You are listening to the Scale With Speed Podcast.

Under the Scale With Speed Podcast, we’re coming to you from the CFF studios in Dallas, Texas. I’m Matt Manero and I am Judge Graham. Good to see you, buddy. Good to see you. We are back in the studio recording another episode, this episode is episode 13. I hope you guys are enjoying it. Thanks. There the, um, the downloads continue to go up week after week. So tell your friends about it. You know, Judge and I are involved in, uh, our burn, the shifts at business boot camps. If that’s of interest to you go to burn the ships.com. Our next Bootcamp is December 10th and 11th in Dallas, Texas. There is no better way for you to build a structural plan for 20, 21 than to come to our burn. The shifts Bootcamp, December 10th, and 11th.

Yeah, that’s the thing too. I mean, just a selfish plug here. I mean, and we’ve done a horrible job promoting and marketing, for this, but you know, we, we, you know, continuously sell out to everyone and you know, we’ve had over 200 people go through and we do a hundred percent money-back guarantee. No one’s ever asked. Not only has anybody ever asked, but there’s also never been now that I think of it, like, yeah, it was okay. No, it was like, this is the best business event I’ve ever been to.

We’ve had guys come through burn the ships who are part of many other,

Yeah. These are 20, $40 million companies to that.

Yeah. I mean, we’ve had a couple of guys recently from the taste syndicate, you know, and that’s five grand a month to be part of RTA, say, there’s nothing. There’s nothing like it. So that is a shameless plug on both our behalf because we believe in the freaking product and it’s such an unbelievable product. I think one of the reasons that we don’t push the sale harder is because it’s hard for us to believe that you wouldn’t just come to sell it. I know, but we do have to sell. All right, listen, here’s, we’re going to talk about something super important today, about what reviews mean. And you think that reviews mean one thing and judging, aren’t going to challenge you on today’s podcast to help you try and see them slightly differently. Yes. What do you think they mean? They do mean that, but we’re going to offer you a couple of other deeper layers of what reviews mean in your organization and why they’re so freaking important. So

We’ll do it. Let’s start you and I have created, uh, an Amazon business and hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, that first product is going to be up. Yeah. Right. Our team, the entire first two months, the strategy is around, you know, driving traffic to sell it. But being relentless on what reviews from our buyers gets reviews. And if there’s anything that needs to be tweaked or fixed, we’re going to make it happen. Because I mean, just think about the Amazon buyer. I shopped on Amazon pretty much. That’s right. If I can’t buy it on Amazon, it’s tough for me to even like, consider it besides moving my hats and trucks. Right. But how do I search

Prime? Dangerous

Prime four-star review. Yeah. That’s where it starts. That’s where it starts.

It’s so dangerous, man. We use looks, I was not much of an Amazon guy until I’m buying all this stuff for the Lakehouse. Now I just bought Allen wrenches. Oh yeah. On Amazon, everything. I looked this morning for a five-gallon jug of water. Cause we’ve got one of those. Let’s see what Amazon Scott I’ll just order on Amazon convenience, right. To the doors. Why would you go to the freakin store anymore? It’s crazy. It’s dangerous for most retailers. And that’s going to play out over the next decade for sure. But look, let’s get back to reviews. Let me give you an example. Last month, in the commercial fleet, we did 192 funded deals and we didn’t get one review.

That’s a bad way to start the podcast map.

Well, hopefully, you can relate to it because if you’re not getting many reviews too, you know, I just couldn’t understand it because I know we do good business and I know we’re good people and I know we’re servicing our customers. You can’t do that much by that, that translates to about $18 million worth of funding. So that’s a lot of dollars going through our systems. It’s a lot of customers. Um, but no reviews. Yep. So I ran a contest this month and I said, here’s what we’re going to do a commercial fleet. We’re going to pay a $25 gift card, not to the client, but to the salesperson whose client mentions their name in the review on Facebook or Google on our commercial fleet, Facebook, or Google page. And um, today is the 21st of October and we have 90 reviews done for this month. Okay. Um, wow. What’s interesting. Is anyone whose name was listed in the review? Got the 25 bucks. So not just the salesperson of record, but if they mentioned, you know, I worked with my operations person or, you know, anyone’s name that was mentioned, got the 25 bucks.

I’m going to stop you, Matt. What I think is brilliant about that too, is it just continues to frame up the authenticity of the review. I think you may not even know subconsciously what you’re doing is brilliant. And what I mean is here’s the difference, great product, a great team will buy again. I worked with Steve in sales, who connected me with Susan in OBS to ensure that this and this happened freaking brilliant. So that’s a whole separate thing of the type of review. So kudos to you because that is a differentiator. Not only getting the review but, but it, it feels and is authentic.

Yeah. Thanks, man. There’s listening. Good ideas always have multiple other benefits from it. Exactly like that. Right? So, we put that in place. Now let’s talk about how it is, how it plays out. And this is why you’re not seeing it listening. You’re not seeing this. You think the reviews are just that tagline that we have them. So now we have people within the organization who are doing a better job for the client because they want the client to give them a review. So they’re already more concerned about, am I doing a job that would be a five-star review job, right? You’re one of the core values of commercials is teamwork. So now what we’re having is salespeople go to the client after the deal is set and say, Hey, listen, did we do a good job for a great, would you do me a favor and leave a review?

And by the way, please feel free to mention anyone else in the organization that you spoke to. And the clients are listing the sales person’s name and the ops person’s name. Right. Which is awesome. The third piece that’s happening is every time one of the reviews comes in, we screenshot it and email it out to the entire company. So everyone sees that Jeff and Elena just got a new five star. Love it. Great. So that reinforces winning for the good ones. The top dogs like promotion. They want pats on the back and you’re saying, no, my top dogs, they just want their paycheck. No, they want more than the paycheck. They want recognition. Yeah. Love being number one creates momentum and in competition. And you will love it. Love it. And what else happens, which is so magical is that when you’re when your name isn’t being mentioned, it opens up the question of why, why isn’t James getting the news? What’s going on, James? I saw that you did 10 deals last month, but none of them left you a review. And then the final piece of reviews that we want you to look at it differently is this just happened yesterday.

The brand new client didn’t know him from Adam. Like we talk about in burn, the ships, 67% of prospects will go to your digital presence before they ever return your phone call. They will research your company before they return all your cold calls or your direct mail or your email campaign or whatever it is you’re doing to get in front of them. They’re going to do their research. What are they saying? What are they looking for? Totally. So now this customer yesterday calls Jeff and specifically rents references. I was looking at your reviews and I noticed your name a lot. So I’m calling you to do my deal because you have a lot of good positive reviews. Now, all of that, when you start to intermingle all of it, you put the flush out. Are we doing a good job? Well, we should be getting reviews.

What does it do to the core value of teamwork and how do we get more people represented? How does the salesperson offer up the ability to say, Hey, reference my people to man? Don’t just put my name in it, right? The company incentivizes everybody who has your name. The weak people begin to say to themselves, man, I should start by getting my roommate. I’m seeing Jeff’s name all the time and I want to get a little more deals I want. Yeah. And then the organic customer comes and says, so when we talk about reviews, it’s so much bigger than a review when it’s done. Right? So that’s the example that we have for you today. And by the way, um, you know, it is a freaking proof point. Like if you’re doing five-star business, people ought to be saying you did five-star buds,

A proof point it’s, it’s not a, a, a nice to have. It’s a must to one it scale must. But dude, it’s self-reflection time too. Yes. Okay. If you’re not getting those, go start to get them. And what are they? Right. And if you’re getting the ones and twos and threes, you got some work to do. You got some wood to chop, but you know, it may be time to do a reset, but man, there’s so much to unpack what you just said. I mean, like I would rewind this one, right? Because you’re one year you’re giving the customer what they need to decide the sale. You’re creating teamwork, comradery, competitiveness within the organization. You’re now showing the organization. If you focus on the reviews and they put your name in it, you ultimately can make more money, which creates this new and heightened level of customer service support, salesmanship review, like it’s a full circle. It’s a win in every facet.

It’s a prerequisite to winning business in the future, you have to have a review strategy and keep it, which by the way, should go back and listen to the last one. Client retention last episode on client retention. So we’re, you might consider this to be basic stuff, but I can tell you that for a company that does a lot of deals. Yeah. 192 a month, a lot, it wasn’t happening. Wow. No one was leaving us reviews. Number one, we weren’t asking for number two, the company wasn’t incentivizing them. By the way that operations person, whose name keeps popping up with this one salesperson. Don’t you think that solidifies their teamwork too, that he feels comfortable with it? She’s probably gotten 20, $25 gift cards. That’s 500 bucks. She may just because the company decided to put this little program together now, you know, listen to me, there’s a lot of belts. 500 bucks probably pay a car payment. If she wants her 500 bucks buy some Christmas gifts or 500 bucks buys a new outfit or two or three or four, lots of pairs of shoes. I mean, you think 25 isn’t meaningful, but at the scale it does man. So what’s the converse to the content, right? So lets at the end of the month, it’s a hundred, a hundred times 25 is 2,500 bucks. Did we piss away 2,500 bucks here on fucking toilet paper every month for Christ’s sake?

Yeah. It doesn’t matter. And I think the longer-term play here is if you ever sell you think those customer reviews are going to be important to the buyer, do you think we’re going to do that diligence? Right? And if you have a thousand plus, and they’re all, you know, three to five stars, do you think that’s going to make that buyer feel pretty comfortable that it’s not smoke and mirrors? You’ve got a real process. You’ve got a real team. You got it all. You know, Matt, you it’s, it’s the same. That’s been said a lot, but you’ve coined this idea of dude, we’re not playing checkers. We’re playing chess. That is a chess move. That may not, that pays off instantly to new sales, but it’s a bigger long-term game. That’s four moves ahead. If you’re trying to sell your company, the difference of having, you know, five to six reviews versus thousands of three and five stars, what does that look like in an exit? It’s meaningful to either get the deal potentially done or not.

Now one last takeaway judge, for why people should look at reviews differently. After listening to this podcast, if you get one you now have every right to call that person and say, do to fix it. What happened certainly to the client, but also to the individual who got the one we don’t operate with, we operate with fives. So what on earth happened here? Was it a training issue? Was it an attitude issue? What on earth derailed that all of a sudden we had 50, 60, 70, 80, 105 stars leaderboards. Now you have a measure of another way to have a measurable leaderboard. So we encourage you sounds simple, but you know, I love how, how, how Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner says it, right? Common sense is not common. This is a perfect example of something that seems so simple, but never gets done. And it’s so impactful. Go do it.

Yeah. You’re in business. The only way you stay in business is the customers. And the only way you can keep those customers are they happy? And this is a great widow.

Now, judge, you tell me what you think about this. Cause I haven’t, I haven’t thought this through enough on this one. Do you think if the company has lots of five-star reviews, legitimate five-star reviews that sway someone from leaving a one-star review, do they go and say, Oh, I don’t want to tarnish it. Or does it empower that customer to leave the shitty review?

Dude, listen, people are mostly sheep. They want to follow the trend right now. You get a few assholes that want a bucket. Right. And you know, you’re going to get that. But listen, dude. I mean, if I had a good experience and I’m leaving a review and I see more five, it just validates my feeling.

I know a guy. And if I mentioned his name on the podcast, most people listening would know him and the books that he’s written. Yeah. Okay. They are very, very popular books. And he does guerrilla marketing for his books. Like to the point where he, when Barnes and Noble weren’t, um, um, what am I, um, stacking his books. They weren’t, you could buy his book in the store. He had all his buddies around the town go to all Barnes and Noble and put the books in and people would come to the register to buy them. And they’d be like, something’s going on? This is finally when the store manager called him. It’s like, what’s going on, man? If you’re not in our system. I gotta, you gotta be in our system. Boom. He gets Barnes and Noble to carry his books. Right.

But he told me one time, he said he purposely has his friends go and leave shitty reviews for his book because it makes the book more credible to the FiveStars. He says, if it’s nothing but five stars and no one stars, people begin to question the five stars. So my point is, don’t be afraid of the one star. Use it as an opportunity to train and get better, but also recognize that you may have a disgruntled former employee who wants to get ya. And if you’ve got 1,005 stars, the one doesn’t hurt you as badly. But if you’ve got five, five stars, the one hurt ya.

Yeah. It’s always a volume game, man. I’m telling you if you guys just through the scale game,

If you say, after you listened to this, I’m going to do this now 20, 21, we’ll set up a lot better than it looks right now for you. So

Leave us a freaking review on this podcast. I, I haven’t looked last time. I think it’s good.

Go hit a five star. If you don’t mind, he’ll put one star and give us a few reasons for what you’d like to hear us say or how we could be better. But we believe in our content. We know it works. We’ve got hundreds of people coming through the burn, the ships, you should be number 201 come to the December 10th and 11th, go to burn the ships.com. Do us a favor, hit buy, spend the 4,000 bucks, buy the ticket to come to it, and leave it up to judge. And I, and you will leave with a structured roadmap for 2021 in your business. It’s the best $4,000 you could spend in your business.

Yeah. And we have those reviews on burning, the ships.com through testimonials, real tests, video testimonials, video testimonials, people selling their company. So anyhow, the proof is always in the pudding, right? It is ma’am so go make sure your proof is real. Get the customer reviews, do mat strategy, right? I mean, go back and listen to that. Right? It’s like an octopus with eight different, you know, little things to get in there. I mean, man, that was just, that was good. It was a cruise ship,

Man. That’s a good one. It’s not that complicated. It’s not

Complicated with a simple, but the value of it is just when it’s going to change the culture here too. Yeah. Right now that’s part of the process of the, okay, I’m on the call. I’m selling him. I got to get the review. What’s he going to say? Was I good at like, it’s going to, everybody’s going to just amplify their game because they know not only do I got to try to get the review,

I got to make sure it’s good. Now it is a game-changer for this business. Judge. One last thing to add, add on that. It also sets up the new milestone for you never to go the other way. Everything would be moving forward to, well, what’s the review look like? How many reviews did you get? Why didn’t you get a review from that guy? Why would we ever go back? So great. We’re going to get a hundred this month. Great. At the end of the year, it’s 1200 new reviews on the business in 12 months. Did that? I don’t know if you need more than 1200. I mean, shit. I mean, at some point it keeps going, keep going, but I mean, fuck. That’s a lot. Yeah. You know, so anyway, I hope you guys learned from this one today. Judges always appreciate being with you. Don’t forget. Burn the ships.com December 10th and 11th. Don’t be afraid. Hit the register by the way. We’re about half sold out for that event already. We had some, we had alumni by

Last night, right? Uh, five Oh five last night, bringing this whole management team there. It’s like, I need everybody to see this. All right. See you down the road. Make it happen.