Marketing

Recruit Better & Sell Better With A Brand Story With Philip St. Jacques

Ryan Englin · July 6, 2022 ·

The marketing and branding of your company impacts so much more than just sales. Marketing for existing customers, new customers, and technicians are all connected. In this episode, Philip St. Jacques of WorkWave explains the importance of building your brand story in the recruitment process. Join host Ryan Englin as he chats with Philip about why businesses should invest in marketing and branding and how advertising your culture externally help attract top talent into your organization.

—

Recruit Better & Sell Better With A Brand Story With Philip St. Jacques

Our guest is an owner of a marketing agency that believes in employer branding and putting your marketing efforts towards what potential job seekers or employees learn about your company. What they see about your company’s brand is equally, if not more important, than being able to market to customers.

In fact, he tells me that he talks to employers all the time to say, “I can’t take on one more ounce of business unless I can find more people.” As an owner of a marketing company and a partner with WorkWave, Philip St. Jacques is out there helping brands from small all the way to enterprises solve their recruiting problems. I’m looking forward to our conversation. Philip, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

I’m excited about our conversation. Let’s jump right in. What’s the biggest myth of your industry?

There’s no denying that the past years have been challenging for a lot of people. As people in field service, we had to deal with a lot of different challenges that we’d never seen before. One of the biggest myths is that the marketing for existing customers, for new customers, and for technicians to help grow the business are all separate. They’re not. It’s one ecosystem.

We’ve got clients to tell us, “I cannot take on one more piece of business if I don’t get any more technicians.” That seems to be a pervasive problem. That’s a newish problem. We’ve heard that before. It’s always been a challenge in the industry especially if you get more specialized verticals, but never consistently across every business owner that we typically speak to are they having trouble with either recruitment or retention.

You say that they’re not separate. Unpack that for me a little bit. How are they all connected in your world?

At the end of the day, it’s about that brand story. It’s about the story of the cultural fit for the customer. It’s like, “How is this all put together?” That’s where it all becomes connected. The technician, the employee culture, and the culture around the customer experience are all related to the same thing. There’s a problem that needs a solution. Technicians need a new career path.

We were talking to somebody in the HVAC space where he said, “Hiring bonuses don’t do it anymore. Everyone’s offering a hiring bonus. What’s the differentiator?” We found that most of the time it’s a cultural fit. “I didn’t get along with this. They don’t care about my future. They don’t value what I do. Someone else is getting more than me.” It’s more of the cultural fit that is what people are looking for because the money’s there. These steeled technicians can get money everywhere. If it’s a matter of $1 dollar to an hour, that’s not meaningful money. It’s about the cultural fit. “Does this place feel like home to me?”

It’s great that you talk about it from the employee’s side and their perspective. I find that when I meet with employers and they tell me, “I can’t find any good people.” I’m like, “Define good for me?” They’ll tell me, “They need to show up on time. They need to be able to talk to the customer. They need to keep their tools in good shape, their trucks are stocked and clean. They need to clean up the job site.” I’m like, “None of that has to do with being a technician. All that has to do with their value system and whether or not they’re a cultural fit for you.”

Good is a subjective term at any level. Maybe you’re not a good employer. I’m not saying that they’re not good employers but it’s not a one-way street. That’s what it is. It’s not, “I have a job. You must come to this job.” It’s more of, “Here’s what values that we bring as a company to you as a professional.” That’s the conversation that needs to be had. Good is a subjective term. Cleaning trucks have nothing to do with satisfying customers. It does at a minor point but if you’re starting the conversation, you’re looking at the wrong thing.

Marketing and branding costs something. It’s an investment. A lot of times people aren’t used to the dollars it takes to actually get that done. Click To Tweet

You make it sound simple. You have this brand story. You wave a magic wand and everything works. I don’t think it’s that simple because a lot of people don’t do it. What do you think is holding people back from putting together this brand story and being able to bring the synergies across these disciplines together?

A lot of time it’s the mindset. A lot of the companies that we work with started off small. They grew up big but they still have that small company mentality. Marketing and branding cost something. It’s an investment in the company and a lot of times people aren’t used to the dollars it takes to get that done. The way we work is we’re bringing a team that you couldn’t assemble yourself. It’s almost a timeshare of this team, brand strategy, digital folks, web folks, content people, SEO, and SEM. We’re bringing us all to bear onto your business at a fraction of what it would take to have you build a team yourself.

They first got to get their mind right around this and say, “I need the brand story.” I like what you said too. Maybe you didn’t quite say it but you implied it. Bring in outside experts to do this for you. I tell people all the time, “It’s hard to read the label of the jar you’re inside of.” When they’re that close to it, it’s hard to do it on their own. That goes on top of what you were saying. Bring in the experts to help you with this brand story. Let’s talk about this. Do they get this brand story together? What’s this do for them? How does this help them?

It helps to focus a little bit more on what they do best. It helps project the culture out into the marketplace, not only for new customers and existing customers but also for these technicians that are like, “I remember those guys. I remember that team. They’re doing something. Let me take a look because they’re doing something meaningful. ” I’d imagine like a lot of the interests we’re working in, everybody knows each other. All the companies know each other. All the technicians know each other. These are small like the HVAC industry, large industries.

If you look at it from a regional level, 100% know everybody and what they’re doing. You start to make changes and focus on the things that are more external like the brand building and that culture. People will take notice. That’s a big part of it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Not doing anything isn’t going to change your outcome. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I have a line that I tell people. “If you’re not attracting good people, it might be because you’re not attractive to good people.” It’s exactly everything you’re talking about. It’s being clear on your brand story, having good marketing, and understanding what’s for you and what’s not working with experts. This is all they do.

A lot of the people that we work with either grew up in the trades or they bought in and they know nothing about the trades. Both of them are equally suited to not being able to perform in certain areas of the business. They’re either too close to it or too disconnected from it. Bringing those outside experts who may be able to help is a cool idea especially when you’ve got a one-stop-shop like WorkWave.

We cut to the heart of the matter. We were talking about franchise development. Coming in the door, we know what the problem is with franchise. We’re looking for new franchisees to open up new locations. We almost prescribe it coming in the door, “This is what the challenges are.” We know where to look. First of all, I love that line that you said. I’m going to use that.

It’s like going to get your car fixed. I can certainly pop the hood. I can certainly watch a YouTube video. I can certainly turn a wrench but I have no desire to figure out how to fix my car. I want to bring it somewhere and pop the hood. People know exactly where to look. I got the tool. They tell me exactly what’s wrong. I’m going to fix it. I’ll 100% pay for that.

Marketing is the same way when we’re talking about recruitment or marketing for new customers. If you trust the person that’s telling you that they know where to look and to diagnose what’s wrong, that’s worth its weight in gold. We’re working with a janitorial supply company down in the Maryland area. He is a great guy, a great company. They were all in on this CRM, this content publishing path platform.

It’s a household name. Everybody knows it. The CEO was like, “I was all-in on this platform. I was taking the classes. I’m watching the videos. I’m diving in. I’m going for my certification.” I stopped and said, “I don’t want to know any of this. I’d rather bring somebody in that knows this. Why am I learning?” It’s that type of thing. Either you’re going to invest, you’re going to lean in and learn everything there is to know, or you’re going to trust somebody and bring somebody in that can help.

Brand Story: One of the biggest myths is that the marketing for existing customers, for new customers and for technicians are all separate. They’re really not. It’s one ecosystem.

Recruiting is something that does have a direct impact on the financial health of your business. You already said it, “I can’t take on another customer until I get more people.” That’s not what your business is about. Unless you’re a staffing agency, you don’t need to be super expert at being able to recruit people. You do need to be good at retaining them but you don’t have to worry about the recruiting. Let the experts analyze.

I heard you say a lot about the tech stuff. I know WorkWave. We could go in a hundred different directions on the ways WorkWave can support people but I want to focus on some things that you’ve seen work when it comes to recruiting tech. What’s a good tip that you could share with our readers if they want to recruit tech more effectively?

I’m not young anymore but I do know that mobile-first is something that they respond to. I’m imagining a lot of the technicians that coming are either coming out of the trade schools or they’re growing into their careers. They’re mobile-first. If your website, your communications, and even your social profiles and applications, aren’t thinking in terms of mobile-first like being able to apply for a job while you’re sitting in your truck between jobs. Someone’s scrolling through and be able to apply for a job using your thumb. That’s what people are looking for. It’s making it a lot easier. If you’re thinking that somebody’s going to mail in a resume or write one, that’s not going to happen.

We ran across this with somebody. I’m like, “What? Fax machine? What is this?”

It might seem obvious to some people but if this is the way you’ve always done it, this is what you know. Being able to cut and clip a resume, click a button to apply for a job, autofill the information, and shoot it off somewhere, it’s simplicity. Mobile-first technology is how we do things.

There’s a statistic out there. More than 90% of job seekers start and end their job-seeking journey online. Whether they’re doing it on someone else’s dime because they’re on the company computer or they’re doing it when they’re hanging out with their kids and surfing on their phone, it’s all online now.

It’s all online and it’s coming at you in all different ways. I love LinkedIn. You can’t log in. You can’t scroll for 30 seconds without seeing somebody looking for a job or posting a job opening. It’s being where the people and your audience are looking. It seems simple but a lot of people haven’t caught up.

I would even say to take it one step further because your audience is on Indeed but so is every single one of your competitors and non-competitors. Where else is your audience that is not buried with competition and getting clear on that? I imagine that’s the stuff that you can do over there at WorkWave.

A lot of times people will reach out when Indeed is not working or if a recruiter’s not working. The tried and true things that they’ve always relied upon stopped working. You’re like, “Where do I go? I’ve got to compete, eat it even harder on the platforms that I’m used to,” but then it’s still not working. That’s when you have to take a step back and say, “How am I showing up as a consumer brand? How am I showing up as an employer brand?” Those things are important.

I remember it wasn’t that long ago where everybody’s like, “Craigslist isn’t working for me anymore.” Now we almost never talk about Craigslist anymore. It’s, “Indeed and ZipRecruiter aren’t working for me anymore.” There’s always going to be a platform that’s going to get saturated and you’re going to have to be ready to move. Unless your business is 100% recruiting, that’s what you focus your effort on, it’s best to work with people that get it.

I tell people a lot of times, “As the owner, as the person that is fully responsible for operations, you should spend about 30% of your time on recruiting,” which is weird because they’re like, “I have HR people that do that.” I’m like, “You have HR people that have 100 other things to do besides figuring out why Indeed isn’t working.”

Be somewhere the message isn’t so diluted. Click To Tweet

That tips more toward the marketing side of things as opposed to the recruiting side of things. HR is good when you’ve got somebody close and in the door. That’s when HR is good. Everything up until that person makes contact with the HR department is all the marketing side of things. How are you getting people to the door? Once they’re through the door, they go into a different process.

Once you’ve got this story and some stuff, what are some things that you’ve seen effective? You had mentioned being mobile-first but are there social media platforms that do well? Is there a certain type of maybe video content, written content, or memes? What are some things that you’ve seen that have been good at helping attract good people?

A lot of times it is thinking and shelling up where people aren’t expecting it. Everyone’s on Indeed and it’s oversaturated. I’m sure you’ve heard of this platform called Nextdoor. The CEO was just on Shark Tank a few weeks ago, which was fascinating. It took them ten years to get enough neighborhoods together to turn it into something.

Next door is great though because it’s so local. It’s like neighborhood to neighborhood. There are people on there. There’s an audience on there but you’re not competing with people 20 or 30 miles away. You’re zoned in on your neighborhoods. You could expand that search out for a couple of miles around your neighborhoods. We found that to be efficient and effective because you can micro-target as many neighborhoods as you want but it becomes efficient to target.

The takeaway for me is to think outside the box with the platforms that you already know and use. I don’t use Nextdoor but my wife does. I know a lot about Nextdoor. I would’ve never thought about that. It’s great that you have something that’s worked.

It’s worked but it starts with, “Let’s give this a try.” It’s not like we’re one of many. We’re 1 of 1 if we’re talking about recruiting technicians. We’re 1 of 1 on that platform. It puts us at the front of the line. We’ll put it that way.

Marketing 101 is you got to stand out. You got to be different. The whole point of marketing is to differentiate yourself a little bit. If you’re the only one there, you’re different. You don’t have to do anything different, just be in a different place and you can get great results from it

Be somewhere where the message isn’t so diluted. That’s the other thing too. This goes back to a few years ago. If you were the first ones using Google Ads, you had free reign. You were running ads for $1 a click and making money. All of a sudden, everybody got real smart at it and that $1 a click is $10, $20 sometimes $30 to get somebody over to your website.

People are like, “Google Ads doesn’t work anymore.” I’m like, “It still works. It’s just competitive now. Everybody’s doing it. There’s a lot of money flowing through there.” It’s being efficient, looking in those areas, and getting the brand story together. We’re looking for those other areas where no one else is looking.

It’s good. It got me thinking. Google got more expensive, which means you have to get more efficient. You have to get more effective in order for your new customer to be the same. I see that a lot of times it used to work. A lot of employers will stick with what worked last year or even before the pandemic. They’re like, “It worked before. Why isn’t it working now?”

When it comes to recruiting, the pandemic has shifted the way people think about work. If you haven’t shifted then you’re already behind the times. When you’re helping these guys recruit techs, what have you found to be a good way to make that transition from marketing to, “It’s time to interview the guy or it’s time to hire the guy?” Is there a process or tool that you recommend to your clients to say, “Here’s how you can make that be an effective transition?”

Brand Story: It’s either you’re going to invest and you’re going to lean in and you’re going to learn everything there is to know, or you’re going to trust somebody that can actually help you.

We’re about getting people to the door. We’ll assess that quality. You’ve got a model or a platform to help on the interview side once somebody’s through the door. That’s not our area of expertise.

I thought I’d ask because you see a lot of it. One thing I can say is to treat it like a customer lead. I ask people all the time, “How long when a customer lead comes in, would you let it sit?” I’m like, “Five minutes.” Why is it that you let an app that can’t sit for seven days?

That is a great point because at the end of the day, they’re both equal revenue to the company. The technician has to service the job to turn that into revenue. A new customer is the one that has a problem that needs to be solved that turns into revenue. If we’re looking at it from both avenues are revenue-producing, how long are you going to delay that revenue by not jumping on this?

Give me the quick little spiel on WorkWave and how you can help work with our readers. Talk to me about your free giveaway.

I’m going to start with the free marketing assessment first because that’s the easy part. To your audience, I’m happy to do an analysis of your recruitment marketing, your franchise leads gen operation marketing, or even your new business market. I will take a look at it and give you our two cents as a mechanic that can pop the hood, hear the noise, understand what’s needed and be able to diagnose it. That’s what we can do. We’ll do a free analysis. We’re happy to do that for your readers.

WorkWave is a large operational software company. They’re in several large verticals like pest control, lawn care, residential and commercial cleaning, HVAC, plumbing, and fire safety. At the end of the day, WorkWave is an operational software company for field service businesses. It’s about any industry all the way from routing to billing to the operational software and all of that stuff. The marketing services side is all about that new customer, new technician, and that acquisition strategy to help you grow.

It is a one-stop-shop. You could start, grow with you and then get into other areas as needed. You’re there to support them in a lot of different areas.

We’ve got programs for new businesses. On brand new business, where do I do? We have a product called Instant Website Builder. If you’re in a field service vertical, you don’t have a website, you’ve got ten minutes and you don’t even know how to code, you can have a website in ten minutes. We’ve already written it for the industry. All you have to do is put your address in, put in your contact information, and maybe upload your logo but we built it to make it easy.

“I need something online. I don’t want to figure it out. I don’t have enough money to hire a web guy.” We built this. For $79 a month, you can have this website that you can turn right on all the way up through the bespoke marketing services that are like, “I’ve got 80 franchisees in the market and they all need more leads. How do we put our program together to satisfy all of them?”

When you’re offering a free digital marketing audit, it’s legit. You guys know what you’re doing because you work with small companies all the way up to the enterprise level. You’re able to take advantage of that free audit. Even if you’re working with an agency, I would imagine you don’t want to change. There are so many other ways that they could work with you and get some extra value from you guys.

We work with companies all the time that have outgrown their current agency and that’s perfectly fine. We’ve been in that boat. We signed out a client who said, “We hit the limits of what they’re able to do. We need a different thinking and a better strategy.” It’s very small, large and everything is in the middle.

Philip, I enjoyed our conversation. I will make sure that our audience can take advantage of that free audit. Thank you so much. I love hearing from other marketing experts who are like, “Recruiting is a marketing activity. You need to think about marketing.” Thanks for being here.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Important Links

About Philip St. Jacques

Brothers Philip and Michael started St. Jacques Marketing in 1991. St. Jacques has grown significantly and now specializes in closing the gap between marketing and sales and is a brand of marketing thought leadership. Their insight-based strategic process is the hallmark of St. Jacques Marketing’s success today that’s core to the St. Jacques brand of marketing leadership. Understanding that quality research and analysis delivers insights that leads to distinct positioning is the cornerstone of marketing success.

Philip is the front-facing, thought leader for St. Jacques Marketing and is sought after for many speaking opportunities. Marketing is a fractured and complex process and one of the most complex processes to scale. As social, mobile, and digital channels evolve and mature, how do brands provide leadership and how do brands embrace new strategies. These challenges are top of mind for brands large and small.

He is also the cultural leader for St. Jacques, creating an environment of belonging, inclusion and appreciation that creates a family atmosphere.

“St. Jacques has a culture where everyone can feel a sense of ownership and is fulfilled professionally. We put no limits on growth and have yet to reach what’s even possible.”

Specialties: digital lead generation strategies, brand strategy positioning, local and regional marketing strategies, franchise brand marketing, inbound content strategies, and operations.

600% Increase In Employee Applications

Ryan Englin · December 15, 2021 ·

So now you’re looking for people to join your company. You need employee applications, but you just can’t seem to get the right kind of applicants in. Worry no more as Ryan Englin and Jeremy Macliver share their insights on the hiring process. Ryan and Jeremy discuss several key points that can help boost the number of applications and get the right people through the door. Listen in and learn how to fine-tune your hiring process with these useful insights.

—

600% Increase In Employee Applications

Welcome back to another episode.

Welcome back. I am looking forward to this one because I have a question that I am seeing come up continuously in the session room. I’m excited to ask this and we’re going to know what we need to do to get people to apply for our job. Before you answer this, I want to clarify it. I don’t want people. I want the right people.

Now you’re setting the bar.

I don’t need robots or people that are under this minimum wage and they don’t even want a job. They’re just trying to keep it going. How do I get good people to apply for my job?

What you’re saying is they can’t just fog the mirror. They’ve got to be able to do the work.

Do the work, do the work well, fit my company and be that person I’m looking for. I want it all.

That’s one of the things that I feel a lot of employers have done wrong over the last few years. They’re so desperate to hire that if a person shows up, has a pulse, can fog a mirror, they’re in, let’s do it. Three weeks later, you’re like, “I don’t understand why this project is over budget. I don’t get it.” I think there’s so much that doesn’t happen in the qualification process. Often, we’re desperate to hire people quickly, that we think if we slow down the process and get to know them a little bit better, we’re going to hurt our results. It’s what it comes down to.

We have to start thinking about this job post as an ad, so people will start applying. Click To Tweet

When it comes to getting people to apply, there’s one thing. I wish I could give two takeaways in this one, but it’s going to be one thing, and maybe you get some other takeaways in here. The thing you post on the job boards, stop thinking of it as the job description that HR gave you or that your lawyer gave you, or that you downloaded from your association.

Those job descriptions are internal documents to help you define the role inside your organization to hold people accountable. What you got to start thinking about is that thing that you post on those job boards that you put on your website, that is an advertisement. Ads are exciting and engaging. They draw people in. They’re attractive and you’ve heard me say it before. We got to start thinking about this post as an ad. When we can think about it as an ad, people will start applying.

I like what you’re saying. I’m going to need some more clarification on it. Of course, we would never say, “I’m looking for clients that have more than $100,000 in income, living in a house that’s $350,000 or more, drive two vehicles. If you’re not that, please don’t call me.” I’m like, “That makes sense but how do we do that?”

The analogy I like to think about it is a car commercial. We’ve all seen some advertisements for a car. Picture that we’ve got a Corvette convertible on the Pacific Coast Highway and that’s the commercial you’re watching. What is it? It’s a couple driving the car, seeing the ocean in the background, and having a great time. Take that and put it against an advertisement that was the maintenance schedule. At 250 miles, you got to bring it in and make sure you broke it incorrectly. At 3,000 miles, you’re going to want to rotate the tires and change the oil. At 10,000 miles, we’re going to charge you for this extra service that you weren’t planning on when you bought the car. Imagine if that was the advertisement. How many cars do you think they would sell?

Not very many.

That’s what we do all the time with our job ads, “Must be able to lift 50 pounds. Must have reliable transportation. Must be able to turn a wrench,” whatever it is. No wonder these things don’t work. I want you to stop thinking of your ad as that maintenance schedule and start thinking of your ad as driving down the PCH, having a good time, wind in the hair, and enjoying life. That’s what’s going to attract people to you.

One of the first things we like to do when we work with a new client is we tell them, “Here’s the deal. I know you got an HR department and you got HR people. Let’s take recruiting away from HR.” I know some people are not going to like this. You might not like it, but let’s take recruiting right away from HR and let’s give it to the marketing team. What do you think that would do to that ad that you post?

BCC 61 | Employee Applications — Employee Applications: We’re so often desperate to hire people quickly that we think if we slow down the process and get to know them a little bit better, we’re going to hurt our results.

That is interesting. I could see the marketing team taking that on. They could make it fun if they could but let’s get real. We’re all blue-collar. It’s not that cool. It’s not driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in a Corvette.

In the construction space, they have these apprenticeship programs. I don’t know about you but I hear like, “I spent a lot of money and a lot of time building this apprenticeship program and I can’t get anybody into it.” What’s the coolest part about an apprenticeship program? I see the social media ads sometimes, “Earn while you learn.” You might have seen that one where it’s like, “This is Billy. Billy went to a four-year college, and he has $150,000 in debt and he can’t find a job now. This is John. John went to an apprenticeship program, earned while he learned, makes $80,000 a year as an electrician, and has no debt. He just cut off Billy’s electricity.”

The apprenticeship programs are so valuable. Whether it’s in construction or as a contractor, home services, whatever it is, these apprenticeship programs are impressive. You can take somebody straight out of high school and in four years, get them the equivalent of a four-year degree in their trade. They’re making $60,000 to $80,000 a year with zero debt. I don’t know about you but that sounds pretty sexy to me. That sounds pretty much like driving down the PCH in a convertible.

You said home services. How many home services companies have an apprenticeship program? Is that the only trick? Is there something else that we could do?

There are other things. This is a serious question. How many people do you know that they want to hire somebody entry-level and keep them there? They don’t want them to get better skills. They don’t want them to be more productive. They don’t want to be more profitable. They just want them in entry-level and keep them there.

I don’t know anybody like that.

I don’t either. How cool would it be to say, “Here’s the deal? Maybe you’ve got 1 or 2 years of experience.” Let’s even take a semi-experienced guy because not everybody’s going to look for a guy that’s totally green. We take a guy that’s maybe got 1 or 2 years of experience. He’s probably not going to do it your way but you’re going to coach him. You’re going to train him on it. Whether you have an apprenticeship program or not, you’re going to take him at this, “He’s still learning level,” and you’re going to turn them into a journeyman inside of 3 or 4 years just because you invest in your people, just because there’s an opportunity to create this career path, just because the work is such that he’s going to have to get better at his trade. He’s going to have to get better at his craft.

People don’t leave jobs; they leave managers. Click To Tweet

Most people that go into the trades want to get good at it. You probably do already have this in place, but imagine your organization had a well-defined career path for people. By well-defined, I mean there are four bullet points. You’re going to do this for a couple of years, then you’re going to do this for a year, then you’re going to go get this certification and then you’re a journeyman. You’re making $60,000 a year. That’s attractive to a lot of people.

A lot of my teams use the accountability chart. They use that for what you’re talking about, “Master these? Why don’t you get these? Take rocks to learn the next level up as you’re developing. When that opening comes, you’ll be prepped and ready.” That’s their master plan. Super simple, super fast. They already have it because they already had to do that to get aligned so the team was all rowing in the same direction. You mean that by an apprenticeship program, it’s not this federally registered. I was like, “This is going to be a big deal.”

Maybe. If you went through that route and you spent the money to get this federally accredited apprenticeship program, you best damn give that to the marketing team if they can figure out how to get you an ROI.

We got learning and development. We got apprenticeship programs that this marketing team can do. What else is going to make it cool to come here? “We fix people’s toilets” is not that cool.

That’s great because my next story is going to go right in line with fixing toilets. We said it before. People don’t leave jobs. They leave managers. Imagine your job ad talked about what it was like to work with you or to be on your team. What if it painted the picture that the grass is greener? Most job seekers are thinking like, “It looks pretty cool over there but I don’t know. Maybe it was growing over a septic tank. Maybe that’s why the grass looks greener. It’s toxic.”

What if it wasn’t toxic? What if you had good hiring managers that invested in their people and communicated well? The truth is you probably have some. You might even be one. Imagine that your ad talked about that. The reason that people are looking for a new job is they want a new manager. What if your ad talked about your manager? What if the ad talked about who you’re going to work for and how you guys communicate? That’s attractive because nobody else is doing that. Everybody else has given me the same old song and dance, and then throwing me into an environment where I’m disregarded.

That’s definitely something where I see a lot of good people in the trades, hard workers, care about each other. They’re out there working hard doing whatever they’re doing, but they’re passionate about their people. I could see that being a huge thing to talk about what it is like there. That’s pretty cool.

There’s so much more like, why do people stay? One of the things that I tell people to do when they’re writing a job ad is to give it to one of your top performers and ask them if they’d apply there. “Would this be attractive to you? I want more of you. We all want more top performers.” Give it to them and say, “What am I missing? What is it about being on our team do you like?” Let’s include it. This isn’t something you have to do in a vacuum. You don’t have to figure it all out on your own. Ask your team to help. Your people that are productive, guess who they like working with? Productive people.

Birds of a feather flock together.

There’s a ton of opportunity in the ad. We’re talking more at a conceptual level. I do want to give some very specific tips that you can take away, but I do want you to think about this as an advertisement. Get your team to help you. Give it to the marketing team. Spice it up. Have fun with it but don’t oversell yourself. That’s the other thing. That’s my warning. If it’s not legit, don’t put it in there. Other than that, have fun with it. Be different. Give it to your marketing team.

We don’t have to say we’re the Disneyland of concrete pouring?

If you are, awesome. Are we going to have churros and cotton candy on the job site? I’m all in.

No, we got to work hard. It’s early in the morning. Be real. There are some real things that you got going that are good. I love that. Let’s hear something. You piqued my interest. I want to hear some practical tips and get down into it. Let’s hear those.

Here’s the first one. I don’t want to be absolute but everybody has made this mistake. Do not get clever with your job titles. Don’t get creative with them. We had a client and this was being creative, field technician. I was like, “What the heck is a field technician?” They’re like, “I wanted to go short as I could because I wanted the best chance of my job ads being seen.” I was like, “You’re getting a little clever here with this so you can game the system.”

We don't want just more applications. We want the right people. And qualification questions are really going to help with that. Click To Tweet

One of the things we did was we went and did a Google search and a job search for field technicians. We wanted to see what came up. This was a refrigeration guy, by the way. All of page one are field technicians and IT guys. All they were are IT guys. He thought he was being clever and he was going to game the system by putting in a field technician to cast a wider net. He ended up getting lost in a sea of IT guys. A refrigeration tech and an IT guy are worlds apart.

We went and as simple as we did, we put refrigeration in front of it because that’s what it was. All of a sudden, we started getting applications that were the right applications. This happens more in the tech space than it does in the blue-collar space, but I still see it every once in a while, where you get fancy with these titles because they’re cool and they’re hip. It’s like Master and Commander of the Unicorn Army, and you’re the customer service agent. Let’s not get crazy creative with our job titles because no one is searching for them. No one is searching for your crazy creative job titles.

The idea that if you get creative with the job title, you’re going to stand out is true. However, you have to remember that job boards are search engines. If someone isn’t searching for that job title, you’re never going to show up. Call it what it is because your technicians, your craft workers, your laborers, they’re searching for those words. If you’re looking for welders, put welder. Don’t get all fancy with what that means or what you think might be creative. Just put welder because that’s what people are searching for.

The title is a big one. That’s probably the biggest mistake we see happen a lot. We’re not clear in the title. We either got clever or we got creative, and that never works. That’s one of them. Do you remember how I said give your job ads to your marketing team? The marketing team understands this thing called search engine optimization. They’re creating content for your website that the search engines can pick up so that you can be found. What did I say about job boards? They are search engines. If we are not optimizing our ads before we post them on the job boards, they can’t be found.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to take the title and make sure you repeat it. It depends on how long your ads are. There are some technical requirements but I say 3 to 4 times inside of the ad, repeat the job title. Get clear on what that title is. As I said, refrigeration field technician. When you’re writing the ad as a refrigeration field technician versus as a technician, if you’re going to write that and talk about what it’s going to be like to be there, search engine optimize your job ads. Your marketing team already knows how to do this. If you give it to your marketing team, they’ll be able to help. That’s another one that we see that is helpful in getting people to apply for your jobs.

Do you have a third for us?

I’ll come up with a third one. Here’s the other one. Now, you’re going to show up in search results. People are going to be able to see your job ads and they’re excited. You get a lot more views. Typically, views are going to equal more applies. It’s going to happen. We’ve done all of this to create extra traffic for our ads, and now we start getting all these garbage applications. We’re like, “I already don’t have time to hire people. I definitely don’t have time to deal with all of these garbage applications.”

The job boards have this. If you’ve got an applicant tracking system, they have this. You want to make sure you take advantage of any of the qualifying questions that the job boards give you. I’m not talking about name, address and phone number. I’m talking about the ones that say, “Do you have this certification that we need? Yes or no.” If the job is mobile and we’re not going to give you a truck, we might ask, “Do you have reliable transportation to get to the job site?”

These qualification questions are critical to making sure that you’re getting high-quality people. We don’t just want more applications. We want the right people. These qualification questions are going to help with that. I don’t know of a single job board that does not allow this or that doesn’t have it. The one place that you can’t do this, or most people don’t do it is on their own website. If the only place you’re posting your job ads is on your website, you’re probably not going to see a lot of people or a lot of traffic. If you are posting them on the job boards, take advantage of those qualification questions. It’s not just about the views and the number of applications. It’s about getting the right applications.

We’ve got three helpful tips there as we bring it over to the marketing department and create a marketing version of it. We definitely have learned that we all have good things about our company that we should be sharing out there and making sure that that’s communicated as we build our employee brand. With that, what is one action that they should go do after reading this?

Go rip the job description out of HR’s hands, go give it to your marketing team and say, “Fix this for me.” The other thing is somebody will be like, “I don’t have a marketing person to go to.” Go to one of your employees and ask them. One of them that you like or one you want to keep or you’d love to clone and say, “Tell me what’s it like to work here. Describe it for me.” Let them talk and write some notes down. Worst-case scenario, you might have to make some adjustments. The more you can make your ads sound like the people that you want to hire more of, the more you’ll attract the right ones. That’s what I would do. I would go clean them up right away and get them posted.

Everybody go out there, look at your ads, and make sure they’re coming from a marketing perspective. If you don’t have an HR and a marketing team, at least make sure that you’ve changed the hat that you’re wearing when you’re writing and reviewing them to be in more of a marketing hat. Bring in some of your key employees to ask if they’d be attracted to it, and then use some of the fundamental principles that we talked about there around marketing.

A lot of good things here. I don’t want to overwhelm everybody, but start thinking about those posts as ads and that’ll help you change the type of applications you’re getting and the type of people that you want to talk to.

Thank you all for reading and see you on the next episode.

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://bluecollarculture.com/podcast/

How To Grow With Your Customer With John Jantsch

Ryan Englin · September 8, 2021 ·

How do you make your business grow with your customers? We learn how to do that and more in this episode. Ryan Englin sits down for an interview with marketing consultant and author John Jantsch. John and Ryan discuss marketing myths and talk about what you can do to scale with your customers. Learn more about marketing and scaling your business in this conversation.

—

How To Grow With Your Customer With John Jantsch

I am super excited about our guest. I have been a fan of him since the early 2000s, when I read his first book. It got me thinking differently about marketing, relationships and the way we communicate with our target market. Our guest is a marketing consultant, speaker and author. You may have heard of one of his books. He’s got Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. In fact, he’s got a new book coming out, which we’re going to spend time talking about. John Jantsch, thank you for being on the show.

BCC 58 | Grow With Customer — The Ultimate Marketing Engine: 5 Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth

Ryan, thanks for having me. I appreciate the support.

I love the idea that you have a new book coming out. I can’t wait to read it but before we jump into that, what is one of the biggest myths about your industry? What is something you want to dispel for all of our audience?

The biggest is and it seems to have grown bigger in the last couple of years is the marketing is this complex deal, particularly digital marketing. I’ve probably spent the last couple of decades acknowledging the new platforms and things that have come along but also trying to teach people what not to do because the real allure to try to be everywhere, to be all things and do all this is causing a great deal of stress. I show people how to simplify.

I saw this infographic one time of all the social media platforms you can be on. They had to make it so tiny to fit on one piece of paper. You couldn’t even see the logos. It seems like it’s changing so fast. What’s your recommendation? How do we overcome that?

The real key starts with getting very narrow about who your ideal customer is to start with because that will help dictate a little bit of where you need to be because logic is you need to be where they are. You need to be where your ideal customer is getting their information. The second part is to fully understand the problem that you’re uniquely suited to solve for them. When you get those two pieces, you’ve got your messaging down then you can focus on guiding that group and that group only through the journey they’re already going on. You have to be there in that place. That allows you to do a lot less and not chase every new social media platform.

Be the big fish in the small pond. That’s what I heard there. Find out who your group is and go after them. I love that. We spend a lot of time on this show talking about hiring. We talk about how so many people think it is the number one issue in America for small businesses. It’s how do they find good people. Our approach is very unique. We believe that recruiting is a marketing activity. This is going to be a good conversation but I want to know a little bit more about the book you have coming out. How people can use marketing in that sense to build referral partnerships, to get their network or their tribe to come in and help them solve some of these challenges they’re having?

You need to be where your ideal customer is getting their information. Click To Tweet

Before I answer that, I will tell you that for years, I’ve said that marketing is everything. Hiring fits into that equation. This new book is called The Ultimate Marketing Engine: 5 Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth. Probably the biggest premise of the book is that we grow a business with our customers. That first gets into understanding. I encourage people to narrow their focus to the top 20% of the folks they’re working with, with the idea that you can completely understand them. You can communicate in a way that says, “You are for me. You’re going to solve my problems.” I’ll tell you, it’s interesting.

The biggest challenge that a lot of businesses have is if I’m a remodeling contractor, anybody that owns a home is my potential customer. Even though I’m doing high-end, bespoke work like kitchen engine things, I’m still fixing gutters for people or at least I give that impression that I am. You drill down and understand who makes an ideal customer and the problem that you’re solving for them. It’s not that you’re designing a new kitchen for them. Anybody can get a new kitchen if they’ve got craftspeople, the assumption may not be true but it’s how you get it done, the experience that they have.

Anybody that’s remodeled a kitchen knows what a disaster that can be to a family’s routine. The process of how that gets done and the company that can get it done in a way that is less disruptive, that communicates and all the things that make it a good experience, that’s the problem that they solve. It’s not building the kitchen. It’s the process of how you got there. If you understand who you’re working for and the problem you solve for them then you can start communicating to the world that, “This is what we do. This is how we’re different,” in a way that’s going to attract more of them. It also is going to teach, in a lot of ways, a client how to be ideal.

If you have a certain process in place for onboarding, for getting work done, getting communication and you’re communicating that all along in the marketing part of your business, you’re going to attract more of that ideal customer and that ideal customer because you’re providing so much value is such a good fit. Some percentages of them are going to want to do 10 times or 100 times as much business with you. Rather than chasing every odd opportunity that comes along, you narrow your focus and then you grow with that customer.

Targeting who that ideal customer is and figure out what that problem is you’re solving. It’s not the new kitchen. Maybe it’s because your wife loves to entertain and she’s embarrassed by the quality of the kitchen she has. That’s what you’re helping them with. You said a couple of times, “It was subtle but I loved the process.” Have a process with this. It sounds so easy and common sense. You got to have a process. It blows my mind how many people I talked to that have never thought about putting a process in when it comes to how they deliver and the value they bring. Not just get the work done but how do you turn that one kitchen into ten kitchens or to that next big project.

The thing that’s funny too about that is sometimes they have a process or at least somebody in the organization has a process. That’s how they get the job done or get the work accomplished but they haven’t thought about it being their unique process, unique enough to document, to brand and to maybe communicate. “Here’s the process we’re going to go down.” We’re together because it’s a great marketing message and marketing materials to show somebody that you’ve got a professional process.

You’ve done it enough and you do it well enough that you can tell them it’s only three steps. It might take a year to get through all three steps but if you’ve got three steps and you can break it down that way, it does elevate that level of professionalism.

We had a client years ago that we developed this fortnight. It’s a remodeling contractor that I’ve worked with for going on over two decades. We outlined all the steps in the remodeling process. We called it the remodeling curve because, in their particular business, there are parts that approved the plans that are high. Drywall sanding is way down here. They went through and had about 47 steps along the way. They said, “Here’s how you’re going to feel during each of these.” Not only did they show that they have a very documented outlined process, they used it as a way to set expectations too.

That’s one of the things we talk about when it comes to building a team or partnerships. Often, these relationships don’t work out because expectations aren’t met, whether they’re spoken or not. Everybody walks into a relationship with expectations. It’s our job to say, “Here’s what the real expectations are and here’s what you can expect.” That’s fantastic.

I often tell businesses that our job is to lower their expectations because then they’re easier to exceed.

Someone told me a long time ago, “Do what you say you’re going to do and never say what you’re going to do.” It’s a very easy way to lower expectations. Let’s talk about these building partnerships. That’s a big part of the book. What’s that look like? What do you mean by partnerships?

I’ll re-emphasize something I said already. This idea of growing with our customers is a great, beautiful way to grow. We all have probably experienced getting a referral. You get that referral from an ideal customer. A lot of times that’s great because that ideal customer probably knows somebody else who’s like them. They don’t ask about price as much or at least that’s not high on the list. They typically remain more loyal. They might refer people too. It’s a great, beautiful circle with this idea of referrals.

In the book, what I try to do is say, “That’s great. You know that that’s valuable. Let’s do something about it intentionally. Let’s set up some processes where we are reminding our customers at least quarterly why it would be smart for them to refer us. Let’s reward our champion customers, those ones that are already referring us.” What could we do special for them, bring them together and impact the entire ecosystem of our best customers? If we are providing services of one kind, we know that they probably need all the other things.

Let’s say a homeowner. They need all the other things in their home fixed. Could we build a strategic partner network where we could go in at any time and say, “We did this great project. I know that you might have this project and this project coming up. We have a couple of great partners. Here’s 10% off for the next time you need them.” They’re doing that for you when they’re going on their service calls as well. This idea of intentionally bubbling up the fact that people want to refer you by making it easy is a big part of what I have had for years. I wrote another book, The Referral Engine, that’s all about referrals but in this particular book, I bring it into an overarching strategy as well.

It got me thinking when you were talking. As business owners, it’s the wrong perception of our clients. They’re happy. Referring is as easy. They don’t need our help. If they want to refer us, they’ll refer us. It’s like testimonials. Not everybody has the skillset to give you a good, well-thought-out testimonial, which is why you see so many reviews with just a star rating, no words. It’s equipping them and helping them through that process.

The idea of growing with our customers is a great, beautiful way to grow. Click To Tweet

Making it as easy as possible is one of the real keys. Everybody is so busy. The idea that somebody is going to stop what they’re doing and say, “I’m going to go do this.” The beautiful thing, as human beings, if we exceed people’s expectations and we surprised them, there are a lot of people out there that will be motivated to talk about it. “Look how smart I was to hire this company.” We want to take advantage of that.

How do you go about finding these partners and building these relationships?

The first place is to ask your customers. Who’s best in class that they work with? That to me is the first step because then you’ve got a mutually shared client or customer so it’s a great logical place to start. Their reputation and doing some research online, you can find people. Here’s what I recommend people doing them. If you take this mindset that, “I want to build this partner team of best of class providers,” first and foremost, when my client or my customer needs something, I have somebody to refer them to.

Nobody goes on your list because you think they can get you referrals. They go on your list because they’d be a great partner for you to provide to your clients. I would recommend building that list, maybe 8, 10 people. Send them a letter that says, “I have customers that I think might be able to use services like what you provide. I wonder if you could teach me the best way to introduce you to my customers.” If you got that letter, wouldn’t you at least go, “I’m going to check this person out?” They say, “I don’t know who you are but you want to refer me to your customers? Sure. Let’s talk.” That’s the way that you get on somebody’s radar.

You’ve got to have something that can activate the relationship. Can you interview them on your podcast, write guest content or provide guest content for their website? Could you do a video interview? If you do some sort of how-to educational series, could you offer that to their customers or their community for free? Recruit these folks but then have a way to activate them. Maybe there’s a co-marketing thing. You could all have your service technicians be passing out each other’s discounts when they go in and make calls.

There are so many good nuggets there in being able to start the conversation with those partners. What’s the next step? How do you make sure it moves forward? I’ll tell you, I’ve had this experience many times where we start this partnership, it’s great and then it fizzles out. Nobody knows what that next step is.

That’s why I say it’s so key to have that next step, have a workshop that you could do, have the content that you could create, do a podcast interview. If possible, become a customer or offer a service. I’m in the professional services business. I could go to strategic partners and say, “Let me do an analysis of your marketing or let me review your website just so you know how I work.” I’m not trying to sell that person anything. I just want them to experience how I work. A lot of times, even though we have a great meeting, we say, “Let’s work together.” We don’t have full confidence in how it’s going to work or how they’re going to work. You got to find ways to go deeper. You might even get together the three of you say, do offer a webinar or some educational step so that you’re all inviting each other’s folks there so you’re cross-pollinating in a way.

A lot of it too is finding people that are like-minded. They have that servant’s heart. When you were talking about getting that letter, the first thing I thought of was something I learned in BNI, givers gain. It’s that give the first mentality with zero expectation of anything in return because you want to be more valuable to your clients or more valuable in the community. That’s fantastic. There’s one question I want to ask you. Something that we teach when we’re helping people recruit is developing partnerships when it comes to who’s out in the marketplace. Who’s out there having these conversations with workers who may be looking at another job?

We teach a marketing plan process for how do you get in front of these partners. What are some things that we could do to open up that relationship besides that 10% discount? What are some of the things that you’ve seen work so that it’s easy to transition into, “Can we maybe help each other to hire some people? I might have people that might work better for you or they might work better for me and we can start getting out there and supporting each other.”

That’s another aspect of your strategic partner network. In most instances, your strategic partner network or non-competing businesses also have your ideal customer in mind but they’re probably in tangential industries. The idea of co-marketing for hiring ought to be part of the consideration with your strategic partners as well. We have a client that is looking for skilled trade lead carpenters. They’ve gotten together with a couple of other trades. They are doing apprenticeship programs and hiring fairs to where you come in. There are lots of those out there but these are very reputable names. They’re coming together and saying, “There are a couple of opportunities.” You want to get into the skilled trades of one shape or another. All of the educational institutions are looking for people that can teach or at least speak to those types of job opportunities. Doing a lot of outreach in the community is a big part as well.

Community involvement is big. I talk a lot of times about small businesses in particular. If you’re still involved in the day-to-day of your business, you’re still a small business. You might have 200 employees and you’re still a small business. If people can’t find you, they can’t apply for your jobs. I’m sure you talk about that when it comes to branding, marketing and everything else. If they can’t find you, they can’t become your customer.

Rather than chasing every odd opportunity that comes along, narrow your focus and then grow with that customer. Click To Tweet

What’s interesting is hiring messages. Hiring advertising is a pretty decent brand message unless it’s desperate with people. The fact that you are hiring and continuing to grow is a decent brand message for a lot of businesses too. If you start thinking, “This is very expensive,” and you’re shifting some of your budget that you might be spending on attracting clients, you can feel comfortable that if it’s placed in the right places, it will have the impact of building your brand as well.

You’re a credible source when it comes to marketing. We teach a process around redirecting advertising. Ads that attract good people will attract good clients but the other isn’t exactly true.

You might not be in a position to do this but we’ve all seen the particular industries that are like, “Marble countertop discount only today.” That’s all their messaging as opposed to messaging about the company and what it believes. That type of messaging in your marketing certainly is going to go a long way towards attracting people who believe those values who want to work there as well. Promoting your people, that they’re happy and doing great work. Having processes where you treat customers fairly, all of that goes into your ability to hire.

I was thinking about having those well-defined processes and creating these partnerships. Much of it has to do with, “Are you aligned? Do you have the same value system? Do you think the same way?” Those are the best partnerships.

I know because you focus on this so much too. Not having those processes until having balls dropped by no fault of the employee who happens to be there facing the brunt of the ball being dropped. It wears on people. Having great service, great values in action and having processes makes for happier employees. We’re square into the retention idea.

We’ve talked about having this process and some of this messaging. Any tips for our audience on how they can start working on that?

Guess who knows the answer? It’s your customers. Your ideal customers know what you do that nobody else is doing for them. Make it a point to talk to 8 or 10 happy customers. This is not research. You’re not doing NPS scoring or anything. This is you finding out the real things that people buy from you, the real problems that you solve for folks. I’ll give you an example. We worked with a tree service years ago. All of their website, their messaging, family owns, third-generation are all good stuff.

I’ll tell you another goldmine. First off, get those Google reviews but then scan them because you’re going to see so much messaging and the words that people say in a Google Review. Not just the five stars but the paragraph of, “Here’s what we get that nobody else does for us.” Back to my tree service, we interviewed their customers, scan their Google reviews. About 50% of them said some combination of, “They show up when they said they would and they clean up the job site every time.”

I don’t think anybody even talked much about the tree coming down beautifully. “If you got a chainsaw on a truck, you’d cut a tree down but you showed up exactly what you said you were going to so I didn’t have to wait for four hours. When I came home at the end of the day from work, I could hardly tell you were there.” That’s the problem they were solving for their ideal customers because we’ve all had the opposite of those things. It’s not just getting trees cut down. It’s pretty much everything that you have done probably on your home. That became their core message. Their strategy for their business is to build a whole on-time guarantee around it and communicated that because the customers told them, “Here’s what’s important to us.” I will tell you. Shockingly sometimes, it’s little simple things that you assume everybody else does but they don’t.

It has nothing to do with taking care of trees at all. You said there was a goldmine as well. Was that it?

That’s what I’m saying, those Google reviews you should be scanning. If you’ve got over 25 five-star Google reviews, I guarantee you that there are blog post ideas in there, email subject lines and messaging that probably should go above the fold on your website before you ever talk about all the great stuff that you do. You should be promising to solve your ideal customer’s greatest problem.

First off, if you don’t have Google Reviews, let’s solve that problem first but if you do, go through, read them and take the time to get to hear what your clients are saying about you.

If you don’t think prospective employees are looking at those, you’re crazy.

I’m close to 80% until job seekers Google the company first. The first thing that comes up for a lot of companies is not even their website.

No especially local businesses. It’s the map pack.

It’s the map, the Yelp or the Google reviews, all those things that you have less control over. Make sure you stay on top. This is great. Anything else you want to share about partnerships with us? There’s a whole book out there about this. I love that it’s five steps to ridiculously consistent growth. It’s only five. It’s probably a couple of hundred-page books though.

It’s a couple of hundred-page books. I’ll go through the five steps. Map where your best customers are and where they want to go. That’s a big innovation that I’m trying to bring to the world here. Most of our customers come to us in a certain stage, with certain characteristics and certain challenges. We can recognize that they’re in that stage that’s why they become a prospect or a customer. My idea is what would the next stage look like for them and the next? We were able to build our entire service offerings and processes around helping them achieve the milestones that would move them to the next stage.

It’s not just about solving nowadays’ problems, it’s about helping them in the future. That’s a different way of thinking about it.

It’s wherever they want to go. Not whether we’re here to sell them. What’s the transformation that we could ultimately provide? That’s a big one. Uncover the real problem you solve for your ideal customers. That’s step number two. That’s all about some of the things we’ve been talking about getting at that messaging. Step number three is going to challenge some people. Narrow your focus to the top 20% of your ideal customers. It’s a tough one and 20% arbitrary but what I have seen over the years is that there is a product or a service that you offer that typically is producing most of your profit for a certain type of customer yet when I go to your homepage, there are 27 services on there that you applied it.

If we exceed people's expectations and surprise them, there are a lot of them out there who will be motivated to talk about it. Click To Tweet

You did dig that trench around somebody’s driveway one time so you can offer that. We want to make sure that people know that. If you focused on the fact that you are the best basement waterproofing company on the planet because you are and that’s where you make all of your money, then anybody who comes to your website says, “These are the people we need to hire for that.”

It’s one of the things that I love about that step. I’ve seen clients that have gone through this process. Your marketing, your advertising becomes so much simpler. It’s less expensive and so much easier because it’s laser-focused on that 20%. I love that tip.

Once you know who you’re trying to attract, you know where you’re trying to take them. You know the problem you’re solving. It makes it a lot easier than to explore what channels you’re going to put that message out there. Your job is to be very focused on that narrow idea. The fifth step is to scale with your customers by serving their entire ecosystem. That’s my view of the whole referral, partnering, all those things. Once you know who that ideal customer is and you’ve lasered in on exactly what it is you do for them to solve their problems, then you can spend a lot of time growing with them by either partnering, getting referrals or finding ways to do more with them instead of chasing after every new thing that comes along.

It’s almost like I’m the only one that’s in their phone on speed dial. Anytime they need anything, they call me because they know I’m connected to high-quality professionals.

I can go as far as one line in the book. I say something like, “You can become the only company that matters to them.”

That is an exciting stop. I am looking forward to it. Does it come out in September 2021?

On September 21, 2021, it will be available.

You got a free offer for our audience.

If you’re one of those people who says, “I wish I could get something,” pre-order a copy of the book wherever you order books. You can find all the links to do that at TheUltimateMarketingEngine.com, which is the name of the book. Come back there and you’ll find a big button that says, “Get the companion course.” Fill out that form and you’ll instantly get access to six training videos on some of these concepts along with worksheets.

Once the book is published, you buy a copy of it. There are some links in there to all kinds of resources, tools, checklists, things that we use every day working with business owners to develop some of these concepts. You’re going to have access to the whole library of 40 or 50 tools that come along with the book as well. You can get the companion course right away. On September 21, 2021, wherever you order the book from, it will show up on your doorstep.

John, thank you so much for being my guest. I had a great time talking about this.

You bet. I loved it. Thank you so much.

Important Links:

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. He is also the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network, which trains and licenses independent consultants and agencies to use the Duct Tape Methodology.