Monthly Archives: September 2018

Weekend Favs September 29

Weekend Favs September 29 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

  • Sociograph – Gather analytics on your Facebook groups and pages.
  • Feedier – Collect customer feedback and offer your users rewards to increase response rate.
  • Segment Protocols – Eliminate data quality issues.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

The Seven Steps to Marketing Success – How to Build a Marketing System

The Seven Steps to Marketing Success – How to Build a Marketing System written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch on Building a Marketing System

The key to an effective marketing approach is creating a marketing system. This is Duct Tape Marketing’s point of view and our key differentiator. Here, we’ll take a closer look at the seven steps you must undertake to build a successful marketing system for your business.

1. Focus on Strategy Before Tactics

The first step to creating a successful marketing system is to know who your ideal customer is, and what their core problems are. If you don’t understand the value that your business can bring to each engagement, it’s nearly impossible to select the tactics you should use to reach your audience.

When you understand the ideal customer and create the narrowest definition possible for who that is, you can then connect what you’re offering to solving the customers’ problems. This makes your approach not just about your products and services, but about your promise to solve those problems. If you don’t take the time to understand your ideal customer, there’s no way to build a marketing strategy that will speak to them.

2. Guide the Customer Journey – The Marketing Hourglass

Because of the internet, the way people buy today is largely out of your hands. They have so many places to do research, ask networks, find out about you, and discover the products and services to solve their problems before they ever contact a company.

The customer journey comes into play at Duct Tape Marketing with something called the marketing hourglass. The hourglass has seven stages: know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer. These stages represent the logical behavior in buying that many of your customers want to take. Your job is to help them move through those stages sequentially.

Your first step is to understand how somebody would come to know about a company like yours. Likely, they’d turn to a search engine or they’d ask a friend. At these early stages, they know they have a problem, but they haven’t yet concluded how they’re going to solve it. Marketing at this stage needs to show that you understand their pain points and that you might have the right solution for them. From there, you need to establish trust in your brand and perhaps even give them a way to try you. When they do finally buy, that experience must be excellent in order to create repeat business. Not only that, but happy customers will also generate referrals.

All marketing efforts must be built around the concept of the marketing hourglass. When you understand how your customers buy and what they’re expecting to achieve at each stage, you’re able to build a marketing plan that exceeds their expectations along the way and creates happy, lifelong customers.

3. Make Content the Voice of Strategy

Content is not just a tactic, it is the voice of strategy. You have made a promise to solve a problem for your customers; you now need to be ready to meet people where they are (search engines, social media, etc.) and generate enough valuable content to dominate in those arenas.

We use something called content hubs to outshine in search and to create content that is valuable to read, find, and share. This content must also meet customers at every stage of their journey, from know and like all the way through to referrals.

4. Create a Total Online Presence

Even if you do the majority of your business offline and in person, in today’s world, you must have a total online presence. The internet is where people go to have an experience with marketing, to understand a company, and to do research. When someone refers you to their friend, the friend turns to a search engine or your website to learn what other people are saying about you and to see if you actually solve the problem that they have.

No matter what kind of business you run, you need to be tackling all the elements of online marketing. This includes social media, search engine optimization, content, website, and email marketing. All of these pieces must work together as an integrated whole.

5. Build a Reliable Flow of Leads

Leads are the lifeblood of getting your business going, and so you have to find a predictable way to generate enough leads to grow your business. There are numerous channels through which to generate leads, and again, integration is key.

Sales, content, advertising, networking, and online and offline events all play a role. There is no one way to generate leads; the key is in finding the three or four channels that you can consistently mine and establishing a process to develop leads through those channels.

6. Make Lead Conversion Your X Factor

Lead conversion must be your multiplier. The key here is to focus on all forms of lead conversion. Obviously someone buying your product or service for the first time is a conversion, but what about signing up for an ebook, registering for an online course, getting a free evaluation, or making an appointment? Those are all conversion activities.

You need to map the experience of each of your leads and clients so you can be sure that they’re having a great experience throughout. This is how you create repeat business and reactive those clients who have been lost. Once you begin tracking customer experiences, you then need to measure these activities. When you understand customers’ behavior, you can create better experiences; even if that only increases each conversion activity by one or two percent, that has a huge impact on the business overall.

7. Live By the Calendar

When you’re developing a system, you have to have a plan. It doesn’t have to be long-term—focusing on three to four important priorities for the quarter is ideal. From there, you can break those priorities down into activities and projects so that you can plan the quarter and not expend energy chasing the next new thing.

You have to have fewer priories, and you have to make marketing a habit. It has to be something that you do daily. You have to build meetings with the appropriate people to make sure that you’re moving those priorities along. Once you establish that habit, you should start documenting your processes. From there, you can decide what tasks you can delegate, either by adding more staff or outsourcing to others.

The reality is that marketing never ends—it’s a cycle. Once you go through the seven steps and build your marketing system, you want to constantly be reviewing, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and changing your approach accordingly.

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

Transcript of How to Get the World Talking About Your Brand

Transcript of How to Get the World Talking About Your Brand written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

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John Jantsch: With all these fancy marketing channels we have, still today, the most potent form of marketing is the original form of market, word of mouth. In this episode the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I visit with my friend Jay Baer. He’s got a new book called Talk Triggers: A Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth. Check it out.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jay Baer. He’s the President of the global consulting firm, Convince & Convert. He’s also the author of Hug Your Haters and Youtility. I think both books that we had him come on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and talk about at some point. But he’s got a new book with the co-author, Daniel Lemin, called Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth. Jay, welcome back.

Jay Baer: My friend, it is fantastic to be back here with the Duct Tapers. I appreciate the time. We should mention at this top of the show here that you are quoted liberally in this book, Talk Triggers, because you are a very smart man and at some level it’s the idea of referrals and you certainly have a handle on that. Thank you for your contributions to the book.

John Jantsch: Well, thank you for starting with that, because I had a questioned cued up here for you, if you quoted any smart marketing people. That was going to be my opportunity, but you just did it for me.

Jay Baer: At least one. No, but it’s funny you say that, because this book is about word of mouth and word of mouth is not a new idea. It’s not like we struck some sort of plutonium vein. Word of mouth has been around since the first caveman sold a rock to another caveman. There are a number of good books about word of mouth on the shelves, but here’s the thing that Daniel and I tried to do. We wanted to give people a book that allows you to follow a system to do word of mouth on purpose. A lot of people who are good at word of mouth are kind of good at it on accident, so we’re very specific and there’s a whole framework in this book; a six step process that any business can use to develop a talk trigger, a differentiator that creates word of mouth. I think what our contribution to the word of mouth literature will be is giving people sort of a thing that they can say, “Oh, now I can follow some steps and actually do this.” As opposed to just say, “Yes, word of mouth is important.”

John Jantsch: It’s funny, until you said that, I hadn’t really thought about it. Word of mouth’s probably the original channel, right?

Jay Baer: It is the only channel. Imagine before you had Papyrus, or Hulu, or Snapchat, word of mouth was the only game in town.

John Jantsch: I’ve heard you and seen you define a talk trigger as a strategic operational differentiator that compels word of mouth. You want to unpack that?

Jay Baer: Yeah. I mean, a talk trigger is not marketing. Maybe we should just end the show right there. It is not marketing. It’s not marketing. It is an operational choice that creates a marketing advantage. It is something that you do differently, not something that you say differently. I’ll give you a quick example if I may. One of my favorite examples from the book is a restaurant in Sacramento, California called Skip’s Kitchen. Skip’s is a counter service restaurant, so you go to the counter and you order two patty melts, and chocolate shake, and onion rings, and they bring your food to your table when it’s ready. Pretty simple concept. These guys have a line to get in almost every day. They were just named the 29th Best Hamburger Restaurant in the U.S. by USA Today newspaper.

Yet John, they’ve never spent a penny on advertising in the 10 years they’ve been open. They’re able to do this because they have made an operational choice. They have a talk trigger. They have a differentiator that creates conversation. Here’s how it works. Before you pay, you’re at the counter, you make your order. Before you reach for your wallet, they say, “Hey John, I got something for you to try.” They whip out a deck of cards from under the counter and they fan the cards out faced down in front of you. They say, “John, pick a card.” You select a card and if you get a joker, your entire meal is free, whether it’s just for yourself or for the entire soccer team that you just ordered for. Now, on average three people a day win. When they win, they go crazy.

They’re taking patty melt selfies, and they’re calling their mom, and there’s all kinds of social media, and a high school marching band plays. It’s very exciting. But that’s what propels this business forward. People tell that story over, and over, and over. So much so that even though there’s a big neon sign out front that says Skip’s Kitchen, people in Sacramento typically call it, “That joker restaurant.” It’s a choice, right? It’s an operational decision that they made that creates marketing, but it’s not a contest, it’s not a coupon, it’s not a campaign, it’s not a promotion. It’s none of those things that we typically associate with marketers. It’s not even content. It is an operational choice.

John Jantsch: I’m going to give you an example of … A much simpler example. My wife bought a piece of clothing from kind of an indie place, not a mail order catalog that you would know. She brought it home and put it on the first time and put her hands in it. It was a sweater or something, outer garment. She put her hands in the pocket and there was a piece of paper in there. She pulled out a piece of paper and it said, “You are a goddess.” I just-

Jay Baer: Nice.

John Jantsch: I have talked about that to so many people, because-

Jay Baer: That’s really good.

John Jantsch: What a simple thing-

Jay Baer: That’s a really good one.

John Jantsch: To do.

Jay Baer: Yes.

John Jantsch: We’re not shouting and taking … In fact, I did take a picture of that, of course, and share it on social media.

Jay Baer: Yes, yes.

John Jantsch: But it can be simple things, can’t it?

Jay Baer: It actually should be simple things. One of the tenets of the book, Talk Triggers, is that it has to be reasonable. Sometimes in marketing we want to go for the big, right? We want to do surprise and delight, we want to do this whole huge crazy thing, because it’s so competitive and attention is hard to come by and so we feel like the way to get attention is to do something dramatic, and bold, and crazy. That can work, right? Surprise and delight can work, but it’s not a strategy, right? Surprise and delight is not a word of mouth strategy.

It’s a lottery ticket, right? It’s a publicity stunt. What I love about your idea with, “You’re a goddess,” piece of paper is that really meets two of the conditions that we talk about in the book. One, it’s reasonable, right? It’s a small. Two, it’s repeatable. I presume that every garment that they sell has that piece of paper or some piece of paper in it. It’s not just every once and a while, or just on Thursdays, or on your birthday. Everybody who orders at Skip’s Kitchen gets a chance to play the joker game. Talk Triggers must be repeatable as well as reasonable.

John Jantsch: Talk a little about, you mentioned it, but talk a little bit about the research that went into kind of your conclusions.

Jay Baer: We did four different research projects for this book actually. We did a national study of the impact of word of mouth on purchases and voting behavior. That study is called Chatter Matters, which was actually released today out of media embargo. That’s got all kinds of charts, and graphs, and data points. One of my favorite findings in that piece of research, John, is that 66% of Americans would trust an anonymous online review more than they would trust a recommendation from an ex-boyfriend, which I think is genius, right? Word of mouth matters, unless it’s your ex, and then it doesn’t matter at all.

John Jantsch: Well, you bring up a great point though, because I mean, look how many people are making decisions because behavior of looking at reviews, which is sort of word of mouth, has become so prevalent that-

Jay Baer: Huge. You have no idea who this person is.

John Jantsch: That’s right, that’s right.

Jay Baer: But we don’t care. We’re like, “If it’s on the internet, it must be true.” We did the Chatter Matters research. We did a bunch of social media, deep social listening research around individual talk triggers and how much they surface in social media conversations. Then we did two deep, deep, deep studies on two of the organizations that we profile in the book. One on DoubleTree Hotels and one on the Cheesecake Factory restaurant to examine how effective their specific talk triggers are at generating chatter amongst their customers. For example, listeners may know that the DoubleTree Hotel chain gives you a warm chocolate chip cookie when you check in. They’ve been doing that every day for 30 years. Each day now they hand out 75,000 warm chocolate chip cookies per day. That’s a lot of cookies.

Well, we talked to 1,001 DoubleTree customers and found that 34% of them have mentioned without being asked, have mentioned that cookie to somebody else in the prior 60 days. Which means that approximately every day 25,500 mention the cookie, which is one of the many reasons why you don’t see much advertising from DoubleTree because the cookie is their advertising. See, the best way to grow any business is for your customers to grow it for you. You know that, you’ve written about that extensively. I could not agree more. The problem is, everybody knows that to be true, but then they don’t give their customers a story to tell. A talk trigger is the story that you want your customers to tell one another and everybody can do it, they just need to figure it out and go do it.

John Jantsch: It’s interesting, as I heard you talk about that, of course, the … I won’t call it a danger necessarily, but once you come up with a talk trigger, you have to commit to it, right? Because I mean, imagine if-

Jay Baer: Yes.

John Jantsch: You went to that DoubleTree and the cookies were cold, or just weren’t there, or somebody said, “Yeah, we’re not doing that anymore.” I mean, it almost has the opposite effect, doesn’t it?

Jay Baer: Absolutely. That’s why it really is an operational choice. One of the things we talk about in the book is how important it is to get everybody in your organization, large or small, on the same page. While it’s common that talk triggers and word of mouth programs like this will initiate with marketing, everybody’s got to be on the same page; sales, operations, customer service, because everybody’s got a pull on the same rope here for this to happen and for it to be delivered consistently.

John Jantsch: Since you mentioned operational, I’m going to use the S-word, system, for this and you have a very nice tidy four, five, six system. Again, I’m not going to ask you to spell out every aspect of that, but let’s talk about the four … No, let’s go with five. Let’s go with the five types of talk triggers.

Jay Baer: It helps, I think, to have this taxonomy, to think about what are we trying to achieve here. Because a talk trigger is really just something that defies expectations. In fact, in the process one of the things that we really recommend is doing some research of your current customers to determine what it is that they expect, because if you know what they expect, then you know what they don’t expect, right? That’s really the raw materials for your talk triggers. There’s five different types, five ways that you can execute a talk trigger. The first one and the most common one is talk about generosity, where you’re more generous than your customers expect. Free cookies at DoubleTree is certainly an example of that. Winning a free meal at Skip’s Kitchen if you pull a joker is an example of talk-able generosity. That’s the one you see the most in the wild, John, because it’s the easiest to implement in your operations.

Another one is talk-able responsiveness. This is where you are faster than your customers expect. This can have tremendous winning benefits for your organization. It is perhaps the hardest one to do though, because expectations around a speed get higher, and higher, and higher every year. What was fast three years ago is average today, so that one’s a tough one to stick, but when you can do it, it works really, really well. The third one is talk-able empathy, which frankly, wouldn’t have even been in the book three years ago, because as you well know, treating customers with empathy, with humanity, with kindness was the default state in a business for the entirety of my career and yours until recently. But I think I can say now without any degree of irony that we are now in an era of empathy deficient.

Where both in politics, and in life, and in business the default state is no longer kindness, and warmth, and humanity. When you can still play that game, right? When you can still treat your customers disproportionately well, it actually is disproportionate at this point, and it can create a lot of chatter and really be a winning word of mouth strategy for your business. That’s talk-able empathy. The fourth one is talk-able usefulness, where you’re more useful than your customers expect you to be, similar to the book I wrote called Utility. Some of those same ideas are in that one. The fifth one is talk-able attitude, which is my co-author Daniel Lemin’s favorite category. That’s when you just do things a little different, right? You’re just a little askew, a little askance. You’re just a little wacky, a little wild.

One of my favorite case studies, it’s not in the book, because we learned about it afterwards. There’s a bar in Great Falls, Montana, which is out of the way, even by Montana standards. This bar was just named one of the top 10 bars to fly to by GQ Magazine. In Great Falls, Montana. Here’s their talk trigger. Every night between 9PM and midnight, they have a giant aquarium behind the bar, live human mermaids swim behind the bar from 9:00 to midnight. Now, you cannot possibly go to that bar and not have a conversation with somebody about that afterwards. That is a good talk trigger.

John Jantsch: What’s interesting as I wrote all these down, I mean, none of them saw you’re more active on Facebook, or that you have great ads, right? I mean, they’re all operational things in a lot of ways.

Jay Baer: Yeah.

John Jantsch: Or culture things, maybe. We would say some of them, but I think it really hammers that point home.

Jay Baer: There’s two things there. One, it’s important to know that the research shows, and this is research from engagement labs, that 50% of word of mouth is offline and 50% of word of mouth is almost exactly the same is online; social, review sites, etc. Now, our research in Chatter Matters shows that the impact of offline word of mouth, that you and I talking right now on Skype, or an email between the two of us, or a face-to-face conversation has more impact than a social media recommendation, just because the nature of that relationship and one-on-one. But half and half, offline versus online. Then the other thing, is you talked about Facebook ads or anything else, that’s where the sixth step in the process where you have to amplify your trigger comes into play.

If you’ve got a talk trigger, what you want to do, not all the time, because then it gets a little yucky, but every once in a while you just want to remind people. You just want to connect the dots for them. One of the examples we use in the book that I think is really … It’s just very intuitive, is Krispy Kreme doughnuts, right? Krispy Kreme doughnuts has hot doughnuts, right? They just make them out of the assembly line, but in every single Krispy Kreme location they have a giant blinking red neon sign that says, “Hot now.” They have a hot now light, right? When you see that light driving by, you’re like, “Oh yeah, fresh doughnuts. That’s their talk trigger. That’s their thing, right?” They use the sign to remind you of their differentiator and that’s a good way to do it. That’s where you use social and other forms of advertising and marketing to just remind people that you do have something that’s a little different.

John Jantsch: I’m imagining some listeners sitting around going, “Gosh darn it, that Jay is so smart. We need to do that. Let’s create a viral stampede into our business, right?” Remember everybody first started talking about viral videos and stuff that they wanted to create. How do you really authentically create … I mean, if it was a simple saying, “Let’s do a talk trigger and the world will beat a path our door,” everybody would do it. How do you do it in a way … How do you at least brainstorm, just start coming up with what would be your authentic talk trigger?

Jay Baer: We don’t really think of talk triggers as a virality mechanism, because when I think viral, I think fast growth, rapid spread. That’s not what a talk trigger does. Talk trigger does consistent reliable spread over time. A talk trigger is a word of mouth strategy. A viral campaign is a lottery ticket. It’s not the same thing, right? You may have a similar impact, but once your viral thing is over, what do you have left? You have the memories of your viral thing. DoubleTree’s have the same talk trigger, the warm chocolate cookie for 30 years. 30 years, right? It’s a different kind of way of thinking about it.

But the first step, the first step in the whole thing is to understand your customers better. We really recommend that people looking to implement a talk trigger do some interviews with customers, specifically new customers, longtime customers, and ideally lost customers. What you want to do is take your customer journey map, sort of the different inflection points that you had with each customer, and then you say, “Okay. At this step, when we sent you our proposal, what did you expect would happen?” Then you just write all that stuff down. When you do that, what you have is an expectation map, because once you know what they expect, then you can figure out what they don’t expect.

John Jantsch: That seems like something everybody ought to do anyway.

Jay Baer: Yeah, it really … It’s a good point, right? It seems like a good … Even if you’re not going to build it into a word of mouth strategy, it’s probably good information to have.

John Jantsch: What’s the danger of your talk trigger being copy-able? I mean, I can bake-

Jay Baer: It is a danger. Yeah, it happens.

John Jantsch: Chocolate chip cookies maybe.

Jay Baer: Yeah. I mean, you would think … In most cases, right? You would think that if you’re going to roll it out you would know if it’s already in the market, right? You would know, “Hey, somebody’s already doing this, so maybe we should or shouldn’t.” But sometimes you roll one out and then everybody’s like, “Hey, that is a great idea.” Then they rush it and copy you and now it no longer works. The example of that we use in the book is Westin Hotels. You may remember, John, this is … I don’t even know how many years it was. I’m going to say five, maybe it’s longer. Westin came out with this thing called the heavenly bed and they put a ton of money into trying to convince us all that they had the best beds in all of hotel-land.

Well then, Hilton Garden Inn did the same thing, and Marriott did the same thing, and Hyatt did the same thing, and somebody else got the Sleep Number bed. I think it was Hyatt. Then everybody’s got a fancy bed, and so then their talk trigger no longer worked. They basically just got co-opted out of it. That sometimes happens. It is a danger, which is why in the process of talk trigger ideation, we always recommend coming up with five to eight ideas, and then you score those ideas on a matrix we created, which is 50% talk-ability; how interesting is it, and 50% viability; how operationally difficult is it to execute. Then if one gets stolen, right? Your competitors, say, they match you and you can’t do it anymore, then you go back to the list and you just try another one.

John Jantsch: We’ve sort of been talking about, what I would call, core talk trigger for an operational … Core talk trigger for a business. Theoretically, couldn’t a product, or a service, or even a person have a talk trigger?

Jay Baer: Yes. Definitely a person, no question. There’s a lot of “personal branding,” implications for this work, no question about it. At the product level, yes. However, you have to make sure that if you’ve got, let’s say, three different talk triggers, one for each of your three main product lines, that if all three of those stories get told it doesn’t confuse anybody, or they do not create conflict, or some lack of congruity. You just have to make sure that if you’re going to roll out a talk trigger for a division or a product that if you’re going to have multiple, that it all kind of adds up. Because you don’t want to end up having your stories fighting against one another.

John Jantsch: Yeah. It might just be that if that’s ingrained in the culture, it may just actually be a design decision that goes … As cliché as it is to say, I would like to think sometimes, at least one point in their life, apple head that. That they sort of intentionally built a talk trigger maybe even into the design of their product, but that was sort of based on their overarching aesthetic.

Jay Baer: Yeah. That’s where you sort of get this Venn diagram of talk trigger versus what is actually your brand, right? For example, on the DoubleTree side, right? The warm chocolate chip cookies is the talk trigger, but their brand positioning is the warm welcome. Even within the pantheon of the 14 Hilton brands, DoubleTree’s thing is the warm welcome. They put a tremendous amount of time and effort on staff training and lobby design to sort of own that 10 minutes between when you walk into the hotel, between then and when you walk into your room. That gap, that 10 minutes is what they want to own, and so the cookie ceremony makes a lot of sense in that context.

John Jantsch: Jay Baer, I could talk to you all day long, but I better let you go. But we are talking about Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth. Jay, where can people find out more about what you’re up to?

Jay Baer: If they go to talktriggers.com/ducttape, talktriggers.com/ducttape, we both show a little landing page for your listeners, we’re going to give you the six step guide to how to build your own talk trigger. Because I want people to do this and when you do it, please let me know, because we’re always looking for new examples. The book, of course, has a lot more detail, but if you just want the cheat sheet, go to talktriggers.com/ducttape, download the six step process guide and get started tomorrow.

John Jantsch: That’ll be, of course, in the show notes. Kind of on a final note, I won’t say this was intentional. I didn’t think this was a talk trigger, but people over the years have responded to the name of my business, Duct Tape Marketing as a bit of a talk trigger.

Jay Baer: Oh, absolutely. It would be so simple for you to lean into that skid, right? And do something with duct tape, or what have you, to sort of extenuate that differentiator.

John Jantsch: Absolutely. Jay, thanks for joining us. I know I’m going to see you soon. This book’s out in September of 2018, depending upon when you’re listening to this. Go check out Talk Triggers. Jay, we’ll see you soon on the road.

Jay Baer: Thanks, my friend.

How to Get the World Talking About Your Brand

How to Get the World Talking About Your Brand written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Jay Baer
Podcast Transcript

Jay BaerMy guest this week on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Jay Baer. He is the founder of Convince & Convert, a digital strategy consulting firm and a New York Times best-selling author of six books.

Baer is also a highly sought-after emcee and keynote speaker, an entrepreneur and founder of five multi-million dollar businesses, and has served as an advisor to more than 700 companies and organizations, including Caterpillar, Nike, and The United Nations.

He is a go-to source for various national media outlets including NPR, USA Today, TIME, and Real Simple.

On today’s episode, we discuss his latest book with co-author Daniel Lemin, Talk Triggers, which provides brands with a guide on how to create an effective word-of-mouth strategy for their business.

Questions I ask Jay Baer:

  • What is a talk trigger?
  • What are the five types of talk triggers?
  • How should a talk trigger relate to a company’s brand?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • What elements are essential to creating an effective talk trigger.
  • Why the best way to grow your business is to let your customers do it for you.
  • How to use more traditional forms of marketing to remind people of your talk trigger.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Jay Baer:

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

Sales Training Options to Help Your Small Business Succeed

Sales Training Options to Help Your Small Business Succeed written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Having an effective and engaged sales team is one of the keys to guaranteeing your business’s success. Some people are natural sales men or women—they have the gift of gab, the ability to easily connect with others and win their trust, and are adept at juggling leads and following up with prospects and existing customers alike.

For most of us, though, sales skills need to be developed. Things like cold calling, making an effective pitch, and understanding prospecting strategy are not always intuitive, and so it’s critical that you offer your team training in various areas so that they can become the confident, well-rounded, skilled salespeople that will perform best for your business.

Cater to Your Team’s Strengths and Weaknesses

The first step here, of course, is to understand your sales team’s strengths and weaknesses. Now, these may be different for each person on your team. Maybe you have one person who doesn’t have any trouble picking up the phone and chatting with strangers multiple times a day, but who lets follow-up requests sit in his inbox. Meanwhile, you have another team member who’s skilled at managing relationships with existing customers and making up-sells, but who struggles with her demo presentations to prospects.

A good jumping off point is finding a sales training program that can cater each team member’s individual needs. Hubspot has a great list of sales training courses that cover a wide range of topics and are accessible at a variety of price points.

Providing your team with access to a generic course that can help them brush up on the skill or skills that need the most work is a great way to start getting everyone on equal footing.

Create Your Own Course

While having a general understanding of sales techniques is important, you’ll also want to create a course specifically for your business’s sales team. Each business has its own approach, and you’ll want to share tips and tricks, plus help them avoid pitfalls, that are unique to your business.

The first step here is to ensure that your team understands your value proposition. This is the driving force behind why you started your business, and it’s the reason that your salespeople are selling the good or service you offer. Trumpeting your value proposition empowers your team to motivate every action they take with that “big picture” idea always in mind.

From there, you want to make sure your salespeople understand your process and approach to sales. Is there a specific CRM tool you use and a way that you want information recorded? Do you have a script for cold calling or emailing? Do you have a set list of answers to questions frequently raised by prospects? Is there a system in place for alerting managers to potential issues that crop up with unhappy leads or customers? And how does your set approach incorporate the marketing team in the sales process?

When you have a clear and established set of systems and processes in place for your team, you provide them with a context in which to work, which then frees them up to focus on the art of selling and closing the deal.

Act It Out

One of the most daunting things about interacting with prospects or customers is that a salesperson can never predict how exactly the conversation will go. Experienced salespeople have seen and heard it all, but if your sales team is newer to the game (or just unfamiliar with sales at your particular company) they may feel intimidated by the unknown.

Much like a new airplane pilot starts out in a flight simulator before getting behind the wheel of an actual plane, you can start the greener members of your sales team out with role playing. Put together a list of the types of tricky prospects your salespeople might encounter: The one with lots of questions, the one who doesn’t want to pay full price, the one who declares they hate the product. Create a rough outline of a script for each scenario that details the points you want the “prospective customer” to hit. Then, get the whole team together and pair up members of the team, having more senior salespeople playing the customer and the newer team members acting as the salesperson.

When the role play wraps up, ask colleagues to weigh in on what the salesperson handled well and what they could have done better. Then have the pair reverse roles and replay the scenario, so that everyone can see firsthand how the salesperson incorporates the suggestions from their colleagues and artfully dodges those common pitfalls.

Start a Book Club

There is a lot of value in a great business book. Sometimes courses get monotonous, but a well-written book with compelling arguments and case studies can help a concept jump right off the page, and it can inspire the reader to try a new approach or tackle a new challenge.

Consider putting together a reading list for your team that includes titles by some sales experts you really admire. If someone on your team is excited about a particular book, hop on Amazon and order it for them. Make it as easy as possible for them to encounter fresh, new ideas that can revitalize their sales approach.

You might even take things a step further and set up an actual in-office book club. Select a title for everyone to read, and then gather the group together a month later to discuss. Come with your own questions and topics to help guide the discussion, and allow your employees to share their impressions, what they learned, and how they think they can implement some of the tactics or approaches covered in the book in their day-to-day work life.

If you’re looking for a good read to get your started, I’d recommend the following:

Make Mentors

One of the best ways to learn sales techniques is to watch someone else do it skillfully. If you have a team with some more seasoned salespeople and some other who are less experienced, creating a mentorship program can be a great approach.

Pair each novice up with a mentor. Allow them to listen in on their mentor’s sales calls and to tag along for in-person meetings and pitches. Learning from a pro in the field is one of the fastest ways to help develop a rookie’s technique. Also ask your mentor to provide feedback to their mentee; have them establish a monthly sit-down over coffee that encourages an open dialogue between the veteran and the beginner.

Studies have shown that mentorship programs have benefits for both the mentors and the mentees. Your novice gets to learn new skills, and your veteran gets to develop leadership skills that prepare them for even greater career growth.

You have plenty of options when it comes to sales training. From the preexisting courses on particular topics to more customized, in-house training programs, you should be able to strike the right balance and create an environment that empowers your team to succeed.

Weekend Favs September 22

Weekend Favs September 22 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

  • Boom’s App Keyboard Shortcuts – Save time navigating your many marketing apps with keyboard shortcuts.
  • ShopifyAR – Empower your customers to have an immersive interaction with your products online.
  • Contento – Offer your articles to a network of media/blogs to expand your visibility.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

Transcript of Letting Go of Perfection in Order to Achieve Your Goals

Transcript of Letting Go of Perfection in Order to Achieve Your Goals written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

This transcript is sponsored by our transcript partner – Rev – Get $10 off your first order

John Jantsch: Would you consider yourself a protectionist? I certainly would not consider myself a traditional protectionist, but I wonder if there’s times when viewing my view of the world through other people’s lens has cost me, has held me back, has stopped me from doing what I was meant to do

In this episode of The Duct Tape Marketing podcast we visit with Petra Kolber, she’s the author of The Perfection Detox: Tame Your Inner Critic, Live Bravely, and Unleash Your Joy. I think you better check it out.

Stuff like payroll and benefits are hard. That’s why I switched to Gusto and to help support the show Gusto is offering out listeners and exclusive limited time deal. You sign up for their payroll service today, you’ll get three months free once you run your first payroll. Just go to gusto.com/tape.

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Petra Kolber. She’s international renown fitness expert and wellness leader. Also, the author of a book we’re gonna talk about today called The Perfection Detox: Tame Your Inner Critic, Live Bravely, and Unleash Your Joy. So Petra, thanks for joining us.

Petra Kolber: Oh my pleasure. Thanks for having me John.

John Jantsch: And I also forgot to mention that you are, you’re gonna shoot me, Scottish.

Petra Kolber: Oh, my god. You are so off. I am British. My dad was Scottish though. I have to be honest, my dad was a Scott.

John Jantsch: There’s a little Scot in your accent still, what’s left of it.

Petra Kolber: If you say so. Okay, we’ll just leave it at that, because my mother’s turning in her grave right now going, Scottish?

John Jantsch: I could have called you Australian.

Petra Kolber: That too. I’ll answer to anything John. If I’m just talking to you, whatever works. I’m fine with that.

John Jantsch: All right, so let me ask you this first. Is this book autobiographical?

Petra Kolber: Well they say you teach what you need to learn, so yes. For me it was autobiographical in a sense, but again for me the pain point of the book, as you know with sales and marketing speak to the pain point. That was definitely my own personal pain point for many years and I thought, if I can help people fast track the seven year process or so that it took me, John, to figure out that you don’t have to be perfect to do great things in this world, then I though it’d be a book worth writing.

John Jantsch: So detoxing is really hot right now. I mean there’s probably half a dozen books in every book store about it, and diets and what not. What does that speak to you think?

Petra Kolber: Well I did the name Detox to be honest, like we had talked about before, my background was fitness for 30 years, so detoxing, nutrition is definitely a piece of that and if you look at the books cover, The Perfection, Perfection is very lightly written, so I do believe many people who pick this up thinking it’s a juicing book, but again, so hey why not build on a cultural trend. That’s not why I called it that. Like with detox from anything is basically cleaning out the crud, and that’s what this book is about. It’s not cleaning out the crud from your body or your nutrition, but really your mental aspect and whether you’re gonna go for a job of your dreams, you’re gonna start that business you’ve been thinking about. It really is about, not what you’re doing, but do you feel worthy enough to even begin the dream and how do you feel about yourself along the process?

John Jantsch: Okay, so let’s start here. What does perfection look like?

Petra Kolber: Ha, great question.

John Jantsch: I’m probably saying that because I have no idea. It does not enter into my life in any sense.

Petra Kolber:  You are so lucky John, let me tell you. So I do believe perfection means different things to everybody and I do believe a lot of people have asked me. Why did, this book as you know is definitely got the woman perspective, yet I speak to men and woman across the board, and many men come up to me and go, “Oh my god, you were speaking to me.” Perfection means different things to everybody and what I ask people to consider is, when you think of the word perfect in the three main areas of your life, self care, the relationships of your own personal family relationships, and your work. When you think of the word perfect, does that add joy to your life or does it suck the joy out of you? Because perfect and perfection is only a word until you attach a meaning and an emotion to it. So this book, this idea of perfect, you know detoxing from perfection, some of your listeners might go, “Well, hey perfect works really well for me in my business.”

I strive, and this is not about not working hard. This is not about wanting to be the best that you can be. It’s not about wanting to be the leader in your field and what it is about is how are you feeling about yourself when you’re striving for these high goals? Do you ever reach them, or they are so high where perfections become the basement level. Maybe we can look at different metrics and a different definition of success.

John Jantsch: So I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and one of the things that I see is almost rampant in that community is that they didn’t define what perfection was. They’re striving for somebody else’s view of perfection because they see somebody else being more successful in their view, or whatever, having more customers, a bigger launch, a bigger house, you know, whatever it is, and how much do you think that, that plays into it? Is that we don’t step back and even define perfection. We just try to hit somebody else’s target?

Petra Kolber: Oh, that’s so interesting John. Nobody’s ever really put it to me that way. Yeah, I agree and I think whether it’s comparison … I think we are comparing being by definition. We need to look at other people for inspiration and I think Jon Acuff was the one that said, “Don’t compare your beginning to everybody else’s middle.” And what happens, especially in this world of social media and the online culture where everything is coming across our feed so fast and if you’re like me, for many years I never had this idea that I had anything unique to say, so who was I to be doing a book, a bran, an online course and so whether you see it as perfection, like you had said, or you see it as a lack of confidence or the gap between where you are right now and where you want to be, I think it’s all about the same thing John. We start looking at ourselves, unwittingly comparing ourselves to others, and then out negativity biased, which is a part of our evolution, is automatically gonna hit on the things that we think we are not enough of.

Or in some cases, we think we’re too much of this and what happens is then, we then stop beating ourselves up and judging ourselves, and I should know better, I shouldn’t be comparing my brand, or my launch to someone else’s launch. The challenge is the part of our brain that’s the strongest, it’s not part of your character flaw, it’s a part of our genetic makeup and unless it goes managed and unless we notice these thoughts John, like “Oh, my god, their launch was so perfect. Or, “They wrote the perfect book, ” or, “Their online program is so perfect,” and unwillingly we’re comparing our back story and our struggles to what we see as their overnight success, which in reality is 10,000 hours of hustle and hard work, and failure after failure and iteration 2.0. This is when we get stopped in our tracks and so it’s where we stop doing, we start watching and then we start becoming paralyzed because we start judging what we think we’re doing to everyone else’s highlight reel.

John Jantsch: So physical toxins, are quite often aligned with something you’re familiar with, as a cancer survivor. How is perfection toxins, what’s that costing us?

Petra Kolber: You got some great questions John. You know what, the interesting thing about this, people often say, “Ah, it’s just a thought. I’m just having these thoughts. I’m beating myself up.” And now science is showing that these thoughts have a physical reaction, a chemical reaction to your body. So what we’re seeing now in this world of elevated stress, elevated anxiety, in the entrepreneurial world and in the life’s of our children, elevated depression, although with our kids, they’re saying anxiety is going up, as depression is coming down a little bit. Every time we have these thoughts, our brain, every time we have a thought of self judgment and doubt, or worry it’s not a status quo, it’s gonna trigger irresponsible in your body. It’s either gonna be fight or flight, or tandem befriend and this cortisol, the adrenalin, and placed on top of the adrenaline and cortisol that gets triggered every time we have an email alert, or a text come in our we have an argument with our partner, or work partner.

This is all having a physical impact on our body and our immune system, our health, our joy, our happiness, and so again, people go, “Oh it’s just a thought.” “Uh, yeah, no.” Because your body can now not … This is science, the science of neuroscience. Your body cannot tell the difference between an actual something we should be afraid of and go on physical defense or a thought where we ramp up and have this same toxic, like you said, toxic emotion built into our body and often to put on top of that John, this work is often happening behind a computer and we’re sitting and you and I just spoke about this before. Sitting is the worse place for our body, our health, our happiness, our focus, our agility, our resilience. So you put all these thoughts on a body that’s now static, it’s just compiled and exasperates to a magnificent and an unfortunate level.

John Jantsch: For the record, I’m at my standing desk right now as we record this interview. I want everybody to know. So let’s pick on social media a little bit now. So let’s pick on social media a little bit, shall we. You know my last interview that I … Who knows when people will actually be listening to these. They probably won’t come out back to back, but Dan Schawbel, Back To Human: How Greatly Leaders Create Connection in an Age of Isolation, and one of the main thrusts of his book is that technology, while it does enable us to do some cool things, it’s probably made us more isolated than ever, and I suspect that in the perfection game, social media is a pretty big culprit isn’t it?

Petra Kolber:  Yeah, absolutely. I love that idea. I think the currency of the future is gonna be connection and I heard Gary V. speak recently at an even and he held up his phone, and he goes, “Technology doesn’t have and opinion,” and I was like, oh that’s good, ’cause I had become silently very judgy about social media and technology. It doesn’t have an opinion, but it’s how we feel about ourselves and how we decide to use it and what our intention is when we’re going onto social media, or any form of technology. So again, it does magnificent things. You and I are having this conversation across the country because of technology. My thought is with social media in particular, there’s many great aspects of it. It allowed me John, over the course of two years recently, to pivot my branding from fitness to happiness and now to this idea of becoming our best selves versus our perfect selves. Social media will allow me to do that without paying a PR company, yet we often use social media to deflect, distract.

We often go on when we’re bored, when we’re a little bit lonely and that is the worst place, the worst time for us to jump on, because then that negative bias, our inner critic is quick to ramp up and then start again, going into that comparison mode, and even though we know that what someone is posting on social media there, there are a million dollar launch, or that perfect this, or we know that’s probably not the exact truth. Maybe it’s a little bit highlighted a little bit, while our brain knows that and for females especially, we see the pictures going across out feed, with that million Instagram followers. Our heart has a really hard time discerning what’s real to what we’re seeing across our feed. So I just say, there’s nothing wrong in social media, but make sure you’re going on with full attention and with what intention. There’s so much noise out there. Do we want to add to the noise or can we elevate the conversation. Add things that make people think, make them feel good, make them want to share what it is that you’re sharing about your thoughts and your view of the world today.

If we’re there to elevate the conversation and make people feel less alone, than it’s a great thing, but then again I keep coming back to this idea of when you step off your time on social media, do you feel more joyful, or has the joy been sucked out of you, and then maybe it’s time to look at who you’re following, your intentions, and just kind of do a quick little detox on your social media too.

John Jantsch: Wouldn’t it be great if in your business all you had to do was the stuff you love, the reason you started the business and not all that administrative stuff, like payroll and benefits, that stuff’s hard, especially when you’re a small business. Now I’ve been delegating my payroll for years to one of those big corporate companies and I always felt like a little tiny fish, but now there is a much better way. I’ve switched over to Gusto and it is making payroll and benefits and HR easy for the modern small business. You no longer have to be a big company to get great technology, great benefits, and great service to take care of your team. To help support the show, Gusto is offering our listeners an exclusive limited time deal. If you sign up today, you’ll get three months free once you run your first payroll. Just go to gusto.com/tape.

So I probably wasn’t gonna bring this up, but you opened the door to it. Do feel that men and women approach this idea of perfection differently?

Petra Kolber: Yes, I do. I mean I think … This is why I wrote the book form a female perspective, ’cause while I’ve had many conversations with men, and I think the suffering is there, but I think it’s a little different. I think, and again, tell me, correct me on this John, I would imagine that sometimes it’s easier for men to compartmentalize their areas of their life. So my job is, I’m crushing it, I’m succeeding, my goal is to be perfect, and their like great, but perhaps your relationships are suffering, or maybe your self care is suffering, whereas I think women have a harder time separating their self care to their relationships, to their work life, to their family, so there’s more of a trickle effect. If I’m not feeling great in this area of my life it’s gonna kind of have a little bit of a trickle effect where I think, and I hope I don’t get a lot of blow black on this.

It might be easier for men to compartmentalize just a little. So while perfection’s working in their work life per se, maybe their self care’s suffering, or their family life is suffering and it doesn’t have the ripple down effect quite as much, and feel free to correct me on that.

John Jantsch:  No, no, I agree 100%. I think society plays a huge role in that too. I remember when my kids were little and I’d take them to … I might have one of them, well I have four, so I might have had all four of them and I’d be carrying one in the grocery store checking out and you know it never failed. Somebody, “Oh you’re such a great dad.” And I wonder what it would take for somebody to actually say, “You’re such a great mom,” if my wife was doing the exact same thing. I think society really … You know, we have much lower expectations I think on men sometimes.

Petra Kolber: It’s a great point and again, not to do any bashing, but I think this expectation that women also place on themselves and the conversation is absolutely changing, a little bit, but even if the conversation is changing externally it’s really hard on the internal conversations that we have with ourselves to ease up the judgment and the self doubt in that area of our life.

John Jantsch: Okay, so we’ve talked a ton about perfection. Let’s talk about detox. Where do you start?

Petra Kolber: Well like with anything I would love to say with this book we start with the joy, but unfortunately you have to clear out the muck. So the first part is just clearing out what’s not working for you and it’s not everything, especially with perfection. Any kind of detox you want to keep what’s working. So you’re gonna keep the flowers but pull out the weeds. So I’m gonna jump back a little bit about perfection John, because there’s many aspects that you want to keep, you’re a hard worker, you strive for excellence, you triple check your work, you’re a great friend, you’re a great coworker. None of that we want to get rid of, but whatever you’re detoxing from, we need to get rid of the stuff that’s not working for you right now. So first bit is clearing out the muck. Then the universe in your brain does not like a vacuum, so you got to put something good in there and this is where my work and my studies with positive psychology enter in. Again our brains default ids the negative, so if we leave a space, then more negative’s gonna come in.

It might have a different voice, a different accent. It might have a Scottish accent, but it’s gonna come in. So we got to put something positive in there and then we want to really be robust for the future. So it’s kind of clearing out the clutter, the muck, which often has happened from our past. Cementing a really positive presence and then from that there’s actually sustainable steps, like creating new habits. As we know, it’s those many daily habits of small, small steps that create magnificent change over time. So how do we do sustainable actions, sustainably new habits around our thinking especially that allows us to create a flourishing future.

John Jantsch: Yeah, that replacement idea is so big. I just read a post, a friend for a long time in this content world and he wrote a post recently. He talked about how he just one day decided to stop drinking alcohol and it just turned into months into year and then he turned around and realized he’d gained 40 pounds and how to like, okay, now I need to replace that with exercise. I think that is so true of our condition isn’t it?

Petra Kolber: Yeah. I mean the thing is, it’s that familiarity. It’s that we’re gonna come back to a habit, whether it’s negative thinking, negative actions that we do, without even realizing that they are negative. They have negative impact. So again, it’s just … And again with this world of becoming, we’re in this attention economy where we’re our lack of full attention. So often times these habits, I think, the negative ones creep in even faster these days, because we’re kind of partially focus, we’re partially engaged without even realizing it. We’re think we’re multitasking, we know there’s no such thing, and I think that has an effect on our inner dialog also, because we’re not fully aware of even the inner habits that we’re maybe replacing, what we thought was a negative just with another negative. So again it’s bringing attention and full intention to all aspects of your life, which is exhausting. So it’s, you do the best you can with what you have.

John Jantsch: Well and you certainly make this point fully in the book fully, but I do think a lot of people when they kind of wake up one day and say, “I have to change something externally.” They really don’t have much success, or at least they don’t stick with it until they change something internally first do they.

Petra Kolber: Yeah, I mean at the end of the day you can want whatever you want. As an entrepreneur, a small business, you can have all the right desires, but unless we’re really looking at the why, what is our driver? Are we being driven by creativity, possibility, seeing failure as just proof that we’re trying, and there’s data in the disasters. If we’re not secure in our foundation John, where we’re building it from a place of, “We are enough,” not meaning there’s not a ton of work that we still need to do to get better at certain aspects of our business, but what often happens is, we can sustain these habits, because the foundation their built on is floored. It’s from an idea of I’m not enough. I’m trying to prove something. I’m trying to prove my worth, versus how can I add worth to the people I’m trying to serve. So again, it’s just with kindness and a curiosity, just continually asking ourselves, why I’m making these choices? Why am I wanting to do this business? What is it in the end that I want to leave? Our legacy. It sounds like a little be grandiose to say, but it really is at the end of the day, don’t we all want to leave the world a little better than when we found it?

That means that we have to continuously and consistently explore our whys and our feelings, not about just the work that we do, but as we grow and evolve and also one thing to make clear is, the closer you get to doing work that really matters, the more you’re gonna struggle with this, because fear is gonna show up, because it just … To me it’s a sign that you’re doing work that you really care about, but when you can flip that wear and stop worrying about, like Seth Godin says, “To be remarkable, means you’re gonna be remarked upon, not just the good but the negative.” When we can flip the fear about what are people gonna say about me if they don’t like my work, onto I’m afraid that I don’t get my work out there and maybe that one person their life could be made easier, by me sharing what it is I believe in, then that’s work worth doing. So, but again, it’s not easy. Our brains gonna notice the negative, the critics, the behind the screen warriors, but when we can believe more in our work, than more about what people think about us, that’s when we can take action behind our dreams.

John Jantsch: So let’s end on a cynical note, shall we?

Petra Kolber: Okay.

John Jantsch: Some might say that perfection has it’s benefits.

Petra Kolber: Yeah, no, again, I mean I never said it didn’t. So that’s fully circle back. Okay. That was the imperfect end. So we’ll circle fully back. Perfect is only a word until you attach an emotion to it. I would change the word perfect, because for me and this is only … This is a personal thing. Again, this is when I’d ask your listeners to go. This might not even be an issue for you, but if the idea of being perfect, or putting out the perfect job, the perfect blog, the perfect podcast. If that stops you from executing, let’s reframe what that word means. Let’s say I’m gonna put out and excellent podcast. I reframe it from being a perfectionist to a passionist. If you can put passion behind your driver instead of perfection, you will probably work harder than you ever have worked before, but this is the area that a lot of people find tricky. If I give up the idea of being perfect, they suddenly see themselves on a couch watching, like binge watching Netflix. I actually think if you give up … I invite you to consider.

If you give up the idea of being perfect, what you think your top level of success is, is actually your mid level, because for many of us, not everyone. If we think we have to be perfect leaders, perfect bosses, we hate to say we don’t know the answer, we hate to ask for help, we have hard time delegating, we don’t give our brains time to relax and find flow and find a place of curiosity. So I often think what you think your success is now, if you eased up the breaks a little bit, not on the work, but changed your driver from fear and has to be flawless and pristine, ’cause also there’s where are you gonna learn. If somethings flawless, how the heck is it gonna get better. So I like it a little bit rough around the edges. That allows us to have iteration 2.0, 3.0, fine tune, fine tune, fine tune, ’cause I’m not sure if it becomes perfect, there’s no more room for learning, growth and expansion.

Don’t know if that answers … and I hopefully that wasn’t quite so cynical.

John Jantsch:  No, I was actually saying that you know, I could see some people saying that. Well that’s just an excuse to do sloppy work, which is what some people would say, but I would counter to that, that the perfections excuse not to ship.

Petra Kolber: Exactly, and I think there’s a different … No perfectionist I know, John. No one I’ve worked with has ever gone from being a perfectionist to being sloppy. That’s just not gonna happen, it’s not in your DNA, but you’re gonna double check your work but you’re not gonna be paralyzed, by going through it with a fine tooth comb, like you said. So you never ship. Would you rather have something slightly imperfect out in the world, or your perfect silence. So, that’s the things that often happens here. Is when we’re trying to be perfect, we often become paralyzed. So let’s just change the conversation around that.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think one of the real keys is that you have to have so much self trust in what you’re doing that when I first started writing, I was a terrible writer. I mad grammatical mistakes, really silly ones. When I started speaking I was very bad at that, but I knew that those were gonna be important elements and the only way to get good at ’em was to just do ’em.

Petra Kolber: Yeah, got to get them out. Get the feedback, get the feedforward, and again it doesn’t have to be … That’s the thing, I think … That’s the bit where we get really stuck. I’m gonna wait to do the perfect speech. I’m gonna wait to do the perfected launch. I’m gonna wait to write the perfect book and that for me Johnathan, for many years paralyzed me and now I’m like, if it’s good enough so I don’t embarrass myself, I look professional, I’ve done the work. I’ve done the preparation. I show up and it’s good enough, fantastic, and then also then I allow room for constructive feedback to get better, but then I also know, I’m not gonna be someone that shows up unprepared and if I am, then I deserve to be remarked upon, then shame on me. So I don’t think I’ve ever met a protectionist that goes from that extreme to giving out shoddy work. It’s just not gonna happen.

John Jantsch: Visiting with Petra Kolber author of the Perfection Detox. So Petra, we’re gonna have a link in the show notes to your website, but tell people if they want to learn more about what you’re doing and what you have to offer, and where they can find. You.

Petra Kolber:  Great, my traditional website is just my name petrakolber.com and then more about Perfection Detox, just perfectiondetox.com.

John Jantsch: And my great gran mother Celia McLaughlin who is indeed a Scot, thanks you for coming on the show.

Petra Kolber: Your so welcome. Thank you.

John Jantsch: Hopefully we’ll see you next time I am up and around your part of the world Petra. Great to visit with you.

Petra Kolber: Thank John.

Letting Go of Perfection in Order to Achieve Your Goals

Letting Go of Perfection in Order to Achieve Your Goals written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Petra Kolber
Podcast Transcript

Petra KolberThis week on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I speak with Petra Kolber. She is an expert in positive psychology and fitness, and she uses this unique background to help companies and individuals find joy, passion, and productivity.

With 25 years of experience in the fitness industry, Kolber has worked with the likes of Nancy Kerrigan, Dana Torres, and George Foreman. She has choreographed and starred in over 100 fitness videos, and has served as a consultant to companies like Reebok, Adidas, Gatorade, and Health Magazine. She is also a highly sought-after speaker, whose practical techniques leave audiences with the tools they need to implement positive changes in their lives.

Kolber is the author of The Perfection Detox: Tame Your Inner Critic, Live Bravely, and Unleash Your JoyKolber speaks with me about how being a perfectionist can be toxic, and shares insight into how to banish perfectionist tendencies in order to live a happier, healthier life.

Questions I ask Petra Kolber:

  • What does perfection look like?
  • What are “perfection toxins” costing us?
  • Where do you start with the perfection detox?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Why comparing your work to others’ highlight reel can paralyze you
  • How our negative biases are causing not just emotional, but also physical, harm
  • Why perfect is only a word until you attach an emotion to it

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Petra Kolber:

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How to Add Sales to Each Stage of the Customer Journey

How to Add Sales to Each Stage of the Customer Journey written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

When you think of your business’s sales strategy, you may be tempted to think of it as only relating to the actual transaction where a customer pays for the good or service you offer.

However, businesses today can’t think of their relationship with their customers as a linear one. Instead, people have the opportunity to interact with your brand in a wide variety of ways: on your website, in-person, over the phone, via email, in Google search, or on social media. And they go through different phases, from just coming to know of your product to (hopefully, eventually) being a return customer who refers others to your business. The sum of all these interactions with your brand is what we call the customer journey.

Because this journey is not a straight road, your sales team can play a role in each phase of the journey. As you think about building an hourglass that addresses marketing needs for prospects and customers at each phase, you should also consider how your sales team fits into the hourglass model. Whether someone is hearing about your brand for the first time or is making their 50th purchase, your sales team has something to offer them.

We’ll take a look at the stages a customer goes through on their journey of interacting with a brand, and how sales can play a role in each phase.

Getting to Know You

When someone is just encountering a brand for the first time, you have a tremendous opportunity but also a great responsibility. They know nothing about your business, so it’s up to you to create a cohesive image that quickly, easily, and clearly communicates who you are, what you do, and why you do it better than anyone else in the game.

These early stages of brand discovery—the know and like phases of the hourglass—are often thought of as the territory of the marketing team. Creating advertising campaigns, compelling calls to action, and social media profiles fall under their purview, but sales has a role to play even this early on in the customer journey.

Outbound marketing efforts may well include your sales team. If you undertake telemarketing or cold calling, have a booth at a trade show, or have a giveaway of branded items at a community event, these are opportunities for your sales team to be the first point of contact with prospects.

While outbound marketing techniques have become less popular in recent years, if it’s done correctly, it can help you to create positive associations with your brand in the minds of prospects. The key here is in making sure that you have a sales team that’s comfortable with having a conversation that touches on the important differentiators for your brand, but at the same time doesn’t feel scripted. With the right sales team in place, it’s possible to create positive personal connections with prospects immediately, and that really allows you to stand out from your competition that’s relying solely on inbound techniques.

Coming to Trust You

A recent survey from Wantedness.com found that, in the U.S., 79 percent of consumers said they would only do business with brands that show they understand and care about “me.”

The trust and try areas of the hourglass are where there’s the greatest crossover between your marketing and sales teams, and so they should be working in tandem to create that highly personalized approach. In order to be most effective, they need to have access to each other’s information: sales needs to share their CRM data, while marketing should provide a window into their analytics.

While some prospects will react well to personalized email campaigns and targeted paid advertising on Facebook, all managed by the marketing team, others will need a bit more hand-holding from someone in sales.

Having a call to action button on your website that makes it easy for prospects to request a demo and get in touch with a member of your sales team can help funnel those prospects that need a little extra attention to the appropriate salesperson. Additionally, creating a shared inbox for your marketing and sales teams will allow your marketing folks to easily hand off prospects that would like more, detailed information to the sales team.

The Moment of Truth: The Purchase

This is what the sales team has been waiting for. After playing a role in introducing prospects to the brand and being responsive to their questions in the trust and try phases, the prospect is finally ready to convert.

Of course, the buying phase of the customer journey where the sales team plays the most obvious role. It’s also a point that some business owners take for granted. Just because someone has become a customer does not mean they can now be forgotten.

As Joey Coleman and I discussed in a podcast episode, creating a standout customer experience is an important part of taking people from one-time customer to repeat client. The sales team needs to make sure that the first time someone buys from you, they have an optimized experience. That means automated updates on their purchase, an easy way to get in touch if there’s an issue, and a proactive approach from you.

If your sales team is able to provide a stellar experience for a customer’s first time buying from your company, they’re a lot more likely to come back again. The trick here, of course, is that the stellar experience needs to be repeated on each subsequent interaction. Your sales team can never take a customer for granted, because if they do, that customer will eventually drift away to a competitor.

Part of the trick here is to establish crystal clear processes for your sales team’s interactions with customers. Make sure you have a customer service platform in place to ensure that any issues are being addressed in a timely manner and that efforts are not being duplicated (which wastes your team’s time and frustrates and confuses your customer). Consider a platform like ZenDesk, which allows you to track customer support requests across channels.

Building a Referral Engine

The final stage of the hourglass gives your customers the opportunity to generate new leads for you. When you empower your sales team to effectively generate referrals, you can build an engine that fuels your business growth for years to come.

Encourage your sales team to be proactive about gathering referrals. If they have a positive interaction with a customer, have a formalized process in place for getting a written review from that person.

Customers will also be more likely to refer you if you remain top of mind. Your sales team should be using a customer data platform to track interactions with customers. If you haven’t spoken to one in a while, have your sales team reach out. A personalized email or phone call might not only bring them back to make another purchase themselves, it will also position you to be the business they recommend later in the week when their friend happens to ask if they know a company that does exactly what you do.

If you think of your sales team as a group that only springs into action the moment someone wants to make a purchase, you’re missing out on the enormous potential that they have to support your business throughout the customer journey. When deployed correctly, your sales team can be by your customers’ sides each step of the way, which only serves to strengthen their relationship with your brand and makes them more likely to establish long-term connections with your business.