan reveals why empathy must precede competence in every customer interaction. He introduces the concept of "tantric selling" – a patient approach to sales that meets customers where they are financially and emotionally in today's uncertain economic climate. This strategy recognizes that breaking the first seal of trust is more important than immediately pushing for maximum ticket size.
Perhaps most valuable is Ryan's breakdown of how to structure pricing presentations that tell a compelling story, positioning financing prominently rather than as an afterthought. He explains why your operations must support your marketing promises, why tension can be beneficial while friction destroys momentum, and how to build what he calls a "marketing mansion" in customers' minds instead of just dumping a pile of undifferentiated bricks like your competitors.
Ready to transform your approach to marketing and sales? Listen now and discover why, as David Packard said, "Marketing is far too important to be left to the marketing department."
https://coreyberrier.gumroad.com/
https://www.audible.com/pd/9-Simple-Steps-to-Sell-More-ht-Audiobook/B0D4SJYD4Q?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow
https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Steps-Sell-More-Stereotypes-ebook/dp/B0BRNSFYG6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1OSB7HX6FQMHS&keywords=corey+berrier&qid=1674232549&sprefix=%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1
https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreysalescoach/
Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, corey Barrier, and I'm here with my friend, ryan Shoup. What's up, brother? Hey, how are you? My man? Good dude, I'm super excited to have this conversation with you. I'm really grateful that you decided to come back on and I think today we're going to have a great conversation. For those that may not know you, ryan, could you just give us a quick bio of who you are and what you've been up to? Sure, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm a partner at the Wizard of Ads. I help out essential home service businesses build big brands with their companies. My primary focus has been on HVAC, plumbing and electric companies, and we're working on a bunch of different clients. I'm actually looking for about two more for 2025. And I'll have a nice rounded out group of people that I'm excited to deal with.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know if it's unreasonable for me to ask, but some of the brands, some of the larger brands that you've been a part of, can you mention some of those folks?
Speaker 2:Sometimes, yeah, yeah, there's certain NDAs in place, but there's also there's some freedom based on previous conversations and agreements.
Speaker 1:Sure Well, what are some of those people?
Speaker 2:Caldad is one of our bigger clients and has had some pretty dramatic shifts and movement in their business, as has Mobatter Garage, which is a fantastic garage door company down in Southwest Florida. We've also got HL Bowman. Those are our biggest three that have given me permission to talk about them.
Speaker 1:Very nice and Caldad's right in my backyard, like two hours from here.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, yeah, very cool, very cool, very cool. So we were chatting a little bit before we started this about how AI chat, gpt. There's a bunch of other engines out there that I think, and I could be wrong, but my guess is it looks pretty easy to build out a marketing strategy on some of these platforms and it looks pretty good compared to what I would write. Let's just say, it looks a whole lot better than what I would write. You're an expert in this field, so how does that equate to actually working as a marketing strategy?
Speaker 2:There's three major components to a marketing strategy. Now, most people think that there's two and a lot of them think that there's really just only one function of marketing, and that's generating leads. So when we declutter and reclassify how marketing actually works, it becomes a lot easier for us to have a better conversation around it. So the three buckets brand activation right. Some sort of brand messaging and messages come in 12 different ways. Right, there's not just visuals and auditory. There's actually a number of different things that we don't even realize, but our brain processes these things 12 different ways. It's the perceptions of the mind. Then there's the sales activation side. Sales activation are all the offers, the promos and just the simple call to actions without any discounts or deals attached to them, just saying, hey, buy my thing. And then, last but not least, is what I like to call the prospect portal.
Speaker 2:Now, the prospect portal is that moment of transformation, that transition from them not being a customer to grabbing the doorknob and opening up that door and stepping into your website, csr, call center form, fill email, a response or even a message. These portals exist online and offline and have abilities for you to step in or crack that door. But you remember the old cartoons where the guy would open up the door and there would be like a line behind it and it would roar and it would be like you close that real quick, right, and then you go to the next door and the like flames would shoot out, and then, of course, you close that one real quick. But then you go into the next door and the like flames would shoot out and then, of course, you close that one real quick, but then you go into the next one. It's like unicorns and rainbows and sunshine and you're like, yeah, I guess I'll go in there. Well, that's what the customer's looking for. And if we just have the rainbows, unicorns and sunshine behind the back of the door, well, on the other side of the door we're in great shape.
Speaker 2:More importantly, what if they choose our door instead of the 4,000 doors that they walk up to when they hit Google right? How are they going to pick our door right? And if we just think about the prospect portal in that perspective, be it Google or just a direct search or heck, even the old-fashioned yellow pages in those places that actually still have those things, or one of the other hundred directories that exist online, or whatever the case might be. What if they just picked us? Wouldn't that make our lives a lot better and wouldn't that be an incredible amount more affordable if we just did that?
Speaker 2:Now, when I talk about lead gen, most people are like, oh yeah, this is the part where they click on the thing and do the thing and we pay a cost per click and blah. No, that's not lead gen, that's the portal that they stepped over. The generation of the lead happened when they saw your truck wrap and your billboard and had an interaction with your staff and their friend recommended you to their friend and they heard your radio ad and they like you in all of these different ways and, aided or unaided, psychologically speaking, they said, yeah, but I like those guys, I'm going to pick them. That's lead gen and that happens in sales activation and in brand activation and it occurs at the moment of them choosing to open your door versus the others.
Speaker 1:Now, the first thing that you mentioned I forget which one it was were you suggesting that was subconsciously? A lot of these things happen subconsciously, right?
Speaker 2:it's a combination of things. Yes, yeah, some are conscious, some are subconscious, and it depends on where you are in their buying cycle at the time of the trigger occurring, right. So maybe they've only heard your ad a couple of times, maybe they haven't heard it at all, maybe they've seen a truck drive by, maybe they've been aware of you for years and they've always picked you. You just didn't have a thing they needed yet.
Speaker 1:Right, interesting, okay, but it takes all three of those. Obviously you get that customer to move through the cycle.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what you need to focus on when you're thinking about your marketing mix. I need some in branding and I need some of it to be auditory and visual and I need some of it to be an activation or call to action in some way. But I also need to have a digital presence and an offline presence that is accessible to them, so that I'm showing up. I'm at the places. They show up when they go looking for the thing I sell. Now, some of them are just going to walk right up to my door and knock on the door, and other ones are going to be searching around and maybe recognize my door when they get into the mix of doors.
Speaker 1:And so, and the combination of these things all depends on where they're at in the buying cycle. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:And the only place that they are in the buying cycle to be frank, in an externally triggered grudge purchase is when something breaks and their guy has let them down, because they almost always have a guy. Guy has let them down because they almost always have a guy. And if they're undecided, well what kind of person are you getting? They're undecided because there's no good reason to have picked anyone, or they've never had to pick anyone before, so you're dealing with a different temperament. If they're undecided, coming in off of an unbranded keyword or a point of access that really doesn't have anything to do with your brand, or, frankly, if you haven't talked about your brand before and nobody knows who you are, no one cares. And if you just said the boring bits that everyone else can say and all they can do is just replace your name with everyone else's name, well, guess what you are? The exact same thing that everyone else is.
Speaker 2:No one gives a crap more about a HVAC company, a and B, until you give them a reason to give a crap, and that's why everything is transactional, until you've made it relational. That's where the low-cap customers come from and the high-cap customers Cap standing for conversions, average sale and profits. You want the person that's going to close on the first sit at a higher average ticket and more profitability, and that happens when you've given them some conditioning ahead of time so that your job is easier and you're not tracking that. You can track it indirectly through a thousand things your conversion rates, your average tickets, your direct search to your website but these are all just distractions to going after your business and working hard and doing a good job on each customer. Build a good marketing mix and you're going to be in good shape.
Speaker 1:Otherwise you're just going to blend in.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, yeah, that's it. If you're standing in a field full of zebras, it's not easy to to say I'm the one that you should pick out of all these zebras, and that's what google is to the customer. We'd like to think that we matter more, because we have 3 000 reviews and some people like that, some people don't, and the same goes for under 100 views and the same goes for a thousand views, and the same goes for 37 years in business and three years of business. But if those are the three or four measuring sticks that you got, you're already blending in.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. So you got to this formula through at some point. Some failures right, absolutely. So I'd like for you to tell me me about. You don't have to mention the brand, obviously, but I'm just curious. When, like you thought you had everything dialed in, you thought everything, there's no chance. Well, maybe not no chance, but there's very little chance this plan is gonna fail. Can you do you remember a time like that and how that, how you turn that around?
Speaker 2:Well, I can tell you about the times when it doesn't turn around, and that's when the client doesn't let it live long enough. We've about this time of year every year. We have one or two clients that that drops off. We either help them drop off or they drop off themselves and they drop off. We're 3% attrition rate, so it's fairly low, but they drop off because they're expecting that marketing is going to do a whole bunch of things that it's not built to do.
Speaker 2:Your marketing isn't going to improve your sales conversion. You have to have salespeople who know how to sell things and close and have a higher sales yield. You need to have a call center that answers the phone. You need to have a whole bunch of operational things that allow you to get in front of capacity through efficient inventory systems. Enough trucks, enough staff on ground. You have to prepare for growth that may or may not come, depending on the economy.
Speaker 2:I'm talking to an awful lot of folks right now about adjusting their budgets and looking at how they're spending money on Google, because those dollars are shifting. Demand is shifting. Right now there's a significant amount of unrest and if you look at marketing as a whole, there's the five uncontrollable environmental factors that marketing has always talked about. These are the things that you can't do anything about. There's an awful lot of people who are freaked out right now, whether they're optimistic or cautiously optimistic or completely irate about the current political and regulatory climate. That's a reality that is affecting people's sentiment to purchase right now, which is affecting overall demand and overall demand search. We also have that adjustment being made at the companies that have a lot of money and are shifting their dollars into a desperate ploy for lead generation in their perception, but really just dumping all their money into pay-per-click conversion points, and that's smothering out an awful lot of small businesses and, frankly, not all good businesses, not all big businesses are good, because we've seen businesses go bankrupt recently that were perceived to have been somebody who could withstand it. But big doesn't mean better and more budget doesn't mean better marketing. But it is a strategy, it is absolutely a strategy and it does affect everybody in the marketplace and look, they're just doing their jobs and trying to trying to survive and get through these things. There's been an awful lot of layoffs lately. There's been an awful lot of readjustments and right sizing, excuse me. So we look at the whole mix of everyone's markets. Some markets are tougher than others. We got an awful lot of clients who are growing despite the challenges, because they're the ones that people are trusting. They're the ones that are standing out above the crowd and going.
Speaker 2:If I had my druthers, I'm going to pick the guy that I feel the best about. That I feel the best about. People don't care about what you say and how you say it, they care about how you make them feel. People don't care about what you say and how you say it, they care about how you make them feel. Well, we're doing it before we even get to their house for the first time. And guess what? Their guy just did Let them down because the big company doesn't get the good guy anymore who's too expensive. He's been fired or punted away. The treatment that they're getting at their current guy is shifting and they don't like it. So they're just going to search around and feel out whether or not I've got another guy who I'd much prefer, because this isn't feeling right anymore.
Speaker 2:Well, all of this is marketing. All of this is part of your brand fabric. All of this is part of your ability to convert. We have to look at our sales models. Should you sell less replacements? No, you shouldn't. You should sell just as many as you can sell right Now. Are there people who are going to hold off on a replacement right now? Yes, well, what are the plan B and C? Right, because every single home you go in that needs a sale should have a sale. It's our responsibility, right, it's our responsibility as essential home service providers to have systems that are functional and within manufacturer specification at a minimum and then at least working optimally for them, at a kind of a standard and whatever else can be sold beyond that.
Speaker 1:Well, and prices are not going down, so a lot of they're not.
Speaker 1:And so a lot of times these guys, especially selling technicians I'll just say that they sell from their own pocket they think about well, what would I do if I had to do this based on my salary or based on how much money I make? What would I do if I had to do this based on my salary or based on how much money I make? And lots of times they that energy transfer from that guy that wouldn't want to do this replacement transfers into you, the customer, and so and it stops the sale. But the reality is, if you let the customer make the decision, if you give them all the right information and a compelling reason why the prices are not going down, you're going to have these problems moving forward. It's going to be X number of time before we're right back out here for another repair. It's important as a salesperson to to explain those things, and it's not. You shouldn't feel bad about it.
Speaker 2:No, you shouldn't feel bad about it. In fact, you should feel bad if you don't make the sale right the ethical sale, that is, but the sale nonetheless. I sell them all, big and small. It does not matter to me what I sell. It matters to me that I've sold something because until there is an exchange of money there and return for it in your value proposition, your service, your product, there is no value transfer. All you have done is wasted their time, wasted their energy and kept they kept their money in return. Our job is to build a value that is in excess of the money that they're willing to give up, the effort that they've already given and that they will give in the future, and the time that they have to dedicate to this, not just now, but in the future. This is where warranties come in and all these other things factor in Understanding that the resources are money, effort and time. We can build a much more comprehensive value proposition when we recognize it from that standpoint. The other thing that I'm big bullish on is recognizing what we don't sell as an option.
Speaker 2:When I talk to various clients who are working with me in the sales communication side, they're very often saying well, how do I present these options? I said, if it's a priority repair, here's your five options. Option number one do nothing right. That's absolutely an option that every customer is considering, whether you say it or not. So why not say it? Because that seems awfully a lot more trustworthy.
Speaker 2:Now, option number two is to do that goofy bandaid option that everyone talks about. Well, we don't do bandaid options. Band-aids are for handymen, and you know what the difference between a handyman and a professional is. We both know what to do, but as a professional, I know what not to do and I'm not doing a band-aid so you can get somebody else to do that for beer and weed money. I'm going to do it right, or I'm not going to do it at all, because you're just going to be frustrated with me and I don't need that brain damage, and neither do you, because it's not just your money right now, it's your effort and time that go past that when I have to come out two weeks from now to fix that bad $5 haircut you just got. So now we've got option number two.
Speaker 2:Option number three it's retail for the priority service to get the thing back to the manufacturer specification. That's the sale, that is the purchase. We're not trying to sell them a bunch of other stuff. Why? Because that makes you look like a greedy goof, and you don't need to be a greedy goof right now, because everyone's worried about their money. Stop being greedy, right? I'm not saying stop selling. I'm saying stop appearing greedy.
Speaker 2:So option number four is club. That's my club price. This is my price for people who have promised me that they're going to be with me for more than one purchase. Whether that comes to fruition or not is up to you, but at the end of the day, I'm willing to take that gamble because we have an awful lot of value built into our club. And option five is the club payment, because we know it's tight, but we put the club and the club payment in proximity to retail. When we don't put those things in proximity to each other, proximity, by the way, is a language of the mind, right? That's why we always see on the internet was this price? Is this price? We're not doing the was is. Now that's snake oil. That's a thing that that has you buying online courses. We're putting it in proximity to the real price of it to build a value proposition that brings it down to. We're working for you. You don't have to ask me for a discount. This is your discount and here's how you afford it with the payment. Now, the outside 5.5 option I'm not even going to call it six options, I'm going to call it 5.5 because it's an outside option is to replace it. But there's plenty of life left in this system. Let's just go ahead and get it fixed. This is going to do you well and it comes with this warranty, right? And when we start to think this way, we start to think the way that customer is thinking, and that means the customer's testing that signal. Are they empathetic? Are they competent? Are they doing the thing for me that is actually serving me or serving them? Now, just like in car dealerships for the past 40 years, when we get the car up on the hoist and we get the tires off, we start doing the thing that we just sold, right? Well, there might be something else that we find, and that's the time to sell.
Speaker 2:The second thing I like to call this tantric selling. I made that stuff up and it's a little bit cheeky, but it's like the Kama Sutra of selling here. It's about delaying your gratification for the benefit of both partners, right. We're so addicted to dopamine right now. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've heard salespeople. It's like the owners are so frustrated with them because if they don't get the big whopper sale, they're not doing anything like what. The biggest frustration with comfort advisors in home? The comfort advisor goes out after the technicians have been there, the comfort advisor doesn't close it and now there's no sale. What Like that doesn't make any sense. Talk about inefficient. Talk about loss of profits. Talk about drop sales, yield. Sell them all, big and small.
Speaker 2:Start with where the customer is at. We've got to break the first seal. When we break the first seal, when we get over the first threshold, we're in the house. Now we can keep selling. Now we don't have to be goons about it. But if we crack it open and we instead approach it as a oh look, I got this thing apart and this is going to be the next thing that goes Did you want me to take care of it while I'm here? I can do it for 10% off, plus another 10%, of course, for your club membership. Save me 20% right now if I just get this done now, because the part's in my truck and I can solve the problem.
Speaker 2:Nine times out of 10, the customer's saying yes because they've already made the purchase right. As it goes down the rabbit hole, you might even get a third and fourth sale in there, because once they put a little bit of stuff on finance, well then, why not just put a little bit more stuff on finance to get the other stuff done, to get it out of the way? For a buck a day, I can get this and this done too, and just have this done out of your way right now, if you want us to. And that's what the customer is more prone to say yes to in a marketplace where they feel as though they're surviving. Let's think about surviving.
Speaker 2:Surviving is when you are looking for security, right Maslow's hierarchy of needs survivals and then belonging, thriving, that's when life's good and you've got the things you might be trying to protect. That which is survival mode in belonging, like you've got the belonging but you're also guarding the vault, so to speak. And that's what people are doing right now. They're hanging on to that thriving mode at the very bottom end of it, because they're just like I don't have the money for that, I didn't budget for that, I still want to go on vacation, right. Everything's tense. Let's do the things right. Let's spend the money. Yes, groceries are too high and, yes, interest rates are too high, and all this stuff, right. And that's what we're walking into Day one, first job.
Speaker 2:So meet them where they're at. Meet them where they're at in survival mode and I'm talking about sales right now, corey but this translates directly into marketing. Why? Because the buying experience determines whether or not you're going to get the customer back, which is a part of your brand. So if people want to continue using your brand, it'll depend on what your buying experience was.
Speaker 2:Now, wizard of Oz partners do not talk about this, right. They're fantastic writers, they're excellent strategists, they're wonderful media negotiators. This is Ryan Chute. So I want to be careful not to include all Wizard of Oz partners into this respect, to be respectful to them, because, at the end of the day, they're not all thinking this way. I'm thinking this way because I've got 30 years of sales operations experience and dealing with customers on the front lines and understanding where people's heads are at through a variety of different economic downturns in different industries. So why does this matter? Because these are the same things that we want to talk about in our advertising. Meet them where you're at where they're at, excuse me and bring them up slowly with you, one step at a time. Don't try to hit the home run out of the gate. Be tantric in your marketing. Be tantric in your selling. Delay your gratification. Don't not sell. I'm not talking about not maximizing sales yield. I'm talking about being patient enough to keep stepping into those opportunities when they unfold more naturally and are more likely to be converted.
Speaker 1:You know that 100% patience is key and the folks that spend the time massaging that relationship. You're building trust and that takes time and you can't get in and out of the house in an hour, sometimes not even an hour and a half. You just got to be content being there, listening and trying to figure out what the customer really needs or what they want, and it's okay to sell them either one of those, but they can't buy things if you don't explain to them. So you mentioned financing, one of the biggest things. It drives me absolutely nuts Probably the thing that drives me the most nuts about companies that present the pricing without presenting the monthly payment. Or they've got the price so big $25,000, and they trickle down with the monthly financing. Beyond me why someone would make that decision.
Speaker 2:They wouldn't and that's why their conversions are so low. They get enough sales out of it that they can just just enough justify. That's the right way to do it, because when it hits, it hits hard, but that's not empathetic to the customer. Now understand the base belief of human beings. The base function and action and behavior of human beings is to first identify empathy and to second identify competence. When we were cavemen, we'd walk up to a cave. There'd be people in the cave We'd be like do I trust them enough for them to not club me over the head and make me either their dinner or their close friend? Big spoon, little spoon?
Speaker 2:We'll say that decision had to be made through the empathetic signals that we received, be it verbal or nonverbal, the gestures of sharing food and the giving first, all of these things that we know to be true today. Where's the empathy coming from? Right? Are we seeing the empathy before we even allow the next thing to happen? The empathy gets our interest, holds our interest. As long as we see empathy, what gives us the willingness, the decision to take an action or to engage with the group would be, or the individual.
Speaker 2:Is competence right? So you've slept through the night. You wake up, you're not dead. So good news. Right Now you have to go get food and water. Are they able to hunt and gather? Are they going to be able to provide? Are they going to be able to do the thing? Are you able to contribute, collect firewood and do all the things? Because if there isn't that exchange, then we're not doing the thing right.
Speaker 2:So these are tests, subconsciously or consciously, that we're all going through and you're either walking into the business as the fool or the favorite, the fool being the guy that's the fault, that's the scapegoat, the fall guy, the guy who's not going to get the deal. You're just the guy that they're testing for, the real guy that's getting the deal Right Because they already have a favorite and you may or may not to be. But you really want to figure out pretty quick whether you're the fool or the favorite and either do something disproportionate to become the favorite or to get out of there quick because you're never going to win that game Right, or to get out of there quick because you're never going to win that game Right. And if you are the favorite, what are you doing to hold the favor? Because there's a fool in behind you that's trying to take your favor, Right? So we have to think about what it is that we're doing here to actually engage the customer. Well, it's very simple in home services, because we're not the cheapest guy in town and anybody who's listening to this we're not the cheapest guy in town and anybody who's listening to this who is the cheapest guy in town can't afford to do any of the other stuff besides be the cheapest guy in town. They're going to have empathy first. They're going to demonstrate their competence. Second. The competence will give them the confidence and trust they need to get the sale. They need to get the sale. How you get the sale at your premium price is to deliver convenience beyond what the customer themes valuable in their money, effort and time. That's it. That's the whole equation. We can make it more complicated If you want. We could talk about all kinds of crap that's like peripherally interesting and generally useless. Just get the basics right, demonstrate that. So how do we demonstrate empathy? Well, we sell the thing that's broke. We can sell more stuff after the thing is broke. Let's break the first seal, right. All of this gives us buying experience.
Speaker 2:Most of the clients that I'm working with right now, if they're not at the top of game and already growing like a weed, are optimizing sales yield and seeing massive increases, because when demand is lower, we're not going to get more leads, we're just going to get probably about the same amount of leads, sometimes even less, but we're going to make more on those leads. Why are they going to make more? Two reasons. One, they trusted you before they even spoke to you because you had a great mass media campaign. Two, you were able to convert more because you're paying more attention to it and you've built a system that is efficient. And a system that's efficient that is going to maximize sales yield, maybe not as fast as possible, but at top dollars. It's as fast as you're going to get, because the alternative is zero dollars, right, and who who needs that right? At the end of the day, we need to make all of those calls count, right. So it's who you attract and that's done in mass media. It can't be done on digital. Just mathematically it cannot be done. Frequencies have not been done correctly like have been able to be achieved correctly to ensure that you're getting in front of the right people consistently, two to three times a week, because that's how the brain works.
Speaker 2:Short term seven seconds. Most people forget you before they have finished flicking their thumb right. Then midterm working memory seven days, erased with sleep. The first to go radio ads, tv ads, social media ads, every ad that doesn't matter to them right now. Right, the things that are sticking around are the ones that are funny or infuriating, or endearing or touching the things that generate an actual chemical reaction in the human body. To get back to the chemical part, because if there's no chemistry, there's no chemical to attach to those neurotransmitters. It's not getting back to this back memory.
Speaker 2:The back memory can be one of three things. Imagine it like a brick. You got a brick and you're walking by and you see a lot out there. I'm looking at a lot of thing here and there's grass in there and stuff, probably some needles, some busted up windows and stuff, right. And you take the brick and you just chuck it back there, right. And now you got a brick and a bunch of weeds right.
Speaker 2:And the people that are walking Muffy that night at seven o'clock and they look back and they say, ah, that, that lot's just horrible, it's just awful. It's like they don't see the brick. It's like they. It's like, oh, there's, there's just a bit of mess back there, and that's what you do, when you just periodically get in front of them with your ad or your truck wrap or your billboard. Then there's the guys who put an effort into it and have a marketing plan, but no real adhesion. There's no feeling attached to it.
Speaker 2:Well, what we're doing that is, we're getting a wheelbarrow of bricks now and we're going to dump them into the lot just past the rusty chain link fence. We're just going to dump them into that lot and we're going to have a pile of bricks and when they're walking Muffy later on, it's like it seems like they're putting some stuff in that back lot there. I wonder if they're going to do something with it. And there's just a big pile of bricks. Now, when they, when they need bricks, they're not thinking of you because they completely forgot about the pile of bricks in the back lot. They just know that, yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, that's like bricks. Yeah, yeah, they're not thinking about that. You're just a big pile of bricks in the back lot.
Speaker 2:Now, real branding, that really makes people feel, that bonds with your customer, with emotion. Right Now, all those bricks, not only are they back there in a big old wheelbarrow of stuff all the time. Now, the way we do it, with the way we buy ads, we're just going to be dumping wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow. It's like like shocking off with the strategy because we need to be in front of them, especially early on in the campaign. And the thing that's different is that we brought a bucket of mortar with us. Every single time you get a brick, you get mortar, and the mortar is the emotion, it's the stickiness, and what we do is we build the foundation.
Speaker 2:The foundation doesn't really seem that appealing and stand out very much. It's just a foundation. It's kind of low. The grass is still high, but then eventually it gets up past the grass and then eventually it starts to get pretty big and then it turns into a mansion in the back part of their brain where you're now taking up real estate in their brain for when they need the thing that you sell right Now, when their guy lets them down because he's a pile of bricks, they're coming to your house to check out your McMansion.
Speaker 2:Now, if you keep doing the things that you need to do operationally, you're going to welcome them in the house and they're going to go. My goodness, this beautiful house inside as much as it is outside. I'm going to tell my friends about this house, how wonderful it was inside this house. It's that big, beautiful house down the street, right, and we went in and they were just lovely inside and you should go check them out. They would love to have you over as well, and we're going to have some nice tea and crumpets next week, right, and that's how marketing works, right? We have to keep building it up. We have to keep being the business that they expect us to be enough that they'd be willing to talk to us, talk to others about us, right, and that we take up that real estate in their brain. And when we're taking up the real estate, it's a lot harder for the other people to take up the real estate, right, and that's why your operations have to be as good as the marketing that you put out there. That's why you have to deliver.
Speaker 2:An awful lot of people are charging an awful lot of money for equipment and services, not because they're offering tremendous value, but because they're running outrageously bloated operations and they still want their 20 points at the bottom line. And at the end of the day, they don't deserve those 20 points at the bottom line and, the end of the day, they don't deserve those 20 points of the bottom line because they're not doing an efficient job in their business. What they should be happy with is 10 points of the bottom line. But having a whole bunch of extra staff and too much inventory and hundreds and hundreds of items on their price list and all of the things that are slowing things down in the spots that it shouldn't be slowed down, excuse me and costing people more in the things that shouldn't be costing people more. And when you start to see what true efficiency looks like, the way I've been blessed to with hundreds of companies that I work with or have been in it blows me away at what the best do.
Speaker 1:And it's so much simpler than we ever imagined, excuse me, Do you think that I run across companies that staff will say the prices are too high, we charge too much, we're the highest in the city? I don't know that I ever turned. I don't know that I ever tied it to the fact that they know the operations aren't up to speed, and so maybe that's why there's incongruency when they have to present the price.
Speaker 2:There's this book called Leadership and Self-Deception, written by the Urbanjur Institute, and one of the most profound pieces of information that I pulled from that book was that people won't do what they don't believe fits with their self-beliefs right. So if they feel like they're betraying themselves, they tend to just not do it or show up not fully invested or in the right way. Excuse me so, yes, absolutely. Excuse me so, yes, absolutely. People are going to show up the way that their subconscious and conscious tell them to show up, regardless of what the boss is telling them to do.
Speaker 1:Right, no, I agree with you. And a lot of that programming from their past or maybe even their present or both, and then to break through that programming takes effort and it takes that confidence that the leadership should be providing those employees.
Speaker 2:I've been in thousands of companies selling organizations across the world. I've taught tens of thousands of salespeople. I've done marketing in the billions of dollars. What I can say with 100% earnest is it's the leaders that need to figure out where the friction is in their business and make it easier for sellers to sell and make it easier for buyers to buy. At every level, less is always more. We want to take the weight off your flywheel, to get your momentum going, to get your speed up, to get your profitability up, to reduce your expenses but also reduce the burdens. That can slow things down and that plays out incredibly well for businesses when they do a really good job at finding rub points, finding friction, finding the rust on the flywheel and knocking it off and addressing it when the flywheel is out of proportion. If one of those ball bearings is too big or too small, it's going to cause problems. If the channels are too big or too small, if's going to cause problems. If the channels are too big or too small if they put tensioners or brakes on it, all of those things are going to have an effect. We talked about price earlier. The pricing that I've built is based off of what I've seen be the most effective, and the most effective I've seen is starting low on product and protection, walking your way up to product and protection at the high point and then walking your price and payment down from high to low. Why does this psychologically matter? Empathetically speaking, you're starting low, you're going to high because they deserve to know and you're finishing low so that the people don't feel as though you're putting the pressure on the high. Now is there a walk to naturally purchase the higher price point? Absolutely, so make it make sense.
Speaker 2:Pricing is telling a story. A story has an act one, act two, act three. There's a beginning, middle and end, right. So give them that Right? This is all about storytelling. Everything we've been talking about is storytelling, which means everything that we're talking about is marketing, which means everything that we do needs to be looked through the marketing strategic eye when you're thinking about how you address your business, because it's about strategic communication, creative communication, decluttering communication, taking out the things Roy says. It's so nice. He calls it x formation. Information is more information in information in x formation is taking information out, right? It's not about omitting, it's about getting rid of the fluffy duck stuff that doesn't need to be there, right? So what are we doing? We're creating an environment where there is less friction, and ultimately, that's what serves us at the highest level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it makes it very much easier for the salesperson to execute the way you just explained. If you take out all the, as you said, the fluffy stuff, stuff, it just makes. More is not always better, it's just not that's right.
Speaker 2:That's right, and what I often get back as well. Yeah, sometimes you need friction, though, to get the sail moving or change or whatever, and I'm like I thought about this a lot because I'm writing a book called frictionless and, believe it, that friction is the thing that needs to be removed, and one of my partners, mick Torbay, brought it up one day. He goes there really does need to be a tension between marketing and sales, just like there needs to be a tension between accounting and finance in your business. These are two sides of the same coin, right In both cases, and the word tension was really interesting. So I went down the scientific side of tension versus friction, how that fits into the laws of nature, and then really pulled back and realized it's not friction that we're looking for so much as it is tension. Right. When we put the brakes on, that's tension right. When we have a tauntness, when we put the brakes on, that's tension right. When we have a tauntness, that's actually what makes it work better.
Speaker 2:Now, if you had your accountants in charge of finance, you'd never spend any money, right? You'd never grow because you'd never have the money, and if finance was in charge of accounting, you'd be bankrupt in a month. Right and the same with marketing and sales. If we tried to sell in marketing, we're not going to get any customers because you're answering questions, no one's asked yet. And if we try to do marketing and sales, then we're not saying enough of the depth that we need to get the customer to step over the first threshold. Right, right. Marketing is about getting a person to self-subscribe, to step into your gravity. Well, to self-select where sales is very much about getting them to break past the tension point of selling, to closing the yes, the commitment, the hard part, right? So let's find the easiest way to get past the hard part.
Speaker 1:Right. Clear communication is vital in this. Yeah, and the tension and the friction thing makes complete sense, because friction, you don't want friction, but tension, there's a healthy pull between the two.
Speaker 2:Yes, and both tension can slow things down and friction can slow things down, but ones like rough and full of vibration and off frequency and there's a lack of elegance or tension like a break, it's just pressure to slow it down. Now, that same pressure when a flywheel is really tight like a fidget spinner, right, that's when you can spin it and it's going to really go right. But if it's a little bit janky and sloppy, it's going to be all wobbly and shaky and it's not going to, it's not going to do its thing, right. So it's exact same thing in communication Frankly not just business communication, by the way it's like, yes, you're giving employees, your customers, but your wife, your kids, your, your communities that you care about, all of these things hold the same true values of their self-referential right.
Speaker 2:They're all speaking the same language because we're really quite simple when you get down to its most rudimentary parts, we just tend to confuse things, because we're curious beasts and love to explore beyond the core to see what is out in that fantastic world of ours. But when we really boil it down to the basics, that's what we need to get right first and that makes the rest of our sailing pretty darn smooth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. Well, dude Ryan, this has been such a great conversation. Dude, I feel like I've just had a masterclass in things that I thought I knew about. You've just painted a very different picture today, so just curious how, if somebody wants to work with you, you only need two more people. So probably a good problem to have.
Speaker 2:I'm in a, I'm in a great spot and I'm excited to find a couple of little a game players, and I'm not talking about huge players. What I'm talking about is people with the, with the right ambition and heart to take to care for their people and for people in general. I'm looking for the helpers in life. I'm looking for the people who are ambitious and I'm looking to 10x their business. I use that because that's the thing that most people gravitate towards in their brains. And to Dan Sullivan's point from Strategic Coach, 10x is easier than 2x, so why not just go for the gold? So I'm looking for that mentality. I don't care if you're a startup or $3 million or $30 million. You can be $300 million if you're the right person. But my team is we've got 80 Wizard of Oz partners now I've got capacity to introduce you to those people as well, and finding the right fit is a big deal. I'm really big on that, particularly when it comes to home services. I have just a strong, a big heart for the home service people because they tend to be the helper mindset. They tend to be the people who I want to serve, and that's why I've just put all of my cards into the essential services basket and cherish the relationship.
Speaker 2:It's hard to market for you as a proper holistic, as we talked about earlier. Cherish the relationship. It's hard to market for you as a proper holistic, as we talked about earlier. That mix is not easy right, getting it all right and spending the right money and relying on companies like Google to not raise their prices or the general economy to to make things more repressed things we can't control. But that's the game we're playing and that's the puzzle to solve and that's what I enjoy doing is just working on those puzzles and figuring it out and helping people do what they do best. So I can help on the marketing side and I'm excited to talk to some people who want to actually figure out whether or not I'm the right fit or there's a better fit than me for their situation at hand situation at hand. But it's worth looking at if you're looking at trying to get a holistic marketing plan, not just a good digital marketing strategy or a couple of really good tactics that kind of work independently of each other, but work yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, your success rate speaks for itself.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you, I'll cheat every time I can by partnering with amazing operators. And amazing operators don't necessarily mean that they got all their ducks in a row. It means that they're willing to put their ducks in a row and are already doing a great job. They already are pointing in the right direction and I'm just making it less frictionless for them, more frictionless for them when can people find you if they want to reach out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can find me on socials at Wizard Ryan Shoot and other than that, my wizardofadsservices is my own custom site that speaks specifically to home services. Lots of articles there. I've got a few hundred articles there and my website ryanshootcom has a whole bunch more of the stuff we talked about today. The operational stuff, the sales stuff all lives in that space.
Speaker 1:So do you help with that? I guess you do help with that side of it, because it's important that everything is fluent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've really thought about should I build a separate stream of income for that and all that stuff? I've never actually charged any extra for it, it's not really. I think it's here's what I believe David Packard said of Hewlett Packard. He said marketing is far too important to be left to the marketing department. And as a guy who's not a creative writer or an ad copy guy, copywriter, media buyer I'm like, yeah, because I've seen it affect absolutely everything at absolutely every level of the organization.
Speaker 2:I've seen the good, the bad, the ugly, and I think people need to know about it and we need to talk about it and as they struggle with it, we just need to address the thing that they're struggling with, not with the things that they're already getting right. It's not about picking on people about all the things you're doing wrong. It's just about reflecting on your business and yourself, because that's really where a lot of stuff starts and going yeah, let's work on that thing. Right, we knock that thing out, then we create less friction and then we can knock out another thing and create less friction and just start accelerating our business more profitably.
Speaker 1:Yeah, makes sense. Well, I appreciate you, my friend. I really enjoyed the conversation Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Always.
