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Doing Business in a Public World

So let’s talk for a minute about doing business in an online world where everything is public. Right.

Okay so when this is actually good because we, in another video we are talking about online reviews.

And we are talking about testimonials and negative reviews and all these different concepts. So this really ties in heavily

And so basically I would say, maybe the first concept to set this up as you want to be the client you want to attract and what I mean by that is, your employees, your vendors, your customers, everybody looks at you and they are going to, they are expecting something from you and if you want to attract the very best clients, the very best employees, have the very best relationships with your vendors, you need to be a certain type of a person. You can’t, in simple terms be a jerk and then expect everybody else to be also.

Right right so a couple of points about this are everything you do is public so and the reason I say, use the example of we were just talking about reducing * for this point right here, everything you do is public. Everything you do is recorded permanently. There is a history of everything you say, every time you go out do a review, you personally, your company does a review, an employee of your company does a review, it is all trapped. It is all recorded and then as your, your clients, your prospects start looking around and they find your company, then they want to do a little research about you and check you out, they are doing searches on your company. May be they are searching on your phone number, maybe, you have no idea what they are going to search on. The stuff is going to be out there for years and years and if they find your tongue generally negative, you are generally negative, it is not going to, it is not going to go well for you. in fact you may also end up looking pretty foolish one day and regret something three years from now that you posted on the internet. Does that make sense?

Yes

And so you want to really set the tone for how you do business and you want to make sure that when you are dealing with your clients that you represent yourself in a positive way and because we are talking about online stuff. You want to make sure that the review you are giving, your responses to reviews that other people have given you when they are unhappy or all very positive in tone, you want to come across this, the fun positive company with high

Professional

Yeah professional high level service, you don’t want to, so many service industries, they have got the impression of the, you know, I don’t know, the dirty grimy guy in the beta pickup truck on the whatever you picture as the stereo type of this and the plumber example of the guy that has pants barely you know fit, you know whatever that stereo type is in your industry you don’t want to do anything to make yourself look like you might fit that stereo type and so the positive happy, friendly, you know again set the tone of how, act and set the tone of how you want people to do business with you. you got customers watching every single thing you do.

As a side note that makes me think of something else. We get a lot of phone calls at the agency. People * us to handle their SEO and I don’t take everybody on as a client.

Right

You know some of them. We take on, we will take on clients with small budgets but generally our clients have pretty good size budgets

Right

But I got to tell you that the clients that I do take on with much more budgets than the regular clients, I usually take them on because their some sort, there is something about them. I like them. I like their personality, I like their hustle, their drive, their, something about them and I think that come and goes along with what you are saying. You want to do business with people that you respect, admire and you know like to, like to, like to be with, like to be around you know.

Yeah that is a great point. I am thinking about in service auto pilot and stuff. I am so busy at this point, we have so many clients and so much, large amount of my time is so already blocked out taken. I am thinking about the numbers of guys that have, that is in * I should not have gotten on the phone with them and talk to them because they are going to make us like not, hardly any money and you know so when you think about prioritizing your time, you really should but these guys are hungry, they have got energy, I like them you know and I will go over and above because exactly they are cool to us, they are positive * they want to get through to me and they are super cool to do and when ever our team answers the phone then my team comes to me and says hey you got to talk to this guy. This is a great guy and it is just, it is just*

That stuff is nice. There has been many clients who don’t really meet our sort of budget, criteria or they don’t have that size of online of marketing budget that we like to see and that we think would be the most effective for them but there is something about them. It is there aggressive attitude about they want to really be success. It is the way that they come of right to us and in generally it comes down to I like these people

Yeah

Yeah. I want to help people I like. I want to, I want to, I want to do business with people that

Everybody wants to work with somebody like him

Everything is about inner personal relationships. This whole online marketing things, SEO, pay per click, it is not really creating a world where, where all are just going to do business electronically and never talk anyway. The companies that dominate are still going to be the companies that build relationships and know their customers and go see them and talk to them. We are all looking to work with people that are friends at some level

Absolutely

So big deal. Did you have anything up to when I say that.

I think that is there on that point and so we have kind of got, we started talking about doing business with people you like and being positive and representing yourself. It had to with reviews and testimonials, how are you going to, we have talked to much about getting reviews but don’t forget what you say publicly on the * what the things that you respond to so huge point. Now couple of other things, your vendors I think are paying attention. So your vendors know what kind of a person you are and they know what you are saying possibly on the internet. Your employees especially, I’d say even worse than venders, employees know because they are with you every day. They see how you respond to other people and they are going to respond to your clients like you respond to us.

You set the tone.

You set the tone and so and imagine especially if you are the guy that goes out just blast a vendor every time you get mad about something with a bad review or whatever the case may be, your employee see this. What do you think is going to happen when they leave your company. They are going to be trashing you everywhere but if you are a good person, you try your best to take care of your clients, yes do make mistakes and you merely try to clean them up and when somebody messes up with you, you don’t go blast them, you don’t like to destroy your employees when they mess up with you. then when your employees leave at least they will  have good things to say about you and one of my other companies, a service company, we have had multiple companies approach us to sell their companies to us simply because we, they hear that we are a great company in the industry and we have a lot of employees that come to us wanting job because they hear we are nice to our people

You develop a reputation

Yeah so it is in a bigger concept but it is, the low level elementary concept you hear is you know we are * in online marketing so you just have to get across the board and everyone of your actions in the tone you are trying to create, you got to be positive, you got to be nice. Doesn’t mean you are pushed over but you, you got to be very careful with what you are doing

Yes and you definitely, you are definitely see that in return I mean

Yeah

If that is the way that you are treating people, the people that you are going to interact with *in that way as well so I mean it is just good pass all the way around. I mean something that we have talked about in another video, touch on too deeply but we, we mentioned the topic of negative reviews and

Yup

And just keep that in mind when you are leaving a negative review and you are representing your company keep in mind that other people see this and people can dig down and people can Google you and people can click on your review and see your other reviews and see if, see if all of your reviews are negative or see

Oh that is a great point. Yeah they check you out to see your general tone on other review

Exactly. You can, I mean from browsing the web and whether you are looking up somebody on Facebook or whatever, you can get pretty good idea of their tone

Yeah

Their persona from, from their online activities.

Yeah these are comments everywhere. These are even YouTube, you comment a video on YouTube, you comment on Yelp, you post a picture in Flickr I mean it is all over

Any site that you can post on, you can typically drill down and see the history of whatever this person is posting. So I mean just keep that in mind. Just be positive, be respectful and it is usually the best pause for you to do business with other people and to get what you want at the end of the day.

I got a little bit more in the stuff. I got two, this is just an awesome lesson on, that I have, it kind of, was pounded on into my head by one of our clients and he doesn’t even know it. And I think it is just super powerful. It is just, I mean I knew this idea already but one of our clients, a guy named Frank, he is one of our service auto pilot clients. He is one of our earliest clients and we like working with him a lot and we like working with his whole team but Frank did something that actually in service auto pilot, we have, in the last year, got a bunch of catered lunches, surprise lunches, cards, fruit bouquets, we got a bunch of stuff from clients. Hand written thank you cards, the testimonials we didn’t even ask for which is really cool and this has been happening quite a bit over the course of this year. Well one of the earliest ones we got, this is where I really got this, one of our clients Frank he and his team catered lunch to our office one day and so not everybody in our company, we are not a big company but not everybody in our company knew who they were necessarily but everybody in our company had lunch catered from these guys so now everybody in our company knows who they are. Even if they will never have any recent interaction with them and because they were one of the very first clients to do this with us, I won’t be the only person who ever mentioned this again. Somebody else in the company will tell another employee in the company, hey these guys did this. They sent over lunch, it was awesome and they, I mean just think about what they created when they did that. They did not intend to do this. They were just again super cool. We like working with them. They like working with us. They were just saying thanks and think about, they give us money every month and they still send us lunch. Normally you think it is the other way round. I should be thanking them

Right

And so what they created here now is, we have gone, and we did it before but we have gone over and above for them. We, when they call, nobody is going to be a jerk with them not that we would any way but you just, it frames the whole conversation

Yeah that is right

When they get them bind and they make a mistake, we are going to, we would go over and above to help them out because they are awesome. You know you just look at them completely different.

Yeah

And so flip that, so just keep that in mind, that is a super interesting way to get people to do what you want and I don’t necessarily mean in a manipulative way

And I guess another, you know another note on the story is that, that the particular client that you are talking about didn’t even have the *

No no this was not intentional. He is just

He is sort of manipulated you without wanting to manipulate

Exactly. Right right and what I have done this for other people, I have given them stuff that I have never really thought about this until*

That is a really good point

So and I am going to wrap this up to the point but let me give you another example so, same company service auto pilot, we recently just got a negative review from on the line from a client. A brand new client and he posted something negative and we, he is a client. And we didn’t even have a chance to like deal with it. And or talk to him about it. I mean of course we are going to fix it. We, there is circumstances around this. My point is, he didn’t even talk to us about it. He just posted something negative about it. Now think about the after effects. Of course we are going to take care of it because that is the culture of our company.

Sure

Customer service is one of the biggest things

But you want your clients to be *

Now imagine how that makes everybody in the company feel you know like when that person calls or said something, you know when they guy that catered your lunch calls your like partner, a new grand energy level goes up

Sure

When the guy that bitched you out online before he ever even gave you a chance to know about it or fix it, when he calls you are like Ahhh. I mean it is just like the total different

That is a really negative point

And so now imagine, now I am now, let’s say I was, like one of my other companies we buy massive amounts of, we spend massive amounts of money every year on equipment and chemicals and stuff like that, big amounts and now let’s say that I was the vendor selling equipment and I had got a negative review from the client I am working with and then that client want to call up and negotiate. That clients wants to call up and say I need my equipment fixed first and he has got four other customers in line that need their equipment fixed first too. You think he is bumping me up. you think he is going to work his hard to give me the best rating, do you think when the lady at the office answers and all the technicians are busy. She is like oh it is guys again. Do you think she is really going to go get a tech off the phone or get a guy out of the shop and say you got to talk to them now.

Yeah

No but she might if we catered their whole team lunch. If we send them a thank you card, if we were just really awesome clients to work with.

Yeah

It is really really powerful lesson that that doesn’t directly relate to online marketing but it definitely directs, directly relates to getting what you want.

And how to do business

And getting the best deals

Yes

And getting the best service and all that. There is a really, two really awesome books to read about this concept are by a guy named Robert *

Very good

That is how you pronounce it. One is a, this is one of the best books ever written, it is called influence, great book. Another one that is a recent book that he wrote with another author and I don’t know the other author’s name is yes, and it is something about fifty scientifically proven something something something. I have read both the books. One of them more than once. Highly recommended but he doesn’t talk about this concept but the strategies of influence and psychology, exactly speak to what I am talking about, reciprocity and some other stuff here. Anyway little bit of off topic from our normal conversation about online marketing but I think a really really powerful one.

I think I think that is a very good point

Okay

Very good, very good

Andrew Pototschnik is the founder of Lawn Care Marketing Expert, the largest online marketing agency in North America specializing in marketing strategies for the lawn care and landscaping industries.

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