Clever tricks struggling newbies can use to make big sales

This is the last of the 4-part interview I did with Vance Morris. It gets deep down and dirty about how newer businesses especially can make their bigger, more talented, and higher-priced competitors look like idiots and be the only ones anyone wants to hire or buy from. Here goes: === elBENBO: How can a newer business use great service to compete against other more talented, popular, and more established competitors? VANCE MORRIS: Newbies got the advantage because if their competitors aren't doing it and you are, it's not going to take long for you to be high up on the Hill ahead of everybody. And you also don't have any bad habits and you start out continually thinking of how do you create an experience for whatever product or service you have that mindset. It takes a little while to get into it. If you're brand spanking new and you don't know any different, I mean, when I just started my carpet cleaning business, I didn't know Jack about doing it, but I knew the service. I knew the experience because it had been so ingrained in me. Now I can't go out to dinner anywhere because I can't stand the service. The bar is so low that anything you do is going to be above the bar. It's just gotten that bad. elBENBO: My printer always sends me either a bottle of wine from Napa or a box of high end brownies. I get fat off this stuff. Fat and happy. And Troy Broussard told me he’s always built these million dollar software companies he’s done not with “marketing” but on the helpdesk — it’s all about just superior service, making sure things work, having the customer’s back. VANCE MORRIS: And being able to engage with your clients when it's not time to make a sale is extremely important. Using that, sending them a book or just something, sending them brownies just those little things and not always wanting something. How do you feel when the only time you hear from somebody when they want to sell you shit? elBENBO: Talking about printers, I'll give her a shout out — her name's Stephanie, she works at Selby. She's the only person I deal with there. She is just on everything like white on rice. And she always acknowledges every email. That seems small. But I can tell you that saves me a lot of time, headache, and hassle. I've always get everything acknowledged. I don’t have to wonder if she got the order, or my request to not send someone something if they’ve been blocked or banned, or if she got the proof I sent… it's just great basic service that nobody else does, it’s astounding. VANCE MORRIS: And newbies can use that. Anybody can use that use a customer support or something like that. I would have a guarantee or a warranty saying that we will respond to you within X period of time, or I don't want to say, or your money back, or something happens. You know, we've got a plumber around here and Ben Franklin plumbers, they build themselves as the “on time plumber, if we're late and we don't show up on time, your service is free” Now what they're giving you free is their service charge, which is just for them to show up and not really do anything. It's still something. How do you use that? You're setting yourself up and setting yourself apart by offering something like that. You are telling them that getting their business is so important to you. Their success is so, so important that you’re going to respond to them in X amount of time and make it something that nobody else does. elBENBO: What else can newbies do? VANCE MORRIS: Well, I would certainly invest in that line entertainment. What are you going to do between the time they purchase and the time they get it? For stuff to arrive that's unexpected, when people join my inner circle, they just expect to get whatever MasterClass is for that month because that's the one when they joined similar to your program and you don't get anything from the past. But what they're not expecting is that whole shock and awe welcome box I send them. That's got a journal in it for them to take notes. It's got a one hour video. This is where I use a VCR 3D box to send the USB, it's got a one hour introduction to systematic magic so that they get the lingo, they get the jargon; they know what they're talking about. They feel like they are now part of the in-crowd because we're not using language that they don't understand. Then I've got a couple of really cool Disney history things that I throw in there. A couple other Disney training manuals from 1956, throw that in there too so they get this box of stuff, that's just really cool. There's some retro stuff in there. There's some stuff that really has nothing to do with marketing, but it's some cool Disney shit, and that now I got them hooked in. elBENBO: Let’s take the same scenario but for a freelancer. They’re starting off, fresh off the turnip truck, no clients, what is something maybe they could do? VANCE MORRIS: If you're starting out, and you don't have for pay-per-click or, or Facebook or any of those, and you're going to be bootstrapping this thing, you got to have a solid referral program. And I think for anybody, that should be part of the deal, because it's one, I mean, there's usually when somebody is referred to you, odds are the sale is going to happen. elBENBO: I want to talk about using service to justify higher prices. What are some of your thoughts or examples of that? VANCE MORRIS: Look at Zappos. All right, online shoe sales. They told their agents, "Stay on the phone as long as you need to, to make the client happy." They weren't incentivized to quickly get off the phone as fast as they can to take care of the next person. No, they were incented to take care of the person they’re talking to, and if the customer wants to talk about three different colors of shoes, fine, talk about three different colors of shoes. That's what you have to do. And you can see where their company went, billion dollar buy out from Amazon. The bar is set so low that people expect slow and bad service. They expect smarmy phone answerers, people that don't care. I don't call myself a wine snob, but I belong to a wine club and I get wine sent to my house. Wine I can't find anywhere else. My guy here in town can't get it. So, it is pretty good stuff. But every once in a while, there's a hiccup and they charge a premium price for their product. But if a bottle is ever damaged, they immediately ship me two to replace it: “Take a picture of the bottle. We'll either credit you for your next delivery or we'll send you something else.” And they charge a premium for it. They include every four or five deliveries, they include new stemware. Now, do I need new wine glasses? No. But it's still pretty cool to get a little extra box, and it comes in a black velvet little case annual. It's like opening up Pandora's box. You have beautiful glasses that comes with a little dust microfiber, dusting cloth thing. And I wasn't expecting that, but thank you. That was pretty cool. So, it really depends on what additional things you're going to offer. A buddy of mine sells piano lessons online, he is really good, Juilliard trained, really good piano player. And one of the things he did is the same thing that drug dealers do — and that is they give you the free stuff. And he did a give back program and offered his base level membership of piano lessons for free as a COVID promotion. And I don't know, he got something stupid like 80,000 new members, completely crashed his server, but he got like 80,000 new members that were free. And August 31st is when that free program expired. But because he was so engaged in that program and it was truly ... these were real lessons. It wasn't anything they'd give you half a lesson and then okay, figure it out the rest on your own. This was real stuff, delivered real content. He had over 40% convert to paying. elBENBO: Wow. Not bad. VANCE MORRIS: 42% converted to pay. It was huge. So let's say have 40,000 converted at 29.95 a month. Not too shabby. elBENBO: The more we talk about it, the more examples I just keep thinking of. I hadn't seen this vet in years and he spent like 45 minutes with us. Just kept asking me questions about my dog Zoe, while sitting there continually feeding her low calorie dog treats to keep her calm and behaved. I was expecting to be out of there in five minutes. Do I care how much it costed at that point? He’s sitting there, feeding my dog these little low calories treats as he talks to me, answers all my questions, examines her, I was there at least 45 minutes just chatting about my dog with him. I’d pay whatever he asked, price was irrelevant when you have a 15-year old dog like I do. It just seems like if you want to raise your prices, goes back to Earl Nightingale: “If you want to make more money, just be of more service.” Last question: Tell us about the live training that will come with the recordings you’re doing. It's called the ultimate client experience and essentially what it is, is I am taking my entire 10 year career at Disney and everything I learned there and packaged it up into something that ... literally a blueprint that you can follow to do everything that we just talked about with Ben, as far as wowing people, creating the experience. But this is going to be tailored for info marketers, coaches, and freelance copywriters. It's all based on what I call my seven magic keys… === So ends this 4th of the 4-part interview with Vance Morris. If you’d like to partake of Vance Morris’s course (taught live to certain members of my horde last year and recorded) about how to grow your business… you can get it at a huge $700.00 discount off the listed price, if you get it via my affiliate link below before tonight, Sunday January 9 at midnight EST. Plus, you’ll also get something else: A free copy of my next blatantly pretentious & super expensive book when it’s ready. The book’s subject: How to use the design-side of your business to help amp up your business’ longterm sales, build a ridiculously powerful & influential brand, and whip up a “berserker-like” horde of excited customers who can’t wait to buy and consume your offers. More: The book also goes deep into how I use design with World-building in my companies. I wrote about World-Building in my elBenbo Press book from a publishing perspective. But this new book teaches it purely from a design point of view. In fact, true story: I recently had a conversation with Kia Arian — one of the only designers the great Dan Kennedy allows anywhere near his own direct response projects, if that tells you something — about this topic. Kia does nearly all of my business’ designs. i.e., she’s been closely watching how I go about my World-Building in “real time.” And here’s what she said about how I do the design side of World-Building: “Honestly Ben, in the whole world, you're talking about the 1% who can think at this level. Very few people can operate at this level. Now that doesn't mean that they can't, some people, they just haven't seen it. They just haven't been introduced to it.” But the World-Building info is just one aspect of my upcoming book. It goes deep into my 20 years experience combining design with direct response marketing to grow my business, my brand, and my influence — all starting completely from scratch. After the book launches it will sell for at least a few hundred dollars. Maybe closer to $1,000 or perhaps even well over $1,000. I am still working out the pricing & logistics. But if you buy Vance’s course from my affiliate link below by tonight’s Sunday 1/9 at midnight EST deadline, I will ship you this book when it’s ready later this year as a bonus. NOTE: It could be several months before the book is ready. So don’t expect it any time soon. All right, here’s the link: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com/vance]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2021 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA