Retention: A Foundational Piece To Success In The Relationship Economy With Shaun Buck

 

Business owners don’t generally think about client retention when times are good and they can lose a customer or two. But when the going gets tough, businesses that aren’t built on a solid foundation of client relationships are the first to topple down like a house of cards. The Newsletter Pro founder and CEO Shaun Buck couldn’t be more emphatic about this in his book, Stop Losing Customers! Joining Curtis Lewsey in this episode, Shaun explains the critical importance of retention to achieving success in the increasingly relationship-based economy. He also shares some practical tips on how you can use and reuse content to drive more leads into your funnel. Join in and relearn some of the most basic, but often overlooked aspects of marketing, which may not be the sexiest, but certainly the most foundational.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Retention: A Foundational Piece To Success In The Relationship Economy With Shaun Buck

I have Mr. Shaun Buck. He is the Founder and CEO of NewsletterPro.com. Go check them out. We have an awesome interview here. He is the go-to when it comes to retention and referrals. He’s got so much knowledge in this lane. I’m super excited to be able to have you share all of that. Before we get into some of it, do you mind sharing your entrepreneurial journey, like how you got started?

Curtis, thanks for having me. I’m pumped to be here. I’m excited. I had a unique life experience where I ended up having a kid early at sixteen years old. His mom is gone on the picture pretty early on. I ended up raising him and had to figure out what I was going to do. How was I going to be big, make money, buy diapers and formula? I didn’t realize I could get government assistance. It’s a good thing because I figured I had to do it myself. I went and started to buy businesses. I spent a lot of my twenties buying and selling different companies that I was like, “This one looks cool,” but I didn’t know what I was doing. I got in and was like, “These seven aspects of this business are cool, and these 38 other things suck.” I’d sell that one and try to find more of the seven. I ended up with fourteen that were good.

How we have 31 things that sucks, and I kept going over and over. I would learn what I liked and what I didn’t like. You never get rid of everything. There are always problems and challenges in every business. If you don’t get married to whatever that vehicle is that you’re using, you can start to take a business and find one that you can mold into what you want, which is the purpose of all this, isn’t it to some extent? That’s what I did. Many years ago was when I started Newsletter Pro. We’ve changed drastically in a lot of different times and ways since then.

Tell me why you chose this lane. Why did you go that? Many years ago, everything was going digital. Why did you go print?

There are a couple of reasons. I had a previous business that we use newsletters in, and I had a difficult time getting them out, to be honest with you. A lot of times, I’d run late or miss a month or whatever the case may be because I was busy running my company. Every time I sent them out, I did well. I got people who either bought more, who reactivated, who referred, whatever it happens to be. I got more business out of sending out these newsletters. I knew that they worked because I’ve been using that for years in that company. Everything was going digital totally, but I’ve learned over the years, typically speaking of everybody, all my friends were starting website companies and SEO companies. I’m like, “If everybody’s going to do that, I should look at what’s over here.”

With all the online stuff happening, you still do have some challenges that come with that. Have a distribution, open rates, things like that when you are on the online media. When you send something out to their mail, you have like 99% distribution rate. When you’ve got that, everybody at least sees it, and then you can get a good open rate as you can do well. I thought this could be the foundational piece for people to grow out an amazing business because they’ve got this relationship, and they’re building that foundation if they do it right. One of the reasons was in my companies, what I learned was that the most difficult thing we did was get a new customer.

If I went out to get a new customer, and I signed up ten people. I got ten new customers. We all know not all ten of them are going to stay. They’re all not going to be good and loyal. Some will use it once and never again. Some might use it 2 or 3 times and never again. Depending on the type of business, some maybe they never use it. They take that dollar trial or whatever it is, and they never convert over. What I realized was I spend so much time, effort, money going out and getting these new customers. I need to put it in an insurance policy almost. I need to do something to build a relationship with them so that they don’t leave because it’s expensive and time-consuming.

I thought, “If I could do that, but then do I also get paid for it?” If I could also get to generate more referrals, if I can get it to do some upsells, I’d be doing good on this thing.” The idea was like, “It’s difficult to get these customers. How do I stand out from everyone else? How do I get my message to everybody else? How do I get out of their spam email box or their fake email box? How do I not compete with everybody in their SEO?” Everyone is interesting when 27 companies tell you that they can get you on the first page of Google. You’re like, “That seems awkward. How do I not do that?”

I thought, “This is it.” I’m a big believer that where most businesses don’t go right is that they don’t do the foundational marketing pieces. They don’t do the foundational or even business pieces. They’re not in there saying, “I’ve got a customer and a new lead. If the new lead doesn’t buy right away, what do I do to get them to buy?” They’re like, “No. They didn’t buy. They must not be interested.” It’s like, “No. They’re just not interested right in the second. How do I nurture them? How do I build a relationship with them? How do I make sure that they call eight people? Those seven other people stopped communicating with them, and I’m the only one still standing, talking to them, helping them, adding value. Guess who they’re buying from?”

[bctt tweet=”In this economy, relationship is king.” username=””]

If it’s an existing customer, they come in, they buy something, but many of us have had the experience where a customer comes in and buys something, and then you find out they’re buying something that you sell from one of your competitors. You’re like, “What’s going on? Curtis, why don’t you buy that for me? I’ll do it.” He’s Like, “I had no idea.” They had no idea because they only remember a very small percentage of what you tell them. I’ve got them. I spent all this money, time, and effort on how do I get them to buy more? How do I get them to refer? How do I get them to stay as long as humanly possible? If I spend $100 to get the customer in the door and they buy my low-price leader, my loss leader to get them in.

Maybe I lose another $25 on that. Now I’m down $125. They never buy anything else. That’s a loss right there or if I get it in, and I can never convert them because I tried two phone calls, and they never buy. That’s loss. I thought these are fundamental things that every business needs to do, like list building. Every business needs to get building a list. These are fundamentals. If you don’t do these things, you won’t get to the success level in most cases that most people would like to get to. That’s how it all came about.

I know you’ve written several books. One of them, you co-authored with Mr. Dan Kennedy. I read this one. You also wrote your latest book called Stop Losing Customers!. In this book here, though, you said something that you reiterated because I haven’t read Stop Losing Customers! yet. You said, “Fortunately, most of your many competitors don’t act as if that was true, talking about retention, and are terrible at creating and sustaining relationships. Their ignorance, sense of entitlement, laziness, and unwillingness to invest in retention is your saving grace.” That was good. That’s gold right there. Nobody does this stuff.

Very few small businesses do these things, but the big companies all do some version of them. Maybe it doesn’t come in the form of a newsletter. Maybe it’s a magazine, but Costco still mails you that Costco connection. It still sends out now. The interesting thing too that we’re seeing is because of COVID, because of everything, there’s a lot of change with these big companies. We picked up Costco as a customer and sent out there one of their first jobs. It’s a regional thing that we’re doing for them here. We picked them up as a customer because they have to go more direct mail. They’re having to go outside of some of their normal that they were doing previously because of COVID and the restrictions.

These big companies get it. Costco understands that they need to get you to come into that store as often as possible. They need to get you to stay as long as possible. You’re paying to go to the grocery store, and then you’re paying to buy everything in bulk for “cheaper prices,” which maybe sometimes. All of that is what’s going on there, and we all cheerfully pay our money because Costco makes us money off those membership fees. This is the way their business model is set up. That’s why they have cheap prices on the actual items because their markup isn’t very high. Their markup is more or less their expenses, and where they make money is all in the membership fee.

They want you coming in, and they want you buying that hot dog up there for $1.50. Price hasn’t changed in a decade, but that’s a value for that Costco membership, isn’t it? Have you noticed that one of the things Costco has done is that they go through, and they’re like, “You can save money on this with us?” It’s all special Costco services because the more you use Costco, the more you’ll spend, the more likely you’re going to keep that membership. If you only come in once a year, you’re not renewing the membership. If you’re getting discounts because you’re getting their QuickBooks, ABC discount, travel discount, you’re shopping there and are getting hot dogs, and you’re going to keep your membership. That’s all foundational stuff. They send you a magazine still to tell you about all the specials.

That goes right along with what you’re talking about with the whole relationship economy. Do you mind touching on that? What does it mean to be in a relationship economy?

The crazy thing about it is it’s more important than I ever even would have imagined it was going to be in this short period of time when I wrote that. We’re in an economy where, in a large part, relationship is king. We’ve got many different opportunities, many places we can do business with. “If I don’t like your service, they can try my service. They don’t like my service, and they try your service. Don’t like this restaurant, go to that restaurant, buy from this website.” We’re all selling the same stuff. I saw newsletters, but there are other people who sell them newsletters.

They don’t do it like I do it, but they’re out there. Whatever you sell, someone else sells that same thing. Now when you have an unlimited number of options. You’ve got all these options that they could choose from, how does someone determine where to go? An interesting thing that we’ve seen is one of the determining factors has been strangers. What I mean by that is your Google reviews or your Facebook reviews. That is a determining factor, and that is sometimes a way for them to get you to engage. That’s interesting that that’s what came about it because before, it used to be, “Ask your neighbor, ask your friend,” but now there are so many, and not everyone uses the same stuff.

Now we rely on the words of strangers. The challenge being is that people realize that system is relatively easily gained. They’re a little less. They’re like, “Is this accurate? Is it not accurate?” When people start using it as a weapon, I don’t think people realize that. When you don’t agree with someone’s politics and then you go and slam their business, what happens is you are bringing down the usefulness of all those reviews because everyone who understands what was going on there is like, “In this business, how bad are the reviews?” They suffer having bad reviews because they got slammed, because this guy has a political belief or they have a religious belief or whatever it happens to be.

It’s an interesting thing there, but that’s what we went into to say, “Should we maybe possibly think about doing business with these people?” Once you do business with them, you’re over there, and you are making a sale. Unless you can get them to come back again and buy again, in most businesses, you don’t have a customer, you made a sale and a loss leader one at that. How do you build that relationship? How do they get to know, like, and trust you so that you are their person? How do you get in there, so they don’t even think? They get like blinders on to everybody else around. Not only that, but when they do happen to look over and they see their friends lost over there, they bring them over into the fold.

It’s this economy where people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust because there are many different options. They all say the same thing, “We’re the best. I’m the best. I’m number one. You’ll get the greatest prices here. The lowest prices here. Fastest service. My wife’s the hottest. My husband’s the hottest,” whatever their pitch is that they’re giving you. Some of them are weird ones. I’ve seen that. They put them up there, and that’s what she got. How do I make that decision? Think about that, if you’ve got ten different companies and they all look the same, seem to do the same, reviews are similar, how do I make the decision? Lowest price? Who’s the cheapest?

As business owners, especially small business owners. We don’t want to operate on low price leaders, do we? It’s this race to the bottom. It’s the race to zero. I don’t want to race down to zero. We have to add value to stand out above, but your competitors can copy that. The only thing they can’t copy is you, your employees, your culture, even the relationship that you build with them. When you’re building it on a mass scale, it’s not going to be this, one-on-one, doing a dinner, or something like that. You’ve got to use media to do that. If you use media, you have to then get it delivered and then ideally consumed. If you can’t do that, then the media doesn’t work. That’s the relationship economy.

The more you can dive into helping them, the more you can dive into letting them look behind the curtain a little bit into your business and your personal life, so they know, like, and trust you, the more value you could add. Even sometimes value for nothing where you are giving them information. It’s like, “This is value. There’s no exchange here. You’re not paying me to be here or anything. This is doing something to help that hopefully builds awareness.” People are like, “That Shaun guy knows 1 or 2 things. We should check out one of his books.” It’s the same thing. You’re back into helping people doing a great job and then remind them of who you are, what you do, that you’re still in business, and then let them see behind the curtain. Let them know about you because they want to do business with you if they know, like, and trust you.

It was a little a-ha moment. I had to pause and read it over again because I never looked at it like the way that you said it. You said, “You’ve got a buyer. A buyer is not a customer.” I’m like, “What do you mean? They bought from me, aren’t they my customer?” You went on to talk about a customer, and then there’s a committed customer and bringing them along that path. Is that one of the reasons why you may have started that you wrote the book, Stop Losing customers!? Is that piece in there?

There are a lot of pieces in there about that. What happened with that book was I never would’ve guessed that COVID would be the economic thing that we were going to run into, but I’ve been around the block enough and been through enough recessions that we were coming due. That was going to happen. The interesting thing is it was one of those things where everyone seems to be surprised by it. I’m like, “That’s how economic cycles work. What I want to do is have this book ready to go because this is going to be the question that they ask.”

What I found in my business was that when the economy is good, I can talk about retention. That is a portion that we go over every time, always, but it’s not as sexy. People aren’t quite as interested in retention when the economy is great because they get fat and happy. What happens is they’re like, “I’ve got many people coming in. I don’t care if Joe leaves over here. It doesn’t matter to me. It should matter to you.” That’s what they think. They’re like, “I miss 1 or 2 here. No big deal.” What they want to talk about is referrals, closing more leads, and all these other things.

We have a book for that. I said, “I’m going to bet we’re going to hit a recession here soon. What’s going to happen is they’re all going to know how to keep what they’ve already got.” One ought to grow it too, but they’ll be scared of losing it. I’m going to do a training on how to keep what you’ve got. Stop losing those customers because if they start doing it now when the recession hits, they’ll be way better off than if they wait until the recession hits and start doing it.” That was where that book came from.

[bctt tweet=”Let people know you because they would want to do business with you if they know, like, and trust you.” username=””]

I have a buddy of mine that talks that he does training in the small business arena. He talks about the leaky bucket. He’s got the leaky buckets, and things are coming out. “You’re constantly putting them in the top, so you don’t worry about the holes as much.” When there’s not new stuff coming in, you’ve got to figure out how to plug those holes fast. I can’t wait to get my hands on that. Where can we find that book?

That book is available on Amazon. We have a text opt-in. We’re going to send it to you. To anyone who wants one, we’ll send it to them. You are going to text the letters RSP a to (208) 269-9111. I want everyone to watch what happens there because that’s automation software that’s going to then go through and send you a few texts back together, like your name, address, so we know where to send it. It’s a cool little process, and then it puts up all into our CRM system. It creates a task.

Once that task is created, the next morning, that task ends up on one of my employee’s task lists. They put them together, take your address, get the label that prints off, and pop it in the mail. It’s a cool little marketing automation. That’s been super helpful, especially before COVID, I’m going up on stage or doing one of these webinars, but it’s a way to gather that information that we need, so we can send you the book without it being like, “Here’s everything you type into your text message,” that no one remembers to type in everything.

By chance, is that a community app where you can connect with people and send?

It’s PlusThis. It works great. One of the things I see here is that community, as you mentioned and this a little side topic to what we’ve been talking about, is going to be even more important and relevant over the coming months and years. How do you build that community up? To your point, those abilities to have that techs community is a good idea. I still think Facebook groups for most markets will be powerful and having an offline version.

Sometimes it sounds self-serving, but there are lots of places where you can do this. It doesn’t have to be through us, but like sending a print media, magazine, newsletters, something like that. That way, you get it in their hands, they get it every month, and reading it. That thing does wonders. Having an online version of that, where maybe you’re providing value, advice, and other things that might be spinning out over emails, that you’re also then duplicating in the Facebook groups. In case they missed the email because we all know email rates or open rates are going down. Even if you’re using Gmail now, you’ve probably even seen where you haven’t opened this in forever, all of a sudden, they unsubscribed.

Google is helping you clear up the inbox, and that’s going to become more of that happening. You want to be super diversified, but ultimately what it boils down to is that you have to meet your customer or prospect where they want to be met, and no longer are the days where we can funnel them all into one little silo. “Everyone goes here because I control all the information.” You don’t because you have ten competitors. You brought up 100, but there are 10 competitors they can easily find. What you want to do is make sure that you’re communicating with them on multimedia, multi-platform, and then you want to use the newsletter or your magazine or whatever that underlying pieces that get to everybody as your foundation.

You build all the silos on top of the foundation. That’s how you do it properly to build those groups and relationships. You also use the newsletter to get people into the Facebook group because they only know it from the text group and the text group to get people, “This is going to be in the newsletter, make sure you read it. Check out this cool thing.” You can sit there, and you can get them all into all different groups.

Relationship marketing of like the dos and the don’ts in this book. I know that this is a topic that you talk about quite a bit. Do you mind going into a little bit more do’s and don’ts?

 

When we’re talking about relationship marketing specifically, first, you’ve got to be you. Don’t try to be someone else. It won’t come across congruent, and I’ve seen people do this. It’s okay to create a little bit of a persona, but it has to be a persona that still is you. It can’t be this persona that you’ve completely made up. Figure out what you’re okay with talking about and what you’re not okay with talking about it. When I say relationship marketing, it doesn’t mean you have to share all of your personal stories, histories, problems, pains, and all. That’s not necessary. You may have things that you want to share, and that’s okay too.

Remember that if you’re going to have a relationship with someone, it’s about consistency, and it can’t all be you centered. You have to help them, not at the end of the day. They want to know, like, and trust you, but they’re going to know, like, and trust you because you’ve helped them. You’ve told them to do something and they either believe it, they’ve done it before, they know it works, or they went out, did it, and found out that it works. Add value. Where can you add value to their lives? We hear that a lot, but most business owners don’t ever do it. Usually, they don’t do it because it’s like, how? They don’t know how to create all the contents. That’s where the hangup is.

It’s completely cool to share. I want to take you through because I know that’s what a lot you do with Newsletter Pro. You bring the strategy, you bring the content, you put it all together for somebody. Please share some more of that.

When people think about creating content, what they do, is they think, “I’ve got to create this new Facebook post, Instagram and TikTok. I’ve got to write an article, newsletter and email newsletter.” It’s overwhelming. What’d you want to do from a content standpoint? You want to have your core content that you’re going to create. The way I recommend doing this, the way we do this for my company, is the core articles that I write for the newsletter. Those might be 1,200 words on 1 article and 900 words on another, and 800 words on a different one. I’ve got some good content there. They’re around topics that are relevant to marketing because that’s what we talk about.

There are personal pieces that I pepper in throughout it, throughout the stories, and stuff. That’s how I get some of that personal aspect in a B2B type of business. Once you have the core content, now the question is, “I have to create Facebook posts. Where do I get small snippets of the core content to create that Facebook post?” Then you go, “Now I need to also create some Instagram stuff.” You can pretty much use a lot of the core text from the Facebook stuff to the Instagram stuff. “I need to get a blog post.” Blog posts don’t have to be 900 words. “Can I take the three main points that were in that 900-word article?” Write a different small intro, a small different conclusion, so there were four sentences on each one. We’re taking 250 words in the middle and popping that in there, and making the opening and closing work. Now I’ve got three different blog posts for that one article.

I’m going to go over and say, “I need to make an email newsletter.” That’s the same thing. I can take those little blog posts that I did, maybe add in something fun or interesting or entertaining. You’re grabbing a little other content, or maybe you write something that’s only in the email, and now I’m taking that. I only need four once a week, let’s say, or maybe I’m going to do it twice a week, whatever it happens to be. You don’t need all that much content. Maybe you do want to create one unique thing that’s just email. That’s fine. No problem. Go do that.

You could write one additional article that you could turn into a long blog post if you’d like, and it could have four points. You could take each one of those points and use it in your email newsletter as well too if you want. You’re going to create the core content. By creating that core content, you can then break it down into smaller chunks of content that you can use across all your different media. If you’re going to create a YouTube video, you don’t do a YouTube video on a 900-word article that has three points. You do the YouTube video on one point from that article.

[bctt tweet=”If you’re going to have a relationship with someone, you need to find a way to add value to their lives.” username=””]

Especially when the content is where you’re reaching out to try to get new people to follow or watch you or engage with you, they’re unlikely to watch an hour-long piece of content from you. You want to get that 2 to the 5-minute mark, then sprinkling a little bit of entertainment. Don’t have it all be that. In your Facebook stuff, you’ve got your core content that’s going out, but what about some entertainment content? What about a funny meme or something to brighten their day? It doesn’t have to be related to anything that you do. It’s funny as crap, and you’re like, “I’m putting that up.” Maybe steer clear of politics.

Although there’s some funny stuff in there, both sides. You could do equal opportunity, making fun of people, but stay out of that arena. For the most part, you start putting in some of the funny stuff or small personality piece. While you’re doing that YouTube video, and you’re cranking. If you jump on and do a 62nd thing where you tell maybe a personal story that ends with a business lesson or a business piece, now, that’s an extra little piece that you can put up on Facebook or TikTok or whenever it is you want to go and do put in your Facebook group.

This is how you do that. If you’ve already created a ton of content, it’s even better for you because you can now take that content and start reworking it. You can take it and say, “I have five years where the content that I haven’t done any of that with.” You have a great foundation to have some good content. You can update it, change it, tweak it, add to it, subtract to it, break it down into smaller components. You’re good to go.

It doesn’t seem so overwhelming anymore. When you think about these three points will tell you a lesson or whatever, and then take that foundational piece, and then it springs off. That sounds way easier.

If you want to take it a step easier, I made it even more simple for you. Whether it’s hiring our company, because you’re doing a newsletter or however, you’re going to do this, but if you’re not a writer, if that’s difficult, I get it. I totally understand. Most people sit down on a blank page and writes. I write a crap ton of content. There are days where I sit down, and I’m like, “I don’t know what I’m going to put here.” It happens to all of us. If that’s not you in general or you don’t enjoy doing it, it’s fine. For example, my service. We call, interview, and ghost write it.

If I call, interview and ghostwrite it for you, and we get the right information out there because we did a good planning strategy there to do that, now you’ve got that core piece. You don’t have to break it down. You can easily get someone in your office, hire someone. It’s even an ad on what we’re going to be doing here. We’ll take those core pieces, and then we’ll break them down for you. We’ll hand you all the social media and everything, and it’s ready to go. You’ve got your newsletter, and then you’ve got all this stuff done for you as well.

If I read between the lines correctly, what you shared about Costco, my guess is you closed the Costco deal yourself, I would imagine?

 

I did. That was me.

I was thinking you must have interviewed him, you must have had some conversations and then talking about the services and this and that. You understand their model. Do you mind sharing, when you go up, and you talk to, I don’t care if it’s a monopod dentist with only a couple of hundred customers or a Costco, there’s probably a similar process that you bring them through? What are some of the questions that you ask them for them to make you realize, “I know what to do?”

This is where I think most people start in, “Here’s what I do.” That’s how they start out because I’d be like, “I’m Shaun Buck. I sell newsletters. Let me tell you all about newsletters and how the service works.” I’m not interested in starting that. That’s the question you will get asked, and that’s why most people will answer it. You’ve got to have a little bit of politician in you. Just because this is the question that was asked does not mean that is the question that you need to answer, at least not right now.

What I say is, “That’s a great question. What I need to do, because what we do is custom or to customize it for you, I need to learn a little bit more about you guys. What do you want to accomplish? Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? Curtis, tell me about what you guys do. Why did you guys call us? What outcome are you looking for? Have you guys done this in the past? Where have your pain points been for it? Do you have any big company objectives that you’re trying to accomplish here?”

Once I start diving into why they want it, why they’re interested, why I’m even sitting here or on the phone with them, from there, I can jump into, “Let me show you how this works. Let me show you how we can help you.” If I can’t tell him, then I can be like, “We’re not the right fit for you.” Usually, it’s jumping into, “Let me show you, this is what you do. This is how you do it. This is how it will work.” That’s where I go with it. There are a couple of things I’ve learned through this process. This is for my company. Your company could be a little bit different.

We schedule everything for 30 minutes, but I do know for every single minute because we’ve tracked it, we’re still on the webinar or the phone or in person. My close percentage goes up every minute, past 30 minutes. If you’re on for 55 to 60 minutes, you’re buying. It’s that simple. Don’t always rush your process. A lot of people want to get in and out fast. That’s the first thing. Second, try to anticipate objections. If you know that these are the things that are asking, and you’ve done this enough, you might be able to anticipate some of the objections that they’re going to have.

[bctt tweet=”Stay on top of people’s minds. Keep marketing until they tell you they’re not interested anymore.” username=””]

That’s a big thing that I see in people. They don’t try to anticipate the objections. The problem is people will give you a couple of objections, but they’re not going to give you seventeen objections. You have to anticipate some of those to build them into your presentation right there on the fly so that then you can get down to maybe two that you didn’t answer or if you want to play it in the Master’s League here, you answered all the primary ones and planted two objections you wanted them to ask. If you want to get slick on it, but it’s a different webinar for a different day.

If you want to do that, that’s an option as well too, if you’re getting good at it. One thing on objections that I found is I won’t say no circumstances, but if you are selling something that is of a larger expense item, or requires some commitment or something, do not answer every objection no matter what. I have found for most people psychologically, if they don’t have an objection or two, what happens is they think, “I must be missing something here.” If I was taking sales phone calls, I could probably go through for 90% plus of people. I could answer every objection that they’re going to have because I’ve been doing it for ten years.

When I did that because I tried that a number of years ago when I was taking sales phone calls, I’m like, “I don’t understand why they’re not buying.” I realize no one ever had any objections. They thought they were missing something. They thought, “Is it too good to be true? Am I not smart? Did I not understand what was going on?” It was that I answered every single question because I got the same six questions every time. Leaving them a question that I do answer, and then they may have one more on their own as well or two more on their own. I ended up closing more deals that way. If you’re going through that process, it should be focused on what they want. What are their outcomes? Why are you here? What’s the goal? Is there an initiative behind it? Are you driving towards some big company goal, or did someone think this was a good idea? When do they want to get started? It’s an important question. What are the benefits and disadvantages to waiting for that period of time that they want to get started? That’s how we do it.

A lot of people that I’m connected with that are B2B, B2C. They sell businesses and they have customers. You’re selling them. Do you mind sharing some of the processes that you might have for relationship marketing to your current customers?

I think B2B, in most cases, is as easy. A person is still buying it. If I’m selling to you, it’s still you who’ll decide whether you like me, whether you like the product or service that I offer and whether you’re going to buy. It’s that simple. You don’t have to change a whole lot, but you do have to take a little bit of the fluff out that you might have in a B2C one. I might write about cool things happening in your community, as it might be one of the articles, assuming they’re like a local lawyer or dentist or something like that. In B2B one, I’m not going to have that piece. That piece doesn’t exist there.

Nobody is there. I’m going to maybe talk about customer service, or I’m going to talk about, “Be careful if you ship stuff because the post office might slow down for Christmas.” Like that kind of stuff. Where people mess up on B2B is they don’t pepper the personal stuff. I might tell a story like this and a B2B one. I might say I’m going to use a very short broad here, but I might talk about how I think people give up early on these leads. They get a lead, a prospect, a guy is not ready to pull out his wallet right away and buy. They’re like, “Forget this trash. It’s garbage. I want the Glengarry Leads.” They want better leads, and all leads are trashed. That is one of the wars that happened. The marketing departments are like, “We’re getting you great leads and you can’t close them. Sales margins. These leads all suck.” That’s the little war that happens internally. What you want to do in the B2B is you need to pepper in some stories. I’m going to go in and talk about that you’ve got to work on these leads, nurture them, help them.

 

People start doing research long before they decide to buy something in many industries, in many cases. You’ve got to stay top of mind, remind them who you are, but while you’re doing it, don’t give up unless they tell you they’re not interested anymore. Keep marketing. Is it possible that after a certain period of time, you’ve got to spend less and less on that lead? Absolutely, 100%. They’re better on day 1 than they are on day 180. It doesn’t mean you have to give up on them.

More entrepreneurs were like my boys. They would do better. Every single year, they go to the same houses because they’re only allowed to go to these houses like we’re on a court, and then they’re allowed to do the court and then the street. They knock every year and like, “Can we snow shovel your driveway when it snows in here? Can we wash your car?” They go over and over again in the same houses, even the ones that I’ve told them no. For the last many years, they go 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times a year. They get to know every time, they still go back and knock.

You need to have that kind of tenacity that’s like, “No is not right now. When you do get a no, don’t take it personally.” In all reality, it’s not about you. There are times where, if you’re all the way in there, you went through the whole thing they should have bought, and you’re like, “I forgot to do these eight steps.” That was you. You’re going to take that one. You missed the mark somewhere. In all reality, if they saw it as a buy, they thought it was going to be good. Maybe it was out of their budget. Maybe they’re not disciplined entrepreneurs, and some other shiny object caught their attention. Now they’re off over here. Who knows? Most of the time, it doesn’t have much to do with you.

Any final thoughts that you want to leave our readers with?

We talked about a lot of this. I touched on this foundational stuff that you need to do. Whether we’re talking about COVID stuff or a recession, regardless of who’s president, regardless of any of these things, if you want to give yourself the best chance, you have to do the foundational stuff, it is very rarely the sexiest stuff. When you think about a house being built, you’re not like, “That foundation, that’s what’s going to get it. They did it. Do you see how smooth that concrete is? That’s like a baby’s butt. We’re going to get this house.” “No, you don’t do that.” If you don’t have a good foundation, you got a crappy ass house.

That’s the same thing in a business. Most businesses are built on a house of cards. They have no foundation, and it’s shaky. What you want to do from a foundational standpoint is you need to make sure that you are capturing information, as much data as possible. If COVID has shown us anything, that is you probably need more ways to communicate with your customers, not last and prospects. You’ve got to set up away. “How do I get more?” You need to understand that you have to be able to get to all of them. That free media of sending an email is not it. You’ve got to understand that it is multimedia. You’re going to have to come to where they are.

Which means then you’re going to have to create content, which means you have to do what I laid out in that content plan. Create the content and then use it to distribute it out in lots of different ways. These are the foundational things that you’ve got to do, nurture them, follow up on them, provide value. If you do these and you set the systems up right then, regardless of what happens, short of a complete shutdown and they’re like, “We’re all going into hibernation for eight weeks,” you will be giving yourself the best possible chance in business to not only make it through whatever gets thrown your way, but to thrive like no other business. If you want to make those dreams come true, that’s what it takes. It’s not the next shiny object. It’s built off the foundation and then build your business, and get your business going off of that and keep building on top of it. That would be my last piece of advice for you.

We’re going to have to get you back on here again and maybe down the road a little bit, for sure. Where can people follow you?

If they want to get more information, they can go to NewsletterPro.com. That’s a simple way to find out. They can get a copy of my newsletter marketing book. We’ll send you one of those as well too. We’ve got that text opt-in that they can hit us up over there. If you go to NewsletterPro.com, that can also get you to all the social stuff. It’s the easiest way there. You’ll see all the stuff that we’re telling everyone to do, all stuff that we’ve been working, testing and tweaking. Now that we finally got it, we’re like, “We’ve got it to where it’s systematized.” You’ll even see us, and you’ll start to see even more of the stuff that we’re doing, where we’re amplifying it. If you’re a student of marketing, you’ll enjoy watching the changes, “I see all this where they were doing all these things. Look at all these new things they got to do.” We’re doing marketing. I think you’ll enjoy watching it.

Thank you so much. This is another episode, a fantastic one. Thank you so much, Shaun.

Thank you.

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About Shaun Buck

I’ve been a serial entrepreneur for the last 16+ years, owning a variety of businesses ranging from multiple hot dog stands to a publishing company. I currently own and operate The Newsletter Pro, based out of Boise, Idaho. Although The Newsletter Pro has only been operating since 2011, my team and I have grown the company into the nation’s largest custom print newsletter company—printing and mailing millions of newsletters annually for diverse industries spread across four countries.

In addition to running The Newsletter Pro, I’m a husband and father of five boys. I had my first son when I was 16, and unlike other teenage dads, I chose to raise him, a choice that both inspired and motivated me to become who I am today.

A few years ago, I was honored to receive Dan Kennedy’s coveted GKIC Marketer of the Year Award. One year later, in 2015, my Newsletter Pro team and I landed at No. 120 on the Inc. 500|5000 Fastest Growing Companies list with a growth rate of 2,975%. We made the list again in 2016, coming in at No. 343. I’m also proud that my company has made the Top 10 Best Places to Work in Idaho list for two years running.

Investing in The Newsletter Pro’s services is the most effective way to create lasting relationships with your clients, prospects, and referral sources. With us, you will experience personalized service with custom articles written for you, a custom design, professional layout, and full project management. Everything is printed and mailed in-house – which means we have 100% quality control – and you have the peace of mind knowing your newsletter is in the hands of the “pros” from start to finish. It’s our personal goal to ensure you are getting the maximum retention and referral benefits for your business.

To connect with my team and me at The Newsletter Pro, visit www.thenewsletterpro.com. We’d also like to hear from you, so feel free to call us at 208-297-5700 with any questions.