The Newsletter Pro July 2018

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

PAGE 3 PAGE 4

2 Golden Rules of Customer Service The Pros + The Geeks = Success Help! I’m Stuck and Don’t Know What to Do! If You Want to Build Your Brand, Read This

PAGE 6 A Powerful CRM for Small Businesses Know Your Numbers PAGE 7 Get to Know Audrey Swift PAGE 8 Cisco Makes Sustainability Look Easy

THE REFERRAL MARKETING STRATEGY THAT CRUSHES IT EVERY TIME! NO ONE TALKS ABOUT

Everyone knows referrals are the best possible new customers you can get. All the stats show they are easier to close, they spend more, and they stay longer. As a bonus, they also typically refer others. With referrals, you don’t need to worry about someone banning you from their platform or a social media sight declining in popularity. As long as you have customers, provide great service, and have a method for getting referrals, you’re set. I’m sure you’ve heard advice like “Just ask for referrals and they will come” or “Hand out referral cards.” That stuff may or may not work depending on your industry, and it is fine advice, but we’ve all heard it before. What if I told you there was a secret way to get more referrals? One that simply crushes it but rarely gets used?

What if I went on to tell you that it works even in professions that can’t give out gifts or prizes.

What if you have 12 referral partners? Hypothetically speaking, what if you had 12 referral partners and they each sent 20 more referrals per year? Would 240 new customers in the next 12 months move your needle? It sure would move mine. Take a second to think about this. Let’s say, for example, you were an attorney who wanted to get referrals from chiropractors in the state of Idaho. There are roughly 1,000 chiropractors here. If you did some good marketing over the next 12–24 months, you might get 40 chiropractors to refer 100 percent of their car accident cases and two dozen more chiropractors to refer you sporadically in their car accident cases.

This is the exact strategy I’ve used for years as my largest source of new customers for TNP. HERE’S HOW MY REFERRAL- PARTNER STRATEGY WORKS. There are entrepreneurs out there right now who have many of your perfect customers. They have gathered them and sold to them, and these customers trust this other business. What would happen if, as part of this other company’s process, they recommended your service? Do you think you’d get some more referrals from that? How many more do you think? Would you get one, five, or 100 per year?

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COVER CONTINUED ... HOW MUCH MORE MONEY WOULD YOU MAKE? It’s not like you’re asking for the world. 40 referral partners would only be 4 percent of the chiropractors in Idaho. The other 96 percent could hate you and it wouldn’t matter, because you’d be getting daily referrals — even multiple referrals per day. Let’s say the average settlement was $10,000 per case, and one-third of that went to you as the attorney. Let’s also estimate that each referral partner could only send an average of two cases per month. Your gross profits would be $266,640 per month. Most attorneys would be thrilled with even half that number. In your business, what’s the average annual value of a customer to you? What if you could get 20, 40, 80, or even 100 more of those customers per month? What would it do for your business and your life? THAT IS THE POWER OF THE REFERRAL PARTNER. I do a ton of work with a company called Infusionsoft. In April, they added 1,200 new customers with over one-half of their new business coming from referral partners. All the big companies use this strategy, but most of us smaller guys don’t, which is crazy. I hear from people on a semiregular basis who want to be referral partners with me, and one major mistake I see is their approach. I currently have one guy who is working hard to be our partner, but in all the wrong ways. He called me 7–10 months ago, and at first, he said he wanted to send us business. Great! I jumped on a call with this guy, and we had a good conversation, but what he really wanted was for me to refer him … the old bait and switch. Do you think we referred him “If you want partners, you need to GIVE first before you RECEIVE.”

to anyone? Nope! Now, I totally screwed up and didn’t take notes in Infusionsoft, so a few months ago, he called in again. My executive assistant, Karli, saw the notes about him being a potentially good partner. I had time, so she booked him on my calendar. I took the call, realized what had happened, and ended the call rather quickly. All he still wanted to do was chat about himself and how we could earn money by sending him customers. THIS APPROACH IS ALL WRONG. If you want partners, you need to give first before you receive. You need to send a referral or provide something of value to help them before you ask. You have to build a relationship. There may come a time when people are beating a path to your door to be your referral partners, but that won’t be for a while, so be prepared to help a lot of people. After you’ve built that relationship, watch the referrals roll in. Whatever you do, don’t walk in asking for referrals from them first. It is lame and won’t get you far with most people. This is not an overnight success strategy, but personally, I like it the best. If you can create a marketing strategy that is difficult to replicate, your competition will never catch you. If your marketing strategy is to use Facebook ads that anyone can do, it is easy for your competition to replicate that and copy you.

On a side note, here’s what I love about newsletters: They’re hard to replicate, and your competition doesn’t know you’re using them. If referral-partner marketing sounds like it could be a win for you and your business, head over to DailyReferrals.com. I have an on-demand training video you can watch for free where I walk you through more details of creating and marketing a referral-partner program.

–Shaun

P.S. The same techniques I’ll show you in the video on demand (VOD) can be used to secure high net worth and marquee customers. There is a small twist you need in order to make that work, but I’ll go over that in the video. If that is the category of customer you sell to, this VOD will be valuable to you.

P.P.S. Don’t worry if you’re a doctor, lawyer, or financial advisor who can’t give out gifts to referral partners. I’ll cover what you need

to do as well as how to crush it with this

strategy. Access the VOD at DailyReferrals.com.

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2 BUSINESS HOW-TO

Golden Rules for Customer Service in Any Business

Have you ever had bad service before? Of course — we all have. All businesses let customers and prospects down from time to time. It sucks when that happens, but the reality is that businesses are run by humans, and humans make mistakes. No customer expects you to be perfect. What matters most is how you handle the situation. Many people mistakenly think this means you need to bend over backward for the customer in order to resolve the issue. While no customer wants to hear that policy or some other nonsense is the reason you can’t do something for them, this is the answer customers hear far too often. They get even more pissed when it comes from the owner, since they know the owner is the one who makes the policies. So what’s the best way to handle customer issues and complaints? We run our customer service according to two golden rules. Let’s start with the first part of this golden rule: When you screw up, don’t hope the customer doesn’t notice — own it. Apologize and offer to fix your mistake. Communication, even when it’s delivering a negative message, is better than silence or a cover-up. Personally, I’m always less angry if a company brings an issue to my attention as opposed to me bringing it to their attention. The second half of this rule is to always be polite. Customers are not always right; I know that is hard to believe, but it’s true. I always want to hear out the customer’s concern and let them know I understand the issue by paraphrasing what they said. If it is something that really isn’t our fault and there isn’t much gray area, I lead 1 ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH WHILE STILL BEING POLITE.

them via questions and statements so they can discover that the problem may not be with us. Regardless, I’m always polite. After all, right or wrong, they are the customer.

thought was a fair compensation — of course, after I politely told the truth about the situation not being 100 percent our fault. When a customer is reasonable about what they want for compensation, we do it. When they aren’t, we have a chat with them to find a reasonable settlement. At the end of the day, your job is to provide something of value in exchange for someone’s hard-earned money. In this day and age, where people overreact by leaving negative reviews and drafting social media posts over the simplest of misunderstandings, having a few golden rules to drive your customer service efforts can mean one less negative review and one less lost customer, which all spells more sales and revenue for you in the long run.

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ALWAYS ERR ON THE SIDE OF THE CUSTOMER. AN ERROR IS RARELY ONE-SIDED.

I remember a customer we had a few years ago who called us because his promotion landed three or four days before the expiration date of the offer. Now, on the surface, that could’ve been 100 percent our fault, but the reality was that the customer was 10 days late getting his promotional content to us. I firmly believe we messed up by not catching the expiration date and noticing the short window of time left for his promo. But since he was 10 days late, he gave us the expiration date and signed off on the final proof, so there was plenty of fault to go around. But when something like this happens, the business has to take some ownership. In a case like this, I’d likely ask what the customer

–Shaun

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MARKETING HOW-TO

CLIENT SUCCESS

W hiteboard Geeks is a company that makes professional whiteboard animations for all kinds of clients, from law firms to nonprofits. We’ve been working with The Newsletter Pro on our monthly mailer since May of 2015, and I have to say that the whole thing has been like hitting the business-partner lottery! The Newsletter Pros are easy to work with, they’re experts in their fields, and they can help you make even the most technical content seem like reading a novel for fun. Right now, our newsletter goes out to current clients, and after starting the newsletter, we’ve had several people come back for repeat business. It definitely doesn’t hurt to have a monthly reminder sent out to clients! Our company has grown and expanded a lot since we started, and The Newsletter Pro team has been so infinitely patient and knowledgeable. I’m excited about the fact that they partner with us while we’re growing. Our project manager has been an absolute rock in helping get the newsletter out for us, and the writer’s content has been fantastic and spot-on. Honestly, my favorite thing about the newsletter is getting to work with these guys. They’re so much fun! I also love receiving the newsletter each month and having the finished product in front of me, interesting and full of color. THE PROS + THE GEEKS = SUCCESS

I’ve known my friend Bud now for 16 years. I originally met Bud when I started my dry cleaning business. He was a mentor, and we quickly became friends. Bud is a successful entrepreneur and does very well with his dry cleaning and lawn mowing businesses. The issue is that he has become too comfortable. He makes great money, and although he has wanted to sell the dry cleaning company for years, it has literally been the business that primarily supported his family for the last 20 years. He now feels trapped by the business. Can you relate, either now or with a previous business? I’M STUCK AND DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO! HELP! WANT TO BUILD A BRAND THAT CUSTOMERS LOVE? Gary Vaynerchuk’s ‘Crushing It’ Will Show You How What started as an unfussy, innovative approach to selling wine — Wine Library TV — turned Gary Vaynerchuk’s family liquor business from doing $4 million in sales to $60 million. Known to most followers as Gary V., the man has since become a media mogul with a frenzied social media following. As his followers can attest, if you want to know how (and why) to build your personal brand, listen to Gary V. Vaynerchuk’s new book “Crushing It! How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence — and How You Can, Too” is part celebration of the entrepreneurs who’ve followed his advice and part guide to implementing it. If his earlier book, “Crush It,” was a lecture on the importance of using the internet for businesses, the new version is a love letter to all those who’ve found success by following that advice. Written in his characteristic no-nonsense style, “Crushing It” is approachable enough that any reader — from a business vet to a newbie — can follow along. His first piece of advice about building your brand? If you don’t have a business Facebook page, make one. He gives a nod to the parade of other OUR BOOKSHELF

– Annie Blackburn Assistant Creative Consultant

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platforms and details which industries they’re suited for, but his takeaway isn’t that you need to buy expensive equipment and put out perfectly polished content. Instead, use social media to share what you’re already doing and to document what your business is about. Vaynerchuk also identifies seven principles that should guide any content you publish. These include intent, authenticity, passion, and patience. It’s no coincidence that these qualities are what made Wine Library TV such a hit with YouTube viewers. Gary’s authenticity and passion are palpable, and that’s why viewers connected with him. If you’ve seen any of his recent YouTube videos, you know this holds true today. Vaynerchuk has never tried to say that building a business is going to happen quickly — in fact, he rails against the misconception that success happens overnight. His empire took time to build, just as yours will. If business is at a standstill and you don’t know why, or you’re not even sure where to begin as an entrepreneur, “Crushing It” could help you I know I can; I felt the same way in the dry cleaning business. I made a good $125K-per- year profit and always had some side hustle that jacked that number up a bit to give my family and me a very comfortable living. I thought long and hard about selling that business; it was what I had known for 10 years. The problem was that no matter how comfortable I was, I was still dying a little inside by owning that business. It simply wasn’t for me. Why? If you’ve ever felt trapped, the worst thing you can do is stay. As entrepreneurs, we’re built to take risks. You can’t trap us, cage us, and expect us to thrive. We have to be challenged and pushed to dream and think about ways to make this world a better place — and make a ton of money while we do it. The problem comes when you’re so close to everything that you can’t see the forest for the trees. Or when you think you have all the answers. I’ve discovered that finding the answers for most life and business problems is easy. The

real problem is that those answers are not the answers we want.

Sometimes you’re going to find that you have to fix two other issues in order to fix the main issue. If that is the case, don’t delay; the sooner you fix those two other issues, the sooner you can tackle the main problem. We also sometimes have to be willing to sacrifice today for tomorrow. Tomorrow isn’t promised, so don’t neglect your kids, marriage, and all that is good in your life for a hopefully better tomorrow. But it may mean you have to do stuff you don’t like for a while so you can get to the point of solving the issue you need to solve. Finally, if you want to call yourself an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to take risks every now and then. You have to be willing to lay all of it (okay, most of it) on the line from time to time. You have to be willing to dig deep and work hard for a while. If you take nothing else from this article, at a minimum, take this: If you’re stuck right now, you owe it to yourself, your family, and your employees to get unstuck ASAP.

I often get asked for advice, but when I give the answer, I’m hit with excuses or talk about the lifestyle they want to live or self-limiting beliefs they have. Rarely am I told the answer is the wrong answer. If you’re stuck and need to solve an issue, here are a few steps to try. 1 You need time and space to clear your head. Take a day to unplug and simply go deep into what the issue is. Be super clear; it sucks to solve the wrong problem. 2 Brain dump all the answers you can think of. If you have a partner, mentor, or business- savvy friend, see if they will help here. Whatever you do, don’t limit your solutions. 3 Piece together the answer to your problem based on your brain dump.

Have You Heard the Good News?

1 Peter 2:16 — ”Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil but living as servants of God.” Philippians 1:27 — ”Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.” Luke 4:18-19 — ”The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

understand the key presence that you need to ramp up. Turn to it for suggestions on building your brand, and see why so many of Gary V.’s followers are “Crushing It.”

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QUICK BIZ TIPS

Know Your Numbers Metrics Today for Profits Tomorrow

retention, and as a result, they are not getting a realistic ROI.

monthly customer attrition, which in this case is 2.4 percent, or 12 customers per month. All of a sudden, the necessary 14 new customers per month is now 26 new customers, almost double the original figures. Neglecting to account for attrition is why most companies stall out with their growth or report inaccurate numbers for their ROI. In this example, if you aren’t factoring in attrition, then when you finally look it up at the end of the year, you’ve actually only grown by 24 customers. That’s only 0.4 percent per month, or a 4.8 percent annual growth rate. Don’t make this same mistake; start tracking your attrition today. That way, your ROI will be an accurate glimpse of investment, income, and retention.

ROI, in theory, is the most comprehensive way to determine whether an investment is bringing home the bacon. The problem is there are a lot of confounding factors that can skew the numbers and make profitable strategies look like a flop. The biggest factor among those is the retention of customers. Of course, it is impossible to keep 100 percent of your customers, but any good business owner will tell you that it’s difficult to grow a business if you aren’t focusing on retention.

Consider these numbers as examples of the roles of attrition and retention:

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Current number of customers = 500

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Desired annual growth rate = 33 percent

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New customer goal = 165 new customers per year, or 14 new customers per month

On the surface, these numbers seem totally achievable. 14 new customers per month is reasonable for most businesses. The problem is that it doesn’t account for one important factor:

The problem that many entrepreneurs run into is that they are not accurately tracking their

RESOURCE OF THE MONTH

INFUSIONSOFT CRM WILL HELP YOU GROW Turn Leads Into Customers and Keep Them Happy

Once your business reaches a certain size, it becomes impossible to manually manage all of your customers and leads. You want to give every prospect and client the attention they deserve, but you can’t do that if the bulk of your time is spent simply tracking customer interactions and opportunities. That’s where Infusionsoft comes in. Infusionsoft offers customer relationship management (CRM) software that features marketing automation. It’s aimed at small businesses growing quickly — companies that need to track, manage, and stay in communication with their clients. Infusionsoft is cloud-based, allowing you to access information from anywhere. It keeps you in-the-know with all of your customer interactions. The main page for any of your contacts is called “the contact record.” The contact record contains an activity feed that shows a timeline of your interactions with the given contact. It also houses

tabs dedicated to notes about the client, tasks that need to be performed by your marketing team, a calendar of upcoming events, and any emails between your company and the contact. In addition to this vital >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8

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