Vance Morris reveals the retention systems that keep customers coming back — and the $22 vs $137 math every service business owner needs to hear.
GROWTH PILLAR: Sales & Revenue
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners · Solopreneurs · Service-based business operators · Leaders building repeatable systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A practical retention framework, real numbers, and simple systems they can start building this week — without hiring a marketing team.
Most service businesses are losing customers quietly. No complaint. No goodbye. They just stop calling. Vance Morris has spent nearly two decades solving exactly that problem, and in this episode he brings the math, the systems, and the stories that make it click.
Vance started over from zero after bankruptcy. His wife had a cerebral aneurysm the week he launched his carpet cleaning business. Both incomes disappeared overnight. What he built from that point — a multi-service home care operation with a 70% repeat rate — came entirely from systems designed to keep customers, not just find them.
The number that changes everything: it costs $137 to acquire a new customer in his business. It costs $22 a year to retain one. Every time he serves an existing customer, he is already $100 more profitable before the job even starts.
In this conversation, Vance walks through the full retention engine — handwritten thank-you letters sent the same day, segmented customer lists, monthly print newsletters, automated postcard sequences, QR-coded Google review requests, and a joint venture network that sends referrals without a single referral fee paid. He also shares why 18% of home service businesses answered the phone live when his call center team tested 4,500 of them — and why that one habit is still the most underused competitive advantage in any service business.
This is not theory. It is a system built over 19 years and iterated one postcard at a time.
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Next Steps
Bernie (00:22)
Question of the audience. What if your best customers are quietly leaving and you have no idea why? That feeling is real and is more common than most business owners want to admit. Today's guest has built a whole system around solving exactly that, and he's here to show you how it works.
Our guest today started his career as a security guard at a birth control factory. True story. And from there he climbed the ranks at Disney, hit a wall, filed for bankruptcy, and eventually picked up a carpet cleaning business to start over. Now he is the person that struggling service businesses call when they cannot figure out why they are losing money and losing customers at the same time.
He is the only expert on the planet who blends direct response marketing with engineered customer loyalty and retention. Not theory, real systems that work. When he's not helping businesses plug their profit leaks, he's officiating swim meets, college, high school, YMCA, and master's level. You can find him at VanceMorris.com or at his LinkedIn under Vance Morris. And our guest is Vance Morris. Sir, welcome. How are ya?
Vance (01:27)
I'm great, man, and the crowd goes wild.
Bernie (01:29)
so your company names Raving Fans for Life, which is really awesome. How did you pick up that name?
Vance (01:35)
well that is that's actually our tagline. the businesses deliver Service Now Institute. and it was just a you know, I needed something sexy because, well, you know, customer retention strategist is very dry and boring. So something that was gonna stick with everybody in their mind. And it really is you are looking for raving fans.
for your business or for yourself, because they're the ones that are gonna go out and tell the world about you almost without you having to prompt them. and then of course the for life part is, well, as business owners, we want customers that are going to be around for a lifetime. Now you can define the lifetime however you want, five years, ten years, literal lifetime, my lifetime, your lifetime, but the basis of it is is
It's ridiculously expensive to get a new customer in the front door. It is ridiculously inexpensive to keep a customer once you have them. So Raving Fans for Life is what we are trying to attain.
Bernie (02:36)
You know, when you t you talk about the uniqueness and we start off the conversation the backstory of Vance Morris and birth control factory security guard to to Disney leader. How did we how did we go from the rubber hat to to the to goofy?
Vance (02:53)
Yeah, yeah, no. Well, I use it because it's one, it it does exactly what it just did with us and it gets people to stop and say, What'd he just say? and so that's instructive in and of itself. We all have things in our background or in our personality that we should use in order for people to stop and say, Hey, what? Wait, huh? What?
Because we we're bombarded with thousands of messages every day. And if your message is beige or vanilla or bland, you're not gonna cut through the noise. So you have to have something either in your headline, in your intro, your website, whatever, that's gonna literally get people to come to a screeching halt and say, wait a minute, maybe I should listen to this.
Bernie (03:39)
So also part of the backstory was you went through a bankruptcy and so I I I'm suspecting this has all led to what you're doing now and the focus. So what's what's the story? What's the genesis? Not the you had the bankruptcy, sorry to hear that, but you know how how did how did it come out the other side that you ended up getting straightened up and get into carpet cleaning, which we'll get into shortly.
Vance (04:05)
Yeah, well the I I gotta start a little bit further back and say that I make a lousy employee. I just don't like to be told what to do, which would also explain the two ex wives I have. So, you know, that in and of itself might be instructive for people. I don't know. but I'd been fired from a couple of jobs, and I was like, you know, I don't really wanna go through this again. so I'll
gonna start my own business. And so I did what every small boy dreams of doing, which is I started a carpet cleaning business. Now, we were supposed to live off my wife's salary while I was getting the business up and running. but she had a cerebral aneurysm and was hospitalized literally the week I was starting the business. and so she was in a neuro ICU for eleven days. I mean she's fine now, in case anybody was worried that I
I killed my third wife, but I didn't. so but we were supposed to live off her salary. and well, overnight literally both of our salaries went to zero. I mean she had some disability insurance, but it was I mean, that didn't even buy groceries. so while I was starting, you know, I I wasn't proud about it, but that's why we have
things in our legal system, bankruptcy, and things like that. And I took advantage of what was there and started fresh, so to speak. I mean, now that was twenty years ago, so it's not like I'm I'm fresh into this. but that gave me the opportunity to really grow the business. it was tough, no doubt. you know, again, I was, you know,
New guy, new business, literally starting at zero. So it's not like I bought a business and we had instant income. I had to grow it. And I think one of the things that really helped grow the business is that I chose a niche immediately, which was going to be affluent homeowners. not rentals, not you know, anything like that, but affluent homeowners.
So that I could charge a premium price and get to profitability a lot faster than if I was doing coupon clipping or something like that.
Bernie (06:09)
So carpets, like th that is and in our in our previous chat y it's like Persian rugs, you know, oriental rugs of of that nature.
So many questions come to mind because that's not like you know, it's not like buying a shirt off the rack. Right. The these these rugs can be quite expensive, right? And and cleaning is helps prolong the or extend the life of the rug. Not prolong it, but extend it. Why did you how did you get into that? Like it Yeah, over to you.
Vance (06:36)
Well, I mean it was a natural extension from the carpet cleaning business. I figured I already have a list. and one of the things that I absolutely hated is that I would walk into somebody's home and literally walk on a rug to get to the carpet to clean it. And I'm thinking, well, I should be able to clean this too. so we d I did a lot of training, got some really good insurance
Because we have had $80,000 and $90,000 rugs in our shop, and started getting into that business. And it was taking, you know, existing customer base and adding a service to it that was complementary to what I was already doing, and I could use the customers I already had. so I mean, getting that business up and running was easy. send out a few postcards, a couple of emails to the existing list, and boom, we were in business.
and I did that with a number of our services. You know, we started doing tile and grout cleaning. Again, it was just an easy add-on service to something we were already doing. We do glass polishing. So if you've got dirty shower doors, we can fix that. and then about seven years ago we added a mold remediation company to it. Again, we had the list, and we just went to our existing list and said, hey, this is a service we're providing. If you think you have mold, give us a buzz.
Bernie (07:49)
You're leveraging your CRM heavily, which is really inter really interesting. Is that where most profit gets leaked from a business then? They're not leveraging the an a the gold mine that they already have.
Vance (08:02)
100%. And you know, as I said at the beginning, you know, it's really expensive get a new customer in the front door. And I really want to hammer this math home so everybody gets it. so in my home service businesses cost me $137 to get a new customer in the front door. That's our numbers from from February. And if I only did a minimum charge for them, which is one ninety-nine, that only leaves me sixty some odd dollars.
to pay the rent, pay the employee, put gas in the truck, everything. There's not much left over. but if I clean for an existing customer, it only costs me $22 a year to stay in front of them and to retain them. So the minute we serve an existing customer, we're already over $100 more profitable. and your existing customers are more more apt for.
An upsell, a cross sell, a new service, you know, exactly what I pro proved in in with adding three or four services to our businesses. and so yeah, that is where most businesses because customer retention's not sexy. You know, I mean, you know, it's the lead generation, that's what everybody's talking about. Hey, I'll get you 10,000 likes for $14 by next Monday and
You know, we see all that stuff in our Flake Book feed and we're like we're just kind of brainwashed that this is the sexy thing we should be doing. And nobody's talking about, well, what do you do with the customer now that you have them? And if you can using a system, and that's a key word or process, you need to have a system for retaining customers. and in because it's not the customer's job to remember you.
You know, doing a good job is no longer enough for people to remember you. That's like entry into the marketplace. It's the business owner's job to remind the customer that they exist. and so top of mind marketing kind of thing.
Bernie (09:56)
You know, when you you talk about already, I'm doing carpets for people's houses. And then you go, hang on, I I've you you come across something, you know, you a light bulb goes off. How do you know that there's an appetite for that client? Is it because one had it and then do you do a survey or like how how do you evolve that that new new box of happiness, you know, new solution for them?
Vance (10:17)
It's for that was that was a easy easy one. Actually they were all fairly easy, is I just told my employees, I said, Okay, for the next week, if you go into a house and you see a rug on the floor, just check a box and see how many people have rugs on the floor. and then ask the customer, Hey, you know, if we were to offer this service, would that be interesting to you? And that that was the extent of our research.
we found that there was a market and the market wanted the service, so we started
Bernie (10:46)
It's wow. Is that the only methodology you've used to survey says or have you tried any other
Vance (10:53)
No, honestly that I'm I'm kind of a rubber hits the road, down to earth kind of guy. I don't need you know, the Gallup organization to do a fifty two question survey as to whether I should start cleaning rugs or not. That's just yeah, no, it doesn't have to be difficult. Sometimes simple is better.
Bernie (11:10)
Well I like that. So retaining the customer. So you've spent money to get the customer, you've offered other value-added services. How does somebody lose their customers?
Vance (11:20)
They ignore them. You know, I mean, there's always you're always gonna have a small percentage of people that are dissatisfied with your service and there's nothing you can do about it. Okay. I mean, but I mean like two or three percent, hopefully even less. because half the time when you do something wrong and it's like glaringly wrong, you've got an opportunity to correct it and do what we call service recovery. And with service recovery.
Sometimes you can actually make the relationship better than if the problem had never occurred in the first place. You get a chance to shine, you stand behind your work and all that kind of thing. but with just plain retaining your customers, you've got to have a system in place that is going to keep you top of mind. And you can't always be selling to people.
there's nothing worse than the only time you ever hear from a company is when they want money. You know, we see that in our mailboxes or the ads we get in our emails. It's businesses all want money. So, what you have to do is mix your messages so that sometimes you're entertaining, sometimes you're informing, and sometimes you're asking for money. And you've got to have a good mix of those. You also have to have a mix of media online.
And offline. firm believer in our postal service. I don't know about Canada, but in the US we got a like a 99% deliverability rate. So we do pretty good. it's better than most email providers, from what I understand. and the mailbox is empty, right? I mean, I got the mail the other day. There was a catalog and a couple of credit card offers. That was it. nobody else in there.
So we have the opportunity to be where our competitors are not, because they might say, it's too expensive to mail something. Great. Well, this is why we charge premium prices so that we can continue to market to them. and so we want to hopefully continue the emotional connection that we created when we were providing the service or they were consuming our product. And by that I don't mean
We need to take them out on a date or cuddle with them or anything like that. I'm I'm talking about a connection that you made during the service. and the further away you get from your service, the less they are going to remember it. And that emotional connection is just gonna completely crap out. so you need to maintain it. What do I mean by this? So I have in my businesses, I shamelessly use my children in my marketing.
no problem with it whatsoever. And I do a print newsletter every month. And for a number of years, my daughter, when she was younger, did ballet. So when she was five years old, I took a picture of her in her tutu and I put that picture in the newsletter. And I did that for a number of years going on. We were in the grocery store, I think she was probably like eleven or twelve years old, and this lady comes running up to my daughter and says, my god, Emma, how is your recital?
Now I'm ready to go run and hide in the fast food section, you know, or frozen food section, but I had to think, whoops, wait, she must be a client. She has watched my children grow up. She's never leaving. She's gonna have to die or move before she stops using us as her cleaner. and sh my I've got thousands, my kids have thousands of aunts and uncles that they've never met.
And it's that emotional connection that I maintain. The newsletter is that design. It's not designed to sell, it's designed to continue the relationship. And then once a month I'll send them a postcard. And on the postcard, there's an offer. And then I send a weekly email. And the weekly email is a combination of the articles from the newsletter and the offer from the postcard. So now I'm not only am I entertaining and informing, I'm also making
you know, under the radar offers. and that to me is a good cadence and a good mix of messages that has kept us pretty close to 70% repeat rate year over year, where most folks in our business are in the low 30s.
Bernie (15:17)
Wow, that's that's pretty pretty strong numbers. How do you determine the cadence? Like when is it you know, sometimes I'll have people you know, I'll book a meeting with somebody using their link and then it reminds me four days out, two days out, one day out, half hour ahead, you know. Then I get a text message and I'm thinking, okay, you know, I've I've not forgotten about you. But that's a cadence, right? How do you determine kind of the right amount of chatter?
So that they don't look at you as in like, Are we there yet?
Vance (15:46)
Right. Yeah, no, we'll well we do I well one I look at it as how do I stay top of mind without being annoying? so email is easy because well it's easy. You just type some stuff out, you hit a button and out it goes. but the deliverability of it or the reading of it, you you're kinda taking a chance 'cause you don't know because most people, if you're in boxes like mine
You know, it's just delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. look, something from Bernie. Delete, delete, delete, you know. and with direct mail, though, you can't delete it. And direct mail's not really annoying. Now, if you're sending annoying messages, yeah, you're you're you're screwed. but if you send stuff where you are entertaining them, making them chuckle, keeping them informed, now you're no longer.
Just a salesperson, you are now a center of influence for them, where they can come and get answers. so I mean they can unsubscribe from the email list. Okay, great. That means they're going to get hit twice a month in the mail, which you I'm sure they could unsubscribe. Nobody's ever asked me to not get the newsletter. So, and after 15 years of doing it, I think I'm doing something right. but yeah, you've got to do what makes sense. You know, your example.
I mean, if you book a meeting with me, you get one confirmation. And in it it says, We're both adults, we're both professionals. Put this on your calendar. I don't need to remind you of the meeting. And that's it. I the people that send out twenty-six reminders, you know, in three days, I just I want to shoot I don't even want to meet with them anymore because they just annoyed me. and and I think that's, you know, so you have to know your audience and what is the the line between
providing a service, providing information and being annoying. and a lot of people cross that line. again, I'd like to think that we're in that area of we haven't crossed the line, but we're still providing that information and entertainment.
Bernie (17:38)
So you make contact with a new person, a new client. What does that first 30 days look like? You know, someone says, I'm thinking about this, and you know, the dialogue goes back and forth, and then they may maybe commit to a purchase. What's what's the what's the next steps? What are the next parts that a, it's it's gentle in and success, work done, and then what happens after?
What's the process?
Vance (18:04)
So, I mean, with our cleaning services, people usually don't plan too far ahead with it. It's like, my God, the dog took a dump in the middle of the living room. I need to get it cleaned. so it's the sales cycle is not very long. I mean, it might be, you know, one phone call and then we'll get out there in a day or two and we'll get the mess cleaned up. so you have to understand your sales cycle. for in my consulting business, I have one program.
That has taken anywhere between six and thirty months to sell it. I mean, it's a high-ticket item. It's our it's my trip to Walt Disney World in in Orlando. not everybody can afford it, and not everybody wants to do it. but if I stopped communicating after 30 days, or if I stopped communicating after six months, I would never have gotten those sales at the 12 month.
15 month, et cetera, points. So you need to know what your sales cycle is like and how long it will be. and I gave you two very drastic different ones. and so with the cleaning business, you know, typically they'll get, you know, we're with the within a week, we're there. so people usually will decide within a day or so of the initial call. Yep, we need it. Come on in, get it done.
while we're there, we obviously we take care of things. And then at the end, first thing that goes out, handwritten thank you letter. those are extremely powerful. don't underestimate a handwritten thank you note because nobody does it anymore. and so and I'm not talking about a robot writing, I'm talking like literally with a pen on a paper. and then we will send out a
customer service survey. if you do that and you expect them to mail something back to you, put a stamp on it. Nobody's gonna go and spend money to send you information back. So if you're gonna do like a comment card or something, put a stamp on it and pre-stamp it so that it goes, it'll come back to you. ask me how I know. no just kidding. so that was you know that was instructive. and then
They go and and then you have to segment your list. and so if they have spent under a certain amount of money, they'll never see my newsletter. Now, if they spend a certain amount of money, which I think it's like $400, then they get put on the newsletter list and they'll get the newsletter now every month, you know, for the foreseeable future. Usually it's about two years, and then at two years we tell them, hey, your subscription's ending. no, I want to keep it.
I said, well, the only way to keep the subscription is to get your carpets cleaned. okay, great, great, come on in and we'll so but if they're not on the newsletter list, then they just get put onto the reminder sequence. And so we have postcards and emails that go out with automation, six months, nine months, eleven months, ten months. I mean, we usually we'll hit them. A customer of ours will get hit anywhere between 15.
And twenty six times throughout the entire year, combination of electronic and mail.
Bernie (20:59)
You ever do any of this by phone? Like do you need to do
Vance (21:01)
yeah. sure. throw the phone in there. Yep, definitely. I mean, so we do a lot. we also will do the quality assurance call by phone. we obviously will do the reminder call. Hey, we're coming tomorrow morning. don't forget, is done by phone and text. and then everybody gets at least one sometimes two phone calls a year.
it's just with over ten thousand names in our database, it's kinda hard to call everybody. you know, more than that.
Bernie (21:29)
Google reviews, do you rely on that also as part of the a flow through?
Vance (21:33)
Yes, one hundred percent. you need to have a system for those. and you really need to get right at the point of service. so literally my guys have a hermetically sealed piece of paper with a QR code on it, and we shove it in their face and say, Scan this while I'm standing here, and I'll help you write it. because if you don't do that, the more time goes by afterwards, the less and less chance they're gonna do anything.
but we d we do put them in a three email sequence reminding them, hey, you know, go to Google, leave us a review. because especially with AI now, those Google reviews or Yelp or wherever, that is your authority building and that is, you know, your credibility. And the search engines and the AI bot thingies will go out and look at that stuff.
Bernie (22:21)
So is this just for service based industry or is this for the widget makers? Is this like when you do this whole approach, like in this case it's cleaning, so it's a service. Is this also the same thing you'd apply, let's say, to coaching? Is this the same thing you'd apply to a restaurant? Is it kind of universal?
Vance (22:40)
It it it is one hundred percent implementable, if that's even a word, into any business. restaurants especially, because that's where people forget and restaurants have a great opportunity to get people into you know, clubs and cut customer appreciation events and all these things. I mean it's so much restaurants can do.
but it also works for for the widget people. I have a manufacturer of luxury shampoo that uses this exact system and plugged it in and has seen their repeat purchase of the shampoos increase due to the extra communication.
Bernie (23:17)
You find cross promotion with per with products that run parallel. let's say for example, you know, y you do carpet cleaning. Do you sell do you know someone that sells carpets?
Vance (23:27)
yeah. Yep. We have a huge joint venture network. anybody that could possibly refer us. so carpet installers or carpet salespeople are tough because they want to sell you new carpet, not so much clean the one you have. But with rugs, we have found that we can put we we've written a couple of books, and so we have a book on.
How to preserve your your oriental rug. And we'll and we have that in a number of carpet showrooms around the area. so it's kind of our sneaky way into those folks. But, you know, we have r relationships with plumbers, you know, because what hey, maybe the toilet backed up and now you got this dirty rug. So now the plumber knows who to give us a call.
You know, same thing with real estate agents or, you know, anybody that has anything to do with the home. We have partnerships with window washers, you know, housekeeping companies, et cetera, et cetera.
Bernie (24:23)
So you're a solopreneur, how how do you manage this? Like because what you're talking about, you have an assistant, right? Yeah, you have a crew, you already have a database, you already have, you know, something you've built up over the years. So someone who's just starting out in their I'm here. Ta-da. You know, I'm gifted at something and there's a market for that something, but now how do I make the rest of it kind of come together?
Vance (24:46)
Right. So start small. So everything I've talked about didn't happen overnight. So you're thinking to yourself, my God, Vance, you got this system, that system, that process, this process. I built it over the last 19 years. and so it's all based on iterations. So just real quick, so on the reminders sequence. that probably took four years to get it to the point where it is now.
Because we we we did we we did actually we did six, twelve, eighteen and twenty-four month reminders because that's kind of what we did. And then you kind of start to see patterns in people calling back and we noticed that, hey, people were actually calling us back at ten months or eleven months. I'm like, well, we should probably do a postcard or a reminder at ten months saying, Hey, it's almost been a year. You should think about getting your carpets clean.
And so you just add this, start small. Do what I mean, even do just an annual reminder. There's so many people that don't even do that. you know, start that and you can automate this stuff. So like I don't even touch these things. I mean, our CRM will say will find everybody that okay, it's been a year, and it will automatically send a list to our printer, and the printer knows what postcard to send, and I never have to touch it.
So that that's the part where solopreneurs, you know, utilize the technology that's available. keep it personal, but utilize the technology so that you're working smarter. You're not sitting there, you know, my God, I gotta think of a postcard. Okay, I gotta design it. And okay, what list do I send it to? It's just use your CRM. It's got all of the information in it you need.
Bernie (26:23)
What's a low cost way to wow a client that most people overlook?
Vance (26:27)
Answer the damn phone live.
Seriously. I I can't be any more blunt about it. so I'm a partner in a call center. And when we were getting set up, we called forty, five hundred home service businesses, and we used the phone number that they are using Google to advertise. So they're paying for this phone number to be out there. 18% answered the phone live. That's it. 18%. That's nothing.
That means all those other people are just flushing money down the toilet. Because if you're in a business like mine or, you know, HVAC or something where like, look, I'll I'm just calling the first guy on the list. And if he says, if he answers the phone and says yes, great, I'm going with him. if you're like number two or three on the list and you just get a voicemail, people are not calling you back. Or you're not they're not, they're already gonna have bought the service before you have the opportunity to call them back.
At the end of the day. Answer the phone live. And if you gotta have a machine answer it, option one should be connect to a live person, not option 19. I don't want to have to listen to all that crap. Live person answering the phone. That is my competitive advantage right now, is that I got a live person, not AI, answering the phone.
Bernie (27:40)
We do you find that AI bots will help direct the call? And I I'm thinking like you're not not so much a solopreneur, but say you have multiple services, like you have mold remediation, etc. And you know, someone calls in and I and I and I get what you're saying. I I have a problem now and I need to talk to someone now and I need to fix something now. but it's not necessarily carpet cleaning, it's mold remediation. Right. Will it will an AI chatbot or do you
For using a call center where you know you land to a live person and that's something you kinda l rent out or, you know, consign out to outside of your your space and they kind of handle the stick handle the call.
Vance (28:18)
Yeah. yeah. Again.
I would well, personally, I would have separate phone numbers for my mold business. When I do, you know, a mold business has got its own phone number, carpet cleaning's got its own phone number, et cetera. now the same guy answers the phone, but at least we know what it is that they're looking for just by the number they're calling in from. but yeah, I mean, I hate listening to those phone tree options. And if
The option I want is number 16 and I gotta listen to the other 15. I just wanna kill somebody. So pick up the phone, say, hi, this is us. How can I help you? I need to talk about mold remediation. Great, be more than happy to help you. And that's it. That's the competitive advantage.
Bernie (29:00)
Very nice. So difference between a repeat customer and a raving fan. How do you define the raving fan? I'm assuming they're happy raving, not not, you know, bad raving.
Vance (29:10)
No, no, not Stark Raving Mad, but yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They are they are a raving fan. these are the ones that your business preface this with your business has to be tellable. and so you have to do things to wow your customer or at least stand out from the competitors and have people at the end of an interaction with you say, You know, my God, you'll never guess what happened when the carpet cleaner was here.
Now, I don't know about you, but I don't have that conversation at my dinner table. You know, I don't sit down and say, my God, you'll never guess how the oil change went. We don't talk about it. But if you went to one of my clients who actually owns a string of oil change places, he's kind of like a quick lube, Jiffy Lube kind of guy. And but he's independent. He's actually got a Jiffy lube two doors down from him. he was having trouble with the competition. And, you know, it
price pricing wars. I mean it was a race to the bottom. And I said, well, there's no competitive advantage to being second cheapest. Should probably go the other direction. Let's be premium. So long story short on that is we turned his oil change place into a 1950s style service station where four guys come out in white shirts and bow ties and one guy squeegee your windshield, the other one checks the air pressure in your tire, one guy escorts you into the waiting room where there's
Today's newspaper, and there's a barista standing there waiting to make your favorite coffee drink while you wait. Now that is a tellable experience. That's like, my God, you never guess what happened when I got my oil change today. I got my favorite coffee drink, and it was great. You know, it was the the latte with the extra potato juice or whatever it is. and so you create the raving fan by giving them stuff to rave about.
and you do at the end of a of any interaction, you want people saying, my god, you'll never guess what happened at insert your business there. because those are the ones that are gonna, one, they're gonna refer you, two, they're gonna remember you, and three, they're gonna the ones that are gonna go online and you know, they're gonna take a picture of their latte that they got in the waiting room of your oil change place and say, You never guess where I got a great coffee at the oil change.
Click and off to social media it goes. So you have to be tellable.
Bernie (31:25)
you leverage attribution or referral fees as part of it, whether it's customer b customer driven or you're working with another business in co branding?
Vance (31:35)
we we do not pay referral fees. and if you look at the reason people refer, there's really two main drivers of referring, neither of which has anything to do with money. one, it makes people feel good. You know, they want to help out their neighbor, their friend, their relative. Two, they have a superiority complex. I know something that you don't know.
Yeah, I got a guy. You don't got a guy, but I'll let you in on my guy. Those are the top two reasons people refer. So if you're offering five dollar Starbucks coupons, if somebody refers you business, one, it's not much of a motivator. Two, people are going to forget about it. And three, that's not the reason people refer. So in order for you to be referable, again, you have to stay top of mind.
Which is why again we have newsletters, we have postcards, we have emails. They don't only just go to our customers, they go to our referral partners as well. And our referral partners actually get visited by a live human being. So we have a salesperson and their job is to drive around our area and visit real estate offices, plumbing offices, you you name it, and remind them that, yep, we're still here.
and without that the whole thing falls apart because they're not gonna remember you.
Bernie (32:55)
I I know that retaining the client is is kind of a top of mind or t part of the process, but still at the same time you'll have an attrition rate. When you go to do r reach out for new clients, so like and you've already talked about it, you know, the plumbers or you know, other other businesses that are run kind of parallel. What else do you do to help market what you do and to show the uniqueness? Like, for example, the oil change guy.
Really cool by the way. You know, four guys four people come out and go, ta-da, you know, usher in your favorite coffee, you know, just, you know, ta da. And, you know, it's it's actually there's two questions coming out of there. One, what else do you do to help market something like that push out? And does that marketing ever lose its panache and or its zing over time? Do you always have to kind of tweak it again?
Vance (33:46)
Well, you know, the the thing with marketing and business owners is we get bored with our marketing before the marketing ever stops working. so I've got ads now that I have to just n I literally gotta tie myself down so that I don't fiddle with the thing because it's working, right? and if you gotta change something on an ad that's working, just change one thing. That way you'll know if you screwed up or whether you improved the ad.
and so, yeah, I mean, we get bored with that. my god, I've been running the same ad for ten years. Well, yeah, it's also generating a hundred thousand dollars a year. Why mess with it? so there's certainly that. but you know, we're when we're launching something new, you know, I love doing grand openings. because one, it's easy to get press at a grand opening, it's fun, it's festive. you know, I've
been to a grand opening at a grocery store and you'd never know it. I mean, you know, there was no kid walking around with a tray of bologna and cheese and, you know, there was no corporate muckety mucks walking around. it was really a sad, sad event. and then, you know, you do have, you know, people that will do a grand opening and
They got the blimp flying over the head, and they've got, you know, this army of little 14-year-olds in bow ties walking around with cheese cubes and all that stuff. And over in the corners, the corporate muckety mucks, and they're making sure everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing. It's got a grand opening feeling to it. It was a marching band or whatever. and you can you can get all that stuff, you just have to think about it. and I'm not saying we don't do any lead generation, we certainly do, and we'd
We have our our Google pay per click is pretty much about the only thing I pay for. Everything else is through one of the referral or joint venture systems that we've got in place.
Bernie (35:32)
Wow. Do you hire out for someone to host an event? Because how do I best put it? I've hosted a conference in the past and I'm thinking, you know, I've never hosted one before. I've been to them, but I haven't hosted one. Right. And you you kinda sit there and you're going, you know, making arrangements with with the hotel. And then, you know, if you if it's a two, three day event, then you gotta go, what do I do with people in the off hours to keep them, you know?
So when you have a grand opening event, although it's not a a a conference, is is that something then you should actually look at hiring out a service to come in and just, you know, to they give you that zing?
Vance (36:08)
Right. Yeah, well, I think, you know, it depends on your personality and your time and your budget. certainly if you can afford to get a creative person to come in and organize this thing, by all means, sure. And that means you don't have to do it. now if you're tight on cash, or you know, anything like that, then yeah, you're gonna have to think about it. And then you just I mean these days now here's a great use for AI.
You know, is hi type into your favorite
doohickey, whatever it is, and say, hey, I need to plan a grand opening for my you know my car wash. What do I need? And AI will give you ten thousand things that you need for a grand opening of a car wash. that's probably the low budget way I would go.
Bernie (36:51)
Yeah, makes sense. So you have a a gift for the audience.
Vance (36:55)
I do. Unveil it's a different way?
Bernie (36:59)
Absolutely, sir. Please do.
Vance (37:01)
So for those of you that are not overly creative or just want a little bit of a push, I created this system. It's called Fifty Two Ways to Wow Your Customer. so you have one wow for every week of the year, just something to, you know, stay in touch with them, give them a little experience. and you can find that at wow fifty twoways dot com.
Bernie (37:22)
Excellent. Excellent. I almost thought it was the there's there's a song with fifty two ways, but it deals with s saying goodbye to your to your lover, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Yeah not that one, not that one.
Vance (37:34)
No, that that was a great song. Slip out the back, Jack. Don't be corduroy. Yep.
Bernie (37:40)
Yeah.
Back in the day. So I I think for the for our listeners, you know what? If you want to know more, you want to understand more what's happening behind what Vance is talking about, Vance Morris.com and just you know, he'll help you. He'll help work with you. Vance, what areas of the universe do you service? do you service US continental, North America? Are you English?
Vance (38:04)
The English speaking world. so I have clients in Australia, the UK, Canada, US, Mexico, Lithuania. so yeah. So I I can it human nature's the same everywhere. So it really doesn't matter what business you're in or what country you live in, this same psychology works for everyone.
Bernie (38:25)
Perfect. Vance, I want to say thank you so much. And you know, folks, if you're listening to this, yeah, Vance has that experience. He's he's got a a really interesting backstory and he can share that with you too a bit more. but the idea is that your your clients know that you exist. You retain your clients because it's easier to retain than it is to find new. And if you want to find out about being a security guard or Disney,
That's a different that's a different story, maybe over a pint. I want to say thank you for listening to our podcast. And if this conversation has landed for you, share it with a person who needs to hear it. And you may not be the end result. There might be someone out there that needs to hear this podcast. You can find our episodes at knack4business.com. That's knack. The word knack is with a a instead of an o and like knock, the number four business.com.
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