"Am I losing customers faster than I can attract them?"

Webinar Transcript:

We've got a phenomenal, phenomenal discussion gonna be happening today. We've got some great information going to be shared with us as shop owners, raving fans, retention of customers.

Gonna be amazing. I'm super excited. So, thank you for everybody that's joining in. Type in the questions box. That is where you want to put your information.

You've got questions. We've got the answers. Go ahead and type them in. Maybe you've got a comment. Maybe there's the topic of discussion we wanna talk about. Put it into the questions box, and we will engage with our illustrious guest here on our webinar today to talk about our raving fans and keeping them coming back into the shop.

So who are we? We are Kukui. Anybody else that wants a shout out, put into the questions box where you are joining us from today. You are super awesome, and and my friends, it's good to see you.

Good to see you. Is from the automotive industry. We have run shops. We have turned wrenches.

We have managed the front counter, the front desk. We have we've done that. We've done that and more. And we we've coupled together with the best of the best for developers, computer software, software as a service industry.

Couple those two together, we're bringing to you shop owners the best of the best Kukui software. It is a proving ground for what marketing is working, what doesn't work. We are your website. We are your, customer retention, your email, postcards, texting, you you name it.

We we're we're the proven ground, all in one success platform with your marketing. Super look forward to working with each of you on this platform, on this program to help you be the best of the best in your market, in your patch, in your area. And I'm super excited to be today with Lighthouse Automotive because they are expanding their reach. They have, purchased another shop here in North Carolina, and it's about two miles up the street.

So the kingdom is growing. Super awesome. Great for that to happen. And, you know, I'll be traveling to many different areas.

You if if you are open for it I'm I'm in Genie Lights' office right now. I'm I'm in their office.

If you're open for it and we can do a webinar from your shop, love to love to stop by. Drop us a drop me a note. Drop me a text. Let's connect on that one.

We are talking about raving fans and customer retention. Super excited to have this discussion. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'll be the host today. I'll be the voice for you.

Go ahead and type your questions, comments, concerns into the questions box so that we can have this discussion today. And joining me today is the ever illustrious and super awesome, mister Rick White.

Rick is, managing partner of one eighty biz. He is super awesome. I met him. And, Rick, I don't know if you remember when you and I met for the first time.

Are you there, Rick?

My hair was brown.

It it it okay. It may have been.

I'm not certain on that. But Rick and I met at ASTE Yep. And it was, Lucas Underwood was there, and and Lucas was just singing the praises. You had come in and helped to coach and train him and turn his business one hundred and eighty degrees to actually being profitable.

And and and to Lucas' credit, he did what you said. He took to heart what you said and and implemented it. So that's super awesome, And and I appreciate you for doing that. I I appreciate Lucas for listening and and taking what you said to heart to be the shop he is today, to inspire the industry the way he does today.

That is just that's awesome. That's awesome.

And then I gotta meet your wife as well, miss Brenda. Yep.

She's awesome as well.

Oh, that's And she's rocking purple hair these days.

That's pretty cool too.

Yeah. She is.

Yep. So I've turned the screen over to you. Throw your, slide deck I know. Up there.

Screen now.

Boom. Shaka locka. Client retention. I see it. It's got the black bars on the side. If you wanna make it super awesome.

Tell you what. Hold on one sec.

Throw it up a little bit larger there. Larger than life as we are.

Let's see.

KUKUI Carl says, hello, Rick. Hello.

And, KUKUI Carl says, he loves your short ten minute daily Just One Thing.

Please get them coming.

Oh, we will. We will.

Alright. Yeah. Your presentation looks perfect. It is big and bold, and I can read it.

Well, that is awesome. Okay. So let's get started. What do you say?

Let's get started. The floor is yours, brother.

Alright. Hello, everybody. Please, as Jimmy said, my name is Rick White from one eighty biz. We're down here in beautiful Harrisonburg, Virginia.

So I'm really excited to be talking with you today and sharing some thoughts that maybe you haven't had before. You know, the reality is there's a lot of stuff we've already heard, and and my goal isn't so much to give you all new stuff. My goal is to give you some new stuff that you haven't thought of or heard of before that builds on what you have, but also to challenge you as to what you are doing.

There is a gap between knowing and doing, and my goal here today is to help you get that gap to be a little bit shorter. So please put your questions in. There'll be plenty of time at the end. I wanna make sure that we have, your time to get your, questions answered.

I want this to be a blessing and a help for your business. So let's get started. You know, today, we're gonna talk about, clients and, you know, kind of a a single-minded focus that I've really found to be dangerous and expensive in shops. I wanna talk to you about what I call the loyalty ladder and why it matters, and then I wanna show you how you can create a program to move your new customers to to raving van clients.

That's the whole thing. And and why are we talking about this? Because it seems like there's a lopsided focus on attracting new clients versus keeping them. You know, closing that sale you that you just made, you know, that great sale you just had, that's great.

But what you're not aware of is you just lost your best prospect.

Now what?

Typically, it's who's next, and I I wanna kinda get away from that a little bit.

Instead, what I want you instead of thinking of continually pursuing new clients okay?

Because a lot of times, what I see shops doing is it's like this giant machine just eating and eating and eating, and it's dumping refuse on the other end, either people that didn't buy or people that bought and and then but they're done. And that is not a healthy relationship to have with the community that you serve. You I'm gonna tell you, yes. You wanna grow your business, but most of your attention, in my opinion, needs to be on building the base that you have now on growing a deeper connection with them.

Because otherwise, that single-minded focus on new clients only is very, very dangerous and expensive. Let me show you what I mean. The typical buying process looks like something like this. First step they have is they have awareness of an issue.

They got a problem.

Now they're starting to get interest in, okay, what can I do about it? Who can I go to? What are my options? These are the things they're going through. And then they get to a decision.

Okay?

Once they get to that decision, now they take action.

When you're with a new client years ago years ago, and I'm gonna use my little pointer here, years ago, we would start here at the awareness phase, and then what would happen is they would come to you to get information. That was before Google, right, before the Google. They would come to you because you were the keeper of all information.

But today, that's not the case. Today, they can learn more about what's going on in their car than you know in ten minutes.

Okay? Today, they're not engaging you until the decision making process.

And that puts you at a real disadvantage because sometimes you gotta back up. You gotta get you know, you they're gonna think, hey, man. I need this. I need this. I need this.

You gotta be able to stop them, slow them down, and say, okay. Wait a minute. I understand that's what you believe you need. What are you trying to solve? Write that down. What are you trying to solve?

Because a lot of times, people will come to you with a mistaken solution.

I see it with shops coming to me all the time. I need better help. I need more cars. Those are the two things that I hear all the time, and a lot of times, that's not the issue.

That's not the issue. God bless you, Jimmy.

So that is a big deal. But here's the thing.

When you because when they get when your client gets down to your new client gets down down to this action notice here, and please forgive me. I'm looking at my screen over here that I'm presenting. When they get to here, now they get to decide, okay. Am I done and I'm not going back, or am I coming back and I'm gonna repeat?

And the goal is to get them to repeat, and I'm gonna show you why this is so important. Okay?

And and what's cool about it is the awareness and interest part, the skepticism, the doubt, the fear, as you get that connection, that relationship built with people, that drops.

Right? Those things drop, and it makes it easier for you to help somebody because they're not worried about your intentions.

And that's really, really important.

There's a perception of self interest at all times. You wanna make sure that you're keeping yours as low as possible.

The easiest way I have found to do that, that we train our clients on, is to when you go and answer the phone or or greet somebody, just be curious and expect nothing.

Just be curious. Can you help?

That's all that you should be coming into. If you start pushing in on, let's get you in, let's do that, let's do this, and people are feeling pushed, you're going too fast.

So you wanna be able to know where they are in their buying process.

Right? Where are they in their buying process?

And make sure that you are somebody they wanna talk to.

Okay?

Now besides their buying process, your client has a decision making process. You might wanna write this down. They're five questions they ask themselves every time. You do the same thing when you're a customer.

Okay? So here's the first question. Do I like you?

Now understand that liking you doesn't mean I'm gonna do business with you. It just means I'm gonna let you on the field to play.

Doesn't mean you're gonna win, but you got a chance. So do I like you?

Do you listen to me? That's the second thing. The second question they ask, do you listen to me?

Do they feel seen and heard and appreciated? How are you showing that up in engaging somebody right off the bat?

Are you trying to impress them with all your knowledge, which, by the way, doesn't work?

Or a much better way is to be completely obsessed about what they're going through when they're doing most of the talking. That makes all the difference in the world. Number three, do you make me feel important?

Do you make me feel important? And let's face it. If you listen to them and you're hearing them and you're asking questions to clarify, and at the end of it, you're using reflective listening and saying, hey. You know, Jimmy, based on what I hear you saying, this is what's going on. Is that correct?

So that I'm sure I'm asking questions that nobody else has asked. I wanna ask you questions no one's ever asked, and I wanna get you thinking about your problem with me as the solution.

That's my goal.

Okay?

Now as we go through this whole process, it's very, very time consuming to do with new people all the time. It gets way easier when you're doing it with the same people over and over again. Okay? So let's talk about some marketing definitions that are really important to client retention today.

And I've got a super, super cool giveaway at the end. I actually built a series of web not web. A series of Excel spreadsheets that you can use to measure your effectiveness with client retention. And I'm gonna give that away to you at the end.

Okay? So here's what's gonna happen. Our first definition is a client acquisition cost. This is basically the cost related to acquiring a new customer.

That could be the campaign itself. It could be in, discounts, etcetera. But those are all there. You wanna measure those, okay, so that you understand what your acquisition cost is.

I'm telling you today, it's not unusual to see a two hundred, two hundred fifty, even three hundred dollar client acquisition cost today in our industry.

That's a lot of money.

Then we have what's called client lifetime value. This measures the value of that client to the business through their full lifespan.

Now the problem I have with this is it's on retail sales.

I've got an intrinsic problem with this. Okay? Because our next talk is about a break even point.

This is where the sum of the profit from a client overcomes the amount of money that you invested in acquiring them. Okay? That's when you've covered your initial cost in getting that client to come into that customer to come into your into your shop.

That's a big deal. And then the last one we wanna be watching is what I call an attrition rate. That's where you wanna measure how many people you've lost over a given period of time compared to the number of people that are coming in as a percentage.

I'm going to tell you that through my experiences over the last hold the five. Hold the phone. Ninety five. Two thousand five. Two thousand fifteen. For almost thirty five years, I have found over and over again that the average shop loses somewhere between seventeen and twenty one percent of their database a year.

That is a real number. You start looking at it, it will surprise the heck out of you. But it's an important number to understand. We're gonna go into each of these as we go forward.

So now your client acquisition cost is simply the marketing dollars divided by the number of new clients that you got through that. And what let's give you an example. So you have a thousand dollars in marketing.

Right? Two hundred dollars in discounts, that's twelve hundred dollars.

You got four new clients from that.

That's a three hundred dollar client acquisition cost.

Okay?

Now think about this, though, for a second. Let's say you have one guy come in one time, one visit. That's it, and it's two hundred bucks.

Okay?

So think about that. Annual value, two hundred dollars. He never comes back again. Two hundred dollars. So you're thinking I'm upside down a hundred bucks.

No.

You're upside down by the amount of that profit. What if the profit on that two hundred dollars is ten bucks?

You're down two hundred ninety dollars.

You can go out of business chasing new clients to the exclusion of anything else if you're not aware of what your what your acquisition cost is and what your breakeven is. Okay?

So, again, look at this. You got two thousand in advertising. Here's another example.

Two thousand in advertising, five hundred dollars in discounts. So that's twenty five hundred dollars. You get a hundred new clients.

That's amazing. Right? Because that's a twenty five dollar acquisition cost. But that's fantastic.

But wait a minute. What about the lifetime value?

Right? Because if they come in at twenty five, right, and they come in, their life hundred bucks and you made five dollars, then you're losing twenty dollars on every vehicle that's coming in.

Twenty bucks.

That's not good. So there's a couple of different numbers you really wanna watch that I didn't talk about today.

When someone comes into your shop the first time, please understand they're a guest.

What I want you to do is find out what percentage is coming back a second time.

Now they become a customer. It's my job to get them from customer to client and from client to raving fan. We're gonna go through that. Okay?

Now you don't wanna be losing twenty bucks on each one. Look at it this way here. You have the original investment in the marketing right here.

And then based on the profit that you generate from that those the the work you do with that person, you're gonna have some period of time, and it's gonna be different for different shops. And it's gonna be based on two things, your client acquisition cost and your profit model. Right?

So if I have a five percent profit model, which is a national average is five to seven percent, that's gonna take me four times longer than if I have a twenty percent profit model.

Okay? But what happens is, and I really hope this is showing it to you, you don't actually break even on this client until right here, the payback.

Then for that entire time going through here, right, continuing on the on this, spectrum, now the green is the profit. This is where you actually get to benefit from the relationship.

And what we wanna be really careful about is the churn.

I was talking to one shop who very proudly told me they had eight hundred new clients in a year.

And I said, wow. That's really amazing. And then very quietly, I said, how many came back?

Less than a hundred.

Less than a hundred. So there's something to be said to make sure that your marketing message is going to the right market, right, the right client base, but it has the right message and the right method of getting it in front of them so that it resonates with them. Basically, marketing is simply recognizing a problem your ideal client has, and the marketing is a promise that you can fix it.

And the better you can do with your marketing as far as getting it in front of the right message, in front of the right people, your churn rate will be really low. But when you're going after just price and you're just, you know, trying to fill the base, you're gonna find that your churn rate is much higher, and you're not gonna be happy with that. You're you're gonna find that it's disappointing, and you're gonna feel like you're always chasing your tail. So this is a very, very important, diagram to be aware of.

You gotta be aware of your lifetime value with your clients. If you don't know, do some studying and find out. Okay? And if there's anything you need help with, anything I'm recommending right now as far as implementing, you run into a snag, you reach out to me, rick at one eighty biz dot com.

I will help you through that snag. There's no cost, no expectation.

Ultimately, I I grew up in this industry, and I know it's it's filled with the most honest people.

I'm here to help you get better. That's my goal. That's my crusade. Okay? So this is a very, very telling diagram.

So now let's talk about attrition rate. Attrition rate, right, is comparing the number of clients that haven't been in for a given period of time compared to the number of new people you've attracted over the same. And, ultimately, your database is gonna do one or two things. It's either growing or it's shrinking.

And, you know, a lot of times, people aren't aware of it shrinking until they're on the react side of it. All of a sudden, I don't have enough work. I don't have enough work. What happened?

Oh, we're too expensive. No. It's not that you're too expensive. You've been losing people and not aware of it, and because of that, your database is shrinking.

So you wanna make sure that's there because I need you to understand that there's a huge difference between attracting somebody and keeping them, and that's where the loyalty ladder starts. Right? That's where it steps in. So the loyalty ladder, what this is is the first thing we do is we start with suspects.

These are people that don't know you even exist.

Now this is hard to understand, but we because when you own the business, man, it's everything to you. Just about every breath you take. Right? Every move you make.

Sorry. That's a song pun. But every breath you take is revolving around your shop. That's normal.

But I guarantee you there are people driving by your shop every single day that don't even know you're there.

So we have suspects. And your goal when you don't have when you have people that don't know who you are is to make them a prospect. And that's where they've come to know that you exist, but they haven't done business with you yet. Right? They don't know enough about you and what you do to justify the hassle of changing.

Because let's face it. A lot of times, people will wanna change their providers, but you gotta fight the devil you know versus the devil you don't know.

Okay? So that is your major factor here. It's not the competition.

It's getting them to feel safe enough to do business with you.

That's really important.

And if you could change your focus on that, like, how do we make it safe? How do they know that when they come here, this is what we're gonna be do? This is how we do it. This is the way we're gonna do it. That's your marketing.

Please understand that your marketing is there to show them that you can address their problem in a very unique way and do it in an amazing way. How are you doing with that?

That's the goal.

That's why today you can't think anybody with four wheels, I can fix their car. That's getting harder and harder to do anyway, isn't it?

I mean, holy crap. I was talking to one of my clients, two weeks ago about a Land Rover that had a computer for the damn steering wheel. Come on.

It's a steering wheel. Right? But these are things you gotta be aware of. So now once you've got them past that hump, they've seen you online, they've seen your your your maybe, hopefully, you're doing some videos, and and you've got testimonials on your website or on on your social media, And now all of a sudden, they're like, okay.

I'm coming in. So now they're a new customer, but I don't call them a customer.

I call them a guest because they've gotta try you on for size.

Number one, are you who you say you are? Do you do what you say you're gonna do? Will I get what I what you say I'm gonna get?

Does it feel good to do business with you? This is important. You know, I see people all the time, you know, stressing the quality of the work they do to get a Google review.

Quality doesn't get you the Google review.

Experience gets you the the Google review. How you made them feel while you were doing business with them, That is what gets you the review.

So now we got a new client. Right? They're a guest. So now they become a repeat customer. They've done business with you more than one time. And as they do business with you, right, and there's a we have a whole another thing on this.

As long as what you're doing is what you said you were gonna do and, you know, you're who you say you are and they're getting what you said you get every single time, then trust is gonna build or it's gonna go away. If consistency isn't there, if caring isn't there, if credibility isn't there, then you're gonna lose them. Right? This is where they become an ex customer, where they have done business with you in the past and they don't anymore.

And, typically, it's either a lack of trust or a lack of perceived value, where they don't understand what they're getting from you. Okay?

So that's really important. But if you can circumvent that and I'll tell you what, you can use marketing to the people that left, and you can do some pretty amazing things.

Excuse me.

Now one of the things I started to tell you was if you got somebody that comes in one time and they never come back again, call them up.

Ask for their feedback.

Find out what what were they expecting, what did they get, what what can you do differently.

Because if you're having a problem retaining new people, that is a really good place to go because you may have the wrong message to the right people, or you may have the wrong message, to the wrong people, right, to the right people. But you just gotta know whether it's your message or who you're going after, or is it execution that is a problem? Because I tell people all the time, there's only one thing worse than not marketing, and that's marketing something you can't deliver consistently.

If you can't deliver it consistently, then don't talk about it.

It's gotta be something you can do every time, every time, every time. Yes. Consistency is boring to a service provider, but it's safety and comfort to our clients.

They wanna know that they can depend on a certain experience.

That's important.

But now that we have the repeat and they keep going, we go to relational now. This is where they've done business with you multiple times. The relationship's grown, and they no longer see you as a salesperson, but, hopefully, they either see you as an adviser or, even better, their advocate, where they got an issue with their vehicle and they know that you're gonna step up as their advocate in the shop and help them achieve the goals that they're looking to have.

Right? Now the whole team should be, but when you can position yourself as that advocate, the amount of trust that goes with that is off the hook good.

Then our final rung is raving fan.

These are people where they are advocates of your business. Right? Well, they'll walk down the street and top peep stop people going down the street telling them they gotta come to see you. It's absolutely amazing when you can get that. And I'm pardon me. I'm willing to bet.

I'm willing to bet that if I could see you right now, we were staying I was standing in front of you asking you this question. How many of you have raving fan clients now?

And people will raise their hand. Everybody will.

So now I'm gonna ask you one more question. How many want more?

And everybody's hand goes up all the time. What I need you to understand is the raving fans you have now, honestly, it's been kismet.

The way you're doing stuff is exactly what they want. They love it, and they become raving fans, and that's a natural byproduct.

If you wanna grow your raving fans and be more intentional about that, then you have got to step up and do something different. Let me show you why.

Let's say we calculate the lifetime value of a raving fan.

Let's say they got two vehicles. They're going to come in between two or three times a year.

Very, very conservative numbers here. Three let's say it's three hundred dollars, average invoice, which is really low.

Then that would give us an eighteen hundred dollar a year annual value. And let's say they stay with you for five years. I know you've got people that have stayed longer. You have some that have stayed less. Let's say the average is five years.

Then that would give you a lifetime value of nine thousand dollars for that client, And that's pretty cool. But let me ask you a question. How many clients do you how many referrals do you get from that one great client? Right? That raving fan. Let's say really, really conservatively, you got one per year.

Now think about this for a second. They're gonna be referring people that are just like them. So birds of a feather flock together. That's the rule. Right? It's not it's not the hard and fast, but for the most part, they're gonna they're gonna send you people that are just like them. They're gonna hang out together.

That lifetime value is gonna be worth about nine thousand dollars per, which gives you a value of referrals of forty five thousand. Now we could actually go out even further than that.

Excuse me. I'm getting over a cold.

You could go even further than that and go multigenerational, but we're just gonna keep it on this single level. Your value of referrals of forty five thousand, So that gives you fifty four thousand dollars for that one client.

Now I've got this built into an Excel sheet so you can figure this out, right, using your numbers, so you can figure out what the natural value is.

Okay? It's in the Excel sheet. You don't even have to worry about this.

But then what creates a one time client? So now we've gone well, if we don't get if we only get somebody comes in once, we're not gonna get our money back on what it cost us to get them. But if we get a raving fan, that's amazing. So now let's step back and talk about what are some of the things they're gonna make someone come in once and never come in again.

Number one, they feel like a number.

They feel like a wallet with legs. If you've ever seen Madagascar, the movie with your kids or grandkids, you know, the lion at one point's looking at the zebra, and it's a steak with legs.

Right? I I just love that graphic.

How many people go into an auto repair shop today, change the dealers, etcetera, and they feel like a wallet with legs?

That's a big deal. You don't want them to feel like a number. You wanna create an experience for them. You don't wanna make it miserable for them. You know, in every interaction with a client, you have one of three possibilities.

You can create moments of magic, moments of mediocrity, or moments of misery.

You wanna make them moments of magic. And what's the amazing thing about this is?

You, because you're the owner, are the author of that story. You get to decide what that story looks like.

So be intentional about it. Don't be so busy doing it, doing it, doing it that you don't step back and get you and your team to see the people you're working with and for, because that's a big deal.

What else creates a a one time client, A one time customer? A lack of trust.

Right? When they feel trust has been broken, hey. I'm gonna have your car done tonight. Oops.

Sorry. Not tonight. Oops. Sorry. Not tomorrow. Oops. Sorry. Not the next day. Or, hey. Right?

Because that's a character issue.

Trust part of trust is character. Part of trust is caring. Part of trust is credibility.

Part of trust is consistency.

These are all the different ingredients in trust. If you fall short on any area, then you're have a problem.

Right?

I have people I trust. Like, I trust the person, but I don't trust their skill.

Like, I don't believe they're credible in doing some of the work that I need done.

How have they taught me that? Because I've brought them something with my car. I live in Virginia. I bring them my car.

They can't fix it two, three times. I love you to the end of the earth, but I can't keep bringing it back to you. I gotta find someone that can fix this. So it's a lack of trust can cause a onetime customer.

And the last one, and it's the worst one, is no connection.

When you have advisers on the front counter that are like Joe Friday from Dragnet, and if you don't get that, Google it. But it's just the facts, ma'am. You don't wanna connect with the client. But the reality is until you can connect with them, you can't get to the wallet.

You can't get them to see you as a valued provider until they understand how much you care, how much you see them, how much you wanna help them.

This is really, really important.

Your number one goal should be to keep people safe, not fix broken cars. Yes. Keep the vehicle safe, keep it reliable, and keep it efficient.

My goal when I had clients come in, I wanted them to have their car to five hundred thousand miles, and I wanted them to have it fifteen to twenty years after they bought it because that's when the car made money for them. Think about that for a sec. If you've got a five to thirteen year old vehicle in your shop, I'm finding that's about the average, fleet age right now in a shop, getting your clients to invest twelve to eighteen hundred dollars a year in maintenance and repair is like a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars a month.

Compare that to a used car payment of six hundred plus today.

Used car.

And the average loan is seventy seven months.

So you gotta have that connection.

What I need you to understand with this loyalty ladder, it's very simple. What fuels the climb, it's trust that fuels the climb up. When they feel like you're in their corner, right, when it's not about making a sale, but helping them get to where they wanna go, and when they know you've got their back, that is when you become that trusted advisor or advocate, and you both win.

So how do you deal with this?

Jimmy, before I get going on any of this, do we have any questions?

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. We we actually have a ton of questions.

And I are you good to answer questions right now? I mean, you're opening this up, so we it's yes. There are questions. Are you ready?

Alright. Tell you what. I've got six more slides. Let me finish the slides.

Okay.

And then we can get to the camera so we can see each other and talk.

And I think that would actually be a a little better. What do you think?

Okay. Six slides and and the questions will come. So everybody, type in your questions. Use the questions box.

Put in your questions there. Keep asking them because I've got a lot of questions. So I know you have a lot of questions as well because we're we're hearing some some great information coming from Rick, and and I can't wait to ask these. So go ahead.

Type those questions in, and, Rick, back to you.

Alright. Appreciate that. So how do we deal with this? There's really two ways to do this.

For you to keep your client retention and to get it so that you're more profitable quicker, there's only two ways to do that. Number one is to lower your client acquisition cost.

Right? When you can go from three hundred a ticket, right, for off the street refer you know, off the street, got somebody off the street through a bunch of ads and such to maybe a referral from a great raving fan, now it's significantly lower.

Okay? Now the other way is to increase the lifetime value amount, where you can keep them in working with you for a longer period of time with you helping them get to where they wanna go. So it's not so much, you know, when you're in a shop and you're just fixing broken cars, your customer is the one instigating the visit every time.

When you switch that to keeping people safe on the road, now you are instigating the visits.

So you wanna instigate those visits in a moral, ethical, and legal way and help them achieve the goals that they're looking for on that vehicle. And it's really important that you understand what those goals are. But let's look at the different stages of a client relationship.

Okay? These are the the seven phases. Number one, they gotta get to know you, like you, and trust you. Now I'm gonna push back on trust a little bit.

Trust is a big word to use. Trust is earned over time. Here's what I'd like to say instead.

You're credible. They know you. They like you, and they believe you can do what you say you can do.

That's not trust. That's the beginning of trust. Right? So trust is gonna be coming over time. And, again, caring, character, consistency, credibility, all of those have gotta be there every every time.

And what's really cool about this, please understand that every relationship you have, I want you to imagine an imaginary trust account right here.

And every interaction with that person, I don't care if it's a client, a vendor, an employee, a or a team member, a, family member, your spouse, significant other, mom, dad, I don't care what it is. Every interaction you have is either a deposit into that trust account or a withdrawal out of it. Let me give you an example. I'm married. I'm sure a bunch of you are.

I have done something stupid.

I'm a man. I have done something stupid in the past. And when the trust account is high between my wife and I, she just laughs it off. It's no big deal.

But when the trust account is low, that same stupid little thing has momentous proportions to it, not because of what I did, but because it's a reflection. Her reaction is a reflection to where the trust account is. So I'm gonna ask you, if you get nothing else out of this, I'm gonna ask you to make sure that you're intentionally making deposits.

Okay? Now the other thing I think I did, and I wanna forgive please ask for forgiveness.

Five questions we ask in a buying decision.

Do I like you? We talked about that.

Do you listen to me? Talked about that. Do you make me feel important?

Got that.

Do you get me in my problem?

I apologize. I did not talk about that.

Do you get me and my problem?

The only way we can show them that we get their problem is when we let them talk.

Don't listen to somebody for thirty seconds. Go, oh, yeah. I know what it is. And then in an attempt, honest attempt, to show them that you know what you're talking about, you diminish what they're going through, and you're like, oh, it's no big deal. It's just this. We'll take care of it.

That does not make them feel heard, and it does not make them feel important. It doesn't make them feel like you've got their problem.

Listen to them. Yes. It might be the thirtieth time you've heard this, but it's the first time they're saying it. It's really important they feel good about it. So that's the fourth question. Fifth question, do I trust and believe you?

Again, trust is more a belief. Do I believe you can do what you say you can do? Credibility.

But those are the five questions each and every one of us ask every time we're in a buying situation.

So now let's go back to this know, like, and trust. Now we do try. That's where they're a guest.

Now they buy, and they repeat.

And then at the end, they're raving fans, and they refer.

Please understand that referrals are the highest form of flattery that you can get, bar none, highest form of flattery. So watch your referrals.

Watch your testimonials. Are you tracking them? How many a month are you getting? What percentage are you getting based on the ticket you're working on? What if you set a goal up for ten percent? I wanna get ten percent referrals. I wanna get ten percent testimonials and reviews.

Rick, you're on drugs. Maybe.

But if you're only getting two or three a month now and you go you kinda jump onto the dark side with me, right, And and all of a sudden, you're saying, holy crap. Now I'm getting thirty, forty, fifty a month?

It works.

So please understand that as you're going through the different relationships, right, the different stages, your marketing method and message is gonna change as you go throughout. In other words, what got people to start doing business with you isn't gonna be the same message that keeps them doing business with you. So you've gotta be aware of that. So let's talk about some strategies.

Number one, be consistent.

Right? Consistency means you feel the same every time. You're gonna make people feel safe and they're gonna have confidence in you. Secondly, offer value.

You gotta know what what differentiates you from your competitors.

I can't tell you how many shop owners, when I ask this simple question, If why would I, as a prospective client, drive by three of your competitors to do business with you? You'd be amazed at how many people can't shop owners can't answer that question.

And that's scary because if you don't know what your value is, then the only thing you can compete on is price, and it's a race to the bottom.

Next, deliver on your promises. Keep your world, keep your word. It's pretty rare in the world today to have someone that does that, and the best way to do that is to stop overpromising.

If you think like, I I've seen it before. Advisors are looking. It's one o'clock. Right? And they're thinking, man, it's a three hour job. If I get the parts, you you know, when they say they're gonna be and the tech can get on it and everything goes right, I can get it done today at five.

So they make a promise for today at five.

I have a very simple question to y'all.

When when does anything ever go perfectly the way it's supposed to?

Never build that into your presentation.

If you think it's gonna be done tonight, tell them tomorrow night.

Better to be done early and and and amaze them than to have something go sideways, and you've painted yourself into a corner, and now you're just killing that credibility.

So deliver on your promises.

Number four, make it an experience. Go beyond just fixing or servicing their vehicle. You wanna see them. You wanna hear them.

You wanna appreciate them. You wanna make it easy for them to do business with you. Right? That's the big thing.

You wanna get this so it's just so painless to get their car serviced and repaired. I'm a tell you now. If I had a shop in this area, because I've I've been here now for seventeen years. I still haven't found a shop, man, that can do stuff the way I wanna get it done.

If I had a shop that called me up and said, hey, Rick. Your truck's due for service. Can we pick it up tomorrow?

I gotta tell you something. I would just about fall on the floor, catatonic.

That would be the that would mean the world to me.

How easy can you make it with your clients?

And then next, set reminders and follow ups. You wanna make sure that you're helping them keep that vehicle on the road safe, reliable, and efficient. The way you're gonna do that is by staying in front of them with the things that you found.

You're not there to sell them anything.

You're there to let them know what their vehicle's condition is, know where they wanna go, and then show them a path that's gonna help them get there. That's it. And then the next thing is stay in touch with me.

I don't wanna hear fumia only when you need money.

I want you to stay in touch with me. Send me an article that you think I might like or, you know, hey. Let's talk about something or, you know, you you you just different stuff, man. It doesn't have to be a big deal, but stay in touch.

Newsletters.

You know, one company that's amazing at this is American Express. Even today, we have the, American Express, American Express gold and platinum cards, and they're in touch with us twelve, fourteen times a year, but it's with relative data. Like, it's stuff we want to get.

What are you doing to stay in front of your team? Your your your clients, I should say. And then last, ask for reviews. Ask for referrals.

It's really, really important.

Okay?

Now the other thing as far as staying in touch, use live videos.

It amazes me how many shop owners will not put the time into put using a video because they're afraid of how they're gonna look.

I hope that my time here with you has dis you know, just dispelled that whole myth right there. I have been anything but perfect, but my heart is in the right place, and I wanna give you a great message. And I'm hoping that that message will overcome and cover up any improprieties as far as the words I've used or starting a sentence and kinda change in midstream. That's really important.

Okay? And then the last thing is use technology.

Use technology, texting, messaging, email, snail mail. Man, whatever works, do it. Okay?

Next, the secret weapon that very few shops consistently take advantage of, excuse me, that is connecting.

Right? It's creating a relationship that goes beyond selling repairs and maintenance. It's getting it's about getting to know them and and becoming their car guy or car gal. And there's really four easy ways. There's an acronym of doing this, and it really works out well in getting to know them. I call it FROG.

Okay?

FROG stands for family, recreation, occupation, and goals.

So here's the thing.

I've got seven grandkids.

You wanna start talking grandkids? You better pull up a chair. I got so many stories and just some insights and stuff that I've had as my in my journey as a grandfather. Or recreation.

I love camping, and I'll I've I've worked with, the scouting, the the scout organization for years and years. I'll talk to you about that and the difference it's made.

I love it. I'll talk to you about the impact I get to make every day with people and what an amazing blessing it is. Or I'll talk to you about some of the goals I want, how I wanna make that impact even bigger. So, yeah, these are things that you can talk to people about.

It's good to ask, and you can use little, signals around. Like, you see car seats. Wow. Kids or grandkids. Now you gotta be careful with that one. Some people might get pretty offended if they're, you know, parents.

Or you see a, you know, an honor student sticker on the back of the you Okay? So now here's what we're gonna do. I promise you that Okay? So now here's what we're gonna do. I promised you that Excel sheet. I, put that together especially for you guys, for.

Just bring your camera up on your cell phone.

Don't take a picture of the QR code. Just scan it, and you'll see a little button pops up. It'll say open in Chrome or Safari. Click that, fill it out, and you've got it. Or you can text retention to eight three three six zero two eight four six three, and you will get sent it will send you back a link in text so that you can get that Excel sheet. It's very, very cool. It's completely yours to use, and it's my thank you for being here today.

Now in conclusion what's that, Jake?

Rick, we got questions, brother.

I got one question.

Go to conclusion. You better you better whip it out quick, brother.

I'm gonna. Number one, track what you're spending on marketing. That's a big thing. Don't just spend money.

Nineteen o two, John Wanamaker, father of the department store, once said half my advertising is wasted. The problem is I don't know which half. Today, that's a sin. There's no reason for it.

With Kikuy and everything like that they've got, the tracking numbers and everything, you should know. And please understand that when you're tracking your marketing, you wanna track your marketing to phone calls.

That's it. Don't compare it to the campaign spend. There's too many pieces in between.

So number two, measure the number of people it brings in. Calculate your your acquisition cost, measure your current long term value lifetime value, and then create a program around connection that's gonna increase the lifetime value exponentially, making your days easier, brighter, and more profitable.

I'm done.

Okay. Now, Sue, I've got questions here. And and, Matthew, thank you very much. He sent in about six questions all in. One one one little post here.

At the beginning, you mentioned that it is How do we get our cameras showing, Jimmy?

You gotta stop sharing your screen.

Stop sharing your screen.

It should come right up.

There we go.

Okay. So, alright, so to Matthew's question, I'm gonna ask his questions first because, my questions can wait. To his question, you mentioned at the beginning, it's isn't always about just getting the customer in.

You mentioned at the beginning that it isn't always about just getting the customer in. Can you explain this more?

Absolutely.

Once you've got them in like, I'm gonna start off expecting nothing. Right? So low perception of self interest.

That way, they're they can see me as making their agenda my agenda. That's the goal. Okay? Mhmm. But once I get them in, I had no problem telling somebody, Jimmy, if you brought your car into my my shop, I would say, hey, Jimmy. Listen. I'm not here to fix your car today.

I wanna become your car guy. Like, if anything goes wrong with the car, my goal in this relationship is that I'm the guy you're gonna talk to. In fact Mhmm. I don't wanna be your car guy. I wanna be your kid's car guy and your grandkids' car guy.

That's the kind of relationship I'm looking for.

Okay. So so to that idea, don't we want to get those customers in so we can show them that we can be trusted, that we can be the guy?

Yes. Absolutely.

Because I think we're talking about two different things here. Go ahead.

It's two different well, we definitely wanna have new people coming in because, again, remember, about twenty percent of our database is going away every year. So because of that, you wanna have I tell shops all the time, you wanna have a twenty percent growth rate to maintain and thirty to grow, thirty to thirty five to grow. Okay?

It's really, really important to understand that while you're doing that, that's important, but most of your time and effort should be spent on the people you already know and do business with because you get a lot more bang for your buck with people you've already doing business with versus new people you gotta pull in off the street. Right.

Right. Yeah. I mean, there's always a fortune in that follow-up, and and if you can get those customers to come back in a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth time, man, now you've got them as the raving fans. Now you've got them as that referral source for you. So, yeah, there there's a fortune to follow.

You mentioned, to call and call those one time customers. So I'm thinking specifically of that shop that said, oh my gosh. We had eight hundred new customers this year. How many came back? A hundred. Okay. So they've got seven hundred phone calls to make.

Are you are you really saying make seven hundred phone calls?

If they had time and could make the time to do it, what kind of information could they pull out of it?

I think they could pull valuable information for sure. Absolutely.

It's bigger than you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful, Jimmy, because if I only call five people, I don't think that's a big enough, spread.

Yeah. It's not a big enough sample.

Right? It's not a good data sample to get.

So I wanna get because here's the truth. As an owner, what happens? You see eight, seven hundred people not come back. You're already telling yourself stories inside.

My my prices are too much. We we try to oversell them, and it's all crap that's not true. Right? Typically, it's a bad match.

Right? Either they weren't the right person to be bringing in, or you were making a promise you couldn't keep, something like that. So you wanna it it's a way for you to fine tune your market, your message, and your method. That's what we talk about all the time when we're coaching.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. K. So I'm gonna I'm gonna summarize the this final question that I have for you into the message, into customers, retaining customers versus new customers.

You mentioned a little bit about that the message will change. The message that got them in is not the same message that will keep them. So my question is, with all that in mind, do you treat a returning customer the same as a new customer?

Yes.

K. Like, now? What? To what degree?

Go ahead. So let's say I'm gonna give you a real quick here's probably the best example. Let's say you've got a really good customer. He throws you the key, says, just fix it. You don't give him an estimate. You just fix it.

One of the most dangerous things you could ever do with a relationship in the world. Here's why.

Because that great relationship you have, what you're not aware of is that client, that raving fan right now, is walking out of the shop with a price in his head.

And as long as whatever you're doing is at or below that price, you guys are still in love, the honeymoon's going, and we're all good.

But if that price is more than what he expected or she expected, They're not gonna be mad at you. They're gonna be upset with themselves for not keeping control of it, but they're gonna blame you.

And it's gonna take remember I talked about deposits and withdrawals in that trust account?

Mhmm.

That's a withdrawal in the trust account. What I see shops do is we work all this time really, really hard doing this and this and this and this to build these great relationships, and then we stop doing it.

We start taking shortcuts because I don't have to.

My recommendation is you treat them just like the day they came in the first time, right, so that they never feel like they don't matter.

Right? Let me give you another quick example, Jimmy. I have a shop. I I got two cars that are supposed to go tonight, but only one can go. One's a new client. The other one's a really, really great client.

Right?

Nine times out of ten, the shop will ask the great client if they can hold their car one more day so that they can impress the shit out of this new guy. Pardon me. I'm sorry. They can impress the new guy. Right? But for me, that's like a bird in the bush versus a bird in the hand.

I am always gonna take amazing care of my great clients first because they're the ones that got me here. They're the ones that are gonna keep me coming here. They may tell you it's okay, but I guarantee you, you just did a withdrawal on deposit, you know, in the trust account. So for me, don't stop. Don't take shortcuts with your best clients.

Do everything you possibly can to do everything to keep them there.

You just hit on exactly what I wanted to hear.

Good. You only took me an hour.

Care of those customers that got you there and continue to impress the crap out of them because you've got them as that raving fan. Continue to keep them as a raving fan. Don't try and convert the new client that you've never met, that you've never taken care of before.

It's like how do we treat family versus friends versus associates? Some people treat associates and friends better than they do family. Mhmm. Don't do that. Treat your family the best you can possibly at all costs. The family is the most important.

And and raving fans are the most important.

Absolutely. It's like being married, Jimmy. If you're married and you want a great relationship, but you're not willing to put the work into it Yeah. You just give and give and give to that relationship, it'll never become what you want it to become.

And at some point, they don't feel valued, loved, and important anymore, and they go away. Yeah. What is the leading cause of people leaving a business? Sixty eight percent indifference of an employee.

Yeah.

That's a sin. That's a sin. Oh, it is.

That way. It's terrible. Well, thank you very much, Rick. Really appreciate your time today. Mahalo, brother.

You you definitely helped us out. Thank you so much. Appreciate you being here. Everybody, this is my cell phone.

Give me a text message. Give me a phone call. This is my email address.

What can we do? Let's lock arms so that together we can be that driving force in your market so that you're the best of the best in everything you do. With that, thank you very much, and we'll see you again.