SNM259: Whisper Campaign To Grow Your Business with Ian Campbell

Jonathan Green: A whisper campaign to grow your business. You know I'm talking about referral marketing today with special guest Ian Campbell on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by book Arbitrage Profits. If you wanna start the ultimate side hustle, I can't recommend book flipping enough. Used books are continually going up in value. If you wanna learn how to flip books and make six and even seven figures, please join our free training@servedmaster.com slash baps. Announcer: Are you tired of dealing with your boss?

Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now. Then you've come to the right place. Welcome to Serve No Master Podcast, where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by bestselling author Jonathan Green. Now, here's your host.

Jonathan Green: Now, this is a topic near and dear to my heart because it's how I initially grew my business and my online business, but I know a lot of people have some misperceptions, and I think a really common thing that. When I talk to people about for marketing is they think it's aggressive, that it's trying to tip tap into the well twice, like asking existing, Hey, you're already a customer, but could you also send me more customers?

And that with that prescription, it feels a little bit icky, right? Like you're asking, asking, asking. And I think that comes from a mindset of that what I do isn't as valuable as what it costs. What do you think? Where does that mindset start from? And of course then you can tell me how you got into reform marketing. I'd love to hear the beginning of your journey in your story. Ian Campbell: Yeah, for sure.

Well, just to, I mean, it's funny that you bring up the the kind of icky feeling of it. Cuz I remember I had a conversation with a friend of mine who's in business and, he brought up the, these stats and I'm gonna completely mix up the numbers, right? So don't think that, don't think that these numbers are specific, but something like, 75, 85% of customers would be willing to give a referral if asked.

But only 7% of salespeople or business owners are willing to ask for referrals, right? So there's a lot of head trash that goes around that, and I think that does come from a lot of just insecurities and fear around. What people are gonna think about us, right? And it does get lead into a lot of my own journey as far as referrals are concerned, and kind of building a business based on referrals.

I started my company when I was way too young and stupid to know that I was completely unqualified to be doing what I was doing. So I had to. Go based on referrals because, I didn't have the credentials to do so, I just had to do good work for people and then rely on the fact that they would be willing to introduce me to somebody else if I did a good job for them.

And so when, as I grew and developed my business and it was a marketing consulting company back in the day I kind of, built that way. And kinda like you were mentioning, that's where a lot of my work came from early on. But then as the entire time went by, rather, I started to realize the power of a really good referral network as well. Right.

So you've got a couple different ways to develop referrals, and one of those obviously is with customers, but then the other one, the other part is with other professionals that you can make connections with and whatnot. And it's important to remember that, again, People are willing to refer you business nine times outta 10. You just have to ask. You gotta get past that head trash, and once you do, it starts to become like anything else, right?

It starts to become easier and then you do it again. Becomes a little bit easier still, so on and so forth. Jonathan Green: I think a lot of it has to do with what you think you're asking for and how you ask. Like I get asked referrals and references or testimonials. Not all the time, but maybe once or twice a month by people that have the confidence to do it. Not as many people as probably should.

And I often go the extra mile and I'll shoot the video and all that stuff. If I really, the more I like something, the more effort I'll put in cuz I know how much it means to the person, how much of a difference it can make. And some of those have actually led to more business for me because the person appreciates it so much. I think a lot of.

The idea comes from some of the more aggressive referral marketing like I'm used to when I say referral marketing, my first thought is like when someone says, Hey, can you think of three people that might be a good fit for my business? Sure. Can you email all three of them right now? Ian Campbell: Right. Jonathan Green: That part I don't like. That's the part that I think we all think of as referral marketing, and I think there's a spectrum.

The main way, like when I get referrals, almost all of my like high level clients or referrals, I don't mention co coaching or ghost writing anywhere on my website. You can only get me for either of those services by emailing me and saying, Hey, I heard you do ghost writing. That's how you get, that's how it starts. And so it's only through referrals. People I've already worked with in the past and.

The way I got out there is I just told everyone that I'm a really good ghost writer, and most people don't know other ghost writers. So if you use a term that's not really out there, then you can do really well. My, and I learned this from my uncle. He went to England and he was a hairstylist, but he had a cosmetology license, which is not the word they used in England.

So he would tell her when he's a cosmetologist and they're like, whoa, he must be a real expert. It's just the name in England when, so they would run these ads. To see if he was stealing a job from an English person, no one would apply cuz no one in England has a cosmetology license cuz he was a different name for it and that he built an entire business just on understanding the power of using the right name.

So it can be as simple as defining your expertise and then letting everyone know what you do. All the way up to that aggressive end of the market where you say, Hey, can you send three referrals? Or even those chain letters? I remember you'd get a chain letter that said, and if bad things will happen to you, unless you photocopy this letter 10 times and send it to 10 people I think that's Ian Campbell: Right. Jonathan Green: The original referral marketing.

And so where on the spectrum do you lie and how can someone find, I guess like the comfort that they're okay with, where they can be on the spectrum? Because most people I know, especially writers, I train, don't wanna tell anyone they're a writer until they have clients. And it's like, you're not gonna get any clients. You don't tell anyone you're a writer, right? Like it's a circle. So where on the spectrum should people be and how can they find their comfort zone?

Ian Campbell: Yeah, especially with people getting started or starting to build their business, I find that falling somewhere in the middle of that is is gonna be, is usually your best bet. Right? Cause you know, there's a couple things that come to mind here. First of all, you never get what you don't ask for, right? So, telling people what you are, what you're doing, and you know what you're doing out in the marketplace, of course, is hugely important.

But then, it is important for you to ask other people, Hey, who do you know that needs this kind of service? Who do you know that fits this kind of profile? And I think there's an idea of understanding your, first of all, your ideal client, right? Knowing who the people that you wanna be working for are and being able to really define those folks, right?

Because, Without that, you're never gonna be able to understand what's who you're going after and who you should be, who you should be talking to in the first place. But then beyond that, understanding your ideal referral partner, understanding ideally who those people are that can refer people. Right. , for writers, for example, you know, you're gonna be, talking to marketing agencies, talking to Videographers and people like that, there's a natural fit there because there's kind of a quick and easy handshake pass off.

That can be done. And so if you can identify that ideal referral partner, then you can Ultimately, it becomes a lot easier to ask and you don't have to say, Hey, who are these three, who are three people that can use my services? It's just maintaining a relationship and saying, oh, hey, by the way, I'm looking for more introductions to. People who own, I don't know, dog food businesses, right? And then next.

That person that's on the other side of the table or on the other side of the Zoom screen, for example, is working with plenty of those folks. And they say, oh yeah, you know what? You've always done good work for me. So I've actually got a couple names and saying, Hey, do you mind making an introduction? It's proactive, but not aggressive. Right. And so you're able to be proactive and to actually say, Hey, let's do this.

And if you could, you're still taking responsibility for your business, I guess is what I'm trying to say. But you're not being so pushy, like you're sitting down and saying, okay, here are five names that you wrote down. Let's have a conversation about those five people and when can you introduce me? Well, Back off pal. You know, that's a little awkward. I'm not gonna do that.

Whereas if you just say, oh yeah, do you mind making an introduction, then I'm a lot more likely to do so falling somewhere in the middle, because ultimately you're gonna get to that point to where you are, where you're able to say, People are going to refer me and I know that people are gonna refer me business.

They're gonna send people, they're gonna send people my name, they're gonna reach out to me and I'm gonna get start getting emails saying, Hey, I heard you do ghost writing. Or, Hey, I heard you do this, I heard you do that. And so if you can keep pushing that forward keep pushing those referral relationships forward, you're just gonna start getting those emails a lot more passively. And then you can start building your business in other ways too.

Jonathan Green: Well, what do you do if someone says they're gonna do that and then they don't? Right? They go, oh yeah, I know it's gonna be perfect for you. And then they never send the email, right? I think that's the second dip where people get super uncomfortable. And I know that, and I put this in a lot of my trainings. I say, if you're asking me and I don't reply, just ask again. Cuz it means I forgot.

And 90% of the time, I remember I hired someone years and years ago, after the 13th time she emailed me. And I was like, oh yeah, I meant to hire you for this job. I think you'd be a perfect fit. And then worked together for a couple of years. And recently someone wanted a referral who'd worked with me for years, another employee, and I kept forgetting until she reminded me she could have been more aggressive.

I, she kept reminding me she wanted a video and she kept asking at a time when I couldn't shoot a video. Right? I was like, wrong time of day, like. You know, she wanted an outdoor video or indoor, forget what it was, but it was like, oh, it's at night. She wants a daytime video. Or vice versa. And so, right. Yeah, it's oftentimes people think that they're being annoying and they can't find the spectrum. Like for cold emails.

I know after three emails, if I don't reply, cause I've never heard of you, that's when you can stop. But if you've already said yes, and I keep forgetting, that's different. So how does someone find that balance between asking enough to get what you want and not asking so much that they now hate you? Ian Campbell: Yeah, for sure. And first of all, if you can get somebody to stop writing you cold emails after three, then you know you're more talented than I am.

That's a pretty impressive thing. Usually I get 15 or 12, 15 or 20 of 'em, but the, as far, when it comes to those referrals, I think that, holding people accountable to what they've told you that they were gonna do is an important thing, right? It's an important thing in business. I wanna be held accountable.

And to your point, you know, I wanna, if I tell you that I'm gonna do something and I don't do it, it's not because I don't wanna do it. but I wanna hold to my word. I wanna to follow through on it. But like you said, sometimes things just get go awry and I get what probably, 75, a hundred emails every day. Right. And there's always, and there's some sort of a fire to be put out.

There's some something happening and, I've got my team that I work with, and so I need, so these people need something that, that, that person needs something. So there's always something else going on, right? But at the end of the day, if I tell you that I'm gonna do something, then I better do it.

And I think that's okay to hold people to that standard because, you know, And then make them , and frankly if they're not gonna do it, make them tell you that they're not gonna do it. Right. There's that idea of polite persistence where you can, if you know, again, once somebody's told you, yes, that this is something that I want to do, or this is something that I'm willing to do for you. Just tapping 'em on the shoulder every now and then. Right?

Don't do it daily. Don't do it. I would say keep it to a week, keep it to once every two weeks, whatever, but just kind of you, you've earned the right to do so. if you've had the guts to ask and they've told you yes, then they've given you permission, in my opinion anyway. They've given you permission to follow up and to make sure that they actually follow through. Jonathan Green: I think there's a tendency to attach the assumption of enemy action to a passive action.

For example, if you email someone and they don't reply, or if someone, this is a really common one, if you have a mailing list like I do and someone unsubscribes your first, oh my gosh, they hate me, Ian Campbell: Right. Jonathan Green: It's an emotion reaction. Like the reason they stopped wanting to read my emails is because they've judged me as a human being and found me wanting, and 99% of the time is that.

They've just moved on to some other interest or they've forgotten, or they're declaring their inbox. 99% of the time when I'm unsubscribing from mailing list, I'm doing it all on the same day. It's either me or an app doing it and I'm cleaning up. I'm like, oh, I just don't need these emails anymore. I'm doing something else. Or I found a different hobby, or I've decided that I'm gonna go in a different direction. And it's very rarely about the actual person. It's very rarely a dislike.

Mostly it's a disinterest or moved on, or it's about the other person, right? Oh, I need to stop getting so many of these emails, right? I'll clean up some of them, but we think. This person hates me. They've rejected me on the core levels of human being. And I think that we so often, right, throughout this entire process, if you're asking for a referral, trying to get a client and because there's this period as well, right?

When they send the introduction email and you're like, well, should I respond first or wait to, for the other person to respond? Right? And it reminds me of like, When I was in high school, there was this rule of like, oh, if you get a girl's phone number, you don't call for three days. Right? But then there was these rules, right, of like , who texts versus who texts the longest. And I'm sure they've all changed. I've been married for a long time.

But I remember used to look at like how many le when it was texting who, whoever wrote the most letters in the text likes the other person more. So if you write the, and she writes on that means you like her more cuz you wrote three, she wrote two. And I know cuz I do this with client work, especially when it's a big number client. Then I'm started going, oh my gosh, my email's longer than theirs. Maybe I like them more than they like me.

And you recreate that same feeling of being 14 and not knowing what to do. How can someone, like, how do you navigate that, those emotional waters where it's a client? You start to really want the client, like in my head, sometimes I already start to spend the money before I've even gotten the reply from the client. Like, do you reply first or do you wait for the other person to reply? How does that go? Ian Campbell: Yeah.

I think there's a level of imposter syndrome that we all deal with, right. And it kind of, it does harken back to that idea of being in high school again and just not knowing exactly where you belong. And I think especially when it comes to being a business owner, there's that constant question of, or an entrepreneur, whatever, a service provider, that there's that constant question of, am I doing. Am I good enough to be doing what I'm doing right? Should I be here?

Should I have a seat at the table? Yes or no? Right? And circle one, yes or no. And I think that there, that's something that we all deal with to some extent. And so I think, in addition to Mission Suite and to my business, I'm a musician, right? I'm a performing musician. And so talk about imposter syndrome.

There's, you know, I can't count the number of times that I've been playing at a place somewhere and I've seen somebody get up and walk away and thought to myself, oh my God, it's because I'm horrible. Right? Nevermind the 200 people that are still sitting in front of me engaged and looking at me. One person walked away and now all of a sudden that means that I shouldn't be up on stage. Right?

So, those types of things are definitely things that we all struggle with, and I think that again, it comes down to A lot of it, for me anyway, comes down to just saying, you know what, I just gotta do it. I don't know if I'm gonna be here, but I'm never if I'm supposed to be here. But I'm never gonna figure it out unless I show up. And if I'm not supposed to be here, someone's gonna tell me.

To answer your question about, like when you get those referral emails and you know who to respond first and whatnot, I always take the lead. I always take lead every single time. Right. And it's doesn't have to be gushy. It doesn't have to be like, it's not super it's not super, Hey, this is what I do you wanna hire me? Kind of a deal. But it's, but rather it's, Hey, great to meet you, or, thanks so much for the introduction, Joe. I appreciate that.

Sam, it's great to meet you. Love to get together and chat more about what you're doing and see if there's any sort of value that I can add to a relationship. Do you have time for a 15 minute, 20 minute phone call? You know, I'm usually, I'm available Thursday at three and Friday at two, right? And so would tell, let me know what if one of those things looks good for you, and then it be it kind of takes away that.

And then of course, following up after that, which is also very important because again, like we said before, the referral the people who are. Who said they send you referrals are busy and the people who they referred you to are also busy. So making sure that you're following up, making sure that you're touching base and whatnot is also really important. So, but just putting yourself out there and making sure, and always taking the lead because again, this is your business, not theirs.

So you've gotta be the one to own it, right? You've gotta be the one to own the relationship and start moving and start driving it forward. Jonathan Green: Now the process, once you start doing this, it can become cumbersome to remember who sent which lead, who referred which person, or where they came from. My biggest issue, the reason I respond quickly, is because I will forget. I pre-warn people a lot of the time that I'm very forgetful.

And I use a special tool that I started using about two years ago called a personal c r m to let me remember who people are. So after this phone call, I will go into that, write down what we talked about, put in a copy of your picture and like your email address and information to help me remember who you are. And it's not personal. I do it for everyone.

Some, when I first dated my wife for the first year we were dating, sometimes I'll go out with the boys and then she would come and meet me and I would text her, raise your hand so I know which one you are. Because that's me. Now, I don't have full face blindness like one of my friends has, but it's sometimes hard for me to. Remember who's who, and I've definitely walked up to the wrong woman and she's like, that's your wife over there.

Doesn't happen as much anymore, but it happened in the early days. And so that forgetfulness becomes like, that's the main reason that I lose leads or clients, is that I forget them. And so I use this for my personal life as well as my business. Just remember who people are. Like what did we talk about? What did this person say? What's this person's interest?

Someone the other day I was talking him in a meeting I'm doing a big project with, and he started talking about his like three biggest hobbies. And I was like, I better write this down because I will forget. I used to be able to remember when my network was smaller when I was starting out 12 or 13 years ago, and I only didn't know about 20 or 50 people.

Now that I've met thousands, I will forget that stuff, and I know that's what you help people do, and that's what I wanted to get to is people lose, I think lose a lot of business in these key moments, which is I'm afraid to ask for referral. I'm afraid to respond to the referral. I forgot about the referral. That's my biggest area. I've had clients, I, someone emailed me maybe a couple years ago and said, Jonathan, I love the book you wrote for me.

I have an amazing client for you. Here's an introduction. My first thought was, I have no idea who you are, and I had a massive 10 or $20,000 project for the person, and I could not tell you. And they even linked to their book and I was like, oh, I wrote this. That's, yeah, right, that's how bad I am. It's not just like a stranger. It's like people who paid me a lot of money, and I haven't done that many ghostwriting clients.

So that's where I'm at. So I really need a tool to help me. And a lot of people, when they think about a CRM tool, they think about Salesforce, which is very, very, very complicated. And it's for people that are doing 50 sales calls a day, and they're in that type of business. But for someone who's doing. Maybe even five or less referrals a week or even per month. They think, oh, why would I need keep track of that? So maybe we can start there.

Cause I, I do wanna dig into your tool. Why, where does forget for forgetfulness begin in your experience? Ian Campbell: Yeah. I mean, it varies for everybody, right? But I think that from the time that we hit send on an email or the time that we close, hang up the phone, whatnot, nine times outta 10, we're already moved on to something else in our head, right? And so it's important to have some sort of a system to make sure that you're following up on everything, right?

Because I mean, and. I'm sure that everybody's heard the fortune's, the fortune is in the follow up. The fortune is in the follow up, right? And everything that you earn, every, all the money that you make is probably gonna come from following up in some way, shape, or form. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And as a result of that, it's important to have some sort of a system, whatever it is for you.

Of course, mission Suite is a crm and it is a system like that. The beauty of the for and. My perspective of it, the beauty of it is that we're able to automate a lot of those things so we can create kind of campaigns. Because to your I'm very similar to you that. If I'm, I have a deathly time remembering people's names, right?

And for the l and nine times, and so there are so many times I like when we all moved to Zoom during the pandemic. One of the kind of silver linings for me was that no matter what, who I was talking to, their name was in the corner of the screen. Right? There were times when, somebody would have his wife's name on in the he was using his wife's Zoom account, which made things complicated.

But, you know, I, that was really, tho things like that were really helpful for me because it was a system that I was able to latch onto. And so with Mission, with what we do with Mission Suite is we automate a lot of that stuff because I find that removing. That getting ourselves out of our own way and getting and putting that automation into place helps in a way because. We're not thinking about it anymore.

And the machine, the computer, the algorithm, whatever you've created inside of the system, it doesn't care if you're insecure. It doesn't care if you're not sure if you should be touching base with this person again, it's going, you're gonna, you make a determination, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm gonna have. I'm gonna send an email. Three days later, I'm gonna follow up on it. Three days later I'm gonna follow up on that. Five days after that, I'm gonna follow up again. Right?

You're creating that kind of a system and the machine is gonna do that no matter what. And so it becomes really helpful and of course, you wanna monitor it to make sure that things can't need to be tweaked, to see what needs to be tweaked along the way. But it becomes really helpful because people actually do. Respond to that, and that's how you can take that's how you can, I think, migrate from that.

Forget from that level of forgetfulness of I've forgotten who you are and what you're doing to having it to being able to be responsive and to really leverage that, leverage the tools that you need to remember a person's name, because it just happens to be sitting in the le in the bottom left corner of their picture.

Jonathan Green: Yeah, when doing outreach and for some of our processes, we send out cold emails too, to people we wanna partner with, like if I wanna have someone on the podcast or I want to have someone work on a book project together and. I write three emails at once, and then I send them, basically they're queued up.

If the person responds to the first email, then they don't get the other two, but then the next one comes out three days, the next one, three days later. And that's the automation that we do. And there are tools that do that, right? There are like some Gmail add-ons that do things like that as, or remind you to send a follow-up letter to say, Hey, did this person reply? And I find those way more helpful than I thought because I forget.

If someone replied or not all the time, like I never wanted to use a project management tool until I realized how much more money I made when I started organizing stuff. Cause I forget projects all the time. Sure. Not have a calendar that tells me what I'm supposed to do every week, which is like so powerful for me. So it's really significant. I think that a lot of entrepreneurs starting out think, oh, I don't need to do any of that.

But then when you try to hire someone or scale, you have no system. So I've utilized how important. Project management is, and CRM for me has always been a challenge because we have one place where we do our financial transactions, we have our shopping card, or maybe we have, a. Like delivery, our content delivery, our membership side, or our service deliveries and integrating all of those things has always been really challenging. And there are so many CRMs out there.

There's so many, many, and all the time I can ever find one that kind of meets my needs, that understands how I do business because only small percentage of my business is referral. And a lot of them are only designed for that. So when I was looking for a tool for me, I was like, well, I'm not lead scoring, like I'm not lead scoring you right now. Right, right. You're not a potential client. You are in a different category. And a lot of CRMs.

That's why I have a personal CRM. Only offer that solution. I'm like, no, I just wanna remember who someone is. And if we talked about doing, like afterwards, you might say, oh, Jonathan, would you ever do this kind of project? I wanna write that down so when I email you in a month or something, I don't forget that. Right? But I'm not trying to close a deal. Whereas then someone reaches out to me or someone says, oh, this person might be a cool client.

They're in a different category. And then I am basically looking at, are they really looking to work with someone like me? Is this an hour a later problem? Should I follow up in six months? Or do you wanna take action right now? Those things are very, very real. So those are the kinds of things that I sometimes struggle with. It's like I don't really wanna run two CRMs for me, right?

I'm a smaller business, I don't have enough employees to need to have them all have their own dashboards. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that, cuz I am interested in your process, right. For, cuz I know you talk about entrepreneurs and so someone who's starting off as a solopreneur, right? That's a new term. So Ian Campbell: Yeah. Jonathan Green: tell me how you deal with those processes and someone who's figuring out what's the right CRM for them.

Because honestly, there are so many, it's so overwhelming. Ian Campbell: Right, for sure. The big thing with, first of all, as far as, there's a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of solopreneurs out there that are just kicking off and getting started, to your point, that think to themselves, I don't need this right now because I can manage everything in a spreadsheet. I can do whatever. Right?

I mean, there's, there is a lot of that and, I've talked a lot to a lot of people and have come to realize that, as far as Mission Suite goes, our biggest competitor is Microsoft Excel. Not Salesforce, not HubSpot. Although those are obviously the big the big gorillas, but our biggest competitors, Microsoft Excel, because we're people are get so kind of, locked into that, but you can't scale with it. More importantly, even for yourself, you can't create systems out of it.

And so you're able, so using those types of tools, using the like a CRM for example, is important because you can create yourself a system and it's important to do those things even for yourself as you're creating that kinda like we talked about before, as far as what to look for in a CRM when you are making those decisions and deciding, well, should I be. Doing this, should I be doing that?

You know, I'm a big believer that first of all, your CRM can be your own personal sales assistant if you are using the right one, right? It can automatically send, it can send follow up emails. You can give it the information that you need that you need the CRM to have, or your quote assistant to have. And then it'll send out a follow up email for you on your behalf. It'll, you know, that's coming from your name.

It'll remind you, Hey, you gotta call this person here, on Tuesday, whatever those types of things. So finding one that can do that, finding one that has that kind of automation that's not gonna cost an arm and a leg is a huge, is really, really important. But beyond that, even more important is find something that has the level of service and support and training that you are going to need. Right?

Because the biggest reason that people stop using CRMs is because they don't see the value of it. They're not able to kind of, they're not able to identify why I should be using this thing, and most often, That's because they never were taught, they never actually learned how to use it for what they needed to do. Right.

I mean, you mentioned, to a couple, we've mentioned a couple competitors here, and they've kind of, they have forums and they've got community groups, and they've got chatbots and things like that. And, those are all well and good and they serve a valuable purpose. But at the end of the day, a lot of times you just need to talk to somebody to say, listen. I need the system to do X, Y, Z for me. Can you show me how to make it do that?

So finding something that's going to that's gonna do that finding a system that has a team that will do that for you, is probably the biggest thing in your search. And again, everybody's needs gonna be different here. There's gonna be some people that. Only need a community forum that only need a chatbot. And that's fine. There's gonna be other people that need full on training and, zoom training and whatnot.

And that's gonna, and that, and so kind of figure out where you're gonna, where you're gonna fall. Because if you don't know how to use the system and you can't figure out how to do it, well then it's ne then you know, you're never gonna get value out of it. And at the end of the day, the only reason that you keep paying people that own companies like mine is because you found value, you get value out of it. Otherwise there's no point to.

Jonathan Green: Yeah, I think that's really interesting because everyone has different use cases. Like when I think of a chat bot and forms and like all that effort to learn something that's like what I don't want, what I like, I use a, I work my personal crm, which is not what I use for business. It's just remember people, it is really small and when I email the founder, cause it might be, he might be a one guy operation, I might be his only customer.

But like he's the one who responds and does what I want, but like the most important features to me, I was thinking about this, the most important feature to me is profile, merge. Because I often put people in twice. I put four people in twice this weekend. That's why it's on my mind. And I was like, oh my gosh, does this have a profile merge? And then I went back, I forgot. And then I go to the dashboard and it's like the first button.

I was like, this one gets me. So I think there is a real personal element to it. It's like that's not something everyone, not everyone has that problem, right? That's like the most common. That's for me. And the second thing that really I value is when you can put in all the person's social media channels.

And it'll just put that ation one place and automatically put in a picture cuz it's such an extra effort for me to download a picture from someone's website, upload it to the thing, and my tool only will pull in the profile picture from LinkedIn. I'm like, I wish you would also do it from Facebook. Cause not everyone uses only LinkedIn. Right? But at least it does it from one. Right. And it pulls in the LinkedIn profile cuz. I guess it thinks that's the most important one.

It's probably the most accurate for most people, right? They're by own LinkedIn's more accurate than Facebook or certainly Pinterest. But those are the things that really matter to me, and those, are both two forms of automation or the ability to import a spreadsheet, right? When I have old information and spreadsheets, the more I can import those and categorize people, cuz we ran on spreadsheets for our outreach for years and years and years, and manually importing people is such an effort. So I do.

I do wish it was a higher level where it would try and use their email address to find their LinkedIn profile in pullin', but my tool doesn't do that yet. It's really just, it's really just a memory booster. It's not meant for the higher level stuff, but when you are designing the automation, right, there's a thing where it can be too automated and people get annoyed at that end, or it can be not enough.

I know that when you're trying to figure out your consumer, this is a challenge that interests me very much. How do you choose. That balance so that people don't go, oh wait, that's way too much like you imported all my Facebook friends. Cuz I certainly am not really friends with all my Facebook friends. Right. Yeah. Right balance. Right. It's the same thing where your tablet is like, you can up update every app at once or one by one and go through a hundred decisions.

It's like there's no in between. So that's when I'm really curious about how you find that balance for your customers. Ian Campbell: Yeah, and it, you know, a lot of it comes down to individual needs, right? Because to your point, everyone, you know, not everyone's gonna use Facebook. Not everyone's gonna use, not everyone's gonna need, five automated emails to go out and whatnot. So, I.

But there are tools there, there are ways that we can develop that to determine what is actually necessary in your automation strategy. Right? And that a lot of times comes down to, first of all automation. Any automation starts on a whiteboard or a piece of paper, it doesn't start inside of a computer. Right. So kind of, so sitting down and saying whether, again, whether it's, I, like, I love whiteboards, I love post-it notes, right?

But I mean, taking those things, going, kind of going analog, if you will, and and taking those things and saying, okay, so first I want, you know, in this specific case, it's a LinkedIn connection. And, or it's somebody that I'm at a networking event, or it's a customer referral or whatever the case may be. Here's where we're starting and then this is what happens next and this, then this is what happens next. And if this happens, I don't want this to happen. Right?

So, but having that kind of, that strategy laid out in a very analog format becomes really beneficial. And what I like to tell people is first of all, assume that the, when you first do this, assume that nobody responds to you. Right? Assume that you're writing automation, you're writing all of your automation for with nobody responding to you. And then once you've developed that, Then say, okay, now if they respond after the first email, what do you wanna have happen?

If they respond after the, you know, not after the first email, but after the first phone call, what happens then? Right? And then start creating your branches off of that. And you'll find that it's one of those, weird family tree horizontal family tree, kind of a things where you'll start to be able to create what that actually looks like and build it out in a way that makes sense to you.

And then you can apply that to your system now, then it becomes important just to make sure that your system can actually, excuse me, conform to you and to your automation needs, and is not forcing you into their own. But most systems out there that are worth their salt will allow you to take whatever strategy you lay out and then create an inside create, build it out inside of their system so that it works effectively for you.

Jonathan Green: I think that's really good because a lot of people come from the other mindset of like, oh, I only need to plan one thing, cuz every deal's gonna come through. Like I go to one to two conferences a year. I live on a small island in the middle of nowhere. So when I go to a conference, I do all my deals for the year and I've learned that if 10 deals get me really excited, I want to call my wife about them.

One of them will happen. And that's a, there's this mistake people make early on. They go, oh, I have one really good deal. Someone said they wanna do a project with me. It's on, right? And they're so into it, they don't realize, no, no, you got a 10% because we're all meeting tons of people. And that's in a compressed environment. And in the same way, it is important to prayer things for failure. I'm very analog. Right?

I write everything down on note cards, and then all my notes, all the things I have to work on today, I've got like, I can see like four or five note cards or stuff written up on projects for the week. Ian Campbell: Sure. Jonathan Green: Because I do struggle to put everything into my project management. I wish I was really good like that. Some people are so good having that dashboard, that's not me.

But for big projects and tracking, I can do it there mostly if other people are doing this stuff. So I think what you're saying is very interesting because. People have different pain points or the part that they stink at. Some people just stink at the planning. Some people are way too optimistic, some people are way too pessimistic.

So I'm always interested when talking to a software creator because you have to deal with very, very different personality types and how they approach data and how they approach their planning. So when you talk about, like I write out anytime I'm writing out an automation, I do write it out in a notebook. I draw it out by hand two or three times. And that's really how I plan how I want something to happen. I have to look at it and then I can move.

If I'm doing it on a board, I don't always do that. I wish I was better. I can move the cards around on a board. I don't always do that. Like I wanna be like my nobody report. But that's really hard to do. Like when I think about. What I would want from this type of tool is kind of like, you know, the president has someone who stands behind and reminds them who every person is like, oh, this is the center from so-and-so.

You kind of hate them. Oh yeah. Like I don't even remember that stuff. Like I struggle to remember like, oh, I don't like that person. Unless I write it down. So that's kind of like the dream, right? For a tool like yours just to nu to remind you who someone is, what you wanted to do, and then even do a little bit on your behalf. I think the automated email thing is very, very interesting. Because it overcomes the. How long should I wait to email?

Right. like you mentioned earlier, it's like that school note. Do you like me? Yes. No, maybe because, Ian Campbell: Yeah, right. Jonathan Green: When we attach emotion, I think that's when referral stuff gets the trickiest. If it's, this person doesn't wanna work with me cuz they don't like me, right? Yeah. And it can be, oh, they just had a financial hit. Right. Like a medical emergency. And that's why they can't do right now. Right. Like I had someone who.

Called me up, wanted to do a huge project, I gave them the number. They said, great, let me put it together. Never responded. Two months later, call me again. Same conversation. Just have a few last questions. I definitely wanna work with you. I'll send you the money tomorrow. Ghosted me again. And I don't think it's personal, right? No, I think it's probably about the number more than about me. But we get in there and that's another area where I'm very interested.

If someone pre automats the emails, then they can put in like what the price is because. Most people negotiate against themselves, right? Maybe you've even been there, right? When you're talking to a client, you say a number, you go, it's $10,000, and they don't say anything. You go, actually, I mean it's eight. What about five moments? Like what am I doing here? What's happening? Right? And then you like they didn't even say anything.

Like that's the first negotiating I rule was like, once you say a number, be quiet as long as you can, like let them talk next or you'll lose. But that's such a common struggle for a young entrepreneur or somebody who's new to entrepreneurship, right? Is that. The price conversation is really. Really, really hard, right? Yeah. Like I'm doing a project right now for a very high number, but I did a two for one, right?

And then in the as I'm working on the project, like, oh yeah, we made 57 million on our last project. I'm like, why did I give you guys, I should have had a two for two? Like, why did I even think about that? Right? It's like a big number for me. It's a great number for me, but I'm like, oh my gosh, I should have gone bigger. And that's even at my level, right? I'm still like, oh, I should have gone for the next number. Right?

Like gone a little bit bigger. I still, I mean, I still got what I wanted, but I could have gone twice as big if I'd realized. So it never stops happening. I don't think it ever stops happening where that's in place. And how could someone maybe integrate that part of the process, the negotiating part, into the automation so that they don't have to sit down and nervously say, am I gonna ask for a number that's too high? Ian Campbell: Right? Right. You know a lot.

So much of that comes from. The qualification process, the those qualification conversations early on. Right. So when, you know, to your point just a quick story you know, I had a sales trainer who told me a story one time. He was like, the first, my first sales job that I had, I. I had my sa, he had a sales manager go out with him and he would he sat down and he'd realized that the sales manager realized that he was negotiating against himself, like he said.

And he basically said, okay, listen to me. Next time we sit down and you quote a number, if you talk before they do, you're fired. And, I mean, talk about a way to get in his head, right? The guy, just the guy shut up, he stayed quiet and he real, and all of a sudden he is like, yeah, I'll take it. That's fine. Fantastic. Right?

So you want there to be a little bit of tension in that conversation because that's when you find that your that your. Being paid for your value and that they're, but you're not going too far for them. Right. But to your, more specifically to your question about how to manage that inside of a CRM, what I've done a lot of times in the past for certain clients is I set up. Because everyone has their series of conversations, right?

Conversation one, I need to get this information conversation. Two need to get this information. And that's the qualification process. And so what we've done is I've set up excuse me, I've set up Little clusters inside of the CRM to say, okay, meeting one, this is the information that you need. Right. How much are they, what are they expecting to get out of the project? Right. To your point, yeah. We made 57 million on our last project.

Okay, so you can afford to spend a bit of money, right? And what's gonna happen with this? What are your intentions for this? All this information that you collect over time is gonna give you that kind of that kind of final number that you feel comfortable that you feel comfortable presenting to them. And so if you can get that information and store it back in the crm, then there's a couple different things that, that you could do, potential things that you could do.

First of all, there are ways that you can build algorithms inside of your c inside of your CRM. This goes into CRM geek 3 0 3 kind of a thing. But but you can build those things out so that if. So that each value has a number associated with it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you can create this hourly rate or kind of per unit rate type of a deal that ultimately is hard coded into the system.

That, so that when the email goes out with the p with to follow up on the pricing, then you're able to you know, it's just in there, right? You, because you can personalize those emails, those automated emails and drop that information in. So that's one way to do it. But more commonly is what's gonna happen is that you're gonna be able to look back at that information and say, oh, okay, so.

Sam here said that he's got all that, that these are the things that are that he's expecting out of this project. That means that my pricing is fair at this point, and fair pricing is what we all want at the end of the day, right? Everybody presumably wants us to be paid fairly. They want to they wanna get a fair price in return.

And so having all that information and really going through the qualification process effectively is gonna be the, is oftentimes the best and most effective way to get over that hump in your head, that mental hurdle. Jonathan Green: Yeah, I think that's very interesting cuz there's all these different areas where we, when we're trying to build a business, we don't realize we have to do the marketing and the sales and the follow up. And I think that's very interesting. So let's say someone.

I am talking to someone, I realize, oh, they're not ready right now. They want me to follow up in two months. Can you write that email now and have it set to go out in two months, or do you have to set it in your tool and then you get a reminder in two months?

Ian Campbell: No, you can absolutely, in, in our tool specifically, you can absolutely set it for two for that two months and so you can, I mean, there's a couple different ways you can do that. And it depends on what you want your follow up to look like. If it's just wait two months and then send an email, then you can preschedule an email.

If it's if it's follow up on this day and then a week later they're gonna get this infor in interesting article, or, a month later they're gonna get this kind of sample of our work or whatever the case may be. Just to keep nurturing that that client. There's ways you can do both. And that's pretty interesting. So who's your ideal customer for the Mission Suite? Which is the name of your tool? Yeah. Yeah.

So our ideal cl our ideal client is really the consultants, the entrepreneurs, the kind of small teams potentially who are getting going and are trying to grow. Right? Our you know, I talked about training before and our biggest asset is the and our biggest kind of service offering is that we. Provide training at no additional cost to anybody that's using the system. So, we love working with, I was a consultant for a long time, so I feel that struggle. I was an entrepreneur.

I've been an entrepreneur for a long time. I feel that struggle really, really, really, sharply. And so I love working with people like that to. Help them grow and to help them figure out what to do next. I think that there's, so much opportunity and CRM A good CRM can be such a great force multiplier for a one man band or for a three person team, you can use a CRM and effectively. Triple or quadruple the effectiveness of your team by using a good CRM.

And our team at Mission Suite loves to actually work together on training sessions to show people exactly how to do that. Jonathan Green: Yeah, that's really cool cuz that's also important is when. One person talks to the potential customer and then someone else is picking up the conversation. I have had the problem where someone's like, yeah, I wanna do exactly what you promised. I'm like, oh boy, I don't remember what I promised or the price. I said like, that's happening. This is very, very cool.

So guys, definitely go to the mission suite.com and they've got something cool to check out at the mission suite.com/crm-four entrepreneurs. It's really been great. Thank you so much for giving me so much of your time, Ian. Thank you. I really, it's been cool to have you here today. Ian Campbell: Absolutely. Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate you having me on. Announcer: Thank you for listening to the Serve No Master Podcast. Make sure to subscribe so that together we can achieve true freedom.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Serve No Master Podcast. Make sure you subscribe so you never miss another episode. We'll be back next week with more tips and tactics on how to escape the rat race. Please take a moment to leave a review@servenomaster.com slash iTunes. It helps the show grow and more listeners means more content for you. Thanks again and we'll see you next week.