Transcription
How many times have you done a sale only to wonder, "I wish I would have charged more?" Or, "I've made X many sales, that's the only amount I've made so far."
Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. Today, we're talking about what would happen if you were to actually offer high-ticket products. And not just high-ticket products, we're talking about six-figure products.
Now, if your mindset is not currently set to be able to focus on a six-figure product, then at least find a way to be able to increase your product. The price of your product is the number one thing that you are able to adjust and it can change absolutely everything.
But when you have a high-ticket business, what does that look like? How do the leads flow in? How do you position everything? What does that look like?
Well, in this episode, we get to listen to Dan Kennedy as we speak to Jason Stevens and Dr. Charles Martin, both from very different industries, talk about what their businesses look like, how their leads flow in, and more. So that you can model it as your full business model or as an amazing backend. It's all your choice. Let's listen in to five must-follow principles for selling high-ticket products and services.
>> "I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy."
>> "The legend of [music] Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril."
>> "They're not really lessons. They're kind of laws [music] that you live by."
>> "Dan opened my eyes to what small business [music] marketing looks like."
>> "Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless."
>> "His ripple effect [music] touches people who don't even know his name."
>> "The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing."
Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host Dan Kennedy.
Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our darted call uh on the big fee, big price selling, and we will get started in just a minute. Um, we have uh with us actually two guests and uh Jason Stevens, member of ours and financial services, and uh Dr. Charlie Charlie Martin, who uh probably many of you know or know of. So, we want to talk about um how to get people to hand over large sums of money, uh inordinately large for the industry or category of product or service that you may be in. And uh I started uh he won't like it characterized this way, but I originally invited Dr. Martin because um he's probably one of the highest priced dentists in the country. You guys don't even use price. Highest fee dentists in the country. Uh and uh and is very good at making people think that large numbers are reasonable. Um, and so we have Dr. Martin and then we also have another guest. So, Charlie, I I'll let you go first just to kind of do your own introduction and not going all the way back to the womb, >> but um but uh giving people a uh uh what it is that you do, kind of how you got here, what the practice looks like.
>> Yeah. And so, >> yeah, Dan, thanks. Um, I am I'm Dr. Charles Martin. You can call me Charlie. Uh, I've been a dentist for many, many years. And all during those uh 37 plus years, I also for the past 30 had been doing business advising. So my new entity is called Martin's Milestone Advisors and a sister website called Martin's Business Milestones. We literally just celebrate entrepreneurs. But what I discovered early on as a dentist uh is that uh uh I did not want to treat run-of-the-mill patients. I wanted to treat patients who had a lot of problems and of course the more problems they have the bigger value could bring. So I have been teaching that for now for oh since the early 2000s uh and uh written six books, done a lot with that area and actually have five main topics to bring up today but uh we'll talk about that in a minute. Um, quick um idea of examples of case sizes.
>> Oh, they they run the gamut of but you know it's not unusual to have a six-figure case size. Uh, so 35, uh, 17 to 137,000 is is kind of the range and of course someone's going to spend that much money, it's for a very, very big reason and that means we're really putting them back together again and uh there's a lot of work involved in that that can take a year to two years to do completely. So there's a reason for that and I want to talk about price and value uh a little bit later but yeah, so we deal with lots of kind of big cases and you know what people would call expensive when they think about dentistry in general.
>> Yeah. Well, we don't want to break that down by the tooth.
>> No, we don't. [laughter]
>> That's like I just saw a statistic. The um, if you go to the movie theater, the price you pay per ounce for popcorn is 4.5 times what you pay per ounce for filet mignon at the grocery store.
>> Wow.
>> So there's price references nobody ever wants to make, right? And in your field it would be divide that $137,000 by the number of teeth in your mouth.
>> Uh, uh, uh, Jason.
So Jason's kind enough to be with us. Um, prompted by a report he sent me. Um, and so uh Jason, why don't you give everybody the same thumbnail sketch of uh who you are, what you do.
>> Sure, that sounds great. Uh, Dan, I'm I'm excited to be here. Um, yeah, my story is I uh originally sort of set out to be a professor and that took me to New York City. Um, but very soon into the business I figured out that there was no real upside there for somebody who you know believes you should earn what you provide in value. So got into the life insurance business um and quickly found that, you know, I was in an I I I had access to a niche and I was in a space where I could do some cool stuff. Um, very quickly went from "I don't know what the heck I'm doing" and almost washing out to getting paired up with some senior people and within a very short time was doing some larger transaction sizes um to some extent rivaling them in the production I was pulling off um and then, you know, switched houses, went to one of the big mutuals and within, you know, six months I had done a six-figure transaction all by myself um and repeated to do, you know, a number of transactions between 15 and $30,000 for mostly life insurance. Um, but to the
>> So that's the you're talking about the premium amounts.
>> Yeah, the annual premium amounts, right? So yeah, so my take was, you know, half, 60 something percent of that. Um, and yeah, transactions that were, you know, large in the scale of like, you know, what kind of check are you going to write? Um, but I think a lot of the principles still apply that that you've talked about and that that, you know, we hope to get into.
Well, so I want to start with you. I'm gonna >> let you kind of go for about 10 minutes, then we're going to move to Charlie's mini seminar that he has graciously prepared. Um, so let's talk about the six-figure premium uh cases. They're relatively rare in your field. Um, just let's just take us through um how that happens, what what you know about that that a lot of people would not know.
>> Sure, that sounds great. Um, so I think one of the things is uh is it didn't come from nowhere. Like I had to I had to get all the information from the business and and work out kind of the the lay of the land in my head before I could site these things. But I was always a really, really voracious reader. So I picked up the books by, you know, Ben Feldman and these guys who'd come before and done big transactions um and had that stuff in my head and I was I was really emotionally committed to, you know, "I can make an outsized living doing this" and people have done it, you know um winning through intimidation, right? Robert Ringer, he said the same thing. Um, so that became a focal point of mine as I was doing the regular business. And I quickly found out that, you know, most of the people I was learning from were saying, "Hey, go in there one to two meetings, get the app and get out and go on to the next guy." And once I started having some success with some larger than average premiums, I figured out I was like, "Hey, you know, I'm I'm doing a real consultative process here. There's a lot of Q&A. I'm really asking most of the questions and trying to get them to understand the realities that exist even if they don't know it. And then parlay that into an extra couple of meetings to triple or quadruple the size of the case." Um, you know, and it comes, I thought it really came from a consultative process. Um, and getting them to see that, you know, the cause of or the cost of doing nothing is a lot more expensive than the cost of doing something.
>> You know, it's it's interesting. I today's my phone day, so I'm on phone all day with clients and this and uh whatever else. But um all my clients in financial services who I spoke to earlier today um they are um they they're earning an outsized living um seven-figure business and and they are selling large cases and large premium life. Mhm.
>> Um, and their uh their sales process um brings somebody through a three-hour class to a paid weekend class to a series of six meetings uh before the businesses transacted. And and as you say, one of the things is most people think in the opposite direction. you know, they want to abbreviate the the process as much as possible. Um, but abbreviation almost always involves a boilerplate approach to what it is that you sell rather than a customized approach.
>> Yeah. And that's that's something that I've it's never made intuitive sense to me. I mean, you know, I've I've never, maybe it's just my bias, but I've never I've never known somebody in my business who worked from a script. And and you know, there's probably going to be an interruption when I say that, but uh I worked with a really successful guy in New York who was kind of the gift to gab guy and, you know, what I learned from him was the relevant thing is to find the issue that matters most and then just, you know, that's what you stay on and that's what you come back to and wherever possible, you're right, you customize it because, you know, especially in these days, they always talk about it in direct response, right? A customized thing is better than a boilerplate, but I think the consultative selling process is really that whole customization thing writ large. You know, we're able to do a totally customized approach for people now that they can see their own situation and like the participation elements and mailings, same deal. Like like, you know, what's your asset load? What are your estate taxes going to look like? What'll happen to your family net worth if something happens and you don't have protections in place? You know, those are the sorts of things that get people to buy in and then when they see the solution, they're like, "Oh, that makes sense."
>> Um, so um, so what does your what does your business look like? Where do the prospects come from? Uh, what's the funnel that they move through? How are you how are you getting in front of people um that you are able to do these sides of sales to?
>> Well, it's funny. That's actually what brought me to you. Um, I was doing this primarily in the niche uh I started in, which was professors in New York City. And um, you know, that's what brought me to the first big client for the six-figure premium. Uh, from there, it's it's mostly referral-based now. And we go in and, you know, you do I've formalized a referral process and the point is to get in front of other people just like these guys who have this problem and not everybody's going to do it, but um, but mostly now it's a referral process. And when I got to the point, sort of a little disclosure on my end, when I got to the point where I was doing these deals, my managers couldn't figure out how I was pulling them off and I said, "Guys, help me here. Help me replicate this. Let me, you know, tell me what I need to do to make this into like a conveyor belt of people coming my Okay." And they really didn't have any any useful information. So that's actually, you know, I sat down and thought, "Well, how do I do this?" And that brought me to you and, you know, "How do you replicate, copy, and clone your best clients?" So, um, at this point, right when I'm getting in front of the right client, I can make the good things happen. To be frank, I'm still perfecting the cycle of getting them to come to me in a regular manner. So I'm not anywhere near that, you know, six-step sign-in for the meetings and, you know, that sort of thing yet. But that's the vision.
You're the second one. Um, again, another call today with a client of mine in financial services who also specializes in university professors.
>> Get out of here. Really?
>> Yeah. Um, uh, Eddie's What state are you? Where are you working? Where are you physically? Geographically?
>> Oh, where am I? I'm sorry. I thought you were asking somebody else. Um, it was New York City.
>> Oh, yeah. So, he's he's not in your same market. If uh I'll make a note. I'll connect you guys.
>> Talk to him.
>> Yeah, that would be great. It's a it's a wide-open market if you know how to access it. There's nobody in it and nobody go I was I was in New York City and I'd only ever heard of one other guy doing it and that was like 10 years ago.
>> Yeah. Well, the power of specialization, people don't get it, but um um if it applies to any business. Um, so, la second to last thing, what haven't I asked you? I should ask you.
>> Um, that's a good question.
>> Well, I think I think the thing to know when you're in this space is that um it's easy to it's easy to get psyched out by the size of transactions, especially if it's kind of new. Um, I got this guy on the line and it it felt like such a big transaction, the first one, that I I almost was like, "You know what? I'm not I'm just going to go with this the way I would do a normal case and not get psyched out by it." And I think that mental advantage helped a lot because we tend to think as as at least in the insurance space, you know, 40 grand for a life insurance premium, that's a lot for a year. But for the guy who's making a million bucks, 2 million bucks, or is worth 12 million bucks, you know, he looks at that and he says, "Oh, that's reasonable because it's going to give me this $5 million of tax-free death benefit that's going to keep me from having to pay estate taxes." And it was the it it was a shift for me of perspective when I when I got it through my head that cuz one of my other advisors was like, "That's a big $40,000. That's a big deal." And I thought and I was like, "No, it's not a big deal to him. It looks big to us cuz we're not used to writing that, but for him that's not a big thing." And being able to put myself in that position of sort of being an ally and being like, "Look, you know, this is what it's going to do. This is the sticker price. I'm not psyched out by it." And I think that helped cuz that allowed me to break through into that space where, you know, it otherwise would have been really intimidating. Um,
>> Cool.
>> Yeah.
>> All right. Thank you.
>> I appreciate it.
>> Charlie,
>> Hello.
>> Why don't you start wherever you want to start? Well,
>> what do folks need to know about [clears throat] looking at somebody with a straight face and um uh writing a $100,000 uh dental case?
>> Well, whether it's a dental case or an insurance premium, no matter what it is, it it boils down to how much does the person value what you're providing for them. And this is a process. In fact, the term uh pretium, which is a Latin term, actually means price.
>> Oh, this is so you get to use the Latin you you had to study in college to get your degree. Is this what this
>> No, I studied this in high school. I say this in
>> Yeah. Okay. Well, I did too, by the way.
>> I understand.
>> However, however, you actually probably got some use out of it. The point I want to make though is is the is the root of the word price comes from a Latin word which means price and value. So there is clearly an objective value to what we provide. Transportation. You can drive a Kia or you can drive a Mercedes. And for some people it doesn't matter, but for other people, the subjective value is high enough. They going they want to drive the Mercedes. And so, you know, the first principle to me is you that is that if you're going to have high prices or high fees is that is a principle that that some people will think will be counterintuitive, but I think it's absolutely true. It's the way you work. It's the way I work. It's the way that the people are really my friends work, which is deliver more value than you charge. Um, I I
>> More importantly about what you said though is to delink is to delink from objective value.
>> Yep.
>> Or intrinsic value. A rock is a rock is a rock to subjective value, right? I mean, that that's that's that's a really big idea.
>> Well, and and if someone even is selling a commodity, uh their their granite rock company in California uh uh has delinked them, believe it or not. They they sell rocks and they have a policy which is very interesting, which is that um if you know you don't like the fee that we've charged you for your rocks, mark it out and write the fee in that you think is right. Now that's some real guts, of course, when it happens, they use it as a learning experience. So I think that that uh that that by the way, that company charges an average of 6% for rocks more than their competitors. Um, but when you think in terms of objective value and subjective value, what's the value of staying in a Motel 6 versus staying at a Ritz Carlton? It's a totally different experience. And the subjective value is in the experience. Both are a bed, both are a room, both have a phone, a TV. Um, but the subjective value is one is one considers upscale and to a great large degree luxury. Uh, and the other one's like bare bones, I'm just barely surviving. And of course, that subjective value is largely tied to the identity of the person buying it.
>> Yep. There you go. [clears throat]
>> So
>> I have two I have two I discourage it enormously, but I have two clients. So everybody that comes here, which you well know um, we meet at my house, which is basically halfway between Cleville and Akron and and everything is for my convenience and uh the closest not horrible place to stay overnight to be picked up in the morning is a La Quinta. And I mean, it's fine, you know, but it's not, you know, it's a La Quinta.
>> Right.
>> Um, and uh, so I have two clients who secretly, they I think I don't know. Um, they stay at the Ritz Carlton in downtown Cleveland and that means they have to they probably getting up at, oh, 6:00 AM when they could get up at 7:45 um and commuting uh to be picked up at the La Quinta. Uh, and they both think I don't know, uh, but I do. And um, and it is, you know, it is really less about the luxury in this case because look, they're flying in at night. Right.
>> Right.
>> So, you know, they're getting to the place at bedtime and then they're getting up and leaving.
>> It's more about, as you said, their own self-identity.
>> Yes.
>> How they view themselves. And they view themselves as somebody that does not and will not stay at a La Quinta.
>> I if you guys don't mind, I found that in my business too. Uh, a number of transactions, this the the first big one in particular, the guy even said, he's like, "I owned a policy with a company years ago and I liked it and that's part of the reason I'm doing this." And I heard a number of people say things like that, especially when it was a big ticket item. They said something to the effect of like, "Now's the time I've arrived and this is what people do when they arrive."
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> And that was like the emotional element that drove a lot of the I didn't know that until it was done, but I started noticing that when people would say things like that, and I thought, "Oh, that's that's why they're doing this."
>> Okay.
>> Well, so Dan, the whole the whole deal here is is that you you start with a premise of delivering value uh more than you than you charge. And and there's a little story about this, and you probably heard it. Uh, there was an older candy store owner and uh he'd been having this candy store for 40 years and it was time for him to retire and he sold it to a younger person. Um, and but what the younger person did is observe the old shop owner doing out candy to kids and adults and they would order malted milk balls and, you know, $150 worth of malted milk balls. He'd put his little up there and weigh it and then he would give him a wink and add a few more malted milk balls before he put it in the bag. Well, he was quite successful with little candy store, right? The new guy comes in. He says, "No, I'm going to give them exactly what they pay for." Well, guess what happened to the candy store?
>> Yep.
>> It went downhill. And people realized they were they were the exchange factor they come to count on and believe in had disappeared and so did that store.
>> You know, they did a Walmart ran a test in 2009 and they eliminated. Well, you probably haven't been in a Walmart in two decades, so I'll I'll tell you something you don't know. Um, uh, at Walmart, they have greeters um and they're mostly old people that, you know, didn't do a very good job of planning for retirement.
>> Yeah.
>> And um, and they have blue vests on and they greet you when you come in the door and sort of help you get a shopping cart. But mostly they're like the goodwill ambassador welcoming you to the store, right? They don't really serve any practical purpose. I mean, the shopping carts are right there. You'd find it with or without the greeter. Um, and so they eliminated him in 10 stores. I forget the month in 2009. And that calendar quarter, with no other observable uh or detectable variable, the sales volume in a store dipped by almost 15%.
>> Wow. Jeez.
>> And it simply evidences that at really at every level of consumer um, whether all the way down at Walmart or all the way up at Neiman Marcus or above, people are unconsciously if not consciously responsive to the three extra pieces of candy,
>> right?
>> Uh, put into the bag, right?
>> And obviously economic practicalities determine what we can do about that,
>> right?
>> Um, but um, but there is no doubt that people feel it, they sense it, and it then affects all their subsequent behavior. You know, I I've been in the seminar business my whole life, and I I'm constantly getting clients to do stuff that they that they don't that they just view as an empty expense, but that affects the mood
>> Absolutely.
>> of everybody going forward, which affects what they spend and how freely they spend.
>> Yeah.
>> And and so value is um is not just about the core product or the service or the quality thereof. Value is about how people feel about the product, the service, the provider, the experience.
>> Exactly. Which leads me to my next point, Dan. And which is it?
>> It's almost as if we planned it.
>> What's that?
>> It's almost as if we planned it.
>> That's true. [laughter] The posters in the mail for you. Um,
>> and I talk about the power of self-confidence and belief in in your offering. You know, it's really the attitude of the seller and the team in many cases that we're worth the fee we're going to quote and that we provide an outstanding value. In in fact, in excess of this. So, you know, the test of this is what I call the choke point. The place where you have a hard time actually saying the price or fee directly to a customer does
>> And and Jason alluded to that when he first started to sell big big big premiums.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah. So it's it's a head game, usually with the person making the offer.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. So you have to do whatever you need to do to acquire the belief about your worthiness of your offerings in yourself. And there's a big point here that I think that that needs to be made about if you have something that people need. You have a responsibility and dare I say duty to care enough about that individual that you're helping to work through all their own barriers and your own, which will inevitably come up, particularly on higher price items, to help them get through all of that. And the kind of the the attitude of you is a relaxed confidence, a personal certainty, and a faith in what you're doing is going to provide more value than someplace else where they get to spend that same money. That's how I go about it.
>> Yeah. And that's, you know, it is a lot about how you understand what it is that you do, how you position what it is, what you do to yourself. uh and then to others. Um, like you guys, I'm often in that high five-figure to six-figure to in some cases mid-six uh fee level um in a profession where you can certainly, you know, find copywriting for less. Um, and um, I was telling somebody the other day, our frame, our personal frames of reference for a variety of things, including price, and everybody else's, it's always useful to remember, tend to be uh, uh, are the year they were born, uh, the year they graduated from high school, the year they graduated from college, and the year they got married. And those numbers stay, you know, on a shelf in your head. Yeah.
>> Um, and so like the year I graduated from high school, the average price, the average priced home in America was $34,000 and some odd dollars. And anything above 100,000 was, you know, it was the Warren Buffetts and the Trumps of the world. It wasn't what anybody, certainly anybody, you know, I knew did. And so you quote somebody like 150 grand and there's there's a to write copy and there's a little voice that comes off the shelf and says, you know, "You realize that's five times what a house is worth." And uh so a big help for me was reframing. So I
>> I view it in most cases because I'm mostly not doing one and done. Uh, I'm doing systems that are going to be used on an ongoing basis. So I always view it and then I got good at describing it to others as "I'm not writing I'm not doing copywriting here. I'm creating marketing assets for you."
>> Mhm.
>> And which is true.
>> Well, yeah, it has well, it has the terrific added virtue of being entirely true.
>> Uh, which well, that's really more important for us to accept it ourselves, right, than it is for anybody else.
>> True. But but but yeah, you know, it absolutely is true. And so somebody I'm doing something for might think nothing of $100,000 for a piece of equipment for their business or opening the next outlet,
>> right?
>> Or even putting on an event. Um, but to have to have some ads written, if you leave it to them, they're thinking about that like having plumbing done,
>> right?
>> A a and if it's like having plumbing done, these fees are really unreasonable, let alone royalties and pieces of equity and so forth. But if you're creating assets, that's a whole different story altogether, right? And so I think everybody needs to sort of find that way to reframe the value of what they do for themselves uh to have this confidence that you're that you're talking about and then to present it uh well to their prospects, customers, clients, patients.
>> Well, Dan, that leads me to my next pillar, pricing power. Thank you for that. We're right on target here. Our unannounced schedule together, which is value perception is your job. It is your job to help your customer, client, patient, patron, whoever. Uh, value what you do in a responsible way. In fact, if you, and what I like to say it, you have to hone it so you can own it. And you really have to teach your customers how to appreciate and value your offerings. Because if you don't, you're left to the vagaries of their own experience and you can't do that. So you have to use while you use the language of your targeted public and you have to mix in symbology and pictures and comparisons, design, simplicity, ease of use, etc. Remove risk of course with guarantees and delivering on your promises. Of course, a billion-dollar company was created by that, right?
>> Yep.
>> FedEx by promising to be delivered the next day. What frustration you can remove, what speed you can deliver, what experience you can deliver, what knowing problem can you fix that they can't get fixed somewhere else and in in many ways as you call selling money at a discount, which is make money by investing money with me and my offering and then frame your price early so then you can support it, but it's going to need a lot of support.
You know, the FedEx is such an interesting thing to mention because there's an entire generation now and huge numbers of people listening to us who really have no appreciation for what a a a groundbreaking and radical thing FedEx was. Um, and the comparison of course was to a postage stamp.
>> Yes.
>> Because that was the other option, right? So, you know, you were going from, I don't know, a stamp was like 15 cents, I think, um, to I think their initial deal was like $9. Um, you know, and I mean, there was a lot of conversation of "Really, does the damn thing have to be there overnight?" Um, uh, and, um, and the spread is actually even greater now,
>> right?
>> A but of course people have used have learned to use FedEx um not just to deliver essential documents but really as a marketing media and a lot of FedEx businesses that um and now we're all paying extra to subsidize their Amazon deliveries. But um
>> Well, it it also, you know, it it it it gives importance to the item being delivered. You see it says, "Oh, it's a FedEx, so it must be more important. I'm going to open it," which is what's alluding to the market.
>> Yeah. And that's exactly so there's your value, right? Yes.
>> It's it's not really that it gets there. It's how it is perceived and handled when it gets there. And that exists in in everything. Um, is finding what's important. Jason, you said it earlier. What's the real important thing to your prospect?
>> And then tying your value to that. Um, and often that's very different from "This is a glass, this is a box, this is a FedEx, this is a rock."
>> Um,
>> And and to add to that, Dan, you know, there there you you do have to teach people to perceive the value delivered. And of course, there's the the thing that's the most important to that person at the moment. But typically and almost always the value you really should be appreciative of are the other things that you can bring to them. You know, whether it's an insurance policy is going to give a death benefit. Well, it's a lot more than that and here's why. And you
>> Can I share a funny about that?
>> Well, let me finish what I'm saying.
>> Oh, sure. I'm sorry.
>> Yeah. So there's a there's a lot to be said about what value you have to create as a package and it is the addition of those other values beyond what they said was important to them that really gives oomph and more power to the to the outing you're going to give.
>> Yeah. And I want to go to Jason for just a second. So, there's something that you'll appreciate um that again, a bunch of people won't, but cosmetic surgery, which is sort of the sister to cosmetic dentistry, um, there used to be no value in the cocktail party story about having it done and the bragging rights of the doctor you were going to because everybody kept it secret. Um, uh, women women left town and hid out um afterwards, whereas now there's enormous value in the bragging rights of the doc you're going to um and the cocktail party story. So the these things do change with time. Um, you want it in Jason.
>> Oh yeah. Um, yeah, it struck me what we were saying there about about understanding why people are doing what they're doing and being really clear on it. And one of the big deals, the guy uh started out the conversation and we said, "Hey, you know, you're going to have this estate tax problem. You can either pay 5 million bucks to the government when you know you guys pass away and your kids get X or you can do this and do you know 5% a year and it so forth and so on." So we started it under that premise and he was like, "This is a good idea. It makes a lot of sense." But all along the way, he kept saying when we would talk, he would say, you know, "Well, I really don't care about leaving that much money to my kids, and I don't want them to be rich," so x, y, and z. And I started to get nervous because I was like, "Wait a minute. This guy, we started it under the assumption that he wanted to avoid estate tax, and now he's telling me he doesn't want to leave his kids rich. What's going on?" But my my sales spidey sense was telling me, "No, he's still on the hook. Just keep going. He's going to come through." And sure enough, he did. And by the time we got the whole transaction done, I looked at him. I said, "Look, you know, you got to share with me. you've been telling me this stuff all along about why you want to do this and then you know it appears that it doesn't it's not why you wanted it." And he said, "Well, yeah, sure, we started it under that premise, but by the time I got to the end, I realized, hey, with this in place, I can spend all my money and still leave my kids something."
>> Y-
>> So, you know, which was eye-opening for me. My spidey sense was accurate, but I wanted to make sure the whole deal was done before I questioned why um, but it just speaks to the point of, you know, understanding kind of why people are doing what they're doing. It ended up not being, in this case, sort of altruism for his kids. It was more like, "Oh, instead of being able to spend 8 million bucks, now I get to spend 12," you know, which is a very personal benefit for him, and he still get he still got to take care of his family.
Well, you know what happens with sort of lazy, low-level salespeople is they decide on, you know, there's five benefits, five reasons to buy X, >> and they wind up with this very standardized pitch of the five reasons, >> but for the most part, different people have different reasons for buying the same thing.
>> Mhm.
>> And to your point earlier, just about every person has one overriding reason, not five. And at some point, it's useful to find that out. Um, uh, so we were at three, Charlie.
>> Right. Yeah. Uh, let me just hitchhike on that little idea there for a minute. Oftentimes people will uh hide that crucial factor that that's like, "I can't tell them that." Uh, so you you actually have to continue that consultative selling talk with and honestly really care about the individual you're working with because you are going to make a difference in what in the quality of their life and that is huge. Yeah. Number four is what I call surfing the persuasion funnel. And here's the great misunderstood that that 99% of all small businesses suffer from, and which is they don't use any reputation crafting, which is really PR on steroids.
>> They don't use that as a magnet to draw people to them. And point of fact is it's it really is the tip of the spear. It's the very first thing you should be thinking of. This is so what is the persuasion funnel composed of? One, reputation crafting, which is that PR on steroids. Number two, marketing. The third one is sales. And it's in that particular order. And when it's done well, it makes the work of marketing smaller, easier, more efficient. In some cases, it removes the need for it completely. Um, and and, you know, examples are uh first right off the bat are Ben and Jerry's ice cream and Red Bull, small multi-billion dollar company out of Austria. So the point about this is that when reputation crafting is done well, it it gives you an edge that most other entrepreneurs and small businesses are never going to use. And so it is something that is done both online and offline today. But it's the it to me, it's the great missing fulcrum that you can use and certainly Dan, you've used it in your business for a long time and I've used it in my own. I you know, I I'm on the cover of magazines, so I've become at least slightly famous where I live. U and I it helps enormously to allow your marketing to go in before it was just filtered out.
>> You know, um, when uh, when Buffett bought, when Berkshire Hathaway, to be precise, bought NetJets. Um, that's the first Berkshire Hathaway company in that has ever actually used Warren in its advertising.
>> Um, and I think I hope more because he didn't want to do it than because everybody was too damn dumb to do it. Um, but you never know. Um, but NetJets was the first one and the first ad had Warren and Bill Gates uh flying on a NetJet's plane. Um, and they rarely got direct response because first of all, they're not doing direct response advertising, but they r they said they rarely got direct response from all their other advertising up until that point. So their advertising, they viewed they viewed themselves as a brand advertiser.
>> And advertising's job simply to establish awareness and lay a foundation for then their their sales operation.
>> Mhm.
>> And this ad, they got qualified direct response. I mean, they got people calling up saying, "I want an appointment with a NetJet person because of the ad in XYZ magazine."
>> And it it simply speaks to this issue of leveraging reputation, right?
>> Yes.
>> And um, and if you don't have it, you got to figure out what kind of reputation is going to be useful with your audience. And then you create it or you rent it or some combination thereof. Um, but you're right, a lot of small business owners, a lot of practice professionals, a lot of salespeople, um, neglect this and they handicap and hamper themselves a lot.
>> Yeah. Um, in financial services where Jason is, I mean, I I went through a whole process a couple years ago now of um, uh, selecting a a private banker and and one from a very big, well, from PNC, very big bank. He had his PowerPoints, which, you know, the minute they get the laptop out or the pad and want to start the PowerPoints presentation, I want to just >> your eyes glass over.
>> Um, uh, but so he had his PowerPoints presentation and I suffered through the 25 minutes of the thing and [clears throat] and one of the things I said to him afterwards is I said, "But what about you? I I don't know a thing about you and you're the guy I'm gonna have to deal with."
>> Yeah.
>> And
>> What did he say?
>> It was like, "You Huh? What? You know, um, we're the oldest bank," which they're not, because they've they're the oldest bank if you count the fact that they acquired a bank that acquired a bank that acquired a bank that was the oldest bank in Cleveland. But he, we're right back to, you know, corporate stuff,
>> right?
>> But but you know, it's Charlie's hand in my mouth and it's your hand in my wallet.
>> Mhm.
>> You know, it's not some nameless, faceless institution. And so corporate reputation matters, but personal uh branding, personal reputation matters a lot too.
>> Well, it's absolutely true.
>> When you climb up the affluent ladder, I always teach that the more affluent the customer, client, patient, the less they are interested in the thing and the more they are interested in the individual they're going to deal with who provides the thing. Well, it is uh it's never ending. In fact, and when you look at uh startup success, whether they get funded is often determined by who who are the managers, who are the founders of this? Have they been successful before? Yeah, I'm in or not. Um, continuing with kind of with our PR point of view, thing is that that, you know, there was a the ALS did an ice bucket challenge that kind of kind of rolled over the country and and ended up bringing in tens of millions of dollars for them with no advertising whatsoever. It became something that was fun. It was all viral, but was use of a creative idea and and there trade ideas by the tons out there, but it's just not looked at or even observed. Uh, we're doing something with Martin's Business Milestones, which is a recognition of entrepreneurs and their success. That's a com by the way, u that we celebrate entrepreneurs and showcase them for what they've done because honestly, they don't get shown very much. So I think that that, when when if you are have a a small business, a professional practice, looking at how you can create reputation crafting for yourself, uh is a is a big lever that more people need to push on.
>> Uh, let's get to your fifth point and then I have one specific question for both of you. Uh, and then we will we will get to open conversation with anybody that wants to play.
>> Okay, sounds good.
>> Yeah. Well, [clears throat] you're you mentioned who and and the fifth one is becoming a category of one. Um, 2005, a book was published called Blue Ocean Strategy. But way before that, people knew that if you can get into a specialization, which you mentioned earlier, get into a niche and become the authority in that area, it gave you a huge leg up. So people are always asking, "Why, why are you different? Why should I why should I care?" But when you start differentiating things in that category of one, well, Ferrari, Ferrari is largely a category of one, the Ferrari category. Uh, the interesting thing more recently is this um uh heavy-duty constructed cooler, a beer cooler that's now gone into other kinds of things called Yeti. And it's being sung about in country songs. It's being going everywhere. The price of that cooler, you might pay $40 for this cooler normally, but their price is 10 times that amount of money. And it's based upon the image they have, the reputation they've built. Actually, they do have what I call hyper-functionality. You can put ice in there for and it'll be there five days later. But they became a category of one in a of all things, ice cooler. And then of course, there is what you've taught forever, uh, um, Dan, which is being a celebrity, being an author, being an expert.
>> And then basically from that being able to prescribe what you recommend rather than having to sell it.
>> Uh, so
So here's my question for both of you. Um, when, when you present a $50,000 to $100,000 premium, a $50,000 to $100,000, uh, dental case, um, pretty much a 50 to $100,000, you know, a lot of things. Um, there is sticker shock. There is it's not really a value question. And it's a G. I. This was not a number that I anticipated hearing. Um, this is not a number. Like I learned a lesson in 19, I think it's 1983. I was in Beverly Hills doing some work for somebody. I walked into a men's clothing store, really liked a couple jackets and realized there's no price tags on any of them. And if you care, you do not want to be shopping in a place that has no price tags. Uh, because you are undoubtedly going to be surprised by the price, no matter what the number is that's in your head. That number is going to be higher when you get that thing to the register. Um, um, and I wound up paying more for a sport jacket than I paid for every item of clothing in my entire closet. Uh, so, so sticker shock happens. Um, and it's a, it's, it's a visceral reaction. Really? That's a lot of money, not necessarily a value reaction. Um, but so you guys both live in this world. How do you prepare, uh, preempt, um, or deal with sticker shock?
I love this. This is a, um, there, there's a number of things with this. One is you have to set expectations way earlier because if you're in a sales situation and it's time for them to make a decision. Um, everybody knows the immediacy of decisions is important because life stream happens and friends and family try to talk people out of doing things that they really should do because they don't know any better. But you have to set expectations so that you know this is what you should expect this to cost. And then really tell the stories of other people who have, uh, made this decision and their happiness with having made it. That, that absolves a lot. But another point is, is that you have to give them some type of what I call rational scaffolding. Um, I don't have time to talk about a lot of it here.
Yeah. Yeah. I make the decision to do it, but I've got to be able to justify it. Yeah. I've got to be able to justify it to my friends and family who are inevitably going to ask me about this and either I either I don't say anything to them or I do talk to them and then I have to defend it. Well, if I want to defend it, I want to have a good reason for defending it. And so, you have to give them the, the rationale, the logic that they need to, by the way, because we know that these decisions are made emotionally and backed up with with reason, not the opposite. But you have to give them that. And then, you know, the, the big thing that most people who are in sales or getting anybody to do anything forget is that the anxiety that you, as a salesperson, representative, whatever you're going to call yourself, experience up until the point they say yes. That anxiety now goes across the desk or across the way to the person who said yes. They go, the first thing they're, among the things they're thinking about is, did I make the right decision? So you have to, in, believe it or not, you have to continue the process and understand psychologically what's happened to a person when they made a, a, a relatively big decision. And one of the other things that we haven't talked about, Dan, but I want to add in here is that if you think you can sell a big case or, or a big anything and that it's going to take a short amount of time, it just isn't going to happen.
Yeah. You need five to nine hours for that to occur and that you should need to understand that that's what's going to happen and that you should expect it. And if you try to to abbreviate that, 99% of the time you're going to wish you hadn't. My, uh, rationalization, by the way, for flying private instead of commercial is that I get free parking.
Well, I think, I think Buffett's rationalization for NetJets was that he wanted to be in the airline business, but he lost his shirt before.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
All right, guys. Uh, operator.
Oh, hey, Dan. Can I do the, uh, can I do the sticker shock?
Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
That's okay. That's okay. Um,
Yeah.
Yeah. So, sticker shock in our industry, it's kind of interesting too. Um, my, my consult, my, my sales process is to start with identifying, you know, the pain and kind of the big, the big, the big cost they're going to incur. Um, and then, you know, that's always, that's always the backdrop is, listen, you know, doing nothing is going to cost you this. Doing something involves doing this and it's, you know, the comparison, as long as it's clear, is far less, you know. So that's one of the things. The other thing was, I picked this up from, uh, Robert Cialdini's book, the Influence book, um, where he talked about the guy who sold pool tables and he found out if he started walking people through the showroom with the expensive one and then walking them down to the cheap one, he could usually sell a higher average, you know, cost of pool table. So, I applied that to my business and thought, okay, I'm going to talk about the expensive stuff first and we'll work our way down. And I did that with one of my big cases. And I said, "Look, you know, you can solve this problem, uh, once by doing $700,000 into a one-pay life insurance and you'll be done and you'll have, I don't know, $400,000 of cash that's growing inside and so forth and so on." And I said, "Or you can do, you know, $12,000 each year for about 18 years and then that'll be done." And the, you know, the, the walking them down from the big figure to the one that you actually want is tremendously powerful. And I think that's one of the things that I learned early that really works is you frame it. Even if you, you know, your end goal is going to be like 30% of the big number, you start with the big number as the solution and then, and that, you know, they're, they're sweating and they're like, oh my gosh, that's crazy. And then by the time you end up at the result, they're like, oh yeah, I can deal with that. Um, and the other one is too, um, uh, in our space, there's often, you know, people will do $100,000 into a mutual fund and that's no big deal, but $100,000 for life insurance. If you understand that they're writing a check and it's the same number for them, then it's less intimidating for us. So, you know, they might, to us, it's a big deal, $100,000 for life insurance, but they'll write a $100,000 mutual fund check. So, if you understand that them writing that big check is the same thing for them either way, it's less intimidating for us.
All right, gentlemen. Again, thanks for your time. Thanks for everybody being on the call and have a great rest of the day.
Thanks, Dan.
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