The 5 Secrets of Success in the New Tangible World of Business. In this week’s show I deep and discusses my top five takeaways & personal insights from the past Relationship Marketing Weekly Shows.
Regardless if you’re a business owner or not, you will love this edition of Relationship Marketing Weekly!
Kody Bateman: Hey everybody. This is Kody Bateman. Welcome to our Relationship Marketing Weekly Show. I’m really, really excited to share some fun things with you today. We’ve had some great shows over the last eight, nine, ten weeks. Incredible guests, incredible people on here sharing with us just titbits of how they’ve been successful running their business and how they’ve used relationship marketing as a way for them to separate themselves from their competitors, to be the best that they can be in their respective professions and I will tell you. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve taken copious notes. I’ve got folders full of notes. In fact, I got notes right here.
What we’re going to do today is I want to talk to you all about – I’m going to do five takeaways. There are five key takeaways from past Relationship Marketing Weekly shows and the copywriters that promote all this stuff, they turn that into a headline that says “Five Secrets of Success in the New Tangible World of Business” and that really does fit what we’re talking about.
Again, let me say that headline again, Five Secrets of Success in the New Tangible World of Business. That says a lot because we are in the new world of business. We’re in a huge digital world of business. But it’s kind of referring back to a tangible world where we got to do more than just digital communication to reach out to our client base and our customer base.
So I’m going to go ahead and get started with this and jump right in. Again, welcome to the show. I’ve got people that are posting in here from all over the world today. So I just want to welcome everybody. I’ve got people here from Australian, from New Zealand, from the United States of course, from Canada, from Mexico. We have people from all over the place that are tuning in today. So I’m going to jump right in. I want to talk to you about the five key takeaways or five secrets of success coming from our past shows.
Here’s what I want you to do. I need you to get a yellow pad of paper and you will notice – listen, this isn’t going to be any crazy – like I don’t have PowerPoints. This is not a formal show. This is a simple brass tacks, get down in the trenches kind of stuff. This is just an informal communication and discussion with me. So also what I want you to do, rather than focus on keynotes – so just grab a yellow pad of paper, so you can take some notes. I’m just going to – do you see this? These are notes that I’ve taken by reviewing some of these past shows. There are five key takeaways. So what I would like you to do is just have a pad and paper available and let’s just jump in. Let’s go to number one.
Number one is called the “three-legged stool”. The three-legged stool. This is the first secret of success in the new tangible world of business. It’s called the “three-legged stool”. This actually came from Andre Perdue. He’s the Manager of Red Rock Collision out of Arizona. So this was really powerful when he shared this with us. He has a philosophy in his business called the “three-legged stool”. The three-legged stool represents this. Leg number one is great service. Number two is communication and number three is appreciation.
So what he’s saying is that any business that you’re going to – keep in mind. He’s in the collision business. So you go in and you get your car fixed with him. What he’s saying is that first and foremost, he has to deliver impeccable service, great, great service.
Number two – and he’s saying all three of these things are equally important. Number two is you’ve got to communicate. How many of you go in to repair shops or different places, service-oriented companies, and the biggest problem is there’s just not enough communication. There’s a breakdown of communication. You don’t fully understand what you’re getting into or what the price is, whatever. So what Andre is saying is communication is huge. You got to spend the time massively communicating to your customer about your service, what they can expect, what they can do. So great service is number one. Communication, making sure you communicate very properly, number two. The third one is appreciation and appreciation being equally as important.
So basically what you say is I’m going to provide the best service in the world. I’m going to communicate like there’s no tomorrow. Man, I’m going to communicate six ways until Sunday. I’m going to follow up with emails. I’m going to do all kinds of stuff to make sure you know exactly what the process is and then by golly, I’m going to appreciate you. I’m going to send out a card and a gift and different things to share with you appreciation. I’m not just going to share appreciation digitally. I may send an email and say thank you. But I got to follow up with a tangible touch. I got to follow up with a tangible touch. That thank-you greeting card in the mail, perhaps a gift attached to it in the mail, really solidifies the three-legged stool. It doesn’t work unless you do all three.
Impeccable service, incredible communication and then tangible appreciation on the backend. We can stop the show right now guys because that alone can really catapult your business to the next level. Let’s go to number two though.
So number one, three-legged stool. Number two, number two is staying top of mind with tangible touches. Staying top of mind with tangible touches. Now this basically came from pretty much every – every guest that we had talked about this. There are kind of two areas where people talk about staying top of mind with tangible touches. Typically a tangible touch is a greeting card in the mail. It might have a gift attached to it that goes in the email. Keep in mind a greeting card is 11 times more likely to be opened than any other piece of mail. A hundred percent of those touches are going to get opened and they’re going to feel appreciated.
So the power of the greeting card is really, really important. Two areas. Real greeting cards and gifts in the mail. There are two different areas that I know of. In fact, one guy, Paul Rising, he’s a custom home builder and also Gayle Zientek. Both of their stories kind of talked about this.
They send out greeting cards in two different ways. The first way is they send “thank you” and “stay in touch” cards to their clients. That’s kind of an obvious. You follow up and say thank you after they do business with you or you follow up and just stay in touch with somebody. That’s the easy one.
The second one, both of these guys do, both Gayle Zientek and Paul Rising. Gayle is in real estate. Paul is a home builder. Both of them do this strategy which is really cool. They have cards. They send cards to celebrate people in their community. So they watch what’s going on in their community. Paul tells a story about somebody that got a real estate award in his community and he just sent out a congratulations card.
Gayle Zientek went to a networking and there was a cook-off and there was a guy that won the cook-off contest. She didn’t know who he was. She simply sent a congratulations card to him for winning the cook-off and then had her information at the bottom of the card.
This card – cards to celebrate people in your community is huge. I highly encourage you to reach out to people in your community like this. So stay top of mind with tangible touches. Follow up with your clients and celebrate people in your community and it’s just amazing what will happen if you do that.
Let’s go on to number three, the third one. Thanking people through the process. I love this, thanking them through the process. Again, I’m going to go back to Paul Rising from Tara Custom Homes. He talked a lot about this. He has a remodel division. So in the remodel division, he goes out and he gives bids and stuff to remodel people’s homes.
One of the things he talks about adamantly is that, “I thank people through the process.” So when he goes and gets a big, he does not have their business yet. He doesn’t have the job, may never receive a dime from those people. But he always sends them a thank-you card for giving him the time and the opportunity to place a big. That’s what he calls thanking through the process. So he does it then.
Then he thanks them for choosing them. So now they choose him as a client or they choose him as a service provider. He’s going to come in and remodel their home. He then sends another thank-you card. Thank you for choosing me. I look forward to working with you. I’m going to do the best job for you kind of thing. Then of course when the job is complete, he thanks them again and sends a box of brownies. This is thanking people through the process.
So think about it in your own line of work. I don’t care what business you’re in. There’s a process that you go through. You cannot thank people enough. You just can’t. I mean people do give you their time and you need to thank people and be appreciative all the way through the process, whether you get their business or not. So I think that’s a really, really good one.
So let me recap. Number one, three-legged stool. Number two, staying top of mind with tangible touches. Number three, thanking people through the process. Let’s go on to the fourth one.
The fourth one is your business is about taking care of people. I want to pause for effect there. Your business is about taking care of people. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. Everybody, all of us, our business is about taking care of people. In fact, your business is what you do. It’s the service that you provide.
So the business you’re in is what you do. Taking care of people is who you are. OK? Business is what you do. Taking care of people is who you are. The better you’re at, at taking care of people, the better your business is going to be obviously. So if you get up every morning and you decide, “I am about taking care of people that are in my life,” your business puts you in front of people. That’s the opportunity you have every day to take care of somebody.
So the business that you do is what is – is what you do and taking care of people is who you are. Tom Lambert talks about this. Tom Lambert is from Shadetree Automotive. He has a little quote that he says. He says, “We don’t just fix cars. We take care of people,” and everybody in his shop knows that. They all know that philosophy. We don’t just fix cars. We take care of people and that makes a big difference. He’s the guy that when you go in to the automotive shop, he has freshly-backed cookies waiting for you. There’s the aroma of cookies in the air and he provides that. So he is all about taking care of people and fixing cars is just a by-product of that.
So pretty cool stuff. So your business is about taking care of people. We’re going to finish up now with the fifth one. See how informal I am. I’m just going right off my notes and hopefully you’re writing these notes down here. I could send this to you. But I want you to write it down. Writing, listening and writing really helps you to retain and these are five key gold nuggets. They’re really going to help you in your business.
So the fifth one is be intentional about relationships. Man, I love this. Be intentional about relationships. Beyond Wynn is a real estate investor. He was on a couple of weeks ago and he really honed in on this. It’s the importance of being intentional about relationships.
It’s funny. I posted this thing on Facebook the other day. I talked about if you had a choice between chasing money or chasing relationships, which would you choose? Most people got that but a lot of people got caught up in me using the word “chase” and so they made it about, well, I don’t chase it. They got all philosophical on me and thank you for that. I appreciate that, everybody. But the point is, is if you – if you could only focus on one thing, relationships or money, which would it be and why? There were some incredible responses to that by the way. In fact, that actually came from Beyond Wynn because his literal quote when I interviewed him was, if you have to make a decision between chasing money or chasing relationships, he would chase relationships all the time.
He went through a monumental shift. When he talks about being intentional with relationships, being intentional about relationships, he went through a period of time where business was about business. It was about making money. It was all about making money. What can I do to make more money? About 10 years into his business, he transformed into becoming a relationship person.
So whether you like the word “chasing” or not or focusing on or pursuing – let’s say pursuing. If you have to make a decision about pursuing money or pursuing relationships, which is it going to be? Don’t give me this stuff about how if you pursue somebody, they run away from you.
Listen, if you want relationships, you got to be in the mindset of pursuing relationships. Get yourself out there. Talk to people. Be nice to people. Look people in the eye. Be kind to people every day. Be in it for the relationship only, not for the business that may follow. Be about people. That’s what Beyond Wynn was saying is be intentional about your relationships. Truly caring about another human being every single day of your life. That just has to become part of you. It has to become a practice that you do all the time, whether you’re doing your business or not.
That way, it naturally flows into your business when you’re doing business. It’s that you’re being intentional about relationships and people feel that. People don’t buy your product. They don’t buy your service. They buy you and so if you’re intentional about your relationships, people are going to feel that. They’re going to know that you really truly care about them.
So those are the five key takeaways over the past several weeks, the three-legged stool, staying on top of mind with tangible touches, thanking people through the entire process that you have. Your business is about taking care of people and be intentional about relationships. Those are really, really powerful things.
If you implement those five things in any business that you do, you will have great success. I’m excited about doing these relationship marketing shows. I’m learning a lot. I’m learning a lot from the people that come on these shows. I am so proud and honored to be a part of this, to be able to be in an interviewer of incredible businesspeople that have amazing knowledge to do amazing things.
So I hope you stay tuned. We’re going to keep on doing this stuff. In fact next week, I’ve got Laurie Delk. She’s a web designer and marketing consultant out of Tennessee and she’s going to be in here talking about online and offline relationship marketing strategies.
This lady, she has been doing this for about 13 years now. She’s a true pro. She’s as pro as pro gets in relationship marketing principles. You’re going to learn a lot from Laurie Delk. In fact, she just wrote a new book that’s coming out called We All Have Choices. I can’t wait to get that book.
Tune in next week so that you can see Laurie as our guest and I look forward to have you. I want you all to remember a couple of things. We do this to help you with your business, yes. But we do it for a bigger reason than that.
We really believe that through kindness, we can change the world. We really believe that we can bring the human race together and do it by being kind to people.
Most people have businesses they need to run, bills they have to pay and most of the time that you spend in your life is dealing with your business. So we do relationship marketing and teach you how to be nice to people in your business because you spend most of your time in your business.
If we can accomplish that, you’re going to be nice to people everywhere. You’re going to be nice to people at any place that you go. That’s the key, my friends. I believe, truly believe that with systems that we have in place, we have a company called SendOutCards that has a great system that helps you. By, you know, just a smartphone you can send out a real greeting card to somebody, add a pitch and put in a message at it, gift if you want. Super easy. You can even schedule things to go out in the future.
These things are important. It’s important that you reach out and appreciate people every single day of your life. We are bringing the human race together through kindness my friends. That’s what this whole thing is all about and I’m looking forward to seeing all of you next week. Take care everybody. God bless and we will see you next time.
