“Provenance is the story behind the artist and the work that the artist creates. You use cards to tell the story, to create that provenance.“
AUTHOR SPEAKER TRAINER: Tony Rubleski
“I know other people have said this. But in an age of digital, high touch wins. Let me come right after everyone that’s giving us their valuable time today. In the age of digital, high touch still wins.“
AUTHOR SPEAKER TRAINER: Lt. Colonel Rob “Waldo” Wadman
He is the Wingman, author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Never Fly Solo. He teaches tactics on how to build trusting revenue-producing relationships with employees, partners, and customers while sharing his experiences as a decorated fighter pilot and sales expert.
“So when I was able to join the organization and help them with that, we were able to increase the gross sales by 60 percent in like 15 months.“
Tom explains how he doubled his customer referrals with a cost effective relationship marketing strategy. You’ll also be blown away with how he helps others in his industry. Tom is a true champion of relationship marketing as well as a champion of helping others in his industry… even his competitors!
“…and about a month and a half, 60 days later, he called me back and said, “You know what? The guy that we sent that card to, he just made a half a million dollar order with the company and the reason he got back to me was because of that card.”
Everybody else at the trade show loaded people up with brochures and bombed them with emails and all the things that we do to ship information out. But nobody shipped anything out that made him feel something and so this guy did and voila, there’s the sale.”
“Six months later, we are at an event, we’re at a camp on event and this big guy come up to me and he says, “I need to talk.” I’m like, “OK.” And he pulls me off to the side and he gave me the biggest hug you’ve ever seen. He said, “That card was just absolutely amazing.” He said, “Thank you so much for that card.” And I was just like, “You’re welcome.” I mean it’s just I’ve never seen this guy, you know, just like when I talk about my dad, I mean the emotions some of these cards are bringing out is just it’s pretty cool. “
BUSINESS GROWTH: Meridith Elliott Powell
“And if you never like to cold call and you’re worried about filling your pipeline and building your business, networking is definitely the new more profitable cold call. If you simply connect with people in a natural servant’s heart type of way, you are going to have such a pipeline moving through of people whom you have served, people you have helped, and people you have learned a lot about that you’ve opened the door to connect, to learn more, and to close more business than you’ve ever dreamed of.“
BUSINESS NETWORKING: Norm Dominguez
“So great accomplishments there. Currently, you are the vice chairman emeritus at BNI. You’re involved with the BNI Foundation which are doing a lot of incredible work there and we’re going to talk a lot about this today. You are also the co-founder of Possi Global, which is a global movement on positivity and I’m really excited about this work that you’re doing. I want to share that.“
“The main thing, whether it’s a church or any other organization, the main thing is to focus on people. Just that extra few minutes that you give to someone, to hear their story, whatever it may be, I always tell people listen for three key things that they talk about you and put them in a card to them and let them know that you were paying attention because right now, our society has become really shortened in our attention span and when you appreciate people with just a few points that they’ve talked to you about, it makes a huge difference and they’re connected to you for life.“
“It always works. At the church service, they love their brownies. Then also if they’re a mother, they get another card for Mother’s Day. If they’re a father, they get a Father’s Card for Father’s Day. Then of course we have a holiday card attached to the same campaign. Now everyone on our list gets a birthday card with a box of brownies. Whether they’re a member of church or not, if they’re on our list, we’re going to stay in touch with them and just let them know that we’re thinking about them.“
CLEANING: Eirik and Sara Nelson
“… another card we may send is if we do get a direct referral, if someone calls, I always ask how they heard about us. If they say, “Oh my neighbor,” whatever, tell me who that is. If that is one of our customers or friend or whoever, I send a card from your system just thanking them for the referral. I send them the email and say, “Hey, thanks. We scheduled,” and then once that job is complete, I send them a thank-you card to the person who referred with a $5 Starbucks gift card in it, which I can send right from your system.”
“Humility comes from understanding that our losses are just as important as our wins.” Certainly, the best person to coach us on humility in business is Coach Dana Cavalea and here’s why:
– 13-year director of strength & conditioning for the NY Yankees.
– Developer of lifestyle training programs for all the players.
– Author of ‘Habits of a Champion’.
– Consultant for CEO’s, Executives on Wall Street and Fund managers.
Achieving all the above, he led the NY Yankees to the World Championship in 2009 and was awarded the ‘Nolan Ryan Award.’
“I have a really good friend who lives in Vancouver Island. We’ve been friends for 30 years and I introduced her to SendOutCards a couple of years ago and last week I got a card and this fabulous little gift inside of it. It’s a little key and on it, it says ‘freedom”’ So for me, my purpose is to inspire different freedoms and she knows this. But this is the whole point. She’s one of my best friends. It’s not a business thing. But this has been on my desk since the day I got it and I’ve been carrying it around in my wallet.
So if that’s a client of yours can you imagine the impact you can have if you take the time to find what means something – every time I’ve pulled this out of my wallet, people have asked me about it and they’ve asked me where I’ve gotten it.“
“Inside of 30 days, I found that my referrals that I was receiving, just by sending cards, very basically sending a birthday card or a thank you card, I tripled my referrals very rapidly and it’s because I was staying top of mind with my clients.”
“This one card that I sent to an individual with a very unique name, she has never thrown this card away. I received 17 referrals from a card like this. She doesn’t have my business card but she sure as heck has this birthday card tucked in her portfolio. If anyone needs a life purpose coach, she says, ‘Hey, call Matt. His contact details are right here on the back of the card.'”
“This is the secret of ‘endless referrals.’”
With these 8 tips, you’ll be able to network extremely effectively and land more new business. Of course, referrals are the best form of new business. If you want to keep the referrals rolling, it’s a great idea to add a personal touch with a gift that keeps you top of mind. SendOutCards offers a great way to show your appreciation for your clients and prospects.
“The second card was an appreciation card of having the opportunity to quote. But it was also like a little nudge to get an answer from them, to see, because we’ve also followed up in between with emails and I know the cards take about three days, three to five days max. So I like to give a couple of nudges in between emails to say, “Hey, what’s going on?” and with that card, I sent out a big wooden box that was filled with delicious goodies again.”
“They gave us a call about three or four days after. I know they got it because they texted and said “Thank you so much. That was a kind gesture and you didn’t have to do that.”
Four days after that, we basically got a call and said, “Can we have Rachid come into the office? We want to talk to him,” and I knew that we got the job.”
My gosh, they’re so good. And it’s funny because it’s just a little gift when you think about it, but it’s not, it’s more than that. It’s the fact that someone thought about you, and they packaged it together, and it arrived, and it was personal. It was just for me. It was – someone appreciated me. Loved it, loved it.
EDUCATION: MIchelle Slaney-Trovato
He showed up in my class, walked in, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Thanks.” I said, “What for?” He said, “My mom got your card.” I said, “Oh! How did that go?” He said, “Well, I’ve been in trouble and my mom and I have been fighting a lot,” and I said, “OK. What’s going on now?” He said, “My mom came and she gave me a big hug and she told me she was proud of me and we’re not fighting anymore.”
… this was the first time in his entire school life, from kindergarten to grade 12, that anybody had reached out and said beautiful things about her son.
“So I did a gratitude challenge with my students and I challenged them to once a day to extend gratitude somewhere and we kind of had to put it in sticky notes and we had it visible on posters. So that when people walk in the door, they could see the gratitude that was going out there. Then I leveled it up a little bit and I asked them to respond. How did this gratitude challenge impact you? Then selected winners. It was kind of a little contest and took it from the people who wanted to rise up to that.
I was able to take a picture of their essay and put it in a congratulations and thank you. It’s kind of a combo message card and send it to them at home where their parents could see that and they could have that copy of it and then I got to keep the copies that get turned in to me.”
ENTERTAINMENT: Laura Viskovitch
“Well basically, if you are struggling in business and you’re looking at ways to grow your business, just get into your body and start thinking what would a human being do. Don’t go from strategies of trying to get a sale. Just purely come from your heart and try and connect with people on a human level and give your authentic self to them because once people like you and they know you and trust you, then it organically comes into a sale and then they organically refer people to you.
I love to give and that’s why SendOutCards for me is a way of connecting with my customers. But at the end of the day, it’s me. So just be you and have fun. Have fun and the sales will come.”
FRANCHISE OWNER: Debbie Miller
“That’s where SendOutCards is really going to be a great addition to our relationship marketing campaigns here and that we will be able to take those personal touches that people tell us when they come in. We have a grandmother that comes in and says she just had a new grandbaby and she bought a onesie for them and put the – you know, nana’s favorite or Gaga’s favorite on the onesie. We can then send her a card using that information again and just reminding her that we helped her with that and she had a great experience in the store from it.“
GARAGE DOOR SERVICE: Tommy Mello
In 2007, Tommy became the sole business owner and operator of a single Phoenix-based garage door service. When he purchased this business, it came with $50,000 of debt. Fast forward to today, A1 Garage generates over 30 million in annual revenue with more than 250 workers in 12 states.
HEALTH AND FITNESS: Wendy Hyatt
“When people hit milestones, they like to share it on Facebook and I will grab a picture and I will put it there and I will say, “Congratulations!” So this way, they have something and this is how one woman’s family was impacted and I like how I can brand myself as well too. So I will put a picture of me there and this is something that they will keep, like a tangible thing.“
HEALTH AND FITNESS Jason Alles
“The only thing I’m going to say is, is that first, this product is so easy for me to use. It’s so easy for my staff to use and the number one hurdle that you’re going to have to overcome with some of these owners is, “Oh, I don’t have the time,” or “How much does it cost?” We know it’s affordable. It’s $1.40 something obviously to go ahead and send a nice card. But it’s really simple and that’s the key. You got to show them how simple it is. What I do is I literally take all my members every two weeks, put them in a CSV file, upload them. Two clicks of a button, it’s done. Once you show them how simple it is, then it’s a no-brainer because believe me, every club owner out there is looking for more guest traffic and they’re looking for more membership sales.“
“Do what’s in your heart, guys. Treat people the way that you want to be treated in all walks of life, wherever that is, and it will come back in spades. I can assure you that whether it’s business or in your personal life.“
HOLIDAY LIGHTING: Steve Jadczak
“So if I see someone’s daughter just won a soccer tournament, I will take some of those pictures, screenshot them on my phone and send them a card that says, “Wow, that’s awesome! Congratulations!” That’s it. Nothing else. Nothing about me. Nothing about my business and the purpose of that is I’m trying to get them to keep it and to put it on a mantel place or whatever they want to do with it and not throw it away. “
HOME CONSTRUCTION: Paul Rising
“This particular real estate agent that we had known prior, we found out that she had won a local award and was kind of celebrating that on Facebook. What we did is we sent her a really cool gift and a card, just saying, “Congratulations! You did a fantastic job. We appreciate you. We appreciate your contributions to the community,” and in turn, she called us and thanked us for that card and she said, “Hey, you know what? I have a client that’s moving here from California and I would like you to meet them,” and we got to meet those folks, developed a little bit of a relationship. They got to see some of our products and they hired us to build their next home here, their final home from – moving from California to Colorado Springs.”
HOME INSPECTION: Brian Hannigan
“Recently, the American Society of Home Inspectors, they had their big conference and I was down there speaking and about a month earlier, one of the inspectors posted on Facebook a little baby. It was their grandchild. So everybody else made a little comment and thumbs-up and all that stuff and I took the picture. I put it on a card. I mailed it to that person.
Well, at the conference, I mean there are 1500, 2000 people there and a big exhibit hall. Well, this person tracked me down to come over to thank me personally for sending the card. How many other people – how many of the people that posted on Facebook do you think he tracked down to say, “Hey, thanks for that like”? You know, it didn’t happen. But he came to me and gave me a personal thank-you, how much he appreciated and that card is sitting on his desk.“
But then the anniversary card is definitely the most popular. We get comments all the time from people’s spouses of hey, you’re sending my spouse some anniversary card and it’s usually really – again really lighthearted, something like, “Hey, sweetheart. We’re glad we’re still married to you.” It’s the anniversary of when they became a client of ours. So it’s a very popular card. We usually send brownies or chocolates or caramels or whatever we kind of feel like we want to send out there.
“So the average retention rate in the State of Texas is between 72 to 75 percent and – which isn’t bad. You know, if you sign up four clients and you keep three out of four for several years, that’s a good deal. But I have been able to have a retention rate of over 90 percent. I think it’s closer to 92 or 93 percent and I firmly believe that it has to do with sending out the cards because I touch my clients at least two or three different times a year by reaching out to them.“
INTERIOR DESIGN: Kendall Ansell
“With SendOutCards, it makes things really simple to do that and I think we probably – we might do three times a year if we were traditionally writing cards. But we’re able to do five times a year because of your system.”
INTERNET MARKETING: Tanya Aliza
“I mean I think the biggest thing is as a business owner or an aspiring business owner or entrepreneur, it’s not about the money. It’s about the relationships first. The relationships come before the money. If you can remember that and cultivate those relationships and what you put out is what you get in, you will go far in life, in personal life and also in business. So if you remember that, to take care of your clients with the utmost respect and raise the vibrational energy of our entire industry, of everybody marketing online and helping people to become more comfortable with those transactions, it will help everybody around together in our industry.”
In this interview below learn how John went from the worst year in his industry to thriving in 6 months by branding himself. He shares how he went from slow times and falling short of his financial goal, to the best 2 years that he’s had thus far…
So I sent her the card with the brownies and just kind of wanted to wish her well. I wasn’t asking for anything. I wasn’t trying to pitch anything. I was just a person reaching out to her and she wrote back and thanked me. She said, “Oh my gosh! Thank you. You sent me a card. I really appreciate it. The brownies were yummy.” I told you they’re good.
Months go by and I had reached out to my customer base at that time to let them know I’m looking for people who want to on-board to my team that I’m looking to train and she reaches out to me. The reason she does is “…because you actually reached out to me when it had nothing to do with Mary Kay.”
MASSAGE THERAPIST: Danielle Ratliff
“It’s getting out in the community, networking, being seen, doing things for people, from a charitable perspective, knowing that you may not see a return right away.
That’s where SendOutCards has really come into play for me within the past year, just being able to have that touch point in between sessions for either clients or for people I meet in the community networking, who might be referral partners or somebody that I want to partner with down the road because they think the same way I do in regards to health.”
Adam will discuss how he leverages his relationship marketing strategy to connect and build relationships with his service providers, contributors. and international subscribers.
When I see that something like this works – so again, that first year, it was just me and I stopped any other marketing I was doing, which were some flyers and some email campaigns and things like that, which is still OK. But I really wanted to put all of this forward to my team and implement it with them so that they could get the same results and so I showed them my cards. I’ve shown them how to use the system and like I said, when we were at our annual convention, our president introduced my team to say, “You guys got to check out what Linda Walter’s team is doing because they’ve increased their sales by 71 percent last year.”
NETWORK MARKETING: Jordan Adler
And I’ll just send this to people that I’ve met randomly. And so somebody that I’ve met and shaken their hand and I’ve sent a nice-to-meet-you card, maybe three or four months later, they got this card from me that says. “I believe in random acts of coffee” with a $10.00 Starbucks card. That creates something called the law or reciprocity. And the law of reciprocity means when people do nice things for you, you tend to want to do nice things for them. So I look for reasons to do nice things for people on a daily basis. And then when I’m ready to get an appointment, it’s a slam dunk! So I get 100% of the appointments that I request because I do stuff like this. So when I contact somebody and I send them a text message and say, “I want to get together,” they always say yes.
NETWORK MARKETING: Larry and Taylor Thompson
Leadership qualities are, in a sense, mentorship qualities. Leadership qualities are needed in any industry because the quality of business relationships, directly correlates with success in any business. Let’s take Larry & Taylor Thompson for example; they are Network Marketing veterans of 50 years. They are in the top echelon of the MLM industry, and their leadership is trusted and well known. Here’s what they had to say.
When networking, forgetting about the importance of connection can make it challenging to make a sale. Your marketing should lead with the principles of relationships, serving & reciprocating.
When you build connections first, the selling and making money comes more easily, otherwise networking can be frustrating, overwhelming and hard.
Let me introduce Rob Thomas, the founder of ‘Networking In Diners’ and author of ‘Who Do You Need To Meet’. Rob is not only a master at networking; he’s also the master at making money while networking effectively. Join this great conversation with Rob Thomas to learn how to network effectively by developing friendships that will continue moving your business forward by making you money.
One gentleman had lots of money and he would buy these meth-contaminated properties and he used us once. So we sent him a card. We took a picture of the home and it was a nice home. I took a picture of it. He owned the property. Nobody throws away a picture of their own house. So I created my own card and sent it to him and I just said, “Thank you for allowing us to serve you.” That was all it said. He had never seen anything like that. Meth companies are not supposed to send nice cards. But I sent that to him and he called us back and said, “I have another house for you and another one and another one,” and they kept coming. He was so grateful for that and he said, “When I need to find you guys, I find that card you sent me with my picture of my house on it that had meth in it.” That made us a lot of money. That little $2.50 made us between $20,000 and $35,000.
PAINT PARTY BUSINESS: Kathy and Bernie Piccirillo
I would have to attribute a lot to the thank-you cards because we get a lot of feedback from people. When Kathy started it, I said, “OK. It’s a cool idea. You never know what you can do until you put your best foot forward, if you don’t try.” So I was like, “That’s good. I will support you. Not a big deal.” I figured people would be coming in maybe a couple of times a year. We’ve had people in the first three years that have come 50 times and over.
“My words of wisdom would be just work on making the connection. Do the little things that make you stand out and truly care about other people and your actions will speak louder than words and you will be rewarded for it.”
Then I had another one recently where we had set up a service with a customer and she had to cancel and reschedule and informed me that her son had to go to the hospital. I personally sent a card out to her with a gift attached to it through the SendOutCards service.
I believe it was a week or two later. She got in touch with me and profusely thanked me for the card, how very thoughtful it was and it just feels great being involved in that process. This is a very simple thing. I mean I do pest control. People like that service. But to be able to have this experience in line with my business, I could do it in my business. It’s beneficial to the business and I’m having an entirely another experience of just giving, and the feelings connected with all that in this daily process of everything else I have to do.
So they get cards from me, about four to five kind of touch points a year, with brownies and then if someone’s kid’s birthday is coming up, I send a birthday card to the kids. So what that does is, even when they go and work for a project, even if it’s not through me, they usually call me to let me know that “Look, I’m about to start this project. I’m going to talk to our senior directors or the IT managers, that we’re going to need more people and I need you to supply us with more consultants.”
That’s really amazing because in that sort of a competitive industry, it does come back in terms of referral business.
“So it has been very effective. They will mention – I mean I will talk to people years later. They will call me and ask me if I’m still in the business and so forth. Either they have a job or they have a friend or family member that has a job and oftentimes they will mention the thank-you card and brownies.“
“So SendOutCards made a lot of sense to me to connect on another level in a different way and when you have a physical card and it has got a memory of your dinner here, you’re not going to throw it away ever.”
I had a guy contact me. He has been in the motorcycle business for 30 years and he says, “Darla, I’m facing my worst year ever.” And I get it. Motorcycle parts can be bought online cheaper. I get it. He says, “But I’m not ready to give it up.” And I said to him, I said, “If you will trust me, I will save your business. But you have to trust me. And it’s going to be completely out of your comfort zone.” He says, “I’m willing to trust you.”
So that was in July, two years ago in July. That December, Kody, was his best year ever that month. I want you to let that sink in. His best year ever that month. Twelve months later, I re-interviewed him to see where he is at. He tracked numbers from his accountant and his bookkeeper and all that kind of stuff, stats and everything, and he had tripled his best year ever. And not just that, he met the love of his life by sending her a card and now got engaged. He was able to get his teeth fixed. He was having dental issues and couldn’t afford to get his teeth fixed. He literally has cried on the phone with me many times because of the emotion of what has happened in his life by learning how to appreciate people, having a way to do it, making the impossible possible.
SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION: Darla Fanta
I had a mom that was coming to our school and an unfortunate situation happened that the dad passed away before they moved and two little girls that were going to be in our school in two different grades. But they weren’t getting to come when school started right away. They had to wait a few months before they were moved over with mom. So I went into their classrooms and I took pictures of their classmates because I knew which classes they were going to be in.
I took pictures of their classmates and I mailed each girl a card with the brownies, knowing every kid loves brownies and inside the card I just put “We are excited to meet you!” and I put every classmate, little kid’s name on the card, their first name only, on the card. So they would know, oh, here are my classmates.
So the mother told me that the girls love the cards. They carried them around. They were excited because it helped to break the tension of who’s going to be in my class. I don’t know anyone in my class and so it helped them to say, “Oh wait, I remember that face on my card,” and she said they would literally talk about their card every day because they were so excited to be coming and they got to see their classmates before they ever got there.
So I love that because it kind of helped break the ice for the kids and mom wasn’t so nervous about her children coming into a class and not knowing anyone.
Dr. Jeffrey Magee is a master at training how to find your success DNA with his transformational seminars taught all over the world. His BIO includes training:
– Corporate Executives
– Military Generals
– Top leaders
In many different industries. Not to mention, he has written 30 books:
– 4 of which are best-sellers
– 3 college graduate management textbooks
Producer of the PERFORMANCE/P360 Magazine, his 5 strategic and tactical success steps will take you to the next level of your sales game.
Kat McEntee owns a talent agency, and knows firsthand how competitive this industry is. Kat focuses on building genuine relationships when marketing her talent agency. By simply focusing on the 1st-word ‘Relationship’ in ‘Relationship Marketing’ she established:
– Top of mind awareness
– Genuine relationships
– Repeat business
– Increased ROI
Hear Kat’s transformational stories on how relationship marketing has made both her and her students, stand out in this highly competitive market.
So, one day a man said to God, “God, I would like to know what heaven and hell are like.” God showed the man two doors. Inside the first one in the middle of the room was a large round table with a large pot of stew. It smelled delicious and made the man’s mouth water. But the people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful. But because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths. The man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering.
God said, “You have seen hell.” Behind the second door, the room appeared exactly the same. There was a large round table with a large pot of wonderful stew that made the man’s mouth water. But people had long-handle spoons and were well-nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The man said, “I don’t understand.” God smiled. “It’s simple.” He said, “Love only requires one skill. These people learned early on to share and feed one another while the greedy only think of themselves.”
Mark has spent 10’s of thousands of hours teaching life & business changing trust-based philosophies. Find out in this value-packed interview what Mark Given means by Trust Based Philosophy as he teaches us how to:
– Generate
– Maintain
– Repair
trust in our business relationships.
“Building quality relationships and our ability to enroll someone in our vision is what sets us apart. It also determines whether we can make something happen or not. For someone to get on board with us, we need to be able to communicate what it is we want and what our vision is.”
One of our employees did a consultation a few weeks ago and they, for whatever reason, in the consultation talked about Yoda. So the card, they went and grabbed a picture of Yoda, threw it in the card. It took us two minutes, wrote the card. The person came back in later, like maybe a month later and said, “You know, you guys said you care about us, that you love us, that you’re different and I left that day thinking I wasn’t going to do it. It was too expensive. I got your card,” and they actually brought the card in. “I got this card and I know you guys are different. So I’m ready to sign up.” Well, right there, that pays for our entire year of subscription.