Houston Business Growth Podcast

Brian Webb

This podcast offers a real opportunity for business leaders and owners to grow your business, grow it better, grow it faster, make better decisions with fewer regrets. We will be teaching, as well as walking you through best practices on how to deal with marketing, social media, or sales. Also, we will include industry experts to speak across a broad gamut of topics, such as leadership, organizational culture, systems, advanced tax strategies; basically anything and everything that you would feel is going to be helpful for you to grow as a leader, to grow your business and grow your team.

Episodes

HACK: Use Gmail To Get More Leads — $110,000 Case Study

Houston Business Growth Podcast Host: Brian Webb Episode 5: HACK: Use Gmail To Get More Leads — $110,000 Case Study _____________________________________________ Description: LISTEN TODAY, as the host, Brian Webb, discusses how you, like most business leaders, might be unaware of how much more you could be leveraging your very own Gmail account, paired with other power boost third-party apps, to grow your business and generate more leads. ____________________________________________ Helpful Links: Gmass: https://www.gmass.co/ MailGun: https://www.mailgun.com/ Mailshake: https://mailshake.com/ Nine Word Email Strategy: https://www.hatchbuck.com/blog/implement-9-word-email-marketing/ Dean Jackson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfnwrw-axYw Digital Marketer: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/ _____________________________________________ Podcast Sponsored By: SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Find and Follow our Sponsor, SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Web: www.disasterrecoveryteamhouston.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servpro-disaster-recovery-team-houston/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SERVPRO9734 Intro Video: https://youtu.be/YH1GXKrRUTU _____________________________________________ Connect w/ Brian Webb Web: https://cmo.webbmarketing.solutions/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrianwebb/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebrianwebb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianwebb/ ____________________________________________ Click on this link for a full transcript of the podcast: _____________________________________________ Like what you hear? Want to Subscribe? Connect with Houston Business Growth Podcast on Apple Podcasts - Subscribe and leave us a review. Your participation helps us grow and reach more business owners and leaders just like you. _____________________________________________ Transcript: Brian Webb: Hey there everyone. Welcome to the Houston Business Growth Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Webb. This podcast is designed for entrepreneurs, just like you, that want to grow your business faster and make better decisions with fewer regrets. We're here to help you grow by bringing you tools, tips, and tricks, along with success stories and industry expert interviews that will help you to grow your business and your team while helping you to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that cost you so much money and wasted time. With no further ado, let's jump into today's episode. Brian Webb: Like most business leaders, you might be unaware of how much more you could be leveraging your very own Gmail account, paired with other power boost third-party apps, to grow your business and generate more leads. You can achieve 100% personalized one-to-one email conversations and fully automated follow-ups with Gmail. Case Study Nitin Chhoda sends 4,000 emails daily and achieves a 30% open rate, 1,200 opens daily, with a 6% click-through rate (CTR), resulting in approximately 72 clicks per day. His appointment booking rate climbed to nearly 10%, resulting in an average of 7 appointments daily. He closes roughly 10% of those appointments, delivering an average of 1 new client every day. Secret Sauce His secret sauce is a Google Chrome plugin called Gmass. You can use Gmass to send automated personalized follow-up emails through Gmail. If your recipient clicks on a link in the email, they will be added to a drip automation sequence to take their prospect through an indoctrination sequence. You can literally use Gmail’s servers with a sending limit of 2,000 emails per day. Or you can use your own email server with a service like Mailgun, which has no sending limit. Mailshake is another viable option. This is a great way to set up appointments with your B2B leads. This could also be an effective hack for mastermind businesses and high-end ($1k+) sales. Brian Webb: Today's episode is brought to you by team Meacham at SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston. Whether you know it or not, your business needs an emergency response plan. We see it on the news all the time, another business owner who experiences tragic loss due to fire or extreme storms like hurricanes or flooding. And we all hope it will never happen to us. But research shows that up to 50% of all businesses shut down after a major disaster. And if the property damage isn't bad enough, the business downtime and loss and revenue only makes it worse. So should your business be devastated from a fire flood or storm damage, how do you minimize the downtime and frustration of getting back to normal as soon as possible? Brian Webb: Here's the answer. You need an emergency response plan. How do you achieve this? It's easy and it's free. Once you reach out to SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston, one of their ERP specialists will set up a time to meet with you or someone from your team. When the specialist shows up, they will walk through your facility with you and make a concise profile document for your business, outlining all of the critical information like where the electric water and gas shut off valves are located, along with the priority areas of your business and the primary points of contact. Brian Webb: Wouldn't you prefer that when someone does show up to assist you in a time of crisis, that they already know what to do, where to go, whom to call and how to get started? Of course, you would. Additionally, imagine getting VIP service like three-hour priority response time when you call and the work begins on arrival to bring your business back to normal, as quickly as possible. Brian Webb: Before the SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston even shows up, they already have photos of your facility, they know where to park and exactly who they should be dealing with. And guess what? It's free. No contracts, no catch. You really need to get this taken care of today. You want to be prepared in the event your business does experience fire, water, or severe storm damage. To make this happen, simply call the SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston office at (281) 419-9796. Or even easier, simply text ERP to (832) 713-6881 and one of their specialists will reach out to you right away. Brian Webb: We hope that you never experience a disaster that adversely affects your business. But if you do, don't you deserve to know that you can worry less by knowing that you're in the best hands possible? Of course, you do. Again, call (281) 419-9796 or simply text the letters ERP to (832) 713-6881. You'll be so glad you did. Brian Webb: Bonus Tip: Nine-Word Email Strategy Consider leveraging a Nine-Word-Email Strategy, made famous by Dean Jackson. Jackson’s nine-word email strategy is when an email is sent to a disengaged audience using only the 9 following words. ‘Are you still looking to buy a new house?’ Your email could actually be 8 to 11 words. The point is to be direct and to the point. The following variations could also work. CPA Firm: ‘Are you still struggling to properly manage your books?’ Business Consultant: ‘Did you ever resolve that problem we discussed?’ Marketing Agency: ‘Are you still wanting to grow your business?’ Case Study 2 Digital Marketer, a marketing education company based in Austin, Texas, recently shared their own experience by leveraging their use of Jackson’s nine-word email strategy. Emails Sent: 2,620 Open Rate: 43% (Remember, this was sent to a disengaged audience.) Response Rate: 28% (293 people) Meetings Booked: 108 (36%) As a result, 17% of Digital Marketer’s email recipients became sales qualified leads, with 11 closed deals at $10k each. One simple email. $110,000 in new revenue was generated. Takeaway Consider using this strategy periodically (monthly, quarterly, semi-annually) to re-engage your lead audience and grow your business. Either put this strategy as a recurring task on your calendar so you never forget. Or consider using a marketing automation tool to achieve the same result — set it and forget it. Go and make 2021 the best year ever. Keep growing and keep going. _____________________________________________ Tags: Houston Business, Houston Business Growth, Houston Business Growth Podcast, Brian Webb, Entrepreneurs, Houston, sales, marketing, leadership, Servpro, Randy Meacham, Susan Meacham, Disaster Recovery Team Houston, Extreme Team Meacham, Email Marketing, Gmail

Nov 9, 2020

10 min

The Myth of Perfection

Houston Business Growth Podcast: Host: Brian Webb Episode 4: The Myth of Perfection _____________________________________________ Description: LISTEN TODAY, as the host, Brian Webb, talks about the myth of perfection. It's easy for any of us, our businesses, our organizations, to end up in a stall because we can become helplessly paralyzed by our desire for perfection. Listen as Brian walks you through how to do everything you can to help your organization to grow and not let the perfect ruin the good. ____________________________________________ Helpful Links: Patrick Lencioni: The Five Temptations of a CEO - _____________________________________________ Podcast Sponsored By: SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Find and Follow our Sponsor, SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Web: www.disasterrecoveryteamhouston.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servpro-disaster-recovery-team-houston/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SERVPRO9734 Intro Video: https://youtu.be/YH1GXKrRUTU _____________________________________________ Connect w/ Brian Webb Web: https://cmo.webbmarketing.solutions/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrianwebb/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebrianwebb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianwebb/ ____________________________________________ Click on this link for a full transcript of the podcast: _____________________________________________ Like what you hear? Want to Subscribe? Connect with Houston Business Growth Podcast on Apple Podcasts - Subscribe and leave us a review. Your participation helps us grow and reach more business owners and leaders just like you. _____________________________________________ Transcript: Brian Webb: Hey there everyone. Welcome to the Houston Business Growth Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Webb. This podcast is designed for entrepreneurs, just like you, that want to grow your business faster and make better decisions with fewer regrets. We're here to help you grow by bringing you tools, tips, and tricks, along with success stories and industry expert interviews that will help you to grow your business and your team while helping you to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that cost you so much money and wasted time. With no further ado, let's jump into today's episode. Brian Webb: Hey there everyone. This is Brian Webb. Welcome to this week's episode of the Houston Business Growth Podcast. Today I want to talk to you about something that you have seen, you might even struggle with it. I can tell you that at times, if I don't have my guard up, if I'm not being self-aware, I can struggle with it, and it's a little thing called perfection. And what I want to do today is speak to you about the myth of perfection. It's easy for any of us, our businesses, our organizations, to end up in a stall because we can become helplessly paralyzed by our desire for perfection. I read Patrick Lencioni's book many, many years ago called the Five Temptations of a CEO. And he warns about the temptation to always choose certainty over clarity. Many times in my experience, the best tactical move is simply to move. Do something, avoid the trap. This is my encouragement. Avoid the trap of constantly waiting for more information before making decisions to move forward. Where does this temptation come from? In a word, fear. Fear that executing our plans or moving forward without volumes of documentation guaranteeing our imminent success will somehow show our superiors, our colleagues, our direct reports and the world that our plan was not perfect. So rather than risk judgment, maybe a bruised ego, or being labeled a fraud or an imposter, we do nothing. We wait. And as a result, businesses and organizations suffer from this. Many outstanding big picture thinkers that I've met are always looking for and burdened by the search for perfection. But in my experience, that path leads to procrastination, which leads to stagnancy and ultimately, or potentially even failure. I have five questions that I want to give you as a way of self-assessment for you to decide for yourself if you potentially struggle with perfectionism. Question number one, do you pride yourself on being intellectually precise? If I were to go and ask the five people who know you the best if you struggle with this, what would be their answer? Question number two, do you regularly prefer to wait for more information rather than making a decision without all of the facts? Question number three, do your direct report seem chronically irritable because you schedule so many meetings and demand too much data, too much information, too many case studies? Question number four, do you enjoy debating details with your direct reports during staff meetings? One more. Do you find yourself repelling other action-oriented people? We'll get back to today's episode in just a moment, but first, a quick word from our sponsor. Brian Webb: Today's episode is brought to you by team Meacham at SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston. Whether you know it or not, your business needs an emergency response plan. We see it on the news all the time, another business owner who experiences tragic loss due to fire or extreme storms like hurricanes or flooding. And we all hope it will never happen to us. But research shows that up to 50% of all businesses shut down after a major disaster. And if the property damage isn't bad enough, the business downtime and loss and revenue only makes it worse. So should your business be devastated from a fire flood or storm damage, how do you minimize the downtime and frustration of getting back to normal as soon as possible? Brian Webb: Here's the answer. You need an emergency response plan. How do you achieve this? It's easy and it's free. Once you reach out to SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston, one of their ERP specialists will set up a time to meet with you or someone from your team. When the specialist shows up, they will walk through your facility with you and make a concise profile document for your business, outlining all of the critical information like where the electric water and gas shut off valves are located, along with the priority areas of your business and the primary points of contact. Brian Webb: Wouldn't you prefer that when someone does show up to assist you in a time of crisis, that they already know what to do, where to go, whom to call and how to get started? Of course, you would. Additionally, imagine getting VIP service like three-hour priority response time when you call and the work begins on arrival to bring your business back to normal, as quickly as possible. Brian Webb: Before the SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston even shows up, they already have photos of your facility, they know where to park and exactly who they should be dealing with. And guess what? It's free. No contracts, no catch. You really need to get this taken care of today. You want to be prepared in the event your business does experience fire, water, or severe storm damage. To make this happen, simply call the SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston office at (281) 419-9796. Or even easier, simply text ERP to (832) 713-6881 and one of their specialists will reach out to you right away. Brian Webb: We hope that you never experience a disaster that adversely affects your business. But if you do, don't you deserve to know that you can worry less by knowing that you're in the best hands possible? Of course, you do. Again, call (281) 419-9796 or simply text the letters ERP to (832) 713-6881. You'll be so glad you did. Brian Webb: So if you do identify with some of these self-assessment questions about whether or not you struggle with perfectionism, I get it because I can deal with it at times as well. Perfectionism creeps up on us if we're not careful, but I want to give you four tips today. If you feel like you do struggle with perfectionism, I want to give you four tips for working towards overcoming perfectionism. Tip number one, instead of constantly feeling disappointed or grieving over something that you don't feel like is perfect, set more realistic expectations for yourself. As perfectionists, we can tend to set ridiculously high standards and unrealistic expectations for ourselves and for others. And because these expectations are impossible to meet, we're constantly disappointed and frustrated. I know the idea of "lowering your expectations" can be hard to accept, but it does lead to greater happiness and more satisfying relationships too for that matter. We ultimately have to realize that we're expecting the impossible from ourselves and we can't control and force others to meet our unrealistic or unreasonable expectations. So if you're continually disappointed and upset with yourself and others when things aren't perfect, it's an opportunity, I would suggest, to reassess and set more realistic expectations. Ones that you and others can reasonably meet. Tip number two, instead of criticizing yourself, practice some self-compassion. Perfectionists are notoriously intolerant of flaws and shortcomings. So we tend to be very hard on ourselves, but self-criticism is both undeserved and I would say unhelpful. Everyone struggles and is imperfect. We all make mistakes and we feel inadequate sometimes. Kindness motivates us to do better. Whereas criticizing and shaming ourselves tends to be demotivating. Try to give yourself the same compassion that you would show to a friend or a family member, a kind word or an uplifting message when you're feeling down. Three, instead of seeing mistakes as failures, and this is probably one of the best tips I can give you today, adopt a growth mindset. When we have an attitude to growth, we tend to see mistakes as a normal and helpful part of the learning process. The only way to really improve at something is to try, fail, and try again. Instead of trying to avoid mistakes and failures, reframe them as normal and an essential part of your growth. Tip number four, instead of defining yourself by your accomplishments, focus more on your character. Perfectionists tend to define themselves and their worth by their accomplishments. This leaves us always pushing ourselves to do more, to be more, and to prove ourselves to the world and to ourselves. Accomplishments certainly have their place. Obviously, we all want to accomplish great things in life. We want to have a big impact, but you're so much more than a Harvard graduate or a bestselling author or volunteer of the year or any other title or accomplishment that you have on your resume. Your value as a person isn't dependent on being the best or earning it. You are worthy because of who you are, not what you've accomplished. Focusing on good qualities and values and strengths will help you to reclaim at self-worth. So for the sake of your organization, business leaders, my encouragement is don't get into a ready aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, situation, where you think about something, you procrastinate making decisions. You want to get out there and you want to do everything you can to help your organization to grow. My encouragement is don't let the perfect ruin the good. Go out there, ready, aim, fire. Thanks, everyone. Go make it a great day today. Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Houston Business Growth Podcast. As always, we're here to help you grow your leadership and your business by making better decisions with fewer regrets. If you've enjoyed the show, please let us know by subscribing to the show and leaving us a review. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to your favorite podcasts. Again, thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next episode. _____________________________________________ Tags: Houston Business, Houston Business Growth, Houston Business Growth Podcast, Brian Webb, Entrepreneurs, Houston, sales, marketing, leadership, Servpro, Randy Meacham, Susan Meacham, Disaster Recovery Team Houston, Extreme Team Meacham

Nov 2, 2020

11 min

How To Achieve Greater Business Results, Scale Your Business More Effectively, & Build An Envious Corporate Culture Along The Way

Houston Business Growth Podcast Episode 3: How To Achieve Greater Business Results, Scale Your Business More Effectively, & Build An Envious Corporate Culture Along The Way _____________________________________________ Host: Brian Webb Guest: Anthony Coppedge _____________________________________________ Description: LISTEN TODAY, as the host, Brian Webb, along with our guest, Anthony Coppedge, walk you through How To Achieve Greater Business Results, Scale Your Business More Effectively, and Build An Envious Corporate Culture Along The Way. Anthony is based out of Fort Worth, Texas where he leads the Agile Transformation for Digital Sales at IBM. He's held leadership roles at Fortune 100 enterprises and sub-$20 million revenue software startups. He's been applying the values and principles of Agile since 2009 and is literally one of a handful of early leaders in the Agile Sales and Marketing space worldwide. _____________________________________________ Helpful Links: The Age Of Agile by Stephen Denning Mastering Marketing Agility by Andrea Fryrear _____________________________________________ Podcast Sponsored By: SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Find and Follow our Sponsor, SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Web: www.disasterrecoveryteamhouston.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servpro-disaster-recovery-team-houston/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SERVPRO9734 Intro Video: https://youtu.be/YH1GXKrRUTU _____________________________________________ Connect w/ Brian Webb Web: https://cmo.webbmarketing.solutions/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrianwebb/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebrianwebb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianwebb/ _____________________________________________ Connect w/ Anthony Coppedge Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/anthonycoppedge _____________________________________________ Click on this link for a full transcript of the podcast. _____________________________________________ Like what you hear? Want to Subscribe? Connect with Houston Business Growth Podcast on Apple Podcasts - Subscribe and leave us a review. Your participation helps us grow and reach more business owners and leaders just like you. _____________________________________________ Transcript: Brian Webb: Hey there, everyone. Welcome to the Houston Business Growth podcast. I'm your host, Brian Webb. This podcast is designed for entrepreneurs just like you that want to grow your business faster and make better decisions with fewer regrets. We're here to help you grow by bringing you tools, tips, and tricks, along with success stories and industry expert interviews that will help you to grow your business and your team while helping you to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that cost you so much money and wasted time. So with no further ado, let's jump into today's episode. Brian Webb: I am thrilled to death to have my good friend, long-time friend, Anthony Coppedge on the Houston Business Growth podcast today. I've known Anthony for about 25 plus years. And today's title is called, how to achieve greater business results, scale your business more effectively, and build an envious corporate culture along the way. Anthony, for those in our audience who don't know who you are and what you do, why don't you take a moment, introduce yourself. Anthony Coppedge: I'm just this guy, you know? Brian Webb: Yeah. Anthony Coppedge: So I've known you so long. For those who don't know me, I am an [Agile 00:01:20] transformation lead at IBM, where I drive the transformation to agility, business agility, for digital sales. And so my background is in marketing, sales, entrepreneurship, business ownership, obviously, and software as a service business, as well as mom and pop and enterprise. So I have a pretty diverse background and I try to bring it all to bear. Brian Webb: Awesome. Awesome. So I know you're going to be talking about what we've kind of named the title, how to achieve greater business results and scale, and build an amazing culture. I know that you're going to be talking to us about Agile. Why don't you tell our listeners exactly what Agile is, just to get us started today? Anthony Coppedge: Sure. Well, we all know that the adjective to describe something agile would be nimble or flexible, or to be able to iterate or change quickly. And that really is the heart of it, the lowercase A. But when people talk about upper case A Agile, what they're talking about is a movement that started in 2001 when they said, there has got to be a better way to deliver software. And so it started there, where they would look at things like ... Brian, I know we're both old enough, do you remember Windows 95? Brian Webb: I do. Anthony Coppedge: What was after Windows 95? What was the next OS they released? Brian Webb: Wasn't it 98? Anthony Coppedge: It was 98. And then after that, what was it? Brian Webb: 2000? Anthony Coppedge: Yep. And then after that XP. Brian Webb: I'm being tested. Anthony Coppedge: Did you notice that it took years to roll out a new piece of software back then? Brian Webb: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anthony Coppedge: So that's what these guys were up against. It took years. So they would have these beautiful Gantt charts that would describe all the dependencies and what it would take to make something. And it was always precisely wrong. I like Gantt charts for one reason only. I love the whooshing sound they make as the deadlines fly by. Because they're always precisely wrong. Anthony Coppedge: So this group of leaders met and said, there's got to be a better way. And they wrote a manifesto and said, what if we just had a way to chunk that up into small bite-size bits, and rather than figure out everything up front, we figure it out as we go. And so that's the idea behind Agile. Anthony Coppedge: It has since been applied to project management, human relations operations, to marketing, and now of course I'm leading it for sales. So Agile is a way of working, a new way of working which brings people together to where we're better together than apart. And we learn, test, and validate very, very quickly so that we deliver higher value at scale. Brian Webb: I know that transforming a culture sounds dynamic, not static. What are some ways that entrepreneurs can encourage this kind of cultural transformation? Anthony Coppedge: Well, first you have to be able to know your why. So, so many businesses think their why is profit. No, that's a by-product, right? If you deliver phenomenal value in whatever you do, you're going to make money if you there's an appetite for it, right? So if you think of the Venn diagram of, what are you great at, what does the world need, and can you get paid for it? Right in the middle of that is this ideal way of saying that's the offering you should have. Well, every business needs to be able to clearly articulate what that is. We exist for the purpose of, and we know we're successful when, and we will do these things to align our work, our efforts, our actions, and attitudes, to make sure that happens. Anthony Coppedge: So for an entrepreneur, you wear all the hats, right? Chief cook and bottle washer. But when you're thinking about growing your business you have to think about the clarity you have of where you want to go, not the outputs you want to achieve, but the outcome of being in business and make that visible, transparent, shareable, and easily transferable to everybody else in the organization. Brian Webb: That makes sense. Anthony Coppedge: And that's the key to building the culture you want. The best way to invent your future is not to look at your past. The best way to invent your future is your future. Anthony Coppedge: So we want to think of it, not like maps go, but more like GPS. Now for those over 25 in the room, you know what I'm talking about, but there was a day when I was in sales, where you would have a binder of maps. And if I wanted to follow this road in Houston, from the Northside to the Southside, I would, when I get to the edge of the map it'd say, turn to page 37, then I flipped to page 37. There's the rest of that map. And then, okay, turn to page 45. And then that's how you were able to navigate and take a portable map with you. And what I would do, Brian, like any entrepreneur, I would find the most efficient ways to get from client to client, from location, location. And I would know those. And so I'd highlight them in. So I was determining routes. Anthony Coppedge: Well with GPS, we have dynamic real-time information, mostly from other cell phones. And if it sees that on I-45, that there are no cell phones moving, that's probably a traffic jam. And so it's going to try to route you around that. So GPS is more interested in the destination than the route. And as entrepreneurs, we need to be far more interested in the destination than the route. Anthony Coppedge: We don't need to tell people how to get somewhere. We need to make sure they have the tools, the competence, and the clarity to know that we're going to support them as they discover the best ways to get there because they're closer to it than we are. And we need to trust them with the ability to take our business and add that value to clients. So we delegate not just responsibility, but we delegate authority. What we're trying to do is build out a culture that says it's built on respect, openness, courage, empathy, trust. And these are very, very difficult things for someone who's used to doing it all and controlling it all, because Agile is the antithesis of control. Brian Webb: Wow. That's a mouthful. So let me ask you this. So Peter Drucker once said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. In today's radically different world, especially during and after COVID, what's the difference between employee management today compared to even just a year ago? Anthony Coppedge: Well, it's hugely different. And I think everybody listening to this podcast would already have experienced what that feels like. But if we were trying to put some labels on it and describe it, it would be chaotic, uncertain. Anthony Coppedge: So how do you know if your people are have what they need to get the job done? How do you know, not just what are they working on, but are they getting the right results? How do you know what the process is that needed to be identified? How do we have better communication so that people don't feel like they're on an island inside their homes as they work from home? Anthony Coppedge: And we've all had to address this, IBM too. And so one of the things what's been helpful is, Agile focuses on building a communication centric organization. So we're real big on visualizing and communicating about where we are, where we're going, and what's in the way. And so, because we do that regularly, daily, it's small little increments of check-ins, not to inspect, but to understand that give us the ability to pivot, test, and move quickly, so that our reps, even though if they're working from home, still feel like they are a part of something bigger and they still have the benefit of the largess of the organization, their peers, and their management to help support them. Anthony Coppedge: So you don't have to see somebody working. You're looking for the fruit of that work. And anything that's not showing up, you're asking why, not what. There's the heart of really being a great manager inside an Agile organization. And in fact, Brian, I would say that traditional management looks at task management, activity metrics, quota attainment, as the way they understand quote unquote success. But what I would say, with Agile, we would look at it and say, how can I help you get what you need and what's in your way? Anthony Coppedge: And so in Agile management, I don't want to inspect, I want to understand. In Agile management, I don't want to have activity metrics, I want to have outcome results. And I want to understand, are we delivering value, not, are we delivering stuff? Anthony Coppedge: One of the easiest ways to see this is, look at the activities that someone says, yeah, I did all of these things and yet the business isn't moving forward. Pick an area in your business where you see that. And there likely is one. There's usually at least one person, larger companies are going to see it more common, where they're doing all the things, but the results aren't happening. Well, we shouldn't say, shame on you for not working hard enough. We should look at ourselves and say, shame on us for not trying to understand why that is. Because if I can understand that in COVID, people aren't answering the phones like they used to. They're literally not at the office. But they are responding to email. They're on LinkedIn. They are responding, but they're just doing it in a different channel. So having an activity quote of, did you make 50 calls a day? Well, that might be the wrong thing. But because we want to have busy-ness as an activity metric for success, we're having them actually be incredibly efficient at doing all the wrong things. That's not success. So we want to find new ways of doing that. And management in Agile is more about helping you with your career advancement and getting stuff out of your way. And that's it. Brian Webb: So let me ask you this, when you're talking about metrics, what's important for Agile to measure? Or what kind of key performance indicators are focused on in an Agile organization? Anthony Coppedge: Yeah. So you want to, first of all, visualize your mission, your vision, and your objectives. So I'm a big fan of OKRs or, objectives and key results. And the idea is to say, if we're supposed to be about this, then what are the things that we're going to focus on to get there? And let's go validate and see how that works. Anthony Coppedge: So what you do is you empower people to be self-directed. And the measurements you look at are less about activity and more about outcomes. So there is both a sense of lagging indicators that you could check into to look for things based on the kind of business you have, that would be helpful to understand. But the more important question is to ask, why is that? Anthony Coppedge: For example, it's not uncommon in the world of sales and marketing for people to be very busy looking at the click throughs and the open rates of things. But that's like true, but irrelevant, right? Because if they don't actually do something, I don't care how many people open my email. I don't care how many people click on my Facebook bot if it doesn't lead to something, right? I can have a false positive that shows, sure, I get lots of activity, but does it ever go anywhere? Well, then it's not success. Anthony Coppedge: I once had a sales rep, a young sales rep say to me, "Hey, check it out, man. I got my stuff moved over this week and I'm visualizing my work and I made 400 calls this week and I made 400 calls the week before." And I said, "Great, how many leads did you get?" And he's like, "Well, none, but I made 400 calls." I'm like, that's not success, right? We actually are not paying you to make phone calls. What we're paying you to do is get results. That'll usually include phone calls, but I'm less interested in measuring the activity and more interested in understanding what's working, what's not, and where are you in that understanding continuum, so that I can train you if you need more training or I can demonstrate to you how to do something more efficiently, or you can show me our process is messed up, we're out of alignment, but this is where we are. Brian Webb: We'll get back to today's episode in just a moment, but first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Team Meacham at SERVPRO's Disaster Recovery Team Houston. Brian Webb: Whether you know it or not, your business needs an emergency response plan. We see it on the news all the time. Another business owner who experiences tragic loss due to fire, or extreme storms like hurricanes, or flooding. And we all hope it will never happen to us. But research shows that up to 50% of all businesses shut down after a major disaster. And if the property damage isn't bad enough, the business downtime and loss in revenue only makes it worse. Brian Webb: So should your business be devastated from a fire, flood, or storm damage, how do you minimize the downtime and frustration of getting back to normal as soon as possible? Here's the answer. You need an emergency response plan. Brian Webb: How do you achieve this? It's easy and it's free. Once you reach out to SERVPRO's Disaster Recovery Team Houston, one of their ERP specialists will set up a time to meet with you or someone from your team. When the specialist shows up, they will walk through your facility with you and make a concise profile document for your business outlining all of the critical information like, where the electric, water, and gas shutoff valves are located, along with the priority areas of your business and the primary points of contact. Wouldn't you prefer that when someone does show up to assist you in a time of crisis, that they already know what to do, where to go, whom to call, and how to get started? Of course you would. Brian Webb: Additionally, imagine getting VIP service like three hour priority response time when you call. And the work begins on arrival to bring your business back to normal as quickly as possible. Before the SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston even shows up, they already have photos of your facility, they know where to park, and exactly who they should be dealing with. Brian Webb: And guess what? It's free. No contracts, no catch. Brian Webb: You really need to get this taken care of today. You want to be prepared in the event your business does experience fire, water, or severe storm damage. To make this happen. Simply call the SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston office at (281)-419-9796. Or even easier, simply text ERP to (832)-713-6881, and one of their specialists will reach out to you right away. Brian Webb: We hope that you never experience a disaster that adversely affects your business. But if you do, don't you deserve to know that you can worry less by knowing that you're in the best hands possible? Of course you do. Brian Webb: Again, call (281)-419-9796, or simply text the letters ERP to (832)-713-6881. You'll be so glad you did. Brian Webb: So I have a question. I was once taught the principle of the BAT. And BAT is an acrostic. B stands for behavior, A stands for attitude, and T stands for technique. Behavior, in this particular scenario that we're talking about would be making calls, right? Attitude is, if you don't have the right attitude about three things, one, yourself, two, your organization, and three, the products or services that you sell, you're probably going to suffer. And then technique is obviously just getting better and better. Brian Webb: So I would imagine the entrepreneurs and business leaders listening to this episode will agree that at the end of the day, especially the business owners, one thing that they care the most about is, how many leads did you close? How did you drive revenue? At the same time, I know that doing the right behaviors is usually the best way to predict the outcomes you want to achieve. How do you weigh those two important variables in Agile? Anthony Coppedge: That's a tension to manage, that's not a problem to solve. Brian Webb: That make sense. Anthony Coppedge: Right? So COVID, right? We're all still in this right now. And so one of the things I've heard from salespeople is people aren't picking up the phone, and/or when they do get ahold of them, there are companies not sure how this thing's shaking out or when it's shaking out. The whole world's in flux. We want what you have. We just might not want to buy it right now. We need to see how things work, right? So what we would do is, we would take that feedback and go, so our Q4 might not be as great as we would normally have it be, but welcome to COVID. Anthony Coppedge: What we are more interested in then is, what kind of Q1 pipe are we building? What kind of Q2 pipe are we building? We're deferring some things, but what we're doing is adding value and we're showing we care and we're responsive and listen. We understand their pain. We want to solve that for them. So when we do that, we're okay with deferring the sale. Not because we don't care about hitting numbers. We're more interested in saying, how do we know if we're adding good value? And do they trust us as a trusted source to come back to us when they are ready to buy? That's more valuable. Because what you want to look at is not the short term closes, right, Brian? You want to look at the lifetime value. Brian Webb: Absolutely. Anthony Coppedge: So, in many businesses, once you get them to buy more than once, their lifetime value goes up by an exponential amount. So if you can get them to be a repeat customer or to expand from one offering or services into two or more, their LTV can go up five, six hundred percent, right? So what you want to do is have that long-term view and that client centric view, which is at the heart of Agile. I want to deliver value to my client. Anthony Coppedge: So let me make this real simple. When I ask my sellers to make calls or to generate leads, what I'm not asking them to do is hit a number. Instead, what I'm saying is, how can you separate the wheat from the chaff so that those people most closely aligned to what we do and the way we do it, to really exponentially help their business be better. How could you get excited about identifying, ding, ding, ding, this person's going to be blown away by what we can do for them. And you are not disinterested in the rest, but you focus disproportionately on those who are a good alignment. And now you're not worried about getting leads, you're not worried at all. What you're now excited about, and that's that B thing, behavior, attitude, right? Now you're looking at, I can't wait for when this is going to make a huge impact on your business. I'm so excited. That is a client centric sales viewpoint, not a, I need to hit my quota because I want to get paid viewpoint. Brian Webb: Right, right. Yep. Absolutely. Let me ask you this, what are some of the key benefits of having teams and departments working in Agile together? Anthony Coppedge: So that's one of the fundamental things, is that we are better together than apart. And we all know this to be true. But think about your compensation model for your different people, including sales. A lot of it is focused on individual contributors. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But what would happen if you also said that in addition to your individual compensation, we want to think about how we incentivize the team getting better. How do we build a culture where a rising tide floats all the boats and everybody wins? And I'm not talking about taking the work that I do and carrying the load of five other people who are slacking. That's not what I'm talking about. I am saying when everybody contributes, we should all benefit together. And so what motivates then is the sharing of learnings, the sharing of insights, so that people are motivated and want to. Not just for the paycheck, but because they see the value of learning and benefiting from others as well. Brian Webb: I would imagine this last question that we have for today, or that I have for today rather, I know the answer to it, but I want to hear what you have to say specifically for our audience, but what kind of company or companies would benefit from an Agile transformation of their culture, their systems, their processes? Anthony Coppedge: If you want to be focused on delivering exceptional value and you can't wait to delight and surprise your clients, you probably ought to take a look at Agile. And even in spaces where it might not be as intuitive. People are like, Agile doesn't work everywhere. No, you're right. It doesn't. But it could probably work around the areas where it doesn't work. Anthony Coppedge: I had someone said, a surgeon, if I'm doing the surgery, there's no way that can be Agile. You're correct. As an individual contributor during the surgery, you are the expert. But I bet it took a lot of people to coordinate getting everything ready for that surgery to even happen. And I bet the post-op's going to require a bunch of people. And I bet the insurance follow-up is going to require a bunch people. There's probably plenty of room for Agile there, even though you're the expert in your domain, right? Anthony Coppedge: So the idea of anywhere where we can say, we're better together, and we can scale up narrowly what works and scale down broadly what doesn't, there's the real value of having your business become far more effective over time by making those small iterative improvements to make big impacts. Anthony Coppedge: Brian, when I lead my kickoff training, when I first talk to sellers, I say, so I want to introduce you to Agile. Let me ask you a question, how many of you will be thrilled if I increase your quota today by 50%? And of course nobody's hands goes up, right? Like, what? Brian Webb: Of course. Anthony Coppedge: But then I talk for a couple of minutes and I say, so let me ask another question, how many of you think it's reasonable that if we work together, we could all get 1% better a week? And of course the vast majority or almost all the hands go up and I say, great. Brian Webb: Sure, everyone that's reasonable, anyway. Anthony Coppedge: If you took two week vacation in a standard tier, in 50 weeks you'd be 50% better. Anthony Coppedge: Now you ask any CFO, any CMO, any COO, any CEO, hey, what would 50% better do to your bottom line, to your customers, into your ability to scale your business? And they would be going nuts for that. Well, there's the idea, right? It's not that we're suddenly so much better, it's that we're continuously improving to get exponentially better over time. And what it requires is that commitment to clarity, the ability to have a shared set of values and a set of principles that align us so that the work we do is not just the work we could do, but the work we should do. Anthony Coppedge: And I'll leave you with this. I remember talking to a senior executive once when I was talking about the idea of breaking it up into small bite sized chunks of one week at a time to improve, right? And this person looked at me and he says, Anthony, are you telling me we get to tell them what to do every week? And I looked at him and I said, no, they get to tell us what to do every week. There's the difference. Brian Webb: It's a complete pivot. Yeah. It's a complete pivot altogether. Let me ask you this, and this is my last question, but for those in the audience who are just now even hearing about Agile with a capital A, what would be a first or a next step? Meaning, perhaps 30 minutes ago, that word was not even necessarily as an Agile with a capital A in their vocabulary, or certainly in their sense of what they need to be doing with their business. It wasn't a priority. And imagine the listeners that are hearing this, they're understanding something, they're seeing fire for the first time, what would be a first step for them to take to start moving in that direction for implementation? Anthony Coppedge: I think we do best when we talk to our peers first. So I would ask my peers, my friends, hey, does anybody know somebody doing anything Agile with their business? Because what's going to help is for you to see a contextually relevant example. So if you are aware of that, that would be the first place to start because people talk to people and that's probably easiest way to learn. Anthony Coppedge: For the podcast listeners who I'm pretty confident are going to be avid readers as well, I would throw out the book, The Age of Agile by Steve Denning. Remember I told you about that group that got together and wrote the Agile manifesto? Well, Steve has since gone on to talk about business agility, not just software agility. And The Age of Agile is a very practical read that helps kind of explain the thinking behind it. I would point to that as a next step resource. And then if you have specialty, like Agile marketing, that would be Mastering Marketing Agility by Andrea Fryrear. And there's lots of different domains where you can see this. Do a search for it on Amazon and you're going to find a ton of books. There's no lack of content. It's a multi-billion dollar industry. Brian Webb: Okay. Well, Anthony, I know that we're all better off for having had this conversation with you here today. For those that might want to connect with you online, where's the best place for them to either connect or follow or reach out to you? Anthony Coppedge: Well, I would point most people to my website, but the truth is, I've really enjoyed connecting with people on LinkedIn. And if you want to follow and see what I say before you connect with me, that's a total viable option. It's very easy to do. You just go to linkedin.com/AnthonyCoppage. And I'm sure you'll have a link somewhere, Brian. But I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. It's my favorite social platform. So that's where I would point people to. Brian Webb: And again, someone who's known you, Anthony, for two and a half decades, I would be one to urge our audience to do that. Anthony is always a source of encouragement. He's always a source of insight. And I just want to say thank you for being on our show today, Anthony. Anthony Coppedge: Thank you, my friend. Brian Webb: Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Houston Business Growth podcast. As always, we're here to help you grow your leadership and your business by making better decisions with fewer regrets. If you've enjoyed the show, please let us know by subscribing to the show and leaving us a review. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to your favorite podcasts. Again, thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next episode. _____________________________________________ Tags: Houston Business, Houston Business Growth, Houston Business Growth Podcast, Brian Webb, entrepreneurs, Houston, sales, marketing, leadership, Servpro, Randy Meacham, Susan Meacham, Disaster Recovery Team Houston, Extreme Team Meacham, Anthony Coppedge, Agile, IBM

Oct 26, 2020

26 min

Four Things You Did Not Know You Could Do With Facebook Messenger To Grow Your Business

Houston Business Growth Podcast Episode 2: Four Things You Did Not Know You Could Do With Facebook Messenger To Grow Your Business Host: Brian Webb Guest Justin Scicluna Description: LISTEN TODAY, as the host, Brian Webb, along with our guest, Justin Scicluna, walks you through 4 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Facebook Messenger. Justin is a well versed, messenger marketing expert with 17 years of experience. Today we will show you how you can save money, save man-hours, and capture qualifying leads all with the use of messenger bots. Podcast Sponsored By SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Helpful Links: Calendly - https://calendly.com/ MiniChat - https://minichat.com/ Chatfuel - https://chatfuel.com/ Find and Follow our Sponsor, SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Web: www.disasterrecoveryteamhouston.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servpro-disaster-recovery-team-houston/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SERVPRO9734 Intro Video: https://youtu.be/YH1GXKrRUTU Connect w/ Brian Webb Web: https://cmo.webbmarketing.solutions/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrianwebb/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebrianwebb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianwebb/ Connect w/ Justin Scicluna Register for a "FREE" Lead Capturing Messenger bot feature: https://webbyup.com/hbgpodcast/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinscicluna/ Facebook: https://facebook.com/WebbyUp/ Instagram: https://Instagram.com/WebbyUp/ Click Here for a full transcript of the podcast. Like what you hear? Want to Subscribe? Connect with Houston Business Growth Podcast on Apple Podcasts - Subscribe and leave us a review. Your participation helps us grow and reach more business owners and leaders just like you. Tags: Houston Business, Houston Business Growth, Houston Business Growth Podcast, Brian Webb, entrepreneurs, Houston, sales, marketing, leadership, Servpro, Randy Meacham, Susan Meacham, Disaster Recovery Team Houston, Extreme Team Meacham, Justin Scicluna, Facebook, Messenger, Messenger Bots Transcript: Brian Webb: Hey there, everyone. Welcome to The Houston Business Growth Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Webb. This podcast is designed for entrepreneurs, just like you, that want to grow your business faster and make better decisions with fewer regrets. We're here to help you grow by bringing you tools, tips, and tricks, along with success stories and industry expert interviews that will help you to grow your business and your team while helping you to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that cost you so much money and wasted time. So with no further ado, let's jump into today's episode. I am so thrilled today to have Justin Scicluna on the podcast. Justin and I have known each other for quite some time. We've worked together on several projects. But Justin, for those in the audience who don't know who you are, why don't you tell us a little bit about you and what you do specifically? Justin Scicluna: Absolutely. So I'm a messenger marketer or a conversational marketer. I'm somebody who has worked in pretty much every arm of online marketing. I started back in 2003, doing content marketing for a cluster of radio stations and building websites, and moved on to do PPC. I've also done full-funnel campaigns for large clients while working at different agency type places. And in 2014, I became the digital marketing director for an upstart energy drink company with a big name. We were Hard Rock Energy Drink. And our goal was to get bought out by the mothership, Hard Rock, and they did. And once they were bought out, I launched my own little agency where I niched down to do online marketing through messenger or using chat services to help market your business. Brian Webb: Awesome. I know the title of today's episode is, Four Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Facebook Messenger. And again, you and I have had the chance to collaborate on this in the past on other projects and client work. I know that we're going to be talking about how you can use Facebook messenger for your business. One of the things I know you want to talk to us about today is automating repetitive tasks. One thing I want to say that a lot of people don't realize is that you can actually build, I'm going to have you speak into this as well, but you can literally build an audience or AKA a list in Facebook messenger, just like you can with an email list. Speak into that. Justin Scicluna: Absolutely. Yeah. So back in 2016, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook owner, Instagram owner, opened up the API on Facebook messenger. It took about a year from the announcement until any real software was out there gaining traction that allows you to build different types of automation to happen inside Facebook messenger. What this automation looks like is it's kind of like an automated assistant who's walking a prospective client, or just a prospect in general, through a series of repetitive questions, repetitive steps, qualification processes, whatever it is that makes sense for your business. You can set up a whole line of conversation to be very complex that can take the answers that somebody gives you and return a different response based on it, and can really be a seamless little helper in your business. All set up with automation, set up ahead of time to where you can take less man-hours to do the same job and still have that personal touch, that personal feeling for your clients who doesn't feel like they're being handed off to a robot to handle these tasks. So, it's a very powerful tool and you can really use it to save time, save money, save staff hours. We can go through quite a few examples on what can be automated if you like. Brian Webb: Yeah, let's do that because I know one of the first things that you wanted to talk about is automating repetitive tasks, specifically. So, knowing that we're talking to business leaders, business owners, and entrepreneurs, what would just maybe be two or three examples of things that can be automated for a business in relationships with their customers using Facebook messenger specifically? Justin Scicluna: How about collecting initial information that you need from your prospect? So, let's say a prospect, you need to get their name, phone number, email address, a specific issue of why they're calling you, some basics that almost every business probably has to go through when somebody calls in. Instead of having them call in, they can contact you through either Facebook Messenger or a few other channels that we'll talk about in a few minutes. That automated assistant can walk through and ask them those questions. It can say, it can glean their first and last name straight from Facebook, or you can ask them and have them enter it, type it in, and send it to you. Once they've typed and sent that information, you can capture that and build out an entire user profile. So this kind of becomes your Facebook messenger account kind of becomes a little mini CRM or a customer resource manager that allows you to build out profiles and collect a lot of information on a specific person that can then be sent into other systems that you've already have set up. So again, going back to that example. You have a new client who's contacting you. Let's say they're contacting you because they need some, let's say some flood damage replaced. So, then the bot can walk them through some basic questions. What's your name? What's your phone number? What's a good email address for you? Where's the damage, inside or outside? Brian Webb: Just to clarify, not to interrupt, but just to clarify, because I know you and I do this, we talk about this all the time, but when you use the word bot, I would imagine that a huge number of people that are going to be listening to this, they might have a sense of what you're talking about, but explain what a bot really is in layman's terms to our audience. Justin Scicluna: All right. So I've never actually put my own definition on a bot, but it's basically some sort of basic artificial intelligence that you can add to Facebook messenger. So on the user end, as a prospect, it feels like a conversation with a real human, although they know they're talking to an automation, it feels like it. The language that it uses, the natural progression of a conversation, it's going to just guide them along as if it's a real-life person, but it's not. It's all pre-done, pre-programmed, and is just walking them down a predetermined set of paths. So what you do is you give people choices, multiple choices with buttons. So, the bot asks a question, "Hey, what are you contacting us for? Option, flood damage, fire damage or home renovation." Brian Webb: COVID-19 Justin Scicluna: "COVID-19 cleanup." They press that option. On the backend, the bot is smart enough to know that that's what they chose and can then pull up a completely different series of questions for them to go through Brian Webb: Relevant to what they're saying that they're reaching out about. Justin Scicluna: Exactly. So then it can go down a line of questioning on COVID cleanup asking if it's a contaminated area, if they're just being cautious, whatever that important information is, saving your customer service team time from having to go through that because it's going through this automated process. Once they hit a landmark, this bot, this automated system can then take all that data and push it into either your current CRM, to a sales representative, to a live human to take over. See, the whole purpose of these automations, these repetitive tasks being automated is not to replace the human interaction, it's to just handle the really repetitive stuff so that by the time it gets to a person, it's a more qualified person for that human to spend their time with and all of this extra wasted time that you could be collecting this data is already done. So, you're already starting ahead of the game without having to use up any of your man-hours, where they can go right in and take a quick glance, see what the person needs, give them the information they need, get them scheduled or whatever that next step is. So, that's one of the major positive things about using Facebook messenger to automate repetitive tasks is, is to keep your man-hours down and to really just simplify the process and make it easier for everyone. And let me just add that the reason why, why you would have this type of a bot, why it would be on Facebook messenger, it's a couple of reasons. They did some studies before Facebook launched this initiative to allow messenger bots and found out that over, and this is in 2016, over 56% of people surveyed would rather message a business through a messaging platform than talk to them on the phone. Brian Webb: Or fill out a form a lot of times as well. Justin Scicluna: Or fill out a form. And the good thing is about when you're using a messenger bot like this, as opposed to a form, is you could pre-populate a lot of answers and keep the actual typing to a minimum, which is the reason why people like doing this rather than a form. So, you have this opportunity. You find out that most people want to communicate with your business through a messaging platform, but you don't have the man-hours to sit there and respond to every task. Well, that's what these features are for. What I'm talking to you about today allows you to set up automation that handles that initial point of contact, that handles that initial data collection, and only passes off relevant referrals, leads, people to a human to take over once they've met certain qualifications. So, it saves you a lot of man-hours and it really, really helps. Brian Webb: And something that I want to speak into because again, I'm thinking through the lens of our listeners and whenever you have something set up like this in Facebook messenger, I want our audience to understand it's not as though if someone comes to their Facebook page and just starts typing in a message, even though you can have a bot there as well, but you can literally have a bunch of different channels. Meaning if you have six different campaigns that you're doing. And for example, let's just say they're running a campaign and we're dealing with property managers or a different campaign might be dealing with executive general adjusters. We can literally make it where there are two separate links that take people into Facebook messenger that can take them down to different conversational journeys, right? Justin Scicluna: Yeah. Correct. So the messenger, your little messenger bot, your little buddy there can actually have unlimited different unique conversations at the same time. So like Brian was saying if you have your property manager in there having a conversation and going through a process, at that same time, a front end client could be going through that same process and asking different questions and getting different answers. Brian Webb: And also let's give this little extra nugget of value here today. There are many things that you can do in messenger in addition to the fact that by the way, when someone's filling out a form if they finish it, you find out after the fact. When someone is interacting with your business on Facebook messenger, you're seeing it as real-time as if you were talking to an aunt or an uncle or a cousin or a sister or brother. But share with us all the different types of, for example, I'll just give a couple, a lot of people don't realize that the bot can, in addition to saying, asking a question or giving a piece of information, it can pop up a video or a product for sale. What are some of the things that you can put into a conversation thread automatically that would be helpful for their prospective customers? Justin Scicluna: Sure. So there's the open API that not only Facebook messenger has, there are other channels, which we'll talk about shortly in text and email, is you can add in all sorts of third-party apps to integrate with it. So, if you're an e-com business, if you're selling products or even if you have part of your business that's e-comm, you can facilitate full sales right through messenger. You can do that with services as well. If you wanted to manage the actual sale of your services if you wanted to set up a complete line of questioning that takes somebody through. And by the end of that line of questioning, you know they need service A, you can actually facilitate the full sales, collecting the money, scheduling the appointment, all of that through messenger, through this tool, all just by using pre-setup automated chats., Pull in your inventory to showcase for people. You can have it directly integrate with your current sales software. So, if you're using Salesforce or if you're using HubSpot or ActiveCampaign or any of these other major players, you can actually integrate this. So, if you have everything connected properly, and a person has started their conversation with you through Facebook messenger, then down the line, your job is finished. And in Salesforce, you mark job finished. You can actually have that trigger a message to send to them in messenger to say, "Hey, your job's finished. Go check it out." So it really just seamlessly integrates with your full marketing stack and pretty much anything that you would need it to pull up or offer to a client that's part of your current systems, it can integrate in and offer that ability. Brian Webb: We'll get back to today's episode in just a moment, but first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Team Meacham at SERVPRO®'s Disaster Recovery Team Houston. Whether you know it or not, your business needs an emergency response plan. We see it on the news all the time. Another business owner who experiences tragic loss due to fire or extreme storms like hurricanes or flooding. And we all hope it will never happen to us. But research shows that up to 50% of all businesses shut down after a major disaster. And if the property damage isn't bad enough, the business downtime and loss in revenue only makes it worse. So should your business be devastated from a fire flood or storm damage, how do you minimize the downtime and frustration of getting back to normal as soon as possible? Here's the answer. You need an emergency response plan. How do you achieve this? It's easy and it's free. Once you reach out to SERVPRO®'s Disaster Recovery Team Houston, one of their ERP specialists will set up a time to meet with you or someone from your team. When the specialist shows up, they will walk through your facility with you and make a concise profile document for your business, outlining all of the critical information like where the electric, water, and gas shut off valves are located along with the priority areas of your business and the primary points of contact. Wouldn't you prefer that when someone does show up to assist you in a time of crisis, that they already know what to do, where to go, whom to call, and how to get started? Of course, you would. Additionally, imagine getting VIP service like three hour priority response time when you call and the work begins on arrival to bring your business back to normal as quickly as possible. Before the SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston even shows up, they already have photos of your facility. They know where to park and exactly who they should be dealing with. And guess what? It's free. No contracts, no catch. You really need to get this taken care of today. You want to be prepared in the event your business does experience fire, water, or severe storm damage. To make this happen, simply call the SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston office at 281-418-9796 or even easier, simply text E-R-P to 832-713-6881 and one of their specialists will reach out to you right away. We hope that you never experienced a disaster that adversely affects your business. But if you do, don't you deserve to know that you can worry less by knowing that you're in the best hands possible? Of course, you do. Again, call 281-419-9796 or simply text the letters E-R-P to 832-713-6881. You'll be so glad you did. Yeah, super, super powerful stuff. So we've kind of talked about some high-level things. We've talked about automating repetitive tasks. I guess we're kind of going to maybe blend these next two things together, but putting customer service on autopilot, and then you've kind of already spoken about capturing and qualifying leads, meaning taking them through a dynamic response question and answer kind of a process but talk a little bit more... Justin Scicluna: Well, there's a little more to that. Brian Webb: Okay, go ahead. Justin Scicluna: So on the customer service side, so a really, really basic use is to add your frequently asked questions directly into an automated bot. So, somebody comes in and they always ask the same five questions in a row. Boom, you can have this thing, take care of it, and reduce the amount of annoyance on your team. Plus just really get these questions and be helpful to give people instant answers and a customized little experience. The really cool part about it is if you have a team that answers a lot of FAQs and spends a lot of time with the process of scheduling appointments, this can handle that as well in being an automated process. In my business, I spent a lot of time with just trying to go back and forth and picking an appointment for somebody. The use of tools like a Calendly or other calendar tools out there where you can send somebody a link and allow them to choose their own time has helped that process. But even more helpful was adding a scheduling feature into messenger, which can ask extra relevant questions about the meeting and send all that information through and make it feel more like they're talking to a real person. People are... You got this mix. You have a mix of people who are hiring you nowadays from boomers who are used to traditional service all the way down to millennials who are looking for everything to be instant and to get answers right away. You can handle all that with this customer service feature by building it into your messenger bot, where you can always have an escape button to where if one of your clients needs to talk to a person, because they're more comfortable dealing with a live agent, you can have that button added in there, but if they want to just navigate through, poke around and browse what you're offering before talking to anybody, you can have that in there as well. So, those all kind of fall under the customer service arm. Now in the lead capturing arm, so yes you can qualify your leads... Brian Webb: Can I interject real quick, Justin? I'm so sorry. Justin Scicluna: Absolutely. Brian Webb: Let's go back because I know what you meant when you said that they can escape to a real person, but take a minute or so, and again, because I'm guessing our listeners don't understand what you mean when they say that they can escape. I know what you mean, but let's also get this in here for... So in other words, I'm in Facebook messenger for a business, let's just say at SERVPRO®, for example, and I'm actually dealing with a bot, meaning it's really a questionnaire that's giving me dynamic responses based on what I say. And when you say that I can escape, please explain to our audience what you mean by that and talk to a real person. Justin Scicluna: Sure. Yeah. So at any point that you feel people may either get confused, frustrated, or just want to stop and talk to an actual living person, we can add a button into your messenger account that just simply says, "Talk to a human," or, "Request to human," or whatever the language is. It's not important, but they press that button. And what it does is it triggers a notification on your back office software to get a real customer service, human, to join them in messenger to answer any questions or to guide them to that next step. Brian Webb: Yeah, that's powerful. Brian Webb: Yeah. It's a very big... So you were going on though, to talk about, I think getting into qualifying leads? Justin Scicluna: Lead capturing and qualifying. So yeah, we spoke a little bit about qualifying. You can obviously run them down a line of questions based on their answers, send them down to any number of directions, but you can actually capture leads or start the process with them by connecting these tools to certain PPC ads, whether it be Facebook ads. There are certain aspects of the channel you can connect to Google PPC ads or LinkedIn ads so that whenever they click on the ad, it leads them either to a landing page or directly into your messenger bot or your chatbot to actually start the process and where people like this more, let's say, for example, if you're running ads on Facebook, they click an ad and instead of it leading them to a landing page, your messenger bot pops up instead, greets them and takes them through a line of questioning to answer anything that they might have on what you're advertising. Let's say you're advertising COVID cleanup. All right. Well, would that work for me? My business has only got about 2000 square feet in the office. We only get a few people. Does that work for me? I don't know. Let me click on this ad. Boom. The questionnaire can pop up and say, "I'm going to help you through to understand that this is the right service for you," and you start walking them through that line of questioning. They know right away, "Hey, this is for me." They got to do it on their own time and you've captured that lead directly from an ad into your messenger bot that can trigger all sorts of automations on the backend to notify your sales team, to just put everything in action. A bunch of little pieces just kind of sprawl off just from this one interaction. So, it's very powerful in that if you want to gain new leads, you want to qualify those leads, you want to just be there in case people have questions, all of these things are 100% possible with having it. And the reason why we focus first on Facebook messenger is they were just the first channel to offer all of these tools in one place. But there are more to come. So, there are more coming and there are more that have just been released. So, there's exciting things. Brian Webb: Something I'm guessing, of course you've been seeing, I've been seeing this, but I've even seen some businesses kind of trending towards as opposed to the contact us part of the website, as opposed to that even taking you to a page where there is a form that almost nobody is ever going to fill out, but literally just opening up Facebook messenger right from the contact us button. I'm guessing you've seen that as well. Justin Scicluna: Yeah. I did that on my website. There was a couple other bigger semi-influencers and business coaches that have done the same. Yeah. The only negative... Well, there's a positive and negative. The only negative with that was in the beginning, in the early days, if a person didn't have a Facebook account or wasn't logged into Facebook, it wouldn't work for them. But the software that we use now, that I use primarily to build out these bots, is called [MiniChat 00:23:41]. The next best one is also Chatfuel and they are neck and neck right now with as far as who's got the best tools. They both kind of stepped up and they're pretty close to an even playing field. But the point is, is you're allowed to have these interactions now without somebody needing to be part of Facebook. That was always a downfall because you can embed this little Facebook messenger on your website as a chat widget, as a live chat widget, if you so chose. And people were like, "Well, what if the person doesn't have a Facebook account?" Well, that was an issue, but now you're no longer beholding to that. You can have guest accounts where people can start a conversation without having an actual Facebook account and really kick all these things into action the same way as you would before. The only difference is when they are logged into Facebook, then you can always end up back in their inbox, in their messenger account anytime you want, just by sending out a message from this platform. So, there's some things in there, some nuances that are a little bit into the weeds that we don't need to go into, but there are some limitations and some positives, but it does parlay into the next point of being a multichannel market. Brian Webb: Yeah. And before we go there, the one thing that I know, what there's more than one, but the one thing I do know about if you, especially, whether you're a B2B or a B2C, I mean, almost always in B2B, this is going to be the case. And sometimes even in B2C for example, SERVPRO®. They actually do both, B2C and B2B. But if a conversation is always going to be the final step or a necessary step before you transact or interact with a new customer or client, then just basically allowing the marketing and the sales process to take them right into the conversation. For example, using a bot in Facebook messenger, it's a really effective way of speeding up that process of not dealing with forms, of basically allowing people to interact with you either real-time or pretty real-time using a bot in messenger. I'm guessing you agree. Justin Scicluna: Absolutely. Yeah. The form part is huge in that when somebody gets to your website and you have a form, they have to click and manually type first name, manually type last name. The positive when you're using these messenger bots, if they're connected to a profile that already has their information such as a Facebook profile, it can pre-populate that information. Some other information it can pre-populate is an email address that they've registered their Facebook account with and a phone number, which is usually a cell number, which is usually pretty accurate and strong because fairly recently, they required you to register your phone number through Facebook. And those are usually pretty good. You don't have to type those out they are a one-click button, you, the business, you don't own that and get to see that number until the user actually clicks on it and sends it through. But it's a one-click to enter that information, which really reduces that barrier to entry when somebody is trying to give you their information. Brian Webb: Yeah. Absolutely not to mention, a more real-time interaction and real-time notification when someone is interacting with your ad campaigns or your brand online. Justin Scicluna: Exactly. Yeah. That's important to you to, to really know, get a temperature of what's going on at the time that is going on. You can get real-time information from the system. Brian Webb: Yeah. That's huge. So multichannel marketing, talk to us about how that interacts with Facebook bots and Facebook messenger. Talk to us about that. Justin Scicluna: Yeah. So with these softwares, like a Chatfuel and a MiniChat, you can add in SMS text bots, email bots, or email automation, and you're also going to be able to transfer this same type of automation into Instagram DMs or direct messaging and WhatsApp for anybody who might have some clients that are Latin American or anywhere that's slightly outside the US, you'll notice that WhatsApp is a major chat platform and is often used more than text messaging. So, these exact same automations are going to be able to come from Facebook messenger, interact with these other channels. The big ones I would say are SMS text right now. So, with SMS text messaging, once you have their cell phone number, it doesn't matter if they have Facebook account and Instagram account, doesn't matter if they're a part of WhatsApp, you can hit them in their inbox and you can build out the same sophisticated automations that we've been talking about with taking people through a line of questioning, pre-qualifying them all done through SMS texts. So they're just basically texting your company and it's walking them through this preset automation to capture all the information they need, get them connected with the proper salesperson, take them through to that next step, and done automated so that you don't have to have man-hours or people sitting there handling those conversations. Brian Webb: Yeah, that's powerful. So, I know we're almost out of time, but talk to us about the future of not just where we are, but the future of messaging or messenger marketing as it's going to help business owners and business leaders. Justin Scicluna: Well, as like that small stat I gave you in the beginning where it was like 56% of people prefer messaging a business rather than talking to them on the phone. That number has only grown. I haven't been able to pull the most recent stats, but I know that they just mentioned it at a recent messenger conference that they haven't released publicly yet. But, the amount of people who would prefer to message a business as opposed to actually talk to someone on the phone is growing exponentially. So, being able to have these systems in place, being able to have the automation-ready to meet the person where they want to communicate with you is only going to set you up for a better future. As these become more mainstream. The best part, besides being able to have these communications through Facebook, Instagram, SMS texts, texts, and email, you're going to pretty much be able to reach them on any platform they are at any time, and at the convenience that they want. Do they want to message your brand in the middle of the night to get some questions answered? They can do that without bothering any employees or having a 24-hour staff. So, the future of it is really just going to be more integrated in your life. It's going to be, every business is going to have some sort of a chat element that they're going to allow for clients. It's just how sophisticated will it be is the real question that businesses need to ask themselves, how sophisticated does ours need to be? Brian Webb: Yeah. Wow. And something that I think that's worth getting into this conversation too is two decades of marketing and owning an agency here in the Houston metroplex, if you're lucky, if you're good, like masterful skilled at email marketing, you're lucky if you're getting a 15 to 20% open rate. And when I say lucky, I'm saying, that's assuming you're actually just emailing friends, family, and employees. And then as far as a click-through rate, you might be lucky to get one, two, three, or 4% in terms of people actually clicking on something to go back to your website or landing page or to your offer. Tell our audience, though, what open rates and click-through rates are in SMS and in Facebook messenger by comparison. Justin Scicluna: Yeah. With SMS, you're going to get near 100% open rates with that initial message that you send out there. Then the action that they take can drop, depending on how compelling you write that first message. But when it comes to the Facebook side, when this was just out for messenger, Facebook messenger, you were getting between 75 and 99% open rates on that first message. Click-through rates were about 75%. Brian Webb: Huge. Justin Scicluna: Yeah. It's massive. Basically, people are interacting and they are opening. Brian Webb: Yeah. Justin Scicluna: So, if you're sending out a message and you're not getting a lot of people opening it, well, then you better look at [crosstalk 00:32:05]. Brian Webb: Right, exactly. Justin Scicluna: Because people are opening them. It's just a matter of messaging, not a matter of platform. Brian Webb: Yeah. And one other thing that I want to make sure our audience understands is that once people have interacted, I think you're going to have some specifics on this, Justin. But once people, let's just say that you have interacted with a business Facebook messenger bot, and I have, Brian, and let's just say 10 other people, or let's just say, 10,000 other people. Once those people are on your Facebook or in your audience, you can decide a week from now or a month from now... Again, give some specifics to this because I might be leaving something out. But the ability to go send basically what is a one-to-many message that will be perceived as like, it's more like a one-to-one message. But once people have interacted, it's not like that's the end of what you can do. You can then send out other offers or other notifications or notices down the road, right? Justin Scicluna: Yeah, exactly. Now Facebook's got some rules on when you can end up back in their inbox. They're not hard to navigate. They leave a lot of options open for how to end up back in that inbox out of the blue. But as far as your SMS and email channels, you can end up in those inboxes anytime you want without restrictions. So you bring somebody in, let's say you run a Facebook ad. Facebook ad is, "Hey, everything you want to know about our COVID cleanup, ask these questions, get answers right away, and find out if it's right for you." Someone clicks that ad takes them through their questioning. Part of that questioning, it asks them for a cell phone number to send them a special. "Let me send you this in a PDF to your cell phone right now," and you ask for that phone number. So, you captured the phone number from Facebook messenger, but now you're able to contact them through SMS text. Same concept if you ask for their email address, or if you somehow can connect their profile from Facebook messenger to what you already know about the person in your CRM. Once you have these different data points connected together, you can send them a message on each one individually or all of them at the same time, depending on what your needs are. So, you brought someone in, they looked up your COVID information. In the process, they gave you an email and a phone number, but then they stopped interacting and kind of went dormant for a week. So, about a week later, you can have a message just pop up in their Facebook messenger inbox that says, "Hey, we're going to send you an email shortly on some really exclusive deals. Make sure you check it out." In email, you send those really exclusive deals. You can have a trigger set up if they never opened that email, then a text message sends out to them to say, "Oh, I don't know if you checked out that email yet, but it's there and it's expiring soon. You might want to go check it out." So, all of these different channels are working together all from one home base of collecting data to really make sure that the person is seeing what it is that you're trying to get them to take advantage of. Brian Webb: Absolutely. You know, the name of this episode is, Four Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Facebook Messenger, but I think we've probably covered a few more than just four. Again, thank you, Justin, for being with us here today. Again, I've had the privilege of knowing you for quite some time. I know you're brilliant and now our audience also knows that you're brilliant at what you do. If they want to learn more about who you are or the services that you offer or how to get in touch with you, where's the best place or places for them to do that? Justin Scicluna: On the socials, Facebook, or Instagram or on LinkedIn. On Facebook and Instagram, very simple, @webbyup, that's W-E-B-B-Y-U-P. And on LinkedIn, you can just search for my name, which I'll give the link to put in the show notes because my last name's weird. Brian Webb: Well, again, thanks for being here. If you enjoyed the podcast today, be sure to subscribe, hit that subscribe button and we will see you again next week. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Houston Business Growth Podcast. As always, we're here to help you grow your leadership and your business by making better decisions with fewer regrets. If you've enjoyed the show, please let us know by subscribing to the show and leaving us a review. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to your favorite podcasts. Again, thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next episode.

Oct 19, 2020

36 min

Houston Business Growth Podcast

Houston Business Growth Podcast Episode 1: Introduction and Trailer Host: Brian Webb Transcript: Hey there. Welcome, welcome to the very first pilot episode of the Houston Business Growth Podcast. I would be willing to bet that you can't begin to imagine how excited we are, the team and I, to be bringing this to you, and today is the very first episode. We launch today and we're thrilled about it. So if you're joining us today, we hope that you will go with us, that you will grow with us. It's going to be our goal to always be of tremendous value to you as leaders, business owners, and entrepreneurs. We are here to serve you and to be of help as you try to grow your business and grow as individuals as well. Now, if you don't know who SERVPRO® is, and specifically Disaster Recovery Team Houston, which is owned and operated by Randy and Susan Meacham, two pretty fantastic people if you ask me. If you don't know who SERVPRO® is, SERVPRO® is a disaster restoration company. You might be thinking to yourself, "Why in the world would a disaster restoration company be launching a business growth podcast?" That would be a valid question. In addition to being heroes, when someone like you or someone you know deals with a catastrophic flood or fire damage or storm damage, the reality is that team Meacham, Randy and Susan Meacham, are very successful business owners. They've grown their business to an eight figure business, and quite frankly, they would love to see you be equally as successful. Because of what they do, they actually work directly with other business leaders like property and casualty insurance agents, commercial property insurance brokers, insurance adjusters, general adjusters, executive general adjusters, commercial property managers, and facility managers, and a whole lot more. So in addition to being there in a time of crisis when called upon, we just basically recognize that there's a real opportunity to help business leaders and owners grow your business, grow it better, grow it faster, make better decisions with fewer regrets. So here we are. So at the end of the day, this podcast is just to help leaders grow their business and achieve even more success. So sometimes we will just be teaching. We may be walking you through best practices on how to deal with marketing, social media or sales, but we'll also be bringing in industry experts to speak across a broad gamut of topics, leadership, organizational culture, systems, advanced tax strategies, basically anything and everything that you would feel is going to be helpful for you to grow as a leader, to grow your business and grow your team, that's what we're going to be about. I know it's been said that a rising tide lifts all boats, and if we can help you grow, that helps us to grow, it helps the community to grow, everyone is a winner. So today's episode is going to be really brief. We just wanted to take some time to introduce ourselves, let you know who we are, why we're here and why you should be tuning in and listening, and to let you know we're all about. We would love for you to you share this with your other business leader friends in the community that you also want to see succeed. We plan on dropping new episodes weekly. This is the pilot and first episode. We're so glad that you were here. I genuinely hope that we'll be seeing you here week after week. Let's go together. Let's grow together. Again, we want to help you achieve success faster, make fewer mistakes and have fewer regrets. Thanks for being here today. Podcast Sponsored By: SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Helpful Links: Find and Follow our Sponsor, SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Web: www.disasterrecoveryteamhouston.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servpro-disaster-recovery-team-houston/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SERVPRO9734 Intro Video: Link Goes Here Connect w/Brian Webb Web: https://cmo.webbmarketing.solutions/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrianwebb/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebrianwebb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianwebb/ Like what you hear? Want to Subscribe? Connect with Houston Business Growth Podcast on Apple Podcasts (insert link) - Subscribe and leave us a review. Your participation helps us grow and reach more business owners and leaders just like you. Tags: Houston Business, Houston Business Growth, Houston Business Growth Podcast, Brian Webb, entrepreneurs, Houston, sales, marketing, leadership, Servpro, Randy Meacham, Susan Meacham, Disaster Recovery Team Houston, Extreme Team Meacham

Sep 21, 2020

5 min