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Before the Sale: Guest Craig Arthur on Profitable Relationships - Part 2
Episode 312nd March 2024 • Connect & Convert: The Sales Accelerator Podcast • Sales RX and Wizard of Ads Employee Optimization
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This podcast episode delves into the transformative power of relational marketing, emphasizing the crucial role of staff training in fostering profitable customer relationships. Through a compelling conversation with Craig Arthur, listeners gain insights into creating a customer-centric business culture that aligns advertising messages with actual customer experiences, thereby enhancing loyalty and sales.

Transcripts

Dennis:

Welcome to another episode of Connect and Convert, the Sales Accelerator

Dennis:

podcast, where each week we share insider secrets of how to grow your sales fast.

Dennis:

Hey, Leah, I'm joined by Leah.

Dennis:

I'm Dennis.

Dennis:

Hey, Dennis.

Dennis:

Hi, Leah.

Dennis:

Hi.

Dennis:

It's Leah Bumfrey and it's Dennis Collins.

Dennis:

We're back again.

Dennis:

We have another special treat.

Dennis:

I hope that you caught a previous episode with our guest Craig.

Dennis:

Why are we talking to Craig?

Dennis:

How to win the hearts, the money, and loyalty of profitable customers.

Dennis:

101 Relational Marketing Principles.

Dennis:

A Wizard of Ads Marketing Guide.

Dennis:

Wow.

Dennis:

I love the way he introduces himself in the book.

Dennis:

I'm an Aussie.

Dennis:

I love a good glass of red, a joke, and a laugh.

Dennis:

I love spending time with family and friends.

Dennis:

I take my work seriously, but not myself.

Dennis:

Please let me introduce, ladies and gentlemen, a fellow Wizard of Oz

Dennis:

partner, a colleague, and a dear, dear person, a man who has decided

Dennis:

in his life to make a difference.

Dennis:

Please welcome Craig Arthur.

Craig:

Thank you.

Craig:

Boy.

Craig:

ALICE That was, um, yeah, that was another big entrance.

Craig:

JUSTIN

Dennis:

Well, you know, you're a big guy!

Dennis:

You represent the entire nation of Australia.

Dennis:

And New Zealand, probably, too, and maybe the Asia Pacific, I don't know.

Craig:

ALICE Just take Fiji in there, too, and New Caledonia, I'll add them all.

Craig:

Tonga.

Craig:

JUSTIN You

Dennis:

should.

Dennis:

Onga, that would be my favourite.

Dennis:

ALICE Yeah, Tonga.

Dennis:

JUSTIN Look, I hope that we have some of our listeners and viewers who have seen

Dennis:

and heard you in our previous episode.

Dennis:

So we're not going to backtrack on that.

Dennis:

We want to cut some new ice, as they say, up in Canada.

Dennis:

So I, I particularly liked, you have a lot of great quotes in

Dennis:

the book, very quotable book.

Dennis:

And we were kidding about Confucius, you know, whenever you don't know who

Dennis:

said something, Confucius said it.

Dennis:

Yeah.

Dennis:

But, but here's, here's a quote that I particularly caught my fancy in the book.

Dennis:

Sending men to war without training is like abandoning them.

Dennis:

And you have rephrased that for the current day, sending

Dennis:

staff to help customers without training is like abandoning them.

Dennis:

Really?

Dennis:

That's pretty heavy.

Dennis:

Abandoning them.

Dennis:

So your, your conclusion is staff, staff training is good marketing.

Dennis:

Help us with that.

Craig:

You summed it up nicely because we always say, these are the people

Craig:

that are going out Um, you know, representing you and you don't train them.

Craig:

Um, so what does that say?

Craig:

First impressions that people are going to have of your

Craig:

business are of untrained staff.

Craig:

Now, in Confucius time, they just got killed.

Craig:

In modern times, in modern times, you miss the sale.

Craig:

Um, purely from the fact that your staff aren't up to, up to speed.

Craig:

And so just on that is a really good, um, and if people can watch the first episode

Craig:

we did on a relational transactional, but if you're running relational ads,

Craig:

which we touched on, uh, ads about the customer and helping the customer and

Craig:

your sales team are basically doing something different, which is like

Craig:

transactional or they're not trained.

Craig:

There'll be a disconnect, and in any business, the minute there's

Craig:

a disconnect, people stop.

Craig:

So you need that flow, you need something to, a good example, there was ads on

Craig:

um, Australian TV for a company, I won't mention the name, but it was an insurance

Craig:

company, and the little guy in the ad was so likeable and lovely, he was just

Craig:

this really nice guy, and they, they sat in a car with With customers and talk

Craig:

to customers about the money they saved.

Craig:

And it was, I just felt good about these ads.

Craig:

And I just keep watching these ads and I felt good about them, so guess

Craig:

what happened, the time to renew my insurance, car insurance, what did I do?

Craig:

I thought of these, I thought of these people first, felt good

Craig:

about them, and called them.

Craig:

They were relational ads and the first person that I dealt with was a

Craig:

Hard sell salesperson who was exactly the opposite of what their ads were.

Dennis:

I just had a client like that.

Dennis:

I actually, it's interesting you say that I had a client that was

Dennis:

doing lovely relational advertising.

Dennis:

It was award winning stuff.

Dennis:

But when you dive into the sales team, it was all transactional.

Dennis:

No good.

Dennis:

No good.

Dennis:

You, you've obviously been there too.

Craig:

Conversion rates just plummet.

Craig:

When that happens, because it's like your friend, you've got a friend who's lovely

Craig:

and the next thing, the next time you see them, they are completely the opposite and

Craig:

it's like, Whoa, this, what's going on?

Craig:

This is crazy stuff.

Craig:

So I, I, I just hung up from this woman.

Craig:

And every time I see the ads now, it just reminds me of the experience

Craig:

I had with this salesperson.

Craig:

Now there's two problems there.

Craig:

One, the company has, has projected an image.

Craig:

That's not really them or.

Craig:

Their sales team haven't been trained in that particular way in

Craig:

the, in the way of the company.

Craig:

And so that salesperson has just reverted back to her normal training, which

Craig:

means that they haven't trained her up.

Craig:

So.

Dennis:

Yeah, as you know, that's what we do is, is we try to take.

Dennis:

Salespeople who tend to, um, go to the transactional and

Dennis:

try to make them relational.

Dennis:

Leah, uh, and I do this every week.

Dennis:

Maybe you have some thoughts on it, Leah.

Leah:

Well, it makes me go back to something else that's in your book.

Leah:

Craig and something that Dennis and I talk about a lot and it's the core value.

Leah:

The other way we express that is that sword in the stone, which makes me think

Leah:

of Wizard Academy, of course, whose sponsors, co sponsors are this podcast.

Leah:

But honestly, that sword is so important because you, you, you know

Leah:

what your business is about and you want your people to know about it.

Leah:

How, how, like, what would you expand or how would you expand on that?

Leah:

Cause I know that's a big part of.

Leah:

Your belief system is laid out there.

Craig:

Sword in the Stone core values flow, and that's where this salesperson,

Craig:

if, if, if she understood the core values or the company had trained her

Craig:

in the core values, she wouldn't have approached the sales process like she did.

Craig:

Um, core values to me, uh, why we call it the Sword in the Stone,

Craig:

the Arthurian legend where only the rightful king, um, Arthur, could

Craig:

pull the sword from the stone.

Craig:

And, um, to do that, they're your core values as in, I will always

Craig:

do this as a business, we will always deliver on what we promise.

Craig:

And it's also all the things that we will never do.

Craig:

We will never ever make a sale at the cost of hurting the customer or, or, you

Craig:

know, the customer has to win as well.

Craig:

So what are the things that you will never ever do?

Craig:

Um, I don't work with customers or businesses that I don't believe in.

Craig:

That I don't trust and I wouldn't deal with myself.

Craig:

So now that costs you money.

Craig:

If, if you believe in a Northstar or, um, core values are only core values,

Craig:

if they cost you something, if it costs you a customer, well, you are actually,

Craig:

yeah, that's, that's a true core value.

Craig:

If it doesn't cost you any money and you just move, well, you didn't really,

Craig:

that wasn't a core value at all.

Craig:

I met a young guy once, he was back in the day when you had webmasters, and

Craig:

he worked for a media station, and he said, We don't have a sword in the stud,

Craig:

um, stone, we have a sword in the mud.

Craig:

We just move it, the sales team move it wherever they

Craig:

want to go just to make budget.

Craig:

So now, that is, we only deal with relational, I only deal with relational,

Craig:

um, owner operated companies.

Craig:

Now the beauty is with that, the owner can say is, you know what, we don't

Craig:

have to make budget this, this month.

Craig:

We're not going to make budget at the cost of compromising what we believe in.

Craig:

Um, that's when you know that it's a true core value.

Craig:

So, at Wizard Academy, we talk about Wizard Academy, there is actually

Craig:

a tower where you stand and look up and there's a sword set in the top of

Craig:

Wizard Academy because it's such an important part of what we teach and

Craig:

what we believe in at Wizard of Ads.

Craig:

And if you stand there on these, these two feet that are set in the stone in

Craig:

the ground and look up, at Um, sword, you'll actually see the North star

Craig:

that we discussed in the first episode.

Craig:

So the North star, the sword and the stone and the entrepreneur

Craig:

is where they are now looking up.

Craig:

They're the things we talk about are so important to our company

Craig:

and our training facilities.

Craig:

They're actually built, they're emboldened.

Craig:

So, and it's part of our logo as well.

Craig:

The, the child with the sword and the, and the star, the child represents.

Craig:

The business owner who has that childlike quality of, I'm going to get knocked

Craig:

down, but keep getting up, you know, as a kid, um, Leah, you've got three boys.

Craig:

They've probably done some crazy stuff when they're kids where you

Craig:

get on a, you get on a push bike.

Craig:

I used to have a dragster back in the day.

Craig:

I'm 62.

Craig:

So back in the day, you had a three speed dragster with, you

Craig:

know, um, handlebars up here and it would look like a chopper bike.

Craig:

Whoa.

Craig:

And I'd, I'd, yeah, I was, I was, yeah, tough.

Craig:

And set up a ramp that was wobbly and go down this ramp and all of a

Craig:

sudden, you know, you'd crash, but you get it back up and do it again.

Craig:

Now, an entrepreneur, why we use a child representing the entrepreneur,

Craig:

they get back up all the time.

Craig:

As a business owner, you're going to get knocked around, but you get back up.

Craig:

So a child has that constant curiosity, that constant wonder,

Craig:

they're looking at the world.

Craig:

Most people, unfortunately, as we get older, we tend to get Belted around

Craig:

and we, we lose our confidence and we just, there's been some songs,

Craig:

we just do it for the man and we just make the money and go to work.

Craig:

The entrepreneur looks at things in a different way and it

Craig:

doesn't matter how old they are.

Craig:

They still have that sense of wonder, that curiosity, um, constant learning.

Craig:

They're just looking at, you know, how can we make the world better?

Craig:

How can we do things better?

Craig:

So again, the values come important.

Craig:

My values tend to be curiosity is a big one.

Craig:

And I think I've heard you guys discuss curiosity before as a

Craig:

salesperson, as a salesperson.

Craig:

Curiosity is asking questions and looking as learning as much as you can about

Craig:

the person that you're trying to help.

Craig:

Um, empathy is something that I learned.

Craig:

Way back, and that was my story as a kid, um, empathy, fun, I just

Craig:

love to muck around and enjoy life.

Craig:

Um, I like to be serious, but you need to have fun and laugh.

Craig:

Simplicity is a big thing, and that's when I put my book together.

Craig:

I made sure that I, I simplified a lot of, um, well 101, plus it's actually

Craig:

112, marketing, relational marketing concepts, and reduced them down

Craig:

into one page that was so simple to understand that it'd fit on one page.

Craig:

And Dennis And Leah, you said it before too, each page is like a seed

Craig:

where it's the seed of an idea that you can turn into a, a blog post, a

Craig:

podcast, it's something that you can take with your business and try and

Craig:

implement it forever, just on one page.

Craig:

And there's one idea, if you take nothing away from the book, there's

Craig:

one idea that it says, if you want to build a relational customer centric

Craig:

business, focus on one question, does this help or hinder the customer?

Craig:

If it helps, do it.

Craig:

If it hinders, dump it.

Craig:

Now that's like a North Star.

Craig:

Everything we do, if you've got your sales staff and your frontline staff

Craig:

trained, all as they need to know is, does this help or hinder the customer?

Craig:

If it helps, do it.

Craig:

If it hinders, don't.

Craig:

And so you don't need a mission statement because, you know, if you lined up mission

Craig:

statements, a hundred people, most people wouldn't know what the mission statement

Craig:

of their business was, but a North star is something that everyone should understand.

Craig:

We're going to help the customer.

Craig:

If it helps do it, if it hinders don't.

Craig:

I think sometimes people get confused with mission statements, um, and North

Craig:

Stars, but a mission statement is just a whole heap of, um, ad speak.

Craig:

It's a whole heap of, um, buzzwords stuck together that makes it look, sound good,

Craig:

but no one can, no one can remember them.

Leah:

You know, Craig, what I am loving when I'm, I'm listening

Leah:

to you is your passion for this.

Leah:

And I just visualize you sitting down with just a blank screen blinking

Leah:

at you as you try to put this all together, because the format is simple.

Leah:

It's designed to help.

Leah:

It's your core values at work here.

Leah:

And that I think is what's so spectacular because it's,

Leah:

it's, it's tangible and usable.

Leah:

You're not just showing off how much, you know, which you could

Leah:

have easily done in the book.

Leah:

What could have been this thick?

Leah:

Instead, it's.

Leah:

Hey, this is stuff I know, and this is what I've experienced, and here are

Leah:

stories, and this is what you should do.

Dennis:

Craig, could I ask you a question, uh, maybe you've been asked this before,

Dennis:

what was the most surprising thing, or the most unexpected thing, or maybe the

Dennis:

funniest thing that you learned while researching and writing this book?

Craig:

Thing I loved about researching this is, it's been something

Craig:

that I've been doing all my life.

Craig:

Because, if you look at it this way, I love collecting things.

Craig:

And be it quotes or be it ideas and the trouble is before I never really

Craig:

had anywhere to put all these in one place I had them you know all over

Craig:

my desk and in my head and this is something I thought you know what.

Craig:

I need to put all this down into one book, these ideas that I've been collecting,

Craig:

these quotes that I've been collecting, not, most of this isn't my stuff, it's

Craig:

just stuff that I found that works, it's stuff I believe in, it's stuff that we

Craig:

apply for our customers, I've applied it in business before, so everything's

Craig:

been something that works, but, it's, So I'm a curator, a collector of, um,

Craig:

things, instead of teapots or, or tennis rackets, I like to collect ideas and

Craig:

quotes, and this I found was a really good way to put them all in one place,

Craig:

so that, you know what, I've got a lot, I've got a whiteboard up here with a

Craig:

lot of them stuck on the board, because, you know what happens is, You have so

Craig:

many ideas in your life and you forget so many and I like to keep turning to

Craig:

the, I go through the book every day and go, yes, I need to apply that.

Craig:

I need to keep applying it.

Craig:

So if, if anything else, the fun thing for me was, it was just getting all,

Craig:

all this stuff in my head down on paper and learning as well and, and

Craig:

highlighting other people because I've highlighted some partners and other

Craig:

people I know in the book, because again, there's so many smart people out there.

Craig:

And it's, it's just shining the spotlight on them.

Craig:

Um, and that's what I like to do as well.

Craig:

I'm like the man behind the curtain.

Craig:

I don't like being out in center stage.

Craig:

I like to be behind the curtain, helping a business person or

Craig:

helping someone else succeed.

Craig:

And the whole idea of this book is.

Craig:

Just do these things and you will, it's just a matter of applying these things.

Dennis:

That's the hard part, isn't it?

Dennis:

What we, we and I kind of have a slogan with some of our customers, you

Dennis:

know, it's not about what, you know, it's not even about what you learn.

Dennis:

It's about what you use, what, what do you put into action and, you know, what,

Dennis:

uh, but I highly encourage people to pick up the book, uh, we could again, spend

Dennis:

hours on this, how to win the hearts.

Dennis:

The money and the loyalty of profitable customers.

Dennis:

This is my highly marked up copy.

Dennis:

I've got lines and arrows and I mean, I've just devoured this several times.

Dennis:

I've also provided it to several of my local colleagues here in

Dennis:

Florida and they are loving it.

Dennis:

So, uh, what can I say?

Dennis:

Good for you.

Dennis:

You, you did a good job here.

Dennis:

Even more, you shared.

Dennis:

With us.

Dennis:

We appreciate the time.

Dennis:

Uh, that's, I think this is going to be very interesting to our listeners,

Dennis:

to our viewers, uh, I hope someday we can, we can do this again.

Dennis:

When episode two, I, I notice on the cover of the book, episode one, so I'm

Dennis:

hoping that there's an episode two.

Leah:

Maybe he's going to announce that to us today, Dennis.

Dennis:

Well, I would, he has the every opportunity.

Dennis:

I'm going to shut up and let him announce right now.

Craig:

Episode two is coming.

Craig:

And that was the message to myself more so than anyone else that

Craig:

I need to have the second book.

Craig:

Um, understood.

Craig:

And I was, I put volume one on there and I was having coffee with my good mate

Craig:

that we meet every Saturday and discuss.

Craig:

Stuff.

Craig:

And he said, um, volume one sounds like an encyclopedia.

Craig:

And they died like the dinosaurs and . So I, I said, okay, star

Craig:

Wars, let's make it episode one.

Craig:

Um, so he went to the bathroom.

Craig:

When I come back, I said, look, I've changed the cover for you episode one.

Craig:

It's now episode one.

Craig:

So episode one.

Craig:

But it, it, it is because it is something I now want to do a

Craig:

book a year, um, moving forward.

Craig:

Wow.

Craig:

So.

Leah:

And we can say we knew him when Dennis, we can say...

Dennis:

we knew him when we, we, we hope he'll still talk to us after

Dennis:

he reaches the highest of fame and fortune, maybe he'll remember us.

Dennis:

I don't know.

Dennis:

I'm not a little people.

Dennis:

I have one closing thought that, that Craig wrote, uh, I want to capture and

Dennis:

share with our listeners and viewers.

Dennis:

One day, a little voice in your head will say, I'm fed up

Dennis:

with my business not growing.

Dennis:

I'm sick of wasting money on advertising.

Dennis:

I want more profitable customers.

Dennis:

That's when people call Craig Arthur, right?

Dennis:

That's when people call Craig Arthur.

Dennis:

How can they reach you?

Dennis:

Tell us your best way to get in touch with you.

Craig:

Best way to get in touch with me is my email, craigarthur at wizardofads.

Craig:

com, or you can go to my website, yeah, um, wizardofads.

Craig:

com.

Craig:

au for the website, but just com for the email address.

Dennis:

Dot com.

Dennis:

I love it.

Dennis:

Uh, and don't you guys, I hope all of our listeners and viewers love his accent.

Dennis:

We could just listen to that all day.

Leah:

Absolutely.

Leah:

That's kind of why I wanted you on the, on the podcast.

Leah:

Yeah.

Leah:

I mean, I like the book, but

Dennis:

the accent.

Dennis:

As I said, I've been practicing

Craig:

it, practicing this accent for 62 years, so it's.

Dennis:

You've got it.

Dennis:

You've got it down, mate.

Dennis:

Good one.

Dennis:

Almost, mate.

Dennis:

Yeah.

Dennis:

Leah, I would love your thoughts here as we close this session out.

Dennis:

What, uh, what are you thinking?

Leah:

Well, you know what, it is just such a pleasure to see someone who had

Leah:

the idea and actually did the deed.

Leah:

I mean, this, this is, I don't know how many hours, I don't know how much brain

Leah:

space, but it's a lot to put it down and then be able to share that with people.

Leah:

Cause when you talk to someone.

Leah:

You talk to one person, when you write a book, you talk to generations.

Leah:

So bravo.

Leah:

And, uh, we can go on Amazon, we can order this, we can, and Dennis, I

Leah:

think this might be our opportunity.

Leah:

The best question that we get emailed to us on, from this episode.

Leah:

It's one of the great books.

Dennis:

Yes!

Dennis:

Great idea.

Dennis:

Yes, we usually have a question of the day, and we will, uh,

Dennis:

save that for the next time.

Dennis:

So when you hear this or see this, please send us your question.

Dennis:

If we choose your question, You're a winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Dennis:

No problem.

Dennis:

Okay.

Dennis:

Okay, guys.

Dennis:

Anything else, Craig, that we missed?

Dennis:

That we should talk about before we sign off?

Craig:

No, I think the important thing is, as you said, it's just the daily,

Craig:

once you've got a destination or a goal in front Get a process to get you there

Craig:

and just focus on the process, focus on the, the daily things that you need

Craig:

to do in sales or in business and just keep focusing on doing those things well

Craig:

and you'll get to where you want to go.

Leah:

And we know we're having you back on again because you're going to have that,

Dennis:

you may, yeah, we'll save a space.

Dennis:

I mean, we're a very busy podcast, but we'll save a space for you.

Dennis:

Okay, thank you.

Craig:

Thank you very much.

Dennis:

And thank you for listening and viewing.

Dennis:

This is Dennis Collins and Leah Bumfrey saying so long.

Dennis:

Connect and convert.

Dennis:

We'll be back next week with a new episode.

Dennis:

Tune in, connect and convert.

Dennis:

Thanks, Craig.

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