In this week’s Relationship Marketing Weekly, I am LIVE from Cancun Mexico from a Relationship Marketing Mastermind. I interview three professionals from the Real Estate industry, the HR industry about Employee Acquisition and Retention, and the catering industry from an executive chef with a high-end catering business. Three amazing stories about incorporating a cost effective Relationship Marketing Strategy in their businesses!
Kody: Hey everybody! This is Kody Bateman live from Cancun, Mexico.
Kody: You are open here to join us. If you come on, say hello to us. Give us your comments so we can see where you’re sending your comments from. We’re excited here. We’re doing a relationship marketing mastermind here in Cancun. And what’s cool about today is that we have a room full of master relationship marketers. We’re all in the room today so we literally can do.
So now, we have three featured stories today that we’re going to do and they’re incredible incredible stories. But I’ll tell you, we could spend all day long because this entire room is filled with stories of how these people use their relationship marketing to further their business. We kind of know what we’re talking about. We know over the years.
See, we are the tangible touch people. A lot of people in business today, they’re doing a lot of digital stuff. They’ll send an email and posting and doing this. The whole world is doing that while we’re going tangible. We’re teaching people to go tangible. What that means is get something physical in somebody’s hands to say thank you. Make sure that you send a real greeting card with a real gift, with a real message, with a real picture inside of that card to genuinely say thank you to somebody. That’s just one many tactics that we use and that we teach.
And I’ll tell you, it’s a movement. It’s a movement that we’re doing. So we’re going to jump right in here. We’re going to feature some stories here today, three very unique, different types of business and how they use our relationship marketing system for their business.
Our first guest, Chip Barco. Chip, you’re based out of where?
Chip: Toronto.
Kody: Toronto, Canada. Chip Barco, he’s in a real estate business. Now Chip, we were visiting just a little while ago and you shared a really cool story with me. And what I love about your story is how simple it is. You did something very, very simple and it turned into an enormous benefit in your real estate business. Rather than asking more questions, do you want to share that story with us?
Chip: Sure. I’d be glad to. Last year in early April, we had a client . So it’s closed on winter. And our neighbor across the water, I say neighbors loosely because I live in that vicinity twice in two years face to face, called and said, “Your cottage door is wide open. I hate to be a nosy neighbor but …” And I said, “Were broken into? Was it open all winter?” And so, she agreed to go over and check it out. She called me back and said, “Everything is fine. We decided – the handyman left the door open so all is well.”
So I did have some pictures of the lake and sent her a thank you card, “Thank you for being a good neighbor and enjoy the brownies.” I included little brownies.
I was sharing this story with someone and they said, “Well, how much does that cost?” I say, “About $10.” He said, “Well, I can’t spend $10.” I said, “No, no, no. It was to thank her. She really did me a favor. It was a genuine thank you.
About six months later, she called me and said, “My neighbor’s house just sold. Can you tell me what it sold for?” And I said absolutely. So I called her back and said – told her the price and she said, “Oh, I think you better come and talk to my husband and me. I think it’s time for us to sell.”
So, when they sell – their house was listed for about $4 million and they went and bought it for $3 million. So that $10 card and brownies will be about $155,000 commission.
Kody: So I want to make sure that everybody got that straight. So first of all, when you – you took a real-life situation like if you’re trying to be this lady’s real estate agent.
Chip: No, no, no.
Kody: And you simply – she did something nice for you and so in return, you sent something nice to her.
Chip: That’s right.
Kody: A real greeting card with a real box of brownies, really good brownies. All right? And you’ve sent that to her. Now, did you expect her to call you?
Chip: No. She did. She called me and said, “You didn’t have to do that.” I said, “Well, sometimes it’s important to do things you don’t have to do.”
Kody: So as a result, several months later, it turned in – she turned into a customer. Why? Because what you send out is what you get back. And all you did was if people want to be – feel appreciated. People want to know that you care about them.
I’m telling you, the power – you can say, the power of the thank you card and brownies is incredibly powerful. Part of the hardest concept to teach is that people in business always want to know, “What am I going to get out of this?” And what we try to teach is don’t focus on that. Focus on what you can give, which is what you did. You just focus every day of your life on what you can give to somebody. The getting back takes care of itself. And it’s so hard, isn’t it? It’s hard for people to comprehend that. “What’s my return on investment?” You always hear all the time.
And sometimes we can’t quantify return on investment but the results are incredible. $150,000 commission, so you’re buying the steaks tonight?
Chip: No.
Kody: Let’s jump to the next story real quick. So this is a unique story here. Dean Gialamas, now Dean got a unique story. Dean, you’re in government services. So this guy is in government services. You’re one of those big wig guys. Like he’s responsible for 18,000 employees recruiting and I’m sure once you recruit, you like to kind of keep those people around, right? So that’s 18,000. I can’t even comprehend being responsible for 18,000 employees.
And we were talking a little bit earlier today. You were talking about how you use this system. We always talk about using our system to indirectly generate sales. You told a story about how he used it to generate recruitment and retention of employees, which is – that’s a big deal. A lot of people use that. Can you share with us what you do?
Dean: Yeah, happy to. Thanks, Kody. So I work for a law enforcement agency that has 18,000 employees. I have 1,300 people in my command or area. And I actually find a tremendous value in using the power of the written word in a heartfelt card with gifts that just create amazing relationships with our employees.
And when you look at business budgets, most of their budgets are spent on employees. So you want to keep your employees happy. You want to keep them engaged. You want to keep them excited about being there.
What’s amazing is that power of the written word, I can go into offices of employees of four and five years later and they still have the card I sent them four or five years ago sitting on their desk. And when I ask them, “Why do you still have that?” And they say things like, “No one has ever done this before. No one appreciated me like this.”
And in a market, certainly like technology areas for us in Los Angeles, that’s where I’m from, we have a 0.1% unemployment rate in technology.
Kody: Wow!
Dean: So how does government service which pays less than the market today compete in that environment? This is the tool we use. And I have people who when I put out a posting, a recruitment, my last recruitment in the technology area, we had five vacancies, I had 430 applicants to choose from. And it’s because of the power that the word gets out how people are treated and how they are appreciated.
Kody: Wow
Kody: It’s so cool to hear real stories about real people are doing with this system to generate business. And it’s really cool. Obviously, I own a technology company so I know what it’s like to have a need because the technology environment, it is highly, highly competitive. I mean it’s definitely a seller’s market in the technology area because you hire somebody and they are getting resumes a month or they’re getting ten offers a month, “Hey, come interview with us. We’ll pay you more,” kind of stuff. And I’m sure you deal with that. But by simply helping them feel appreciated, they stick around, don’t they?
Dean: Yeah.
Kody: Just incredible, incredible stuff. What you send out is what you get. Yes. Very simple stuff. OK. We’re going to go on to this really unique real estate government service. Now, we’re going to go on – now, we want to talk about a unique business, high-end catering, high-end catering.
So this is like, you call it – by the way, this is Jeremy. Say hi to Jeremy, everybody. So Jeremy, he’s kind of – well, not kind of, he is like a big wing in his arena, in the catering business like he’s a who’s who type of guy. So if you go to New York into a restaurant and they hear that Jeremy is there and everybody knows who Jeremy is.
So you’ve had great success in as a chef. Your background is being a chef. And you turned that into a business where you have a high-end catering business. You call it catering market …
Jeremy: High-end catering business.
Kody: So tell us a little bit – just tell us a little bit about the business before we go in there because it’s such a unique type of business and what type of clients you have.
Jeremy: Well, I started the business six to seven years ago when my wife, Jules, and I moved from New York to Sarasota in the Gulf Coast of Florida. I’ve been living and working in London and New York as a chef for about 15 years working in top restaurants in both cities.
And when I came down to Sarasota, I was looking for a niche business. And there are many, many wealthy people who live there who have a high net worth. And so, instead of just starting a catering company where we did all types of varieties of catering, I decided to just enter a niche market that do higher concierge stuff catering.
And in our first year, we essentially do no marketing whatsoever apart from relationship marketing where we send potential clients cards and gifts and thank them for using our services by sending cards and gifts.
In our first year, we did 65 events. Our largest grossing week was $15,000. Seven years later, over the whole year, last year we did 364 events and our largest grossing week was $200,000.
Kody: Wow!
Jeremy: … by sending cards and gifts to thank people for using our services. And once you start doing this sort of thing, the people who you are doing business with become very generous about the way that they refer you to other people. So they become – it’s a perpetual cycle like this.So we built our business on the background of doing exactly that and that only. Nothing. You will not find our business in magazines. You will not find our business on TV. Nothing. We are not visible to the general public like that.
So we built our business on the background of doing exactly that and that only. Nothing. You will not find our business in magazines. You will not find our business on TV. Nothing. We are not visible to the general public like that.
And so, that’s how we’ve grown our business and it’s amazing. It’s obviously fantastic. I come from the UK. I moved to America. But being an entrepreneur here is like the best in the world and the opportunity and people’s attitudes to business is totally. And this is just a prime example of something that is absolutely fantastic and amazing if you’re a business and you’re an entrepreneur to use this. It’s groundbreaking.
Kody: Wow!
Kody: I think we’ve got to make sure we summarize this really quickly. So the only thing you do is send out the real greeting cards and gifts as a token of gratitude and thanksgiving to them. And then you referral business comes in. So you said in the first year, you did 30 …
Jeremy: About 65 events, about 60, 65 events.
Kody: And then that grew seven years later to …
Jeremy: We did about 365 events this past year.
Kody: And your entire marketing efforts came from the relationship marketing.
Jeremy: Relationship marketing. We use it also as the first point of contact. So if somebody shows some interest to us or let’s an event point of contact says, “We want to introduce you to someone,” the first thing we’ll do is we’ll send them a card and a gift and say, “We’re here.” Because there are so many – I mean we have text. We have email. We have these things. But there’s nothing like somebody receiving something hard in the mail with a gift.
I mean last year alone, we were introduced to the highest paid CEO of top 500 company on the Gulf Coast of Florida, he is paid every with $40 million. That’s what he makes. And we were introduced to him. I had a short call with his fiancée and I sent him a card straight away to his office. And on the back end of that, we did the whole wedding weekend and it was $150,000 worth of business.
And they said the kicker for him was the personalized side of that fact that they received a card and a gift from us. I mean hopefully, the food was good.
Jeremy: Well, we sent them brownies and that’s the quality of it.
Jeremy: Your brownies are great. I don’t want to get into the technology space.
Kody: Thank you. I appreciate that. All right. So there you have it live from Cancun, Mexico, everybody. This is relationship marketing at its very best. We’re talking – we’re on the cusp of about 170 million cards sent over 10 million gifts sent over the last several years, mostly with businesses following up the clients to work. We got stories like this from literally every industry that you can imagine. Stories like this all over the world, we’re going to keep them coming your way.
So thanks everyone. You all want to say goodbye.
