Intro 00:00:00 - Welcome to the Creative Agency Success Show, the go to resource for agency owners looking to scale their business. Join us every week to stay ahead of the curve and position your agency for future success.
Jamie 00:00:15 - Hello everybody. Welcome to our second show of the CFO Deep Dive. Today I'm very excited to talk about a podcast done by Jason Swenk. This podcast is called the Smart Agency Podcast. So, Jodi and I have been listening to some adjacent stuff after we interviewed him, and I believe you were on his podcast as well. Jody, weren't you recently?
Jody 00:00:33 - Yeah, Jason's an awesome podcast interviewer. Yeah, very excited to talk about a recent podcast he had with, with Tim Condon.
Jamie 00:00:43 - Yeah. So, we had Jason on the show, and we talked to him and kind of found out about all that he's doing for agencies. So, I'm sure Jason will be on this episode again. We'll find some more of his podcast because he's always releasing great stuff. But today we're going to start with episode 692 of Jason's Smart Agency podcast.
Jamie 00:01:00 - And on that episode, he has Tim Condon. And the title of the podcast is what all successful Agencies Have in Common. So, that really drew me into this podcast. That's something I thought our listeners would like to hear, and we're going to analyze it and use our categories. Thoughts on the podcast before we kind of go into the categories? Jody.
Jody 00:01:17 - I thought it relates really to what's what we're seeing right now with agencies with, pipeline and, and, you know, maybe it's shrinking a little bit, maybe it's expanding a little bit at the close ratios. And, you know, the distance, the length of time and the close cycle, all that kind of stuff. You, he talks a little bit about it and about being creative about it. So, I'm really excited to see because I think this is going to hit, hit home for a lot of folks out there. listen to the podcast today.
Jamie 00:01:41 - Yep, I agree. I think there's a lot of marketing talk here, a lot of really good ideas that I think any listener would really appreciate listening to. So again, if you're listening to this podcast, you might want to hear us talk first and then go back and listen to his podcast afterwards. And I think you'll get a get a lot out of this. So, let's jump right into the categories just for reminders for our listeners. You know, we have ten categories. We're not going to use all of them. We're going to use the ones that we thought stood out the most to us. I think we had a either 4 or 5 today. Some might overlap a little bit because Jody and I don't compare notes before we go. So, we both listened to the podcast separately, listen to what topics we want, and then we kind of go through it. So that's kind of how the format works here. So, we'll start with topic number one on this one.
Jamie 00:02:20 - So, this is the ROI rocket. The idea that could financially benefit your business. So, there was a lot of ideas in this one. what did you pick for this for this topic Jody.
Jody 00:02:30 - what did I pick for this topic? this is definitely the one at the topic that I did pick. okay. And I talked about, basically building a strong email list, I think was the, the idea that I really got from it. And it's kind of coincidentally, you know, at summit, we've always been, you know, hey, we're going to we're going to be we're kind of anti emailing and, we're going to change our philosophy a little bit right now we're going to actually start attacking emailing as a part of our marketing, you know, go to marketing strategy. And so super excited to listen to how they, you know, the basically this conversation that, that Jason and Tim had, because it really does bring some really bringing things home to what we're currently doing, today at summit.
Jamie 00:03:14 - So let's dive into that just a little bit. So, what made us make this change? What made, summit. Anders, really think about using an email pattern, which we haven't done before.
Jody 00:03:24 - Yeah. So we've always had the idea that, you know, as clients contact us, as we, you know, we build an email list, that we eventually do a, you know, basically a drip campaign after we've contacted the client. So we've always kind of done it after the fact, but we're going to actually put a little bit more on steroids. We brought in two, two individuals from Chief Outsiders, a, basically a virtual CMO firm. And, they recommended email marketing as being one of the number one forms of, you know, attracting new clients. And so we thought, hey, let's do it. the biggest thing that I wanted to make sure that we didn't do, in that process is I didn't want it to be a generic email, that spammy email looking thing.
Jody 00:04:07 - I want it to be at least informative for the person receiving it. So, whether they actually, you know, pop on and hop on and want to take us, you know, take, take the opportunity to see if we could, we'd be a good fit. At least they're benefiting from the email benefiting. And hey, here's a new article that we're writing. You know, here's a, you know, new concept. So, here's what we're hearing in the industry. You know, something that can really be a benefit to them in the long run, just as opposed to just being a spammy email.
Jamie 00:04:34 - Yeah. No, I love that. And I think this, this kind of ties to my ROI rocket, but I think it's I have a little bit different here. So, what I had is a quote that they said that I just loved, and it was around the 14-minute mark. I can't remember who said it, but I think it was Jason. And he said, you know, standing out is great, but conversion is crucial.
Jamie 00:04:52 - So, I had that as my, ROI rocket. And I think that kind of ties back to what you just said about email marketing is it's like you can send the wildest email or you can, you know, have people watch some video you create and think it's the coolest thing in the world. But it doesn't matter if you're not able to convert it to a sale. And so I thought that was a pretty, amazing comment. And just kind of think about that. You know, so many people do marketing just to stand out and just to get their name said. But like, you could have a million people know about you in zero sales and it's not going to mean anything. And so that was really the moment that kind of jumped out to me is for the ROI is like if the more sales you convert, the more of those leads you convert, it really becomes crucial. So that was kind of the area that jumped out to me is that ROI rocket.
Jody 00:05:31 - So he said, what's standing out is great, but conversion is crucial.
Jamie 00:05:34 - Yes.
Jody 00:05:35 - Love it
Jamie 00:05:36 - And this is I think you probably have this in one of the other categories, but I'm going to jump into it now. And if we wanted to skip over to the category, this is where he started talking about the annual survey that they send out. And this was this was, you know, at the point where Tim was talking, and they said the annual survey. And so some of the numbers that they came up with, and I want to kind of get your thoughts on these numbers here is first they talked about the sales cycle. They said, they when they sent the survey out, they said 50% of their clients average over a month sales cycle and 20% were over three months. So, what is your thoughts on those numbers in terms of that being your sales cycle?
Jody 00:06:11 - Yeah, I think that's probably pretty typical in the industry right now, in looking at ours, I mean ours isn't too far from that. You know, it used to be our average cycle is between, you know, two weeks to a month and that's grown, to basically a month plus, you know, just over the last year.
Jody 00:06:26 - And so, we're seeing it even on our side, that the sales cycle is taking a little bit longer than what it's taken in the past. And it was kind of interesting how he brought up a good way of reducing that sales cycle. And his way of reducing it was basically giving away a product and or having a very cheap product, to get them at least entice them into, you know, trying you out a little bit. And so I thought that was kind of a neat, neat way to bring it from that, to what he said two months to basically a week sales cycle, which I thought was pretty, pretty cool idea.
Jamie 00:07:00 - Yep. And I definitely have that in one of my former later topics is kind of that, idea. So I'll dive into that a little bit later here. But, the other number he brought out was about close percentage, and he said, first off, he said it was all over the map and his number, which I think is different than what you've said in the past.
Jamie 00:07:17 - I kind of want to dig into this a little bit because he said anything around 10% is outstanding when it comes to a close percentage. So, what is your thought on that 10% number?
Jody 00:07:25 - Yeah, so I think it's important to understand what he's talking about here because there's a there's different clothes percentages. And so what he's talking about is the number of people in your pipeline to what actually converts to a sale, and 10% is a very reasonable number. And I, I did some research in HubSpot about that and trying to get an idea of where that was at, and it seemed like that close percentage fell right within where, you know, where we're seeing, you know, industry wide. the closed percentage I talk about are actually the qualified leads that a salesperson truly talks to. And what they closed from that. And that's about that should be, in my opinion, about 30% close ratio. Between 20 and 30% is probably best practice. You know, ours is hovered right at about 30, 35% for, oh, going on about seven years now.
Jody 00:08:09 - So it's been a little bit higher than the than the average there. But I would say a 20% to 30% would be pretty solid. You know, for a lot of companies I think the close ratio is higher. There's I think there's some inherent problems, meaning the product is probably priced to where it needs to be is the biggest, biggest problem there. So and we battled that when we first started, you know summit we were offering a service that can nobody would pay for it. And our close ratio was high. We're like, oh, this is great for high fiving everybody. And it was so, it was so high that we were picking on so many clients so quickly that we couldn't actually service them, we couldn't be profitable, and we had to actually increase our, our basically increase our, our price in order to get our clothes ratio down to where it's at that, you know, it's at that 30 to 35%. So that was a technique we used in order to help, pricing a value based product.
Jody 00:09:00 - And so, for those firms out there that are looking to, you know, to do that, I think it's important to note that, hey, just because you have a high close ratio doesn't mean that things are going well. There might be some inherent issues there. Don't, don't let that close ratio fool you into a non-profitable company.
Jamie 00:09:18 - And I think that's, that's really important. So, I think, we've we haven't talked about that 10% very often. So, I think it's really important to know both those numbers. Right. And so, I think that's one of the insights I'm taking from this episode. Is that okay, I want a 10% overall close rate and then somewhere around 35% qualified close rate. And I think that's something our listeners can take from this episode is think about both those numbers. Right. And if you have, let's say you have a 10% close rate, but a 50%, you know, qualified close rate. That's something you can talk about and think about. Okay, what are we doing here? Maybe we're selling this or too high.
Jamie 00:09:50 - And so, we're reaching a lot of people. And so, we're getting the right number there. But maybe we're selling it for too high. So, I think having an understanding of both those numbers will be really important. So, I'm going to jump in with that.
Jody 00:10:02 - Let's make sure we understand exactly what it is, because the terminology may be different from firm to firm from whatever we're calling a sale basically. what HubSpot defines as a and I popped up HubSpot to kind of, you know, compare some of those numbers that were that were in the podcast. And in HubSpot says a sales win rate is defined as the percentage of the final stage prospects that closed and became customers, divided by the number of deals in the pipeline in any given period. So that's what we're talking about there. And that's what I think Tim is referring to in this, in the sales call. and that's called a sales win rate. A sales close rate, according to HubSpot, is the number of deals a salesperson closes divided by the number of lead opportunities they're given, or they're fed during a given period.
Jody 00:10:46 - So again, you know, not all not everybody in the pipeline is going to actually talk to a sales person. But once they do, that's when the sales close rate is defined.
Jamie 00:10:56 - That's why they can be qualified.
Jody 00:10:58 - Yeah. And that's what it's that's when it's truly a qualified lead. That's correct.
Jamie 00:11:01 - Makes sense. Okay. So, this next one you had something for, and I didn't. But I'm guessing we're going to have some overlap here. And some of the stuff we've already talked about. So, the one that you identified was the unicorn, which is the most unique thought of the episode. So, what did you have for this?
Jody 00:11:15 - Yeah, I thought the unique thought was, is that, you know, Tim had spoke about how he, he had basically had to come up with email leads. You know, that was that was his base is basic thing email leads. And what he did is he combined, any leverage to different established brands in order to, to achieve that. And so I thought that was kind of a very unique way of doing it, not just, you know, for one of his clients or one of his clients was, I think, The Washington Post.
Jody 00:11:40 - And he and he basically combined the Papa John's brand and the Washington Post brand, and that's how he was able to generate a ton of leads. And it was super successful. And, and the nice thing about that is, you know, thinking through it, you know, I'm guessing I'm guessing don't know, but I'm guessing the Washington Post and Papa John's were probably clients of his. And so he, he used two solid clients in order to, you know, really work together and to achieve that, which I thought was an outstanding idea, for especially, somebody that's, you know, in his position.
Jamie 00:12:13 - Yeah. I had this as well. And I had this under category number seven, which is the visionary Vantage. So that's the best piece of advice for leaders. So, I think we're on the same page here. And, and kind of the, the questions he was asking, which I thought were really kind of something I chewed on after the podcast and kind of thought about over the next day or so is is what assets do I have and what am I looking for.
Jamie 00:12:34 - Right. So that's something that any salesperson or any business owner should really think about is, is what assets do I have in assets? Obviously we're not talking physical assets. We're talking about what tips or what tools do you have at your fingertips as a business owner, based on your life, based on your experiences, based on people you know? Those are all assets you have and things you can take advantage of. And then think about it and ask, what am I looking for? What? What do I need? Do I need sales leads? Do I need email marketing? What? What exactly am I looking for? And then you ask yourself the second question how can I use my assets to generate what I need? So the story told is, okay, I have this connection with Papa John's. I have this connection with the Washington Post. How could I want to? I want to like, make the Washington Post happier. I want to make, that was I think that was his ultimate goal was to make a connection with Washington Post.
Jamie 00:13:19 - So, he used his connection with Papa John's to connect those two and really created this awesome campaign. And so I think that's the that's the question I've been thinking about is as a, obviously a leader in our organization is, okay, what assets do we have in this organization and how can we use them for what we need? And I think that's a question that any business owners should be thinking about. And obviously taking inventory of their assets all the time because, you know, not that you're using people, but it's just a lot of times like this example, both sides are going to benefit from this. Like I think Papa John's and Washington Post are both extremely happy with what came out of this.
Jody 00:13:50 - Yeah, it's kind of funny because kind of taking that team to the next level. I mean, we always get those clients that kind of goes to us over time or our prospects. That goes to us where they're hot and heavy. We may quote them. They said like, hey, this is going to be the, you know, we're the best thing since sliced bread.
Jody 00:14:03 - And then they kind of disappear for three weeks and you're like, well, did they fall off their face of the earth? Did they change their mind? We always, you know, we always want to. We always think ourselves the worst case scenario. Oh, they decided to go elsewhere. And one of our virtual one of our, vertical leaders, came to me. Was it yesterday or day before and said, you know, hey, I think I'm going to call this lead a dead lead. We're not going to pursue it anymore. And it was one of those leads that we thought, we actually thought we're going to we're going to close. And so I said, well, hey, why don't you just send them some information, send them a link to your newest, your latest podcast or send them to that, that book, that white page book that we wrote, about financial, you know, forecasting regarding to their vertical, you know, just send them something like that. Don't mention anything about the conversation.
Jody 00:14:48 - Just say, hey, I saw this, thought of you. And, here's a, you know, see what you know, get what you think type of thing. And, he did and ironically, the very next day, I'm like, you know, hey, I'm going to meet with this person in a couple of weeks. What did me say to me goes, don't worry about it. I'm meeting with him today. He called me right back from that conversation. Or we have a sales call later today with it. And I thought, you know, just that right there using current assets that you have, those assets might be connections with clients. They may be pieces of literature that you've written. It may be, you know, it may be somebody you just know, take advantage of the assets in order to, you know, establish credibility and help that sales process.
Jamie 00:15:26 - I love that example because, yeah, obviously, his example here was two connections he had in your example is is as a marketing department, how many assets are you creating? Like again, we're creating an asset right now.
Jaime 00:15:36 - We're creating this podcast. We're creating assets. When we do webinars, we're creating assets when we go out and speak and have those connections. And so yeah, you constantly have to be working on creating those assets. But if you have all the assets in the world but you never use them, like why? Why have them, right? I think that's a great example. The other example I was thinking about is, is some of the connections we make that are vendors, right. Like the banking assets we have, like all the connections we have with banks and lenders. And, you know, maybe when you're on a call with a prospective client and they're talking about that being their issue, and then you haven't heard from for a couple of weeks and be like, hey, I know we talked a lot about finding a lender. Here's a great lender you guys can reach out to, and you're not necessarily their CFO, but you're possibly giving them that that resource that they really need. And like, oh wow, Jodi really does have a ton of connections.
Jamie 00:16:19 - and so I think that's something that we can do in the agency space as well as, you know, someone comes up with an idea and a sales call and, you know, you want to help them with it, like send them the connections there. And that's one of those assets you could definitely use. Okay. So that was my number seven and your number four. so kind of combined there. So let's jump to number ten. so ten is the campaign carnival. so this is the best piece of marketing or pipeline advice. Now, again, I think we may have stepped on this a little on this one a little bit, but I have I have something unique for this one. So, but I'm curious, before I get started, what did what did you have for the campaign Carnival?
Jody 00:16:53 - Yeah. Came campaign. Carnival. with with Papa John's. I mean, I think the deal that they had or that Tim, coordinated with the with the individual Papa Johns was that, hey, we're going to give away a pizza.
Jody 00:17:05 - So they're giving away a free pizza in order to achieve, you know, basically gain all these different emails. And I thought that was a unique idea. Hey, let's give away something in order to achieve what we have, you know, and I thought that was a big, you know, big idea, you know, hit financially. You know, they're actually truly are paying for those leads. They're just paying for in a different way. And what they'd found out in the process is that Papa John's was one of the biggest, draws that they, they've had, you know, doing that they I think they gave away like 100,000 pizzas or something like that. and in that process, they gave away a lot of money to do it, but they in turn got a ton of lead opportunities, which is what they were ultimately looking for.
Jamie 00:17:48 - And I think the funny part of that story was they were expecting it to be a big deal in the Washington area, and this was kind of the early internet days.
Jamie 00:17:54 - And they're getting calls from Florida and Papa John's getting calls from all these other states. Why isn't my coupon code working? And so I think that was a that was kind of cool how like sometimes there's these other, other advantages that come from it that you don't expect.
Jody 00:18:07 - Yeah, exactly.
Jamie 00:18:08 - So my number ten was different, but I think you're not going to be surprised by what I picked up from this one. Jody. So he talks about this twice in the podcast. He talks about it very early on. So around the five minute mark and then also towards the end around the 21 minute mark. But he talks a lot about systems. And the quote that I picked up is it's hard to build a business if you don't invest in hefty systems. So everybody knows it's listen to me. And I've probably mentioned it 100 times on this podcast. I'm a huge e-myth guy, and the reason I'm a huge e-myth guy is because the binder he talks about going to that hotel and the experience he has every time and the systems that are created.
Jamie 00:18:42 - And I think that's something that, I don't think a lot of people often think about when it comes to marketing is you think marketing is just having a guy that can talk really well and go and, and sell deals, but you have to have a process that's built that can be duplicated by others. And so to me, that's the one thing that if you don't have that within your organization and you don't have that within your marketing department, and you just kind of trust your instincts and go off your instincts of your salesperson, then you are definitely never going to scale to where you want to scale. So that was something I definitely picked up here and really thought was a great piece of advice.
Jody 00:19:13 - Yeah, I love that because he also said that you can't really grow just on referrals alone, you know, which was kind of an interesting concept. And so you have to be able to you can to a certain point. But after that, I think the systems and process that you're mentioning had to be put in place in order to scale at a high rate.
Jody 00:19:29 - So 100% agree a great quote. It's hard to build a business if you don't invest in systems. Love it.
Jamie 00:19:35 - So I'm going to ask you on this one, Jody. So you obviously were a rainmaker for a while with when we were when we were just summit CPA and you were able to really, develop a sales system and a sales process that really met your personality. At what point did you realize that what you were actually creating was a process that could be duplicated?
Jody 00:19:55 - That's a great question. So let's kind of back up a little bit. So the process was thought or the base of the process. We're going to call it thought leadership. In the way the thought leadership that we approached it initially was, hey, we're going to go to conferences, in which, you know, we're going to look at the, you know, we're qualified buyers are going to be at because they're going to be folks that are in our industry, folks at a certain dollar size that are in industry, and we're going to teach them how to be profitable.
Jody 00:20:20 - And the idea was, we're not going to teach them on what a virtual CFO does. I mean, that never comes up in the conversation. you know, we don't want to talk about the pieces and parts of it. We want to talk about, hey, the benefits that they're going to, they're going to receive. And so how to be profitable. We kind of open our books up and show them our playbook. You know, here's what we talk about. You know, here's how much cash you should have in the bank. Here's how to develop the forecast and all that kind of good stuff. The pipeline that we're talking about in this episode is part of that. And so all these different things that we we're giving away to clients. And so then the idea was, hey, we're going to do this repeatedly over time. And then hopefully, you know, clients, you know, if they can if they can do. Exactly. We're saying high five to them. that's awesome.
Jody 00:21:04 - That's that has more gratification than actually them coming and us helping them out. But if they do need our help, then we're here to help out. So it's kind of a long term play. And with that again, we would over and over and do this at conferences and, and eventually after probably it was probably 4 or 5 conferences. We started then picking up clients. So it took a while to actually, get established and get our rhythm and really figure out how to how to do it. so you know, that that was the conference idea. And so and with that, we would have, probably out of each conference, we would average about three folks. That would be, you know, that would come to us. Hey, we definitely are interested. We close maybe one of those on average. Now, keep in mind, we might go to this conference, you know, ten times. And somebody, you know, five years ago is calling us. And so what I'm saying is, you know, three times for everyone is probably what we had.
Jody 00:21:54 - And then again, a 30% closing ratio. So, so that that was the idea. And then the idea then also was that we would market material towards those individuals. So all of our marketing would be focused on creative agencies. It would be talking about, you know, hey, here's what we here's, you know, for creative agencies, here's the new tax laws that are going to impact you. Here's the, you know, here's what your pipeline should be based on. You know, what we're seeing. Here's how to protect yourself in a recession. If the recession does happen and some easy things that are related to agency. So everything was really agency focused. And so that was the that was the idea. That was the playbook, you know, hey, let's become a thought leader. Let's write books on it. Let's do white pages. Let's make sure that all of our CFOs have super high knowledge and know the vernacular, understand what a creative agency is, and that that ended up being super successful and bringing on clients.
Jody 00:22:44 - But it also was very successful on retaining clients because, again, as part of the sales process, you just don't want to bring on clients and churn them really quick. You know, that's not a not a good process. Right? And see, the long tail process is that, hey, if you can keep a client for four years plus, then hey, that's not a bad deal. And ours has always been over four years between, you know, between, I'd say it's probably four and a quarter right now. years that a client typically would stay with us before they graduate from, you know, some CPA, you know, type of thing. And graduating means that they've gotten to a point where they're going to sell or they've gotten to a point where, you know, they're so large now they really need to bring somebody internally, which are both huge success points for us. It sucks we lose a client. But again, great for the client because we got them to the stage that they wanted to be, you know, coming to us.
Jody 00:23:28 - And so then the question is how do you duplicate that and how do you replicate that? You know, with other industries, you know, cannabis being a perfect example? I don't smoke don't use cannabis in any means, whether it's whether it's for health reasons or other, I've never, never done that. and so how would I be that person to be able to speak in front of owners of cannabis agencies? Well, probably not that person. So what we had to do is we had to go out and find somebody that really, really has passion for that industry. And so that's when we did our search and we found an individual. And with that individual now that person can then replicate it. He can then go out and speak a different event and, and kind of take the processes we put into place and replicate that into that industry. And again, it's a long play. It's not a short, you know, short term game. It's not like you're going to start this. And we expect, you know, all these sales come in right away.
Jody 00:24:21 - But they will come in over time. And that's what we're starting to see now where we're starting to get opportunities. Now that we've had this in process for a year. We're starting to see opportunities there slow going. But we are seeing opportunities. And in that field, because of the process we put in place and replicating that sales approach. So, I would say, you know, I've always known, you know, to answer your question, I've always known that that was a replicable thing. It's just a matter of, do I want to take the time and put the money in and the investment in order to, to replicate it? You know, if we're doing really well and we have, you know, we're growing our business and doubling our size every three years, why would I want to take that money, invest into it, unless I really wanted to blow it up and take that short term cash loss for the long term gain of the company. Wasn't really ready for that until we actually merged with Andrew's, and they wanted to grow up from, you know, the $10 million we were at to the $50 million idea.
Jody 00:25:12 - And I thought, well, this is a great way of doing it. Let's, let's just replicate the model and invest a little bit and see how the long term plays out.
Jamie 00:25:20 - And I definitely think it took time, like I was involved in some of those conversations and saw some of the work that you and Kelly and our marketing team did of like, okay, let's we know what the process is. But it was all up here, like actually taking that process and documenting it and saying, okay, this is how we do it for another, another niche was really important. So I appreciate you giving that insight. And I think that hopefully our listeners can listen to that and be like, oh, this is my process, this is my philosophy. Write it. And like, how can I do that in other areas to really scale your business up. So I appreciate you going through that. So we're on to our last category. So just for our just remind our listeners this will always be one of our categories because we want to make sure we close with something positive.
Jamie 00:25:58 - And so, this is a category number 11 the mic drop moment. This is the one thing that okay, this is this is the one thing you want to take away from this podcast. So I'm curious what your item was and I'll go back to mine after that.
Jody 00:26:10 - Yeah. My item kind of fell on the same boat as the other ones, really. And it may be a different flavor. And I think it was the effective email marketing campaign that they were talking about. And hey, how can we how can we get an email marketing campaign to work? And in this case, it was putting it on paper, right? They did a Washington Post ad type of thing, and that's how they were able to get that and how really able to blow it up. And so it was nice to be identifying like, hey, here's the here's the approach that we're going to take and email marketing. You know, I did some research on this. I don't know the exact stat because I've a lot of different numbers going through my head at the moment.
Jody 00:26:44 - But with that, email marketing was probably one of the most effective ways of marketing. And, you know, with that, I think it's important to make sure those emails are qualified and they're not just simply sent out to everybody in anybody. But in this case, they devised an approach in order to be able to get those emails. And that was through this pizza giveaway program. And I thought that was a genius idea. And I think just thinking outside the box, is really, really the key to all of that. And, you know, thinking outside the box, you, you know, when you think about it, McDonald's does things like this all the time where they will bring back the McRib sandwich. You know, they only bring it back for a short period of time and they see sales spike, you know, for that sandwich, you know, that they could offer throughout the year because again, a very good sandwich and very good for them. But again, that's the spike that they have.
Jody 00:27:32 - And you see it with different shakes that, you know, maybe restaurants will have, maybe they'll have the, you know, hey, let's have the, you know, the snow cone shake for, you know, during, you know, December or something like that, you know, which, you know, draws people to it. And so again, just being creative with the marketing ideas, find out what works, you know, whether it's if it's email marketing, if it's another form of marketing, whatever that might be. Just be creative in the way that you go about doing it. I think you're going to find, you know, better results than just simply staying with the norm, for whatever that might be.
Jamie 00:28:02 - I, I love the Nacho Fry campaign, the way they do that at Taco Bell. Like the they have camp, they have commercials, like, locked away that they're ready to use whenever they're going to have those things out there. And so, okay, we're gonna release the nacho fry again for these three months.
Jamie 00:28:15 - Let's bring all these commercials out. Let's get this giant campaign, and then we'll remove them, and then we'll do it again. Like, I think that's brilliant marketing. And again, I know, as someone who I don't go to Taco Bell a ton, but when they have nacho fries, I will definitely make that stop a couple more times than I normally do.
Jaime 00:28:28 - So, yeah. So my.
Jamie 00:28:32 - my mic drop moment was something you mentioned earlier. We really haven't talked about a ton. So I want to kind of dive into this a little bit is the, you know, they used a couple different words for this, but they talked about land and expand the front. get your foot in the door, you know, that type of thing. And, I thought Jason talked about this. And Jason, when we interviewed him, said, you know, he kind of had the secret sauce, and I think he kind of tipped his, tipped his hand a little bit in this podcast. I think this was a secret sauce was he has that, you know, real quick thing that he can sell and he can sell it really quickly.
Jamie 00:29:00 - He's like, I can close this product in a week, right? I can close this in a week versus those 30 days or 60 days or 90 days that we're talking about. And then once someone's spending money with you, guess what? They build trust with you. They know you. You're already an approved vendor. And he kind of uses the McDonald's example of like, you want fries with that. Like that's their highest profit margin. Like, yeah, I may be only charging $500 for this one product, but once the client knows me and once the customer knows me, they're going to start working with me again. They're going to want to keep working with me, and then I can have an unlimited pipeline with the client. So I thought that was huge. And I think it kind of gave away Jason's secret sauce of how he grew his business is so quick. Was he had that real quick sale, got that relationship with the client and then was able to expand from there.
Jody 00:29:41 - Yeah
Jody 00:29:42 - We're trying something very similar to that with you know providing a just a real quick financial statement with industry comparison. You know something super I wouldn't say easy for us to do but easier for us to do than a full blown engagement would be in a client would get a lot of benefit from it, and we're trying to push that out as an opportunity to, hey, here's what you can get. You know, if this is all you need, perfect, then don't worry about it. Here's the small dollar amount that goes with it. But you know, again, if you would want more of them, we can offer more. And I think that's a very similar approach. We just started doing that over the last year and it's been pretty successful so far.
Jamie 00:30:16 - Yeah, so I'd say if any of our listeners have been listening to us for a while and they're like, guys, I just can't afford to work with summit or I wish, hope I can work with summit someday. I think this is an awesome opportunity for you to jump in with us is we have this really cheap alternative.
Jamie 00:30:29 - You feel like your books are in pretty good place. You can just send us your books and we'll send you a financial statement and you can start looking at that and start seeing some of the insights that we talk about a lot and some of the industry information that's out there. So this is just a good opportunity for people that have been listening to us for a while that might want to start working with us, that that's a great opportunity. And again, I know it's a like Jodie said, it's definitely a marketing campaign, but we want you guys to get to know us because we think once you get to know us, you'll want to keep working with us. So that's an awesome opportunity for you guys to connect with us. So I appreciate you bringing up that Jody. Awesome. So that's all the topics I think. again, the interesting thing I picked up from this podcast, Jody, is, is we both listened to the same podcast, but we had some different takeaways this time.
Jamie 00:31:08 - Like, I think the marketing stuff really resonated with you. And I think the system and foot in the door stuff kind of really resonate with me. So it's interesting to different people who work in the same industry. Listen to a what is it 25 minute podcast and took, took some different stuff out of it. So I think that's, that's the benefit of this type of, this type of format here. So hopefully you enjoy the show and enjoy talking about it.
Jody 00:31:31 - And I definitely recommend listening to the podcast, that, you know, it's a great podcast. And, and Jason's got tons of different things. I think he's like 700 podcasts. And so there's a lot of great, stuff to, glean from what he's been providing. I would do it. I would recommend 1 or 2 things, take a look at his earlier podcast and realize how poorly he speaks. Then take a look at our earlier podcast and realize how poorly Jamie speaks. Very similar. And you'll get some enjoyment out of it.
Jamie 00:32:01 - I agree, I was a terrible he's probably the first 20 episodes, so. Thanks for bringing that up again, Jody.
Jody 00:32:09 - Hey. No worries, no worries.
Jamie 00:32:10 - All right. Well thanks everybody. We love doing these shows. We'll keep doing them. I have another one that I'm excited about sending over to Jody that just came out a couple days ago. So I'm going to send that one over to, Jodi and we'll get another one of these out quickly. So appreciate.
Outro 00:32:21 - Everybody. Enjoy this podcast. Visit our website Summit Connect to get more tips and strategy for achieving business success. We're here to be a resource in this ever changing industry.
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