Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the Co-founder of Rise25 Media, a company that helps B2B business owners connect with their ideal prospects, referral partners, and strategic partners through a done-for-you podcast service. He has been involved in podcasting for 11 years and has also been running his own podcast, Inspired Insider, since 2011. He features top entrepreneurs and founders/CEOs of companies such as P90X, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, the Orlando Magic, and many more through video interviews on his podcast. Dr. Weisz also continues to run his own chiropractic and massage facility in downtown Chicago and has also founded a nutritional supplement business.
Dan Kuschell is an accomplished entrepreneur, business coach, and author who currently runs Breakthrough3x, a company that helps founders and entrepreneurs triple their profits and impact without multiplying their workload and their stress. He has owned 11 companies since 1980 while building multiple businesses with revenues exceeding eight figures before selling. He is also the host of the Growth to Freedom Podcast where he interviews industry leaders and experts in a variety of fields.
Tony Rulli is the Co-founder of Intentional Spark, a digital marketing agency with a special focus on Facebook and Instagram ads. Intentional Spark has worked with clients across many industries such as Jasmine Star, ConvertKit, and Brooke Castillo of the Life Coach School. Tony has deep experience with online product launches and evergreen marketing models. He is a rare breed that understands how to scale ads and the direct response creative that can drive lead costs down. He is also a master at retargeting and can follow up with prospects until they sign up.
In this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, John Corcoran is joined by Dr. Jeremy Weisz, Dan Kuschell, and Tony Rulli to discuss the various strategies that businesses can use to follow up with prospects and build key relationships. They also talk about the different tools and software they use for communicating with prospects and common mistakes people make when following up
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- The weirdest health-related gift Dr. Jeremy Weisz has ever requested and received.
- Dan Kuschell’s strategies for following up with people and his advice for creating an impact through relationships.
- Tony Rulli shares his own strategies for following up and some common mistakes people make when following up with prospects.
- How Tony guides his clients to get leads and his advice on what to do after that.
- How to use Instagram direct messages (DMs) as sales channels.
- Tony and Dan‘s strategies for meeting clients through their preferred communication channels.
- Jeremy shares his strategies for following up with prospects and building key relationships.
- The tools and software Dan, Tony, and Jeremy recommend for following up with prospects.
- Dan explains why relationship capital is valuable when building a business.
Resources Mentioned:
- Rise25 Media
- Contact: [email protected]
- Dr. Jeremy Weisz on LinkedIn
- Dan Kuschell‘s website
- Dan Kuschell on LinkedIn
- The Growth to Freedom Podcast with Dan Kuschell
- Breakthrough3x
- Breakthrough Strategy Session with Dan Kuschell
- Tony Rulli on LinkedIn
- Intentional Spark
- Contact email: [email protected]
- Loom
- Pipedrive
- TextExpander
Sponsor: Rise25
Today’s episode is sponsored by Rise25 Media, where our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. We do this through our done for you business podcast solution and content marketing.
Along with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz, we have over 18 years of experience with B2B podcasting, which is one of the best things you can do for your business and you personally.
If you do it right, a podcast is like a “Swiss Army Knife” – it is a tool that accomplishes many things at once. It can and will lead to great ROI, great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, and more. It is networking and business development; and it is personal and professional development which doubles as content marketing.
A podcast is the highest and best use of your time and will save you time by connecting you to higher caliber people to uplevel your network.
To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
To learn more, book a call with us here.
Check out Rise25 to learn more about our done-for-you lead generation and done-for-you podcast services.
Right Click here to download the MP3
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:14
Welcome to the revolution, the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we ask today’s most successful entrepreneurs to share the tools and strategies they use to build relationships and connections to grow their revenue. Now, your host for the revolution, John Corcoran.
John Corcoran 0:40
All right. Welcome everyone. John Corcoran here and the host of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. And this is a live episode. You guys might know a little bit about me. I’m a recovering political hack, recovering lawyer, I spent years working in politics, including as a speechwriter, since working in the Clinton White House and for California Governor, and I spent years practicing law in the San Francisco Bay Area. And you know, 10 years ago, I discovered this medium of what we’re doing right here, which is podcasting, doing interviews, and I’ve been doing it ever since it’s over 10 years, I’ve had the privilege of talking to so many smart CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs of all kinds of different companies. And today, I’m the co-founder of Rise25, where we help b2b businesses with the strategy and production they need to create a podcast and content marketing that produces tremendous ROI and connects them with their ideal prospects and referral partners. And we have a fun episode today, because we got two good old friends who are here to join us, Dan Kuschell and Tony Rulli. I’m gonna introduce both of them to you. They’re both accomplished entrepreneurs. And the topic we’re gonna be focusing on today is following up. You know, it’s really people say the secret is that the money is in the follow up, but how do you do it? How do you follow up with your prospects, your referral partners? How do you nurture those relationships?
Alright, so Dan Kuschell is an accomplished entrepreneur, business coach, and author currently runs Breakthrough3X, a company that helps founders and entrepreneurs triple their profits and impact without multiplying their workload and their stress. Dan has owned 11 companies since 1980, while building multiple businesses with revenues exceeding eight figures before selling. He’s also the host of the Growth to Freedom Podcast, which we are very privileged to work on with him, where he interviews industry leaders and experts in a variety of fields. Tony Rulli is the co-founder of Intentional Spark, a digital marketing agency with a special focus on Facebook and Instagram ads. Intentional Spark has worked with clients across many industries like Jasmine Star, ConvertKit, and Brooke Castillo of the Life Coach School. But he has deep experience with online product launches and evergreen marketing models. He’s a rare breed that understands how to scale ads and the direct response creative that can drive lead costs down plus he’s a master at retargeting so he can follow up your prospects everywhere until they sign up. You can learn more about him at Intentional Spark.
John Corcoran 2:54
Master avocado toast, so we’ll get into that as well. So first before we get into that and get into Jeremy, my business partner, this episode is brought to you by Rise25 Media. And at Rise25, we help 2b2 businesses get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done for you podcasts and content marketing. And then we’re good at it hopefully. So go to rise25media.com and you can learn all about it. Alright, so now at the top of the show. It’s everyone’s favorite feature that we have every week. And the topic is What is the weirdest health-related gift Jeremy has ever requested and received? I have one in mind. We’ll see if he’s able to list it if he comes out with it. So those of you who don’t know my business partner Jeremy, he’s a bit of a life hacker, health hacker. He’s always trying out different health strategies and things like that. Different things that can hack is I don’t know I was an English major so I don’t understand this stuff. But Jeremy, what’s the weirdest health related gift you have requested and received?
Dan Kuschell 3:57
Can we bet on this like cuz I want to get involved in this like you know what, did you? I have no idea but I bet I know what it is. It’s the lasers that grows your hair. Yes, good guests here. I was hoping to get and didn’t get
Tony Rulli 4:11
I feel like Jeremy definitely bought those shoes for jumping higher.
Dan Kuschell 4:18
I feel like Jeremy said totally had those shoes. Yeah, I knew it.
John Corcoran 4:23
I thought you’re gonna say some like nerdy orthotic shoes or something like that. I know. They are your postures.
Tony Rulli 4:28
They’re like six inches off the ground. There’s no heel it’s just to look like a prancing the whole time?
Dan Kuschell 4:33
Where can you get those these days? I was actually looking for it.
John Corcoran 4:38
So what would probably explain that so Jeremy’s got a bit of a basketball obsession too. And he even wears a pair of basketball shorts underneath just about his pants every single day just in case, the odd chance that a basketball game breaks out and anytime he wants to be prepared, including at his wedding
Jeremy Weisz 4:56
The more you talk about me the stranger I sound I realized that Was
John Corcoran 5:00
we’re just getting started. So okay, what is the weirdest health gift you’ve ever requested?
Jeremy Weisz 5:04
To me? It’s not weird. You know, this is normal, but I think what you’re referring to is I wanted to have kombucha on tap in my office. No. Okay.
John Corcoran 5:17
So I may say that one you can explain that. Oh,
Jeremy Weisz 5:20
yeah, I was 30. My wife, I brewed kombucha for six months, two gallons a week. And so my wife made it look like a science experiment, made me take it off the counter, because I lined up bottles and if you ever seen kombucha there’s stuff floating in it. So I wanted it in my office. I
Dan Kuschell 5:37
just ran into when you were doing this science project that Kelly came in and was glowing like Weird Science.
Jeremy Weisz 5:45
I wish that would be great. I would have kept brewing it if that were the case. So I asked for a kegerator and then John made fun of me because I would have been beat up at his college if I said I used it for kombucha.
John Corcoran 5:57
I was in college. I was just like saying you want a kegerator and you’re gonna book kombucha, like hooked up to it. I mean, that’s the kind of the kids you pushed into a swimming pool.
Jeremy Weisz 6:09
So, so actually, yeah, so it’s like, I think it’s a sixth of a keg of kombucha right over there. Maybe
John Corcoran 6:21
that was not the weirdest health related gift what is referring to No, it rhymes does that give you a hint? Yes for it for a birthday recently? Not too long ago.
Unknown Speaker 6:30
Oh the squatty potty squatty potty.
John Corcoran 6:32
I believe this was his 40th birthday he asked for a squatty potty and received it from his family what
Tony Rulli 6:40
more that’s not weird. That’s just science , science backs it up. Jeremy. I’ve read the research.
John Corcoran 6:51
I don’t know what’s weirder, purchasing a squatty potty or reading the scientific literature behind the squatty potty?
Unknown Speaker 6:58
Well, I just don’t want to put a hole in the ground and just squat over the top.
Jeremy Weisz 7:02
I’ve got the ganic Oh, you
John Corcoran 7:03
got the poor man squatty potty, like a piece of plastic man like fork over the 30 bucks or whatever it is. So anyways, alright, so that was everyone loves that feature. Jeremy’s weirdest health related gift. All right, Dan. With that, let’s go over to you were the topic today for me is
Jeremy Weisz 7:23
um, by the way, just the Harmon Brothers, I had Harmon on the podcast and they came up with the squatty potty video. So if you watch the video, you don’t buy the squatty potty. How can you not buy the squatty potty after watching the video. So if you haven’t seen the video, go watch the unicorn pooping. That’s it. It’s a marketing lesson. It’s a message and lurk.
John Corcoran 7:44
message and marking wonderful work. We are all so much more enriched now. Alright, moving on to Dan, the topic today we dumber Yeah, for anyone who is referrals, referrals. So we’re talking about how to refer to how to follow up with people. How to deepen a relationship? Because really, that’s where the magic is that in any business, right? When you start you make a connection with someone you meet them at a conference or or they attend one of your webinars or training or, or you do an initial call, like a call with someone. How do you follow up? How do you deepen those relationships, because I think a lot of people struggle with that, especially when you get into more scalable, which is really where Dan’s expertise comes in more scalable ways, automated ways to follow up with people. But Dan, let me let me start with just some of the big mistakes that you see people make with following up?
Dan Kuschell 8:44
Well, there’s all kinds of layers. So first, I’m gonna call the kettle black, meaning my kettle first, which is my mistake at this for so long, in the beginning is like, you know, creating a sales prevention department. But like, my sales prevention is not following up. Right? Following up is harder, hard, but not following up is harder, right? Yeah. Follow up, you know, some can say, you know, depending on what route you go could be expensive, but not following up is far more expensive, right? So one of the mistakes is just not really, really recognizing the strategy. And why do I say this? I see so many people, John, that they let automation and technology get in the way of them actually making money and making an impact. So as you’re watching right now, don’t let money or automation, I’m sorry, don’t let automation and technology get in the way of you making money. Like that’s really, really critical. So keep it simple, like, you know, be a human being. Don’t try to be like an AI all of a sudden in your business like it just doesn’t work. So you know, a good example of this. We had one of our recent clients, John, that, you know, we started working with name’s Bruce. He’s an artist. Not great artists, but like a lot of artists, he wasn’t, you know, hitting his mark. He wasn’t having a big impact as he wanted. And he wanted to teach people how to do art, right. He’s a coach teacher at a training and coaching program. So when we first started talking, Bruce was like, you know, I’m trying this tactic and this thing and this technology and this, right. And what I hear all the time is very common. Why bring up Bruce is because so many people on top of letting automation get in the way they let tactics get in the way. So as you’re listening and you know, part of you know, John and Jeremy’s world, you start focusing on principle based things that are timeless, more than timely. In other words, they’re not a fad. They’re going to be gone in a couple of weeks or even a couple years. But they’re timeless over time. So when I was talking to Bruce, I said, Hey, Bruce timeout, like, what do you love to do? And he goes, I love teaching. I just, why do you love teaching? He said, I love art as an expression and giving people freedom and giving people peace, peace of mind, and it’s a gift. And whatever talent level, he said, I just want to fill my coaching program. And I said, well, and he and I, he was doing this and doing that and working with this software, and that tech and this thing. Like Bruce, what if we just simplify the heck out of this? I said, Do you know how to use a platform like zoom? He goes, Yeah, I go, how big is your list? He goes, why don’t I have a big list? I’ve got between all my social media followers and my list, I might have 400 people. I said, Well, if we give you the emails to send out, would you just send him like a human being communicating just even manually? He said, Yeah, I’ll do that. He did it. He had 125 people, John registered for his first training, using the platform, just straight. No Fancy Pants tech. You didn’t eliminate it at all. No automation, no autoresponders, no text follow up. No, none of it. Just a simple invitation to came to this thing. He did a presentation where he had 125 people register, which was shocking out of 400. He had 75 people show up. No automation, no tech, he did a presentation. He didn’t even make his offer for his coaching training program. So our three, and he’s still got four to five sales. And he was stoked. But he realized, you know that he’d lost some things on the table. So we regrouped and asked him, What did you like most? What did you like least? And he says, well, Dan, and I love this. I said, Well, what if we just repeat it? What if we just repeat I go, what would happen if we just repeated this for the next 60 to 90 days each week? He said, Yeah, let’s do that, essentially a follow up strategy. And every week, he just painted something new. But the underlying strategies, the principles were the same. It was just a new piece of RT show. Hopefully you pick something up from that right there. Now, the second week, John, he invited about this similar people and more people brought people they started referring to, he had about 175 people registered at 120. To show up, he enrolled about 13 or 14 people in his coaching training. He repeated this week, after 30 days, he had 39 people in his coaching program. Wow. 90 days later at over 117 people Plus he had a recurring revenue stream of over four to $5,000 a month. right at it. Yeah. Yeah, organic follow up strategy that he used. So that’s one exam, there’s many that we can go into, but for sake of time, if you’re listening or watching, like what would happen if you just five things, got tech off the plate, you know, kept it simple, made it real, and just helped people solve their problems. What would that do for your business?
John Corcoran 13:34
That’s great. Tony, I want to go over to you next.
Jeremy Weisz 13:38
I’m gonna interrupt you for one second, before we get to Tony, Dan, you do something is far as sending stuff out in the mail for follow up. So talk about that for a second.
Dan Kuschell 13:49
So you know, for many years, you know, I read a book by a guy named Joe Girard, who was the top salesman in the car business many years ago, he sold more cars than anybody in a six year period. And they interviewed him and said, hey, how did you become, you know, set the world record on selling cars? He said, Well, about every month, I would send out a card to people and follow up with them. And that brought repeat business back. See we’re not in the order business. We’re in the reorder business. Right? That was the lesson of that entire book that I had read. And so far, I don’t know a decade, give or take. I have been regularly about quarterly three, four, sometimes as many as five, six times a year to my important relationships. I like to send out a you know, like, think of the holidays, right? A lot of people send out holiday cards right around the holidays. But it gets cluttered with everybody else. Because guess what everybody else is doing around the holiday sending out their holiday cards. Well, what if you treated all year like a holiday and treated your best relationships like a holiday. And so we started using photo cards where on one side of it, we put some inspiring quotes that were for them to give them value. And then we showed some of the stuff going on that was in our life, my family and stuff like that, and we would literally send this out to hundreds and hundreds of our relationships. About a year or two, maybe three years ago, time kind of blended in, we started adding a newsletter that like for the last quarter, we usually put our top 13 keys that we found in the last quarter that are working and started including that and all these things going out. And we’ve had people respond and go, you know, I get more value from your free newsletter than most multi $1,000 programs I’ve ever bought. And thank you, right, it’s led to relationships, referrals, introductions, just as a strategic byproduct, not as a direct like sale from this process. And so how can you you know, what are ways that you can simply cultivate relationships, important relationships, right over time and being be in front of them on a regular basis and plant you know, we call it plant value seeds when the beginning right could be as simple as like a photocard, then it gets a little bigger, you might plant value, value trees, you get a little value tree, and then you might get to a place where you’re planting value orchards, with your important relationships. Those are a couple.
John Corcoran 15:57
That’s great. Yeah, I love those. And I get those from you every quarter. That’s really cool how you do that? He’s got a little bit of the personal a little bit of the business. Tony, let’s go to you. So what are some of the mistakes you see people making with following up or not following up?
Tony Rulli 16:13
Yeah, well, I love what Dan does was setting something a little more personal for you. We’ve done this for a bunch of years with our clients, we’ll send them holiday packages, but it’s we go out and shop local here in Portland, Oregon, and buy things that are just from Portland and then would ship that to clients as their care package for the holidays. But it’d be a story about us and like who we are and what our life’s like. And so it wasn’t just some random package and it ended up cementing some longer relationships that way. So I think adding a little personal touch always goes a long way. As far as mistakes I see people make I mean, we don’t do any cold outreach. We usually our referral base people find us from podcast interviews I do and some of our own you know, organic content marketing. But I think the biggest mistake I see people do is not follow up at all. Or follow up once you know I’m not a big fan of harassing someone right like with cold emails and then follow up if they’re not responding, they’re not responding. But if I’ve already had a conversation with them, maybe we do a zoom call and I give them some strategy ideas to see if they’re a fit for working with us. We’ll send them a quick follow up email with what we talked about how we could help if I don’t hear back. I set myself a little reminder to follow up in a week by checking in on them. And then I think the number one mistake I see people make is not keep the conversation going after they’ve lost the business. I can’t tell you how many clients we’ve won by number one if a client is if a prospect decides not to go with us, I always ask I’m always trying to get better on these sales calls with love to learn you know what made you decide to go with who you decided to go with? People usually answer and I appreciate their answer and they appreciate you know, like a lot of times it’s just the price they say I went with someone cheaper. So when I make a note in three months I follow up because most of the time when they go someone cheaper they get cheaper results. And I can’t tell you how many times I follow up and they say like oh it’s been a nightmare I was just thinking about reaching out or finding someone else. And so just touching base again after three months and not you know being like I wonder how things are going I just offer like hey we’d like a second set of eyes something like that and that can always work
Jeremy Weisz 18:21
I had a question you know Tony for you on so that’s for you I’m curious what you recommend your clients because you help your clients get a lot of leads and when their leads come in what are some things that you instruct them because listen, you can only do so much you get them only they have to then do all the conversion the closing and that’s out of your hands so I’m sure you want them to be super successful and you’ve probably given a lot of your clients tips over the years on Okay, we brought you all these leads now Don’t mess them up. You know, what do you recommend your clients do? Um, maybe walk through a little bit okay, lead comes in maybe it goes to a webinar like where it’s coming from and then kind of what the next steps are?
Tony Rulli 19:04
Yeah, I know you love retargeting Jeremy, we always talk about
Jeremy Weisz 19:07
I just love when you talk about retargeting.
John Corcoran 19:10
He doesn’t actually like doing the targeting, he just likes to talk about it. That’s true.
Tony Rulli 19:16
I mean, once you get those leads and you can do lots of things so like depending on your budget we always like clients to do some kind of nurture campaign in email but also you can do that with ads so not having a call to action ad but just have a value of value add add where you’re either teaching something telling people about yourself could be talking to other clients or customers like an interview. You know, something like this, this podcast is being recorded on video, right? This could be an ad to people that have opted in just to see the value and your expertise that idiots we are Yeah, maybe edit out the first 10 minutes. skip past this got squatty potty part and then but that can just add a lot of credibility to who you are. Get them to feel like they know you. And it goes a long way when people have seen you on video, they get a sense for who you are, they’re much more likely to work with you. I also have seen some clients lately doing a lot with Instagram, DMS, it depends where your audience is. But we’ve seen clients closing, you know, two to $5,000 courses, just via DMS on Instagram. Once people are in, maybe they’ve done a webinar. And then they go live on Instagram and then people start asking them questions on Instagram, we’ve seen Instagram DMS be a big sales channel for some clients. So
Jeremy Weisz 20:32
like, what does that look like? So they’re alive on Instagram? And then are they engaging? Or people asking questions and how
Tony Rulli 20:40
they go live on Instagram, people ask questions, they’ll chat there and then people will just keep following up with them through their stories and their regular posts and will DMM questions like, Am I a good fit? I’m not sure this is the right time for me. Do you think I could participate? And I’ve seen them close like half their sales just on Instagram DMS. Now that’s where their audiences are right? So it depends where your audience is and what channels you use. But don’t make it harder for them. Right? Don’t be like email me didn’t put the sale there on Instagram and chatting with you make the sale right there,
John Corcoran 21:11
so to speak on the channel that they are speaking to you at or they’re where they’re where they’re most active.
Unknown Speaker 21:17
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
John Corcoran 21:18
Yeah, Dan, anything you want to weigh in on here? So we joke about Dan, he’s come out to a number of our different rides for five new events over the years. And you can ask him a question on virtually any topic. And you’ll say I have a five part answer to that. And he’s completely thought through all five parts is usually an acronym acronym. And it just makes you feel like you’ve got no ideas. So Dan, I’ll turn it over to you. So Instagram, DMS are communicating with channels communicating with prospects in the channel that they like to communicate in? Yeah, meet
Dan Kuschell 21:52
them where they’re at, at the end of the day, right. So to Tony’s point, you know, you know, so many people want to set up a fancy pants website, and, you know, think that that’s going to be the sort of thing that’s going to solve their biggest, biggest business problems. And, you know, almost all of our clients, you know, 99% of their revenue comes from something other than their website. You know, it’s a model page, a couple pages, you know, Instagram, Facebook, Follow up, etc. So you meet them where they’re at, you know, just like people like to hang out at the mall, and you have an ability to go meet them at the mall, get in the conversation there, where they’re at, and they’re more comfortable. And then you can move, move the process. The other part is, is related, like, let’s say, I don’t know, as you’re listening, or watching, if you’re using webinars, or, you know, evergreen webinars, we find that over 90 to 95% of the sales that our clients have been generating for years are not on the webinar, like so many people put all this emphasis on this magic button of the webinar, the webinar, the webinar, and mastering the pitch of the webinar. And all of that’s great, you probably should do all that. But we find that 95% of the sales happen after the webinar, yet so many people, you know, they’ll do a tip of what we see so many times from clients is they’ll launch a webinar, then they’ll put a little replay up for a couple days, and then shut it off. And what they did is just cut off, all this buzz, all this momentum, all this potential goodwill. And so we extend this cycle with, you know, more value seeds on the back end. And in fact, the last two clients we worked with, we had over 60% of the sales from two sources. One is in the follow up, also, including driving to a phone call to have an actual real conversation with a human being follow up. And number two, is actually setting the stage where they got other value nuggets along the way. Right?
John Corcoran 23:52
So give me like a video or it could be like a PDF or a document or something along those lines.
Dan Kuschell 24:00
Yes. And we found that over, you know, 60% of all the sales never even saw the webinar.
John Corcoran 24:06
Interesting. Never even watched it, they signed up.
Dan Kuschell 24:09
But then they sign up for the program. Right? Wow. So the buzz of it, the event, the movement, you know, kind of think of it like you know, the nut one of the top businesses in the world is the NFL, they’re an event driven business. So they built this big Super Bowl. And because it’s such a big event, there’s all this buzz and strategic byproducts around it. So you create your own Super Bowl, and then follow up afterwards. And what it does is it creates an opportunity to follow up, right? And even if they’ve never seen the Superbowl, they were just part of the event part of the party, they got the value, they felt the value, they felt all the other pieces. They never even maybe engaged in the real thing that you started, which was the Superbowl or your webinar, and they still buy like what would happen for your business if you could put those two simple strategies in place.
Jeremy Weisz 24:57
That’s a great quote. Craig Jones superball. Has anyone else said that?
Unknown Speaker 25:01
I don’t think so.
John Corcoran 25:05
Except Jeremy Louise, the title of your book, then
Jeremy Weisz 25:07
create your own Super Bowl.
John Corcoran 25:09
Let me turn it to you, Jeremy. So you are masterful at this and following up with people remaining top of mine with them, you know, reaching back out to people after a couple of months. What are some of the strategies that you’ve used in order to keep relationships going and keep deepening those relationships?
Jeremy Weisz 25:28
Yeah, I was interviewing someone the other day and they use this term. I’m like, Yeah, I think I resonate with that. They call it spiritually stalking. You know, and I’m like, Yeah, I probably kind of spiritually stocked people. But, you know,
Jeremy Weisz 25:45
you know, and it’s like, Dan is kind of what you said about keeping it simple, right? I mean, for me, my closest and best relationships are on my phone. Like, I don’t need to go like some autoresponder sequence or, you know, webinar. It’s like right here and my phone. And so we often neglect our best relationships. You know, we go to the new shiny, and they’re all on my phone. So it’s really, I told her like, if you go through your phone, like once a week look at who have I not chatted with in a while, who have I not talked to or update or gotten update from. And it’s literally that simple for me. Now, what I like to do is follow up. I love to study for my Masters . What I mean by studying the Masters is I will buy stuff, just to see what their follow up sequences are. So like I saw, there was an ad in the newspaper, there was a little thing, and it was asking to buy gold and silver. I’m like, Oh, this is a direct response ad I want to see what they do. Like I called the number. I see how many times they upsell me, I buy the actual silver coins, I go onto the website, buy the coins on the website, all of a sudden Tony is retargeting me everywhere, like I see their ads everywhere. And then I get direct mail from them. I see if they call me they email me. So I actually buy other people’s stuff, to see all of the follow up systems that they have in place. And especially if they’re like, if they’re spending money to mail me something, or to put in a newspaper, I bet they’ve probably have some kind of follow up system because it costs actual money. So I love buying stuff, and then exploring their upsells and their follow up sequence.
John Corcoran 27:38
So if you’re wondering what Jeremy’s house looks like, it’s just nothing but squatty potty and hundreds and hundreds of dollars of commemorative gold and silver. Sitting around all over the place.
Jeremy Weisz 27:48
There was a direct mail piece that we got. And it’s like, you could buy 39 Gold dollar coins of the Presidents on it. And so I made my daughter’s I’m like, hey, if you want you to buy you these, like dollar coins, read Let’s read this. And if you read this, and you want it, we’ll buy it.
John Corcoran 28:08
But I direct mail.
Jeremy Weisz 28:12
Totally I want them to learn. They didn’t realize but they’re learning direct response by reading it and seeing if would they want it? Why don’t they want it? What was the guarantee? And so I yeah, anyways, I geek out on the direct response marketing and from people who, you know, they’re selling millions of dollars this stuff, like, I might as well just buy their stuff and see what they’re doing.
John Corcoran 28:34
That’s there’s some wisdom to that. All right. So let’s, we’re going a little long. So we’ll wrap things up where we’re really quick. Okay, software, let’s say everyone wants to know software tools, software, how do you follow up with people? Is there some automated way to do it? So I don’t actually put any effort into it? You know, those sorts of things? No, is the answer Yeah, Dan, any software tools that you recommend?
Dan Kuschell 28:56
So Jeremy brought one up. This handy pants fancy pants phone is pretty good at being a software tool. And what I like to do is reach out to people, we just had a scenario Jeremy and I Jeremy, you’re the one of the best in the world I’ve ever seen follow up. And so if any of you are listening, or watching you get a chance to spend 10 minutes with Jeremy and talk through your business to understand how to put some of this in place or John and get in front of your dream 100 and follow up and do it in an authentic way to bring your business like clockwork they can help you So Jeremy and I were brainstorming on Saturday, in fact, and we came up with a list of like dream 20 thing for our celebration we have coming up for 300 episodes and 30 years of business. And he was like who would you want to have in your dream when you know a 20 group of people that would be participating in this celebration you’re gonna do and started Mark Victor Hansen and Jay Abraham and Lin name, name, name name. And he said, Well, what are you going to do now? He said, Why don’t you reach out to him right now, you know most of these people, right? So speaking of what Jeremy just said, cultivate your relationships. And I went Yeah, okay. So I recorded a message to so and so and send So this is the second part of the thing. It’s
John Corcoran 30:03
actually a really good tip, you’re really good at this.
Dan Kuschell 30:05
Yes, audio messages on the spot, right? Because it is more important than a text, having some context to it, or even recording a video is probably even better, right? But then sending it immediately in a text is amazing. You can also do this in email, send a voice memo in an email, and put whatever your subject line and audio attached, you’d be amazed at how many people open this thing. It’s like 80%, open rates, right? Because it’s, again, personalized. So those are a couple simple ones. There’s other tech stuff. But I bet if you implemented audio, text messaging, audio emails, that would transform your ability to get new clients and get into conversations with people. And oh, by the way, the list of our 2018 of the 20 have said yes, to be a part of our thing since Saturday, just three, four days later.
John Corcoran 30:53
That’s awesome. And I’m going to go to Tony, but just to chime in on what you just said, you know, another thing you do well is introductions via audio or video text as well, which I’ve been on the receiving end of. And that’s really cool too. And you just you’re in a place with someone else and you just quickly before you forget to do it or neglect to do it, record a quick video or an audio and send that to both people to connect them. It’s a great strategy. And you can do that really well on LinkedIn too. You know, a lot of people don’t realize this, but from the LinkedIn app on your phone, it’s very easy to record a video and to send it to someone. And that is a really good strategy when you’ve met people via LinkedIn, you can build some trust really quickly by sending them videos, showing them that you’re an authentic person. Tony, I’m gonna turn to you any software tools or tips or resources for following up?
Tony Rulli 31:41
Yes, along the same lines. I mean, first, I love the audio messages. That’s one of the things the clients I mentioned that are doing really well on Instagram, DMS, they’ll send audio messages through Instagram, DMS, to people and because you did a webinar, you’re like a celebrity in their eyes, right? Like there’s even if you have a tiny audience and so all of a sudden now they’re getting an actual audio response where you see their name and it feels so personalized, it blows them away. And something similar is I often use video and email as video responses. So like I use Bom Bom, which connects right to Gmail. We did a small test launch earlier this year, like a group program for business owners or their teams running ads. And I saw most of our sales come from the bom bom emails. So like I reached out and if people didn’t respond to the first one, the second email was a video of me waving, saying hi using their name, talking to them, asking them why they want to join and that got like an 80% response rate just from the second email. And it just was a simple one minute video where I said their name and then repeated you know the normal follow up. messaging. Well,
John Corcoran 32:44
yeah, yeah. All right, Jeremy, final tip software tools resource. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 32:48
That’s why I love Tony’s idea. Actually, I love that tip about Bom Bom. Like I know I use Loom just to send a quick personal video to people. And you know, we have so much software, but I mean, really, it’s just for me, it’s keeping people top of mind. So like, obviously the phone, but we use Pipedrive. So pipedrive really connects well with Gmail, so you can click it over and put them so you don’t forget, like, Who is this person? Why should I be following up with them. So it doesn’t, you know, fall away, you forget about the person. So, you know, we use pipe drives to do that. And then as far as follow up goes quick, because it’s time consuming to follow up. Like if we make 10 introductions in a day, it wasn’t using some kind of software that would take me like five hours, right? And so I use a TextExpander. And we’ve talked about this before. I have someone’s bio loaded up even before this, like Hey, give me Tony’s bio. And within like three seconds, I have Tony’s bio people are important to me, I save their bio in my text expander. So I can introduce them to other people. So I could really write Tony. And his whole three paragraph bio shows up. So I go Hey, Dan, you need to be Tony, here’s his bio, Dan, here’s your bio. Good luck. And you guys have context with each other. So I save all the BIOS I introduce in the text expander. So I can quickly introduce them in the future.
John Corcoran 34:15
And it’s a great one. All right, so we’ll wrap things up. final thought Dan, and then tell us where they can reach you or they can get more information about what you do.
Dan Kuschell 34:25
Awesome. So a couple of quick quick ideas here is you know, as you’re building your business and you’ve gotten into relationships, you know, you’re in the relationship business, right relationship capital is probably the most valuable capital you have and your relationship equity is the most valuable. So I’d encourage you if you’re going to take one thing from all of this today is number one, is to once a month, at minimum, identify like who are the top five to 10 people that you’re grateful for, and why and make a goal once a month to reach out to those five to 10 relationships and just send them a message and audio or video of why you’re grateful that they’re in your life and what they mean to you and how they show up for you. And just that process alone will open doors beyond your wildest, wildest dreams. And that’s a strategy. It’s a principle based idea but also incorporates a little bit of a tactical way of doing it, but don’t do it. Looking for what you’re going to get from it like oh, I’m gonna do this so I get no Just do it. Because it becomes you right it’s a habit you build a gratitude exercise for others and demonstrating that if you want to go deeper with some of what we talked about, you’re looking for a way to maybe you’re struggling to get new clients on a daily basis you’re looking for help there we can help you can go to breakthrough strategy call calm that’s breakthrough strategy call set up a 10 minute conversation and we can see you know, identify where you’re at where you want to go and talk about some of the ways we can help you connect the dots see the blind spots and get unstuck to getting a steady flow of clients every day.
John Corcoran 36:04
Yeah, absolutely go sign up there and you can see how Dan will follow up with you every week
Unknown Speaker 36:11
in step approach,
John Corcoran 36:13
exactly Tony Where can we learn more about you?
Tony Rulli 36:15
Yeah, intentional spark calm you can contact us there to reach out we can schedule a conversation. Also Instagram at intentional spark we’re pretty active there. DM me on happy to chat.
John Corcoran 36:27
Whether you an audio
Tony Rulli 36:29
or audio we’ll do everything we chat about and see if you’re ready for ads. Dan could
Jeremy Weisz 36:34
wait yeah, Can people still get your retargeting or not?
Tony Rulli 36:38
No retargeting course we don’t do any more. We have a program where you can join the group program but nope, no more retargeting
Jeremy Weisz 36:45
so they’ll have to go to intentional spark to see what you have, guys. Okay,
John Corcoran 36:49
Dan Kuschell, Breakthrough3x, Tony Rulli, Intentional Spark, Jeremy and I can be found at Rise25media.com or email at [email protected]. Gentlemen, it was a pleasure. Thank you all for listening and watching and we’ll talk to you all soon.
Dan Kuschell 37:05
See ya.
Tony Rulli 37:06
See you guys.
Outro 37:06
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.