Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies, exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson.
Lee:
Hi, and welcome to episode number 95 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show, we have Frank Candy. Now, Frank does so much that I’m actually going to let him introduce himself shortly. But just know that this guy is a man of many talents. He’s a speaker, he’s an author, and he’s one of my really, really close friends. Now, if you weren’t aware, we as a family decided to do a two month trip out in Florida, where we wanted to see what life was like, we wanted to make some time for each other and make some time to meet new people and make some friends. And Frank was one of those people. He’s going to tell you how we met and then go on to share with us some of his thoughts on the tuned in service provider. So this is going to be an episode where I can sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. And I hope you do too. We’ll see you on the side.
Frank:
We met at the WordPress meetup. It was a discussion about design and it evolved around how do we find and keep good clients. And Lee came to me and said, Hey, you know, I’d love to have you be on my podcast. I said, sure, man, I’ll do it for you. So he told me about his audience and you good people listening sound like wonderful people. So I’m here to give you as much value and understanding about how to make money in the marketplace as humanly possible. So a little bit about me quickly. I was formerly with Walt Disney World Imagineering, Harley Davidson, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, America’s largest railroad. And I’ve had the privilege of doing some pretty cool stuff with NASA, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Bank of America, and many, many other clients. I’ve authored 19 books, plus ghost wrote several more and I’m an Olympic gold medalist. And I believe that the same principles of winning in sports and business include focus, excellence, preparation, determination, and the never give up attitude of a winner. With that said, we’re going to jump right into what is the tuned in service provider. Lee, as we get started here, I’d like to ask our listeners to tune in to this point. Sometimes I use the words clients or customers interchangeably. I would like your listeners to tune into this in this idea. It’s whoever gives you money for your services. Doesn’t matter to me what you call them. There are no customers at Walt Disney World. Everybody is a guest. There are no employees at Walt Disney World. Everybody is a cast member. So these are titles and, and I want you to just remember we’re putting labels on certain things. So if you hear me use the word customer client, essentially I’m referring to the same thing. So let’s talk about this analogy of being tuned in. Many of you might be old enough to remember having a radio with a dial on it, an AM FM radio, and trying to tune in a station. And that ultimately is what we’re trying to do here is how do you tune in to what’s really important to the people who have the potential to give you money, or perhaps are already giving you money. Executives understand the value of being market-driven and pragmatic marketing for business success. So by applying the ideas, strategies, tips, and suggestions I’m going to offer you, you can be more profitable, more productive, but more importantly, happier.
Now I want to, my desire in doing this is to inspire all of you to look at things in your life, different things like TV ads and display ads and banner ads, billboards, advertisements on the street. Plus look at customer service differently, look at products differently, and ultimately look at yourself and what you offered to the marketplace differently so that you can be more productive and more profitable.
I’m going to challenge you to ask the important questions of your clients. I am being asked to provide my clients solutions. So when they contact me, once we establish a rapport, I’m looking for ways to connect with them on a human and emotional level.
I had a call this morning from a lovely lady in the States who was looking for a professional speaker for an event they are planning in 2018. So we’re about nine months out for this event, which is rare because usually people call up and they’re about nine days out. So I first complimented her on being so strategic in her long range planning. And we then entered into a conversation about how important it is to do things in a timely manner. Rapport was established. We both determined we were consummate professionals without having to say it.
Then we entered into a discussion about their event. And I asked her the first question. If you don’t have a pencil or pen or something to write stuff down, I suggest you get that now. We’ll give you a moment to get that done.
Voila. You have your pen and pencil. Let’s go. The first question is, what do you want? Ask the question and then don’t say anything else. Wait for them to respond. Silence is very valuable. If you ask them, what do they want? Chances are they have to think about it. Now I’m going to give you an additional question. I wasn’t planning on offering this, but I’m going to give you this additional question. This is a little bonus for you.
You can say, what do you want? And how do you want it? Now I’ve had people say, well, you know, I’m not really sure. Or I don’t know. Say, then say, well, I know you don’t know, but if you did know, what would you say? It’s amazing to me how all of a sudden the floodgate of ideas and thoughts just come rolling out of their mouth. So what do you want? Next question is, what do you want and how do you want it? And the next one is, if they say, what do you want?
If they say, well, I’m not sure. I don’t know. I know you don’t know, but if you did know, what would you say?
Lee:
Why do you think as well that people actually are able to release kind of all of those floods of ideas when you say, if you did know, because clearly they must know. And yet by you saying something, it’s just unleashed a torrent of ideas and words, et cetera.
Frank:
I think there’s a gate in their brain that the gate just opens up. My recommendation to our listeners is try it and see how well it can work for you. Next one. Next question. Say to them, and you’re interviewing your client. And in these interviews, when you’re not your client, your prospect. So let’s, let’s identify that.
Client is already somebody that you’re connected with. They’re giving you money. You’re doing projects for them. Prospect is you’re trying to bring them in. In one of my books called pipeline marketing, which isn’t available in the marketplace right now, because I’m rewriting it. Because when I wrote it, it was so long ago. It was the eighties. So marketing has completely changed. And I rewrote it in the nineties and put it out as a PDF and I’m rewriting it now for actually the fourth time because it changed originally from when I wrote it. And then the internet came along and then more stuff came along like internet 2.0 and then social media came along. So it’s being rewritten again, but in the book pipeline marketing, I just want to go back to this for a moment. Imagine if you would a pipe line.
What you’re trying to do at the top of the pipeline is a funnel. You’ve all probably seen the marketing funnel. So you’re using different methods to get people into the funnel. The funnel narrows down to a pipe. At this point, you want to make sure that your funnel is working well, that you have new prospects in the prospect pipe. And you have a system for evaluating those prospects to determine if what you have to offer would be valuable to them. One and two, are their values compatible with yours? So that you would enjoy providing them your valuable service. Because if your values and their values are not compatible, then you’re not going to have a client.
You’re going to have a headache. You’re going to have a problem. You’re going to, you’re going to all of a sudden say, Oh my gosh, what happened? I think there’s a train in the tunnel and it’s coming at me.
And we’re all going to have a problem. So you want to have a problem. So you want to have a problem. So you want to make sure that you’re getting on the train that’s going to a happy place and not getting on the train from hell. By doing this, by interviewing your prospects, you can say to them, next question, write this down.
What do you do well? And then be quiet. Just wait for them to answer it. This will be very, very revealing. What do you do well? And determine if what they have to offer is something that you have relevant and valuable experience with. Because if you do, then you have a lot to draw on. You have a lot to connect with. You have ways to make them look good, make them happy, make them money. Your job, ultimately, you have to identify to them, look, I’m not here to take money out of your pocket. I’m here to put money in your pocket. If our relationship is not profitable, then we shouldn’t be doing it. Then the next question is, what are you looking for? And then, again, be quiet and listen. Another question you might ask them is, have you interviewed other service providers like myself for this project? And if they give you a one-word answer like yes or no, then hopefully it’s the second one, no. But if they say, yes, I have, say, well, how am I doing so far? It’s okay to ask that. Feedback is the breakfast of champions. So your three questions, what do you want? What do you do well? What are you looking for? Will be very revealing.
There’s something else that I like to do when I’m going to meet with someone. And whether we meet online, because I’d probably say 80% of my customers or clients, because almost everything I do is B2B. Most of them, I have not met, more than 80% of them, I have never met in person. I’ve talked to them on the phone. We’ve had wonderful conversations. I’ve encouraged phone calls using GoToMeeting, Skype, Zoom.us, and other services. I like doing those. I’m set up in my home office with different backgrounds, depending upon who I’m going to be speaking with, what I might consider using. And so it’s important for you to be able to know how to use those systems if that’s important to your business operation.
The other thing I like to ask them for, and don’t think you can demand this and don’t become aggressive in asking for it because some people are very concerned about the proprietary nature of it, but you could ask to see their business plan. And the way you say it is, how does this fit into the services you’re asking me to provide? How does this fit into your business plan? Now, a good business plan, I’m going to go over real quickly for our listeners, Lee, what would be in a good business plan? It’s 12 points. You might want to write these down. I’ve got a much bigger outline of it. If you’d like a copy of it, just let me know. I’ll be happy to email you a free copy of it.
The history of the business, and that would be existing businesses only. The manner of operation, type of business, industry, day-to-day functions. Number three is management and employees. Number four is the market. Number five is the market strategy. Number six is projections. That would be projections for income, cash flow, et cetera. Let me back up to number five, marketing strategy. That would include brand development and strategy and platform position, branding and marketing plans, pricing strategy, advertising strategy, public relations and promotion strategy, sales strategy, internet strategy, web 2.0 and social media strategy, and customer service strategy, and referral program strategy. So next one, as I said before, number six projections. Number seven would be location analysis. If they have a brick and mortar store, this is important. If not, then it’s not relevant. Number eight would be competition. Number nine would be future plans and strategic plans. Number 10 would be their financial condition. Again, a lot of people are pretty cautious about just pulling out their P and L statements from the last 12 months and showing you their balance sheets for the last five years and their accounts receivable, so don’t get pushy on this early on in the relationship. The next one is the human resources plan. And the last one, number 12 is the strategic plan. And so if they’re going, if they don’t have a business plan and they’re talking to you about doing business, if they have compatible values and you can offer them something and they say, I don’t have the plan yet, but I’m working on it now. That’s great. If they, him and haunt, well, you know, business plan. I don’t have a business plan. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know what you have. If you don’t have a business plan, this is what you got the train coming at you and it ain’t going to be pretty. So, so look, you want to make sure that the people you’re working with have a vision for their future. If they don’t, they might be stinking, filthy rich. And that’s really good for you. I’ve done a lot of this kind of planning and discussions and speeches for people in the league.
And they’ve hired me as a legal industry. And they’ve hired me as a consultant to advise them on building and developing their practice. And the one thing I’ve said to them is look for individuals who are really rich and always in trouble. That’s like a perfect client for a lawyer. I’ll let you guys do the analysis on that after we hang up, but you, you got the idea. So having a good plan, being tuned into the customer wants and needs and being able to offer them a clear understanding about what you offer. So usually I will require 15 to 20 minutes of asking a person, a prospect, what do you want? What do you do? Well, what are you looking for? And analyzing their answers. I don’t ask for the business plan flat out. Unless there are a few times when I have, because I realized this conversation is not going to go very far and I’d like to end the call quickly. So I say to them, tell me about your business plan. I don’t have one. Well, you know, probably the best thing for you to do is to develop a business plan. That’s a service I offer. I’ll let you know in advance. It’s not an inexpensive service. It’s actually a costly service. And there are other people who will do it for much less than me. And you get what you pay for.
So I highly recommend that you shop that around and you’re welcome to come back to me for a bit if you’d like it. So after I’ve talked with them for a short time, I’m then able to provide for them the answers to the following questions. This is what I’m going to do for you. This is how long it will take. These are the variables and this is how much you could expect to pay. And I usually break those down because I don’t want to shock them by saying your website project sounds like a $25,000 project. They’re going to go without usually say is I can see this going in several phases. Overall, the end bottom line, I’m not sure. It’s probably going to be over $20,000. If you’re uncomfortable with that number or that really shocks you, I can appreciate that. There are people who will do much less for less money. And I highly recommend that you seek out other people and get bids and compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Is that fair? And I’ll go, well, yeah.
See, so many people are in their minds. So many service providers, like all of you listening to this podcast, believe that price cost money is a really important factor to a person thinking about hiring your services. When indeed what they really care about is can you deliver the product and the results I want with the quality I expect and the timeline I need. If you can do that, if you can say to them, I understand that you’re looking for this ad campaign. The ad campaign you described has these components. Are we both on the same page so far, Mr. Prospect or Miss Prospect? And I say, yes, yes. Very good. Okay. In order to do this, we’re going to look at three phases. The first one would be our pre-production planning. This is where we will lay out everything that we’re going to do before we actually get into doing the work, at which point we will have a plan and the budget, and we will present that to you. And in order to do that, it will require, and you would probably have a number that would have one or two numbers to the left of the comma.
So a couple thousand dollars, several thousand dollars, 10,000, 15,000, whatever it is, the pre-production planning. At that point, we will ask for, we are going to ask you for 50% down to accomplish that. Upon delivery, we will ask you for this balance to complete that phase. If you would like to move forward with everything we’ve projected to do for you, it will require another payment.
And then you can set it up depending upon what you’re doing and how long it takes. I like to do things in sections or in parts. So if they’re doing a website, we’re doing the graphics for them and we’re doing the video for them and we’re doing the audio for them. We’re doing the social media for them. I’ve probably got several different organizations, companies, or entities involved in doing it. So I will put all of those in separate agreements and separate contracts.
Because they’re going to have different deadlines and they’re going to have different people involved in them. And I don’t want to mix everything into one because that can really get complex when one service provider doesn’t live up to the expectations or worse, fails to deliver. It happens. So I like to separate those. So we’ve got pre-production planning, the actual production, and that can be separated many ways.
And then the post-production, which is we’ve delivered it. Now it’s time to roll it out and to maintain it perhaps. So all of that, you know, the problem for most people is they don’t have a good plan for project management. And they don’t have a good understanding of how it’s going to come together. And you as the service provider need to correctly educate your prospects.
Your prospects, there will be other people who will say, yeah, you want a website? We’ll do it for you. 500 bucks. You’re not going to like it. You won’t be happy. You’re going to waste the money, but boy, it’s 500 bucks. Well, good luck with that. So, you know, I highly recommend that you make a choice of what market you’re going to play in. Maybe you like working with small businesses that have an online presence and a brick and mortar store and sell things in the food and culinary industry. So I just visited a little town north of here called Mount Dora, Florida. Very quaint, wonderful place. Great shops. My favorite shop was a culinary spice shop. They must have had a hundred different spices in there. My nose and my mouth were just swimming with amazing smells and tastes of different stuff they had in there. Another place we visited was a beekeeper’s store and lots of wonderful things, sweet things and sour things to taste and experience in there.
So you have to figure out what industries that you like to service. And the real question is, do you like the people in those industries? Do they have compatible values with yours? Now, I’ve worked in the motorcycle industry just about all my life. I love working with those people. They’re very pragmatic. They understand the technology of motorcycles. Most of them do not understand the intense technology of internet marketing and social media. And in my experience, many of them, the baby boomers, the ones that are over 45, 50 years old, they don’t want to know. They just want it to happen. They want to be standing in their shop and have people roll in on motorcycles and trucks and cars and say, I read about you online or I heard about you online or I read good stuff about you online or saw a good testimonial about your shop online and I need help. So you need to figure out what industries you want to serve and become really good at providing them with value.
Now, one of the things that you might find helpful is being able to add value in ways that are relevant. And if you can have a conversation with your prospects, that might go something like this. How do you increase the number of clients? And if they have a good answer for you, then yay. And if they don’t, then you can talk to them about ways to grow their business. You can increase the number of clients by converting more new prospects into paying customers. You can increase the average transaction. How would you inspire each client or customer to invest more at each purchase? And how do you increase the frequency that the average client or customer buys from you or does business from you or develop the plan to get each customer to buy more often? And you do this with follow-up and you ask for more business and you ask for referral. Mr. Client, did we do a good job for you? And the client said, boy, he did a great job for us. We really, really liked your results. The customers that have been telling us about your design on your website or the new logo or whatever it is you did for them is very impressive. And that business card and that new station there you designed for us. People come walking in holding the business card and they say, hey, I got to talk to you. This is great. So we did a good job for you. We did. Do you have some other friends or business associates or relatives who are in business that would appreciate our good service and the value that we did for you? And what are they going to say? Yeah, hold on. Let me get, let me get my Rolodex. Let me, Rolodex. Boy, I just gave my age. Busted.
Let me get my database. Let me get my phone. Let me get my Rolodex. You know, you know, actually, if we were on a Zoom call and we, you could actually see us on my trophy case behind me is my old Rolodex. And I have it there as a prop to just talk about. And when clients come to my home office to, for a session, it’s one of the props I pull out to make a point. How good is your Rolodex? The real point is how good is your database? How well are you developing your client relationships so that you can go to your clients and say to them, can you give a good referral for me? May, may I have the privilege of asking your assistance? I have a potential prospect. We’d love to convert to a client because they’re in an industry. We can really add a lot of value to what they’re doing. Would you allow me the opportunity to ask them to call you at a time that’s convenient for you? And what would that time be? Would you be willing to put a good review for me on Google, on Facebook, on LinkedIn? Would you be willing to write me a letter? Now, if you’ve done a really good job for people and you’ve demonstrated to them that you have exceeded their expectations and really created a lot of value, do you really think they care about how much it costs? No. I say to people, look, if you give me a dime and I give you a dollar back for every dime you give me, was that a good investment? So this has to do with building that tribe of people who love and adore what you do. This has to do with making sure that you follow up with them in a timely basis, not once a month or once a year to ask them for referrals. One of the other things, and I think we’ll close with this because we’re getting long here. One of the other things that you want to be able to do is when you’re developing your clients, is say to them, what is your preferred method of communication? Do you want me to pick up the phone? Do you want me to send you an email? Do you want to use Facebook group? Do you want to use some other form of social media? Would you prefer carrier pigeons? Do you want us to hand deliver stuff? Do you want a FedEx or DHL or some other service carrier that would deliver things? Tell me what you want and tell me how you want it.
Well, Lee, we’ve covered a lot of good stuff here in the time we’ve had for your people. What I’d like to suggest if we get a good response from this, and I hope, of course, that we do, is perhaps we could have another call or a couple calls on attracting the best clients and evaluating prospects to determine if they’re a good fit and how to profit from the rejects.
I think your audience would really like to hear. If you’re going to invest a half hour and 20 people and 19 out of 20 are not going to turn into money for you, maybe they’d like to know how to profit from those rejects. I’ve got three good questions they can ask.
And then perhaps we could have a discussion about agreements, project management, stage gates. We talked a little bit about phases today. We could get more into that and how to handle delays and how to get decisions done quickly.
And maybe we could talk about exceeding your clients’ expectations with delivering results that count and matter.
Well, Lee, we did say I’d answer a question or two if you had them. Do you have any for me at this time?
Lee:
You mentioned about, during the conversation, putting some prices down. I wasn’t clear whether you meant going away and then coming back with some prices or whether you meant actually laying out within the same conversation some prices just because some builds are going to be different to others and we might need time to even work out whether it’s going to be a 20 or a 200K project.
Frank:
Well, first of all, I’m trying to figure out who I’m talking to. So if I’m talking to a project manager at a very large corporation like an entertainment company, talking with them about money is a total waste of time.
But if I’m talking to a lot of money, but if I’m talking to a lot of money, I’m trying to figure out who I’m talking to, but if I’m talking to the decision maker and I’ve determined they are the decision maker, then they may have some numbers in their head.
But it’s not fair to ask them about their budget until you have a clear understanding of the scope of the project and their expectations.
Now, occasionally I have thrown in the lackadaisical comment of, ooh, that sounds expensive, just to see their reaction.
You know, it’s sort of like poking the bear with a stick, you know, might wake them up, might make them growl, might make them jump up and start growling and chasing you, you know.
So you really want to make sure you’re comfortable with the things you’re going to say and not have to backtrack or say, oops, and regret it.
One of the recommendations, I’ll give your people this real quick. If you’re doing phone interviews with folks, if you have a recorder that you can record the conversation with, you’re only doing this in order for you to go back and evaluate what you said and how you said it. There are laws, especially here in Florida, in the United States, there are certain states that prevent you from recording a phone call without clearly asking permission first. There are apps that will record your phone call, but I learned that the app that people sell here in Florida beeps, beep, every 30 seconds. Beep. So as you’re talking to them and you’re asking beep questions, you’re going to get that kind of, and how do you have a conversation with that going? Can’t.
So you can record your end of it. Take good notes. And the most important thing when you’re doing this is listen as much as you can. Our creator gave us two ears and one mouth. Use them in that order, in that ratio. Do your best to listen a lot and talk a little. Larry King, the great interviewer on CNN, had a quote that I’ve used many times where he said, I never learned anything while I was talking. And if you want to determine if a client is a good client for you, you’re never going to find it out if you’re the one who’s doing the talking.
Lee:
One of my favorite quotes. Frank, how can people connect with you and find out more about you and your books?
Frank:
Hey, you can go to my website, frankcandy.com. That’s F-R-A-N-K-C-A-N-D-Y dot C-O-M. You can also look me up on Amazon. I’ve got a couple books up there right now. I’m planning on putting more up by the end of the year. Most of the stuff I wrote, Lee, was back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And I have been repurposing some of those. I just shared with you about success team at teachable.com. That’s success.team at forward slash teachable.com. And that’s my course, Design Your Life for Unlimited Success. If you’re in business or you’re trying to start a business or you’re looking for a job, I put this course together for people who are in the process of reinventing their life. If you’re not happy, this will give you the formula to happiness. If you’re looking for a raise, this will give you the formula for doing that. If you’re looking to increase business, improve your life, and be happy, healthy, safe, wealthy, and wise, go check out success-team.teachable.com. And, of course, you can email me at frank at frankcandy.com. I always answer my emails as rapidly as possible. And this being in the fall, late summer, I should say, we are going to be taking a little bit of time off. So I do still check emails on a daily basis and try to get back to people as rapidly as possible. Look for other podcasts from Lee and I. We’re going to do our best to offer you great value and understanding and wisdom that has been gained through much experience, failure. And as the great Winston Churchill said, when you find yourself going through hell, keep going. That’s been a quote that I’ve used many times when I found myself in a dark and hot place and had to keep going. And mine is just keep swimming from Dory. Hey, we should do a podcast about Disney, too. Totally. All right. Hey, I wish everyone well. Lee, thank you so very much for inviting me to be a part of your network and for introducing me to these wonderful people. Lee’s told me about many of you, and I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to connecting with all of you. Until then, and our next time that we meet up, I truly wish each and every one of you the best of health and happiness. And I wish all of you much success. And I wish all of you much success. Over and out.
Lee:
And that wraps up episode number 95. Now, if you want to go ahead and check out Frank’s course, you can find that on WPInnovator.com forward slash design your life. And that is where Frank has put together some of the content that he has been generating over the last approximately 30 years. So go ahead and check that out. That’s WPInnovator.com/design your life. And it’s actually a course that I am going through myself. I find it really valuable learning from people who have been running businesses or been in business since before the internet. Because all I ever hear all the time is internet stuff, is funnels and all of that. And Yerik’s exciting. Yes, it’s new. But sometimes it’s actually good to look at what is tried and true. What have people that have gone before us done? And what are people doing who have been in business for many years like Frank himself? So definitely a valuable opportunity there to go and check that out. WPInnovator.com/design your life.
If you have any questions, if you want to talk about anything that we’ve been discussing here on the WPInnovator podcast today, then head on over to the Facebook group on WPInnovator.com forward slash group. If you could do me a solid, go ahead and support me on YouTube as well. Because we are pushing out new content at the end of September into October. So that’s YouTube. You can head on to WPInnovator.com forward slash YouTube. And that will redirect you to our YouTube channel. So a nice subscribe. And if you like some videos, there’s some good content on there already. And there is plenty of good content to come. All right, guys. Have a brilliant day and we will see you next week.
