Good morning.

I've been going back through thirty years of journals, and there's a page in journal number six that's making me smile.

It was 1997.

The prompt I'd written at the top of it was simple. Let's start with a list of all the things you can think of that bring you joy.

And then just a list.

Number one was a great day of golf with some good friends.

Thirty years later, that one still lands.

You know what a gratitude practice is. Think of this as a joy practice.

Not what you're thankful for... what actually brings you joy. So you can go and put more of it into your days.

Let me read you some of mine.

There was a show I watched every morning when I first moved to Florida. Animated, comedians on a psychiatrist's couch. Very fun.

A day at home with nothing to do but lay around and read and study. Still true.

Going to a movie at Celebration. Still true.

Those are two-hour things, which means they go in the calendar. Like anything else you actually intend to do.

Being in resort-like surroundings is on the list too, and I've built my life around that one.

Where I live, we call it the Four Seasons Valhalla.

Dan Sullivan said something once that stuck with me. That he and Babs don't want to do any less at home than they would if they were staying at the Four Seasons.

So we have a logo. Robes in the guest room. The logo on the coffee cups.

Then there's dreaming up big schemes.

Some people do Sudoku. I like to crack a marketing puzzle. Same puzzle, same recreation, and mine happens to pay.

The ones that surprised me are the very specific ones.

My friend Stacey Hurley used to throw apple crisp and Trivial Pursuit parties. She'd make this legendary apple crisp, invite everybody over to her beautiful home, and we'd play Trivial Pursuit all night.

I read that line and the whole feeling comes back.

Which is the part I didn't expect.

Even the things that don't fit into your life this week still bring you joy, just from the remembering.

Then there are the rituals.

At the time it was Sunday night at the movies with Tim and Darlene. Their place or ours, every Sunday.

I still do it. Now it's Josh and Diane coming to the office to watch a movie.

Having money is on the list. They say money can't buy happiness... it brings me joy, and I'm going to write it down.

And an afternoon by the fire at the Delta Meadowvale in Toronto. A big lobby, a real wood-burning fireplace, hot chocolate and a stack of magazines, and somebody coming round every so often to stoke it with actual logs.

It's a gas fireplace now. Not the same.

But the remembrance of it is still doing its work.

So here's the whole thing.

Take some space in your journal and write down what brings you joy. Then either fit more of it in, or ritualize it so you know it's coming.

And you get paid twice.

Once now, filling your days with the things on the list.

And once in thirty years, when you open the page and find you knew all along.

Here's your nudge for today.

Start a joy page. Just the list... everything you can think of that brings you joy.

Then look at this week and put one of them in it.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/096-how-to-plan-optimize-for-daily-joy/

Good morning.

Day twelve of Profit Activator week, and the last one. Profit Activator 8.

Thirty years ago, in journal number six, there were only seven steps. I've been working on this eighth one ever since, so let's finish the picture properly.

Nurturing lifetime relationships was never only about repeat business.

It was about referrals.

And there's a psychology to why people refer that most of us have completely backwards.

Here's the backwards version.

That referrals have to be earned. That somebody sending you a name is doing you a favor.

Which leads straight to compensating them for it. Incentivizing them. A finder's fee.

And the moment you do that, you break the thing that was already working.

Because we are already wired to add value to the people around us. It's not something you have to install.

Go back far enough and we're in tribes of about a hundred and fifty.

Robin Dunbar at Oxford put the number on it, and it's still the number. You can hold about a hundred and fifty relationships. You've got a hundred and fifty right now.

In a tribe that size you had to know everybody. And you had to be a contributor.

The worst thing that could happen to you was to be shunned.

So we contribute. Constantly. It's how we keep our status in the herd.

Let me put you out on the savannah.

I find a big patch of blueberries, gather some up, and on the way back to camp I run into Josh.

Hey. There's a blueberry patch over those hills. Go and get some... maybe Nancy makes her muffins tonight.

In that moment I am higher status than Josh. He's riding on my coattails.

So he immediately tells me to watch out behind those rocks, because he saw a lion on the way over.

Now we're both better off. And we're square.

That is still running. Every day. In every city.

It's why reciprocity works the way it does.

Dan Ariely has a lovely illustration of what happens when you put money into it. It's in Predictably Irrational.

Say I need to move a piano, and I call Josh and offer him twenty bucks to help.

Now he can do the math. Twenty dollars, that piano, those stairs... not worth it.

But if I just ask him, Josh, I need to move a piano, he's drawn to say yes. Because we're friends and I need help.

I think every piano ever moved by a friend was moved because a certificate came with it. Good for one reciprocal piano move, whenever you need it.

Bring the economic exchange in and you remove the social contract. So don't reach for it.

Now the mechanics.

Every referral you have ever received happened inside a conversation.

And in that conversation, three things had to happen.

They had to notice the conversation was about what you do.

They had to think of you.

And they had to introduce you.

Three things. Every time. Miss one and there is no referral.

We used to run big real estate seminars, and for three years running I'd have ten people stand up and tell me the story of their last referral.

Eighty percent of the time it was a stranger calling them. Hi, I got your name from Bob.

That's a passive referral. It's already done by the time you hear about it.

The other twenty percent was the client calling to say I was talking to my friend Nancy, you should call her.

That's a reactive referral. You react to it.

And then there's a third kind that I've never heard anybody talk about.

An orchestrated referral.

Here's the size of it.

You've got your hundred and fifty. Say each of them has ten meaningful conversations a day. It's far more than ten, but say ten.

That's fifteen hundred conversations a day. Nearly fifty thousand a month.

Your job is to program those hundred and fifty so that when the right conversation happens, they know exactly what to do.

Something happened to me that made this obvious.

Somebody in our real estate forum posted asking where they could get a carpet replaced that day. Closing tomorrow, and the painters had spilled paint all over it.

And my brain immediately started singing a carpet company's toll-free jingle.

Planted years earlier. Without my permission. Sitting there waiting for the words same day carpet.

Flip of a switch.

So here's the question I like to ask.

What if you could plant a chip in the ear of everybody who knows, likes and trusts you, and listen in on their conversations?

What would you program it to listen for?

What are the trigger words?

Bob's got a job transfer, we're moving to Poughkeepsie. We're thinking about a place in the country. The kids are graduating so we're downsizing. There's another baby coming and we need more room.

All real. All happening today.

Now here's the flip that makes it work.

Most of us tell our clients don't keep us a secret, tell your friends about us.

And they do it. They say you should call Josh, he's great, he sold our house.

Which quietly puts all three things back on them.

Instead, get them to tell you about people.

Just a quick note. If you hear anybody talking about selling their house this fall, and right after Labor Day is when they list, text me and I'll get you a copy of our book to give them.

Now it's easy. They're not selling anybody on you. They're handing a friend something genuinely useful.

And they get to be the hero inside their own tribe... which is the only thing they ever wanted.

Here's your nudge for today.

Write down the three trigger words that would tell you a referral conversation is happening.

Then write the one sentence that asks your hundred and fifty to tell you about people, instead of telling people about you.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/095-getting-referrals-the-secret-psychology-of-why-people-refer/

Good morning.

Day eleven of Profit Activator week, and we're into the After Unit.

Profit Activator 6 is providing world class after sales service. Profit Activator 7 is nurturing lifetime relationships.

Here's the way I'd like you to think about both of them today.

Imagine a law gets passed tomorrow.

From now on you're only allowed to do business with people who have already done business with you.

No new customers. No advertising. No going out and finding anybody.

Just the people you've already got a relationship with.

What would you do?

I'm a big fan of provocations like that. Artificially constraining something, purely as a thinking mechanism, to see what's actually sitting there.

Because I think you'd get completely innovative if that was the rule.

If you've been in business for any length of time you've got people you have already gotten a result for. And you've gotten that same result for a lot of them.

So what else could you do for those people?

What I see most of the time is somebody who started out serving a particular market, at a particular price point, with a particular product... and is still quietly living inside that box years later.

But you've evolved since then. You can get bigger and better results now than you could when you set all that up.

So what if you offered the people who already have a relationship with you the chance to get more, precisely because they already have a relationship with you?

There's a question I love for this, and I've forgotten who gave it to me.

What would you definitely buy from me if I was smart enough to offer it to you?

Take a list of your very best clients, the ones you've had a great relationship with, and go and ask them that.

Then look at the answers and ask a second question. Could I take more of the struggle off them?

Let me show you what that looked like for us.

We've helped real estate agents for years, and our GoGo Agent platform has always been a gym model.

All the equipment is there. The tools, the ads, the postcards, everything you need to install this stuff in your business.

But you have to come in and use it.

And just like a real gym, plenty of people join and never show up. Or they show up, do a little cardio, and leave.

They're not getting the results they could be getting.

So we added accountability. Boot camps. A six or eight week sprint to install one element of the listing agent lifestyle.

That worked. The people who did it got the outcome.

But the majority still didn't take the action.

So I asked a different question. What if I was responsible for getting the result?

And I sat down and wrote out, line by line, everything that would have to happen to get somebody that outcome.

What I found was that somebody could do about 95% of it.

The client only had to be in one place, on a schedule, to give us the 5% that has to come from them.

Everything else could be done for them.

The way we describe it now is working with a personal trainer... except we're going to do the sit-ups, and you're going to get the six-pack.

Zero resistance.

So look at the people you're already working with, and the result you already get them, and ask how you could offer that in a premium, assisted, done-for-them way. A way that gives them certainty of getting there.

Here's where most people flinch. That version might have to cost ten times your current price.

Business owners get very constrained by the pricing model they already have. They try to squeeze everything into whatever feels affordable.

Do it the other way round.

What would genuinely get the result? What does that need to cost to actually deliver? And what is that worth to the person getting it?

This is also the thing people miss about the order of it. Your During Unit drives your Before Unit.

It starts with the offer. It starts with realizing what you're now capable of doing for somebody.

And the people who already know you, like you and trust you are the easiest people in the world to say it to.

I did exactly this myself.

I'd been doing live events for years, and I decided I wanted to work with some people one-on-one.

So I sent a short email to my existing clients. I'm going to work with a handful of people one-on-one this year. Would you like to work with me?

That was it. That was the whole thing.

The ones who wanted it replied, I told them how it worked, and my allocation was full.

The most expensive thing I offer, sold in an email to people who already knew me.

Here's your nudge for today.

Pick ten of your best clients and send them one question. What would you definitely buy from me if I was smart enough to offer it to you?

Then read the answers as a to-do list.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/094-what-would-your-best-customers-buy-if-you-were-smart-enough-to-offer-it/

Good morning.

Day ten of Profit Activator week, and we're still on number five.

Yesterday was the storyboard. Every benchmark in your During Unit, and two questions at each one. Where's the wow, and where's the friction.

Today we layer something on top of it.

Because the way most people treat a new customer is as a transaction to get out of the way.

And the thing you want in your head, and in theirs, from the very first moment... is that this is a lifetime relationship.

There's more than one opportunity here.

Let me go back to the restaurant.

A hundred people come through tonight. Thirty dollar average ticket. That's a three thousand dollar night.

That's your million dollar restaurant model right there.

Now think like a multiplier.

Start with the asset. If you want those people in your After Unit, you have to know who they are.

I eat out constantly. I travel, I'm in restaurants all the time.

And almost nobody ever asks for my contact information. Nobody gives me any indication they'd like a relationship with me beyond tonight.

So go back to your benchmarks and look for the gap.

There's a lovely one in a restaurant. The order's been taken, the food is being made, and the server comes back to top up the water and tell you it won't be long.

Nothing is happening in that moment. It's just a gap.

So fill it with the birthday club.

Join tonight, and we'll celebrate your birthday right now with some birthday cake for dessert... and you'll get a twenty dollar gift card on your actual birthday.

A tent card on the table with a QR code on it. That's the whole mechanic.

Now a hundred people come through and forty of them join.

That's your database. People with a name and an email who have already been in your restaurant and already enjoyed it.

Getting those people back is easy compared to finding a stranger.

Then you keep going down the timeline.

Next question. How do we get more people ordering wine, and ordering the better wine?

So you sit down with the chef, or the sommelier if you've got one, and you pair a wine to every entree. Printed right there on the menu beside the dish.

And when somebody orders the fish, the server says would you like the pinot with that?

A lot of people, presented with the idea, will simply say yes.

Now your average ticket goes from thirty dollars to thirty-six.

Same hundred people. Same night. Thirty-six hundred instead of three thousand.

Keep going.

Maybe you get known for one specific thing. The Olive Garden. Outback and the bloomin' onion. The appetizer or the dessert that people have to have.

I was in a restaurant that did this beautifully. Nobody wanted dessert... and then out came a tray of dessert shots. Little cups with a brownie and some whipped cream, little parfaits, two or three dollars each.

Suddenly everybody's saying oh, maybe just a bite. Maybe just one of those.

And the margins on those are wonderful.

None of that changes the food or the service. It's all layered on top of an experience people were already having.

That's the multiplier index. Where are the opportunities for more to happen, simply because somebody is doing business with you.

And the job title I'd like you to try on is guest experience architect.

Front of stage is the play. What people see and feel.

Back of stage is everything that has to happen to make the magic real. The systems, the processes, the assets. The tent card, the printed pairing, the sommelier's list.

You design the front, then you go and build the back.

There's so much richness sitting in your During Unit, and it's very rarely about doing the main thing better.

It's about seeing all the moments around it.

Tomorrow we carry it into the After Unit.

Here's your nudge for today.

Take the storyboard you wrote yesterday and find the gaps. The dead moments where nothing is happening.

Then pick one and add something. A way to get their contact information... or an easy yes worth six dollars.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/093-how-to-multiply-the-value-of-every-first-time-customer/

Good morning.

Day nine of Profit Activator week, and we're into number five.

Yesterday was the offer. Today is what happens after somebody says yes.

Deliver a dream come true experience.

In 1997 I was calling it deliver a world-class service. The words have got better since then. The job hasn't changed.

And it splits into two things.

There's the result. The actual thing people are paying you to do.

And there's the experience. What they're touching, holding, hearing and feeling on the way to it.

Most people manage the first one carefully, and let the second one just happen to them.

So here's the exercise we used to run at the main events. It was always the most popular thing we did.

Six or eight hundred realtors in a room. We'd put some music on and give everybody a few minutes to write a letter.

Not from your own perspective. From the perspective of somebody who has just come all the way through the process of working with you.

And it had to be the most raving review anybody could possibly write about that experience.

I was reading Raving Fans around that time, and that's the whole idea of it. Not satisfied customers. Raving ones.

So imagine what that person would love to be able to say about working with you... then write it as though they already had.

What you've got now is a vision for the entire journey. From the moment your process starts to the moment it's over.

And that's the baseline you lay your storyboard on top of.

Because there are two halves to any experience.

There's the above the line half. Everything people actually see and hear and feel.

And there's the below the line half. The systems, the processes, the checklists, all the behind the scenes machinery that makes the top half possible.

Your guest only ever experiences the top half. It only ever happens because of the bottom half.

Now, the way to get at it is to think in benchmarks. An experience timeline.

I've used real estate ones for years, so let me do a restaurant instead.

It starts with the reservation. Then there's a gap of a few days.

Then arriving. Then checking in with the hostess. Then being walked to the table.

Then all those little vignettes... somebody brings the menu, somebody brings water, maybe some bread arrives.

Looking over the menu. Ordering. The wait while the food is being made. Somebody topping up the water, saying it won't be long.

The food arrives. Did everybody get the right thing.

The meal is eaten. The table gets cleared. Then it's dessert, coffee, something after dinner.

Then the check. Paying. Leaving.

That's the whole During Unit for a restaurant, and every one of those is a checkpoint.

So go back through them and ask two questions at each one.

What would be a wow here?

And what friction could happen here?

The second question is the one that pays, because friction is almost invisible from the inside.

There was a show on the Travel Channel called Hotel Impossible, with Anthony Melchiorri. A career hotelier who'd go into a struggling hotel and help them turn it around.

And every single episode started the same way. With him arriving.

Just walking up to the place and looking at it the way a guest would.

A run-down sign. A light that isn't working. Paint cracking and peeling. Shrubbery overgrown. Cigarette butts on the path up to reception.

And his read on it was always the same. This is a general manager who has checked out. They're on autopilot.

Because the number one job of a general manager is to walk the property every day and notice the things that need doing.

My favorite one was in Miami. One of those beautiful old art deco hotels on the ocean, where there's no parking out front at all.

There's a sign that says valet. So he pulls up right in front of it, and they start a timer running.

And you know this feeling. Any second now a guy in a polo shirt is going to come running round the corner. He's probably just parking somebody's car.

Twelve, thirteen minutes go by.

Eventually he gives up, pokes his head through the door and asks the receptionist whether the valet is on duty.

Oh, no. Just leave the keys with us.

Think about how many people had already had exactly that experience. Sitting out front, waiting on somebody who was never coming.

Here's how he fixed it.

A little sign rider underneath the valet sign. Leave keys at reception.

That's it. That's the entire fix.

And now nobody sits out there for thirteen minutes wondering what's supposed to happen.

It sounds like a small thing. It isn't.

Somebody arriving at a hotel has been on a plane, or driving for hours. All they want is the room, a shower, and ten minutes of not doing anything.

And the very first thing that happens to them is a frustration.

These little things are dominoes. One goes over at the front door and everything after it is being done from a deficit.

You spend the rest of the stay climbing back to zero.

So that's the work. Find the benchmarks, and at every one of them, raise the wow and remove the friction.

And the secret to all of it is experiencing it through the eyes of your guest. Not through the eyes of the person running the process.

Tomorrow we'll talk about how to enhance it.

Here's your nudge for today.

Write the ultimate scenario for your own During Unit. From the moment somebody says yes, to the moment they've got the outcome you promised them.

Then list every benchmark along the way, and put two columns beside it. Where's the wow. Where's the friction.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/092-how-to-create-super-happy-customers/

Good morning.

Day eight of Profit Activator week, and we're into number four.

Yesterday was the nine-word email. Reviving everybody who ever inquired and never went ahead.

Today we present your unique service offer. That's what I was calling it back in 1997.

It's the transition into your During Unit. The moment where you frame what you're going to do for somebody, and propose the exchange.

Now, every commercial transaction in the world comes down to the same two things.

Somebody offering to sell something, or do something, or make something. And somebody willing to pay for it.

A buyer and a seller.

And the most valuable thing you can do is work out where on the spectrum your offer actually sits.

At one end... all sales final. All cash. No refunds, no exchanges. A hundred percent hedged in favor of the seller.

You see it in the sketchier corners of retail. Everything protected, on their side of the counter.

At the other end... no credit card required. Let me get you the result, and you pay me once you've got what I promised you.

I think you can guess which way acceptance runs.

The closer you get to zero risk for the buyer, the more offers get taken.

But there's a difference between risk reduction and risk reversal, and it's worth being precise about it.

Risk reduction is take it home, and if it doesn't meet your needs, we'll give you your money back.

Which is much better than all sales final. But look at what's still sitting on them.

They pay upfront. They have to trust that you'll actually give the money back. And if it doesn't work out, they have to deal with the hassle of sending it back.

It eases the mind. It doesn't remove the risk. It just moves it a little.

Jay Abraham used to tell a story about two men selling a horse.

The first one says, here's a horse. It's a good horse. Your daughter will love it. Six hundred dollars.

The second one says, we've got a wonderful horse and I think it'd be great for your daughter... but I would say that, because it's my horse.

So let's do this instead.

Send the horse home with your daughter. Let her ride it for thirty days and bond with it. I'll send enough oats and hay to feed it for the whole month.

And if at the end of the month it isn't the perfect horse for you, I'll come and pick it back up.

Which horse do you think people buy?

The one with no risk attached to it.

Any time you can go past reducing the risk and actually reverse it... take it onto yourself... it's an amazing outcome.

And here's what makes it safe to do.

If you know that in Profit Activator 5 you can deliver a dream come true experience... if you're genuinely confident you can get the result you're promising... then it's in your own best interest to get that in front of as many people as you possibly can, meeting as little resistance as you can.

People are very, very interested in outcomes.

They're not nearly as interested in taking risks.

Here's the other analogy I've been using a lot lately.

Say you're selling into a company. What most people do is go to the purchasing department.

You pitch your proposal, you hope they'll write you a purchase order, and they pay you now for something you'll deliver later.

There's always resistance there. You're competing with everybody else for the same limited pool of right-now money. Which is a strange thing to be doing when the thing you're selling is a way to make more of it.

So go around the building and knock at the receiving dock instead.

At the receiving dock you're met with open arms.

Because every single person in every company is a hundred percent authorized to bring more money into the business.

Nobody needs a sign-off for that.

Position what you do so that it's a hundred percent upside for the person you're talking to, and you meet zero resistance.

That's how you frame an offer that gets you the most outcome with the least rejection.

Tomorrow I'll go a little deeper on presenting it.

Here's your nudge for today.

Write down your offer exactly as it stands, and mark where it sits on the spectrum. All sales final at one end. Pay me once you've got the result at the other.

Then ask yourself the honest question underneath it.

Are you confident enough in what you do to bet on yourself... and take that risk off them?

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/091-how-to-make-your-offer-irresistible/

Good morning.

Day seven of Profit Activator week, and we're still on number three.

Yesterday was about the cookies. Making the next step something that's already baked, so nobody has to go out of their way.

Today I want to show you a magic trick.

It's my favorite thing I've ever created, and you could do it this afternoon.

But first, here's why Profit Activator 3 is the one I'd pick if I had to pick one.

Most of the profit activators are in and out. We choose the target market, and we move on. We work out the offer that gets somebody to raise their hand, and they pass straight through it.

Nobody stays there.

But the moment somebody raises their hand they land in Profit Activator 3, and they stay. Sometimes for a little while. Sometimes for years.

Every one of those people has real asset value in your business.

And the biggest mistake I see is counting only the ones who are ready right now. Somebody books a call, they buy, wonderful... and quietly, everybody else is dead to you.

So let's go and revive them.

Gather up everybody who ever inquired and didn't go ahead.

Look in your phone. Your texts. Your email. The desk drawers. The notebooks you scribble in. Look in the sofa cushions.

Anybody who at some point told you they were interested, and then it didn't happen.

Now send them nine words.

Hi Josh, are you still looking for a house in Georgetown?

That's the whole email. Period at the end.

Are you still planning that trip to Israel. Are you still looking for a yacht. Whatever it is you do.

Part of the magic is the word still, because it quietly says I know you were.

And part of it is what isn't in there. It's short, it's personal, and it's expecting a reply.

Here's where people ruin it.

They can't leave the mystery alone. Are you still looking for a house in Georgetown? Because if you are, here's what we can do... and if you're not, that's absolutely fine too.

Now there's nothing left to answer.

Think about the difference between standing on a table in Starbucks asking whether anybody in here is still looking for a house... and recognizing one person in the line, making eye contact, and asking them.

Everybody on your list has a one-to-one connection with you. They don't know or care that anyone else is on it.

So ask the question, and then shut up.

That silence is a vacuum. In real life, people feel compelled to fill it.

We had a client in Georgetown generating leads from people looking for a home there. Over a thousand of them.

Then her mother got cancer, and she spent eight months with her mother and ushered her through it.

When she was ready to come back to work she assumed she was starting from zero. Best part of a year with no focus on the business at all.

I asked whether she'd been in touch with any of the people who had inquired. She hadn't.

So we sent one email to all of them. Hi Josh, are you still looking for a house in Georgetown?

The replies started coming back. We're just getting started. That was a Wednesday.

She met one of them at the weekend. They bought a house on the Sunday.

She wasn't starting over at all. She just picked up where she'd left off, and carried on sending them the new homes every week.

My favorite one, though, is the yacht broker.

He'd joined a new brokerage in Fort Lauderdale, which is the yacht capital of America, and they had a file. An actual paper file, marked dead leads.

He went through it one at a time. Hi Bob, are you still looking for a yacht?

One of the replies came from a man who had a $120 million custom yacht on order, three years from delivery.

So he bought a $50 million yacht to tide him over.

From nine words, sent to a name in a folder that somebody had already given up on.

There's no harm in any of this. Somebody ghosted you, or you dropped the ball, and things fall through the cracks for everybody.

Gather them up, ask them a simple question, and you're going to win.

Then keep going. Every week, continue the dialogue. Send them the things that answer the questions standing between them and the thing they want... so you're paving the way into Profit Activator 4 and the offer.

Tomorrow we move on to Profit Activator 4.

Here's your nudge for today.

Find ten people who inquired and never went ahead, and send each of them nine words asking if they're still looking.

Then don't add a single thing to it... and see who writes back.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/090-the-amazing-9-word-email-that-revives-dead-leads/

Good morning.

Day six of Profit Activator week, and we're still on number three.

Yesterday was about finding the five-star prospects in the first hundred hours.

Today is about what you actually offer them.

And it starts with something you have to accept before any of the rest of it works.

People are going to do what they want to do, when they want to do it, on their own timeframe. Even if they tell you otherwise.

You're not going to talk anybody out of that. So the job is to work with it.

Which is why the outbound conversation is exploratory, not persuasive.

What are you thinking of doing?

Do you need something right away, or have you got time to plan?

That's really disarming, because they're braced for the opposite. They're expecting somebody to try and get them to commit to something.

Instead you're giving it room. You're making it crystal clear that whatever their timeframe is, it's okay with us.

Now here's the part you can actually engineer.

Your ideal prospect has pretty predictable next desires. Think them through ahead of time and you can build a path that lets people self-select their way down it.

Somebody downloads the how to sell your house for top dollar book.

There's a good chance the next three things on their mind are... how much am I actually going to get for it. What do we need to do to get the house ready, do we redo the kitchen, do we replace the carpets. And, we're not in a hurry, but if somebody wanted to buy it we could move our plans up.

Same with a deck catalog. What's this going to cost. What's the design going to look like. How would we finance it.

That's the thinking. Then you shine the light over their shoulder onto exactly those things... knowing all paths lead back to you.

Now, what you name the next step matters more than almost anything else here.

Because most of what we offer sounds like a commitment.

A comparative market analysis. Book an estimate and we'll come over. Get preapproved.

Every one of those asks somebody to invite a trained salesperson into their life before they're ready for one.

But if it sounds like it's already done... just the next natural step... it's an entirely different proposition.

It's much easier and more compelling to play with a deck cost calculator than it is to have a deck salesperson come to the house.

So for the people who downloaded the seller book, our three offers line up with the three things already on their mind.

Here's a pinpoint price analysis, showing what's actually happening in the market.

Or the room-by-room review book and checklist, which shows you which things get the highest return when you sell.

Or we may be able to sell your house in as little as 24 hours, without even putting it on the market, through our silent market.

Notice what those have in common. They already exist. Nobody's going out of their way. All somebody is doing is having a look.

That's just human psychology, and understanding human behavior is the number one skill in this business.

Work with the way people naturally behave and it's like riding the jetstream. Work against it and it's resistance all the way.

Here's the analogy I always come back to.

Say I invite you into my house and sit you down in the living room. And I say, hey, I'm really happy you're here. If you're hungry or thirsty there's lots of stuff in the fridge, go ahead and help yourself.

I don't know you. But I'd bet almost anything that you're not going to go and get something out of my fridge.

Nobody wants to impose. We don't want anybody going out of their way for us.

It's the same reason for the cup of tea dance. Would you like a cup of tea? Well, are you having one? Because if you're having one, I'll have one. But don't boil the kettle for me.

And that is exactly what most of us are doing with our prospects.

If there's anything at all I can help you with, please feel free to reach out. Just call or email us, we're more than happy to help.

It's obsequious. And all it really does is put the onus on them to take the initiative.

Now here's the other version.

I sit you in the living room, go into the kitchen, and come back out with a plate of cookies. I walk right up to you and say, I just baked these, would you like one?

I still don't know you. But it would be very difficult for you not to take a cookie.

Because we don't want to reject people any more than we want to impose on them. They've clearly already gone out of their way, and it would be rude not to accept.

That's the whole thing.

Being really good at lead conversion is identifying who the likely prospects are... and then making sure what they feel is your hospitality, not your sales process.

More on Profit Activator 3 tomorrow.

Here's your nudge for today.

Write down the three things your prospects are most likely thinking about next, and beside each one write what you currently offer them.

Then ask the honest question about each of those offers. Is that the fridge... or is it the cookies?

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/089-convert-more-leads-what-to-say-to-prospects-so-they-all-convert-themselves/

Good morning.

Day five of Profit Activator week.

Yesterday we worked out what a bundle of a hundred leads is quietly worth over the next hundred weeks.

Today is about the first hundred hours.

Because here's the problem with that bundle. You can't tell, by looking at it, which of those hundred people are going to buy.

All you've got is a name, an email and a phone number. There's no information in that.

Wouldn't it be lovely if we could run them all past a sensor and the ones who are going to buy glowed bright green.

That's what the first hundred hours is for.

Not to sell anybody anything. To find out who's a five-star prospect.

Five things have to be true.

That's a five-star prospect. All five, or it isn't one.

Now, most people run at this backwards.

They start at number five. Here's what you should buy, here's the price, and the price goes away at midnight.

They're making the prescription before they've done any diagnosis. They don't know yet whether this is even somebody they can help.

I think about it like the staged lighting at the drag races. First light comes on, then the second, then the third. You go through them in order.

So start at the top. Are they willing to engage?

I build everything as though my phone only accepts incoming calls. So mostly I'm not chasing anybody... I'm making it easy for them to start talking to me.

And when you do reach out, do it with the true intention of connecting rather than closing. You can tell in the first thirty seconds.

When we were running the beach condo price report, the whole call was this.

Hi, it's Dean Jackson. I sent you the beach condo price report. Just wanted to make sure you got it.

That's it. Everything true, nothing pushy.

Then, once they're actually talking to you, ask the most neutral thing you can think of.

What are you thinking of doing?

And then shut up.

Because what happens in the next ten seconds is the whole thing. Is what comes out of their mouth coming through a smiling face... or is it hands-off and a bit resistant?

We've literally got smiley, neutral and frowny icons in the CRM for it.

I'm a big believer that however it starts is how it ends. It doesn't get better.

Somebody who's dismissive on the first call is not going to warm up into friendly and cooperative.

But when it goes the other way, listen to what you get.

Well, we've been vacationing in Longboat Key for years. Prices look like they're starting to come down. We're getting closer to retirement... might be time for us to buy something.

Now you're into whether they know what they want. Is this permanent? Are they snowbirds? Are they going to put it on Airbnb, because that rules out a lot of buildings.

Same thing with a fence. Do you need a fence right now, or have you got some time to plan?

A tree came down on ours, it's still lying there.

Or, we're building, the house is ready in about six months.

They'll tell you. People are much happier telling you their situation than being asked to confirm yours.

And what somebody volunteers is worth more than anything you had to extract.

Only when you understand what they want, and when they want it, are you ready to say here's how I can help you get it.

That's element five. And by then you're making the offer from a relationship, not from a standing start.

Stephen Covey had it right. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

What you've got isn't interesting to anybody until you understand what they want.

So the job in the first hundred hours is to be responsive. Start the conversation, start the clock.

Don't send the download link and disappear. Don't let the leads pile up in a list somewhere while you decide what to do about them.

If half of these people are going to do something over the next hundred weeks, the only sensible thing is to find out which of them might do it now.

Tomorrow we'll talk about sorting them, and what to do with people at each stage.

Here's your nudge for today.

Take the next person who raises their hand and ask them what they're thinking of doing... then say nothing at all and see what comes back.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/088-how-to-know-which-leads-are-actually-going-to-buy/

Good morning.

Day four of Profit Activator week, and we're into number three.

Educate and motivate your prospects to meet you.

Everything up to here has been about getting the right hand in the air. Now we've got a bundle of people who raised it, and this is the most valuable part of the whole thing.

Let me set the context first, because I don't want to be misunderstood.

I am not saying take the long view. I'm not saying ignore the people who are ready today.

If somebody's ready to go right now, that's perfect. Let's go. I want to convert people as soon as we possibly can.

What I want you to see is what you're actually holding.

Because most advertisers approach this like a slot machine.

Pull the lever. Did somebody buy? No? Wasted money. Pull it again.

And if the machine pays out before the credit card bill is due, it was a good month. If it didn't, the leads were no good.

That's the whole model. Return on ad spend, measured by Friday.

Back in 1997 I was working out how to generate these leads, and I found a study that changed the way I look at all of it.

There was a company doing inquiry handling at an enterprise level. Millions of leads a year, across every industry you can think of.

And they ran what they called did you buy surveys.

They'd take a cohort of people who inquired about something eighteen months earlier, call them up, and ask exactly one question.

Josh, you came to the home show and asked about faucets. Did you buy any faucets?

Here's what they found.

At the eighteen month mark, just over half of the people who inquired about a thing had gone and bought that thing.

More than half. People eventually buy what they raise their hand about.

But only 15% of those buyers bought inside the first 90 days.

That's the number that reorganized my thinking.

85% of the value of the leads you generate today is 90 days or more away from you.

Now, 90 days feels like forever when you've just spent the money.

I saw it most with realtors. They wanted to run an ad, have somebody call this week, go and look at a house on Saturday, and put a sign in the yard on Monday.

Then I did this for enough other businesses to realize everybody's like that. Everybody wants the right now business.

I mentioned time travel the other day. Let's go back to it.

Imagine we could leave tonight at midnight and land a hundred weeks ago, and we could carry with us the list of every person who's going to sell their house over the next two years.

Everybody loves that idea.

But look at what you'd actually be holding. The person who sold last month? The moment you land, they're still 23 months away from doing anything about it.

You'd still be waiting. You'd just be waiting with certainty.

And certainty changes everything about how you behave in the meantime.

So the question you need to answer is not are these good leads.

Good lead is an emotional phrase. What people mean by it is somebody who's ready to buy right now, and anybody who isn't feels like a disappointment.

The objective question is what happens to this bundle of a hundred people over the next hundred weeks.

The studies say over half inside eighteen months. I like to be conservative, so I stretch the window to a hundred weeks and I round the number down to 50%.

Fifty people. Go and do that math on your own number. If your thing is $10,000, work out what that bundle is quietly worth to you.

Now, about the first hundred days.

I think of it as the Van Allen belt.

If you're going to space you have to get through that band of radiation and pressure first. That's the hard part, and it takes everything you've got. But once you're through it, it's effortless. You can go all the way to Mars.

Same here. Get through the first hundred days with a bundle of a hundred people and the rest of it costs you almost nothing.

Most people never get through the belt.

One of my quiet delights is looking up the people other advertisers gave up on.

They run ads for our sell your house for top dollar book. Leads come in at $5, $7, sometimes $10. Then they start calling everybody, looking for a listing today.

Around the 90 day mark they get antsy. Nobody's listed. These leads are no good. We'll spend the money somewhere else.

There's a fellow in Texas who did exactly that. Generated 130-odd leads and walked away from them.

Real estate is public record, which is the great gift of that market, so I can just look them up on Zillow.

At the eighteen month mark, 30-something percent of the people he abandoned had listed, or sold, or have their house sitting on the market right now.

He was standing on it the whole time.

And this is why I think in bundles and never in individuals.

One person is unpredictable. There's no useful way to say what one person is going to do.

A hundred of them is arithmetic. Fifty are going to do something over the next hundred weeks. Eight of them are going to do it inside the first hundred days.

Which gives you a real goal, and a much better one than chasing everybody. Find the eight.

So phase one of Profit Activator 3 isn't a tactic at all.

It's realizing what you've got. Treating a hundred people who voluntarily told you what they're thinking about as a capital asset, not an expense you have to justify by the end of the month.

Tomorrow we'll get into what you actually do with those hundred people.

Here's your nudge for today.

Take your last hundred leads, whatever they cost you, and do the arithmetic. Fifty of them buying over the next hundred weeks, at your price.

Then look at that number and ask yourself honestly whether you've been treating those people like an asset worth that... or like a lever you pulled that didn't pay out.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/087-100-leads-are-worth-more-than-you-think-heres-the-math/