Blake Binns: More Sales with Less Customers

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Mr. Blake Binns. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. How are you doing? Hey man. How are you doing? I’m good. I’ll um, before we hit record, we we’re talking about very masculine things and beard. So, um, naturally. Yeah. Yeah. That’s funny. You, like you said, it seems like every time we have a guest that, um, one of us has a beard than, than.

You talk about beards, you got to man. Well, you know, it’s, it’s, I feel like all of us, or maybe I’m projecting. I feel like when I was a kid, like all of my friends, none of us could grow beards. And so now that we are all at the age that we can find, I mean, I think it came in at like 25 and now that we’re at the age that everyone can have a beard.

Now we just like explicitly make sure to like, when we see someone’s Beaver, like it’s a nice beard to a stranger. I’m sure. I’m sure strangers are like, what’s wrong with you? Like, why are, you know, Thanks. All right. So Blake, um, I asked our guests two questions. Question number one is what’s your area of expertise and what are we gonna learn from you today?

Yeah, so I run a business coaching company called good advice and really the sweet spot for our company is we help companies build their 1000 raving fans, which is a very basic concept that comes from the thousand true fans concept. And it’s basically, how do you really grow a business where your customers love to buy from you again and again, and again?

And it’s not just your external company customers, it’s also your internal customers. Meaning how do you have employees who really love your company? Uh, which is especially true right now during COVID, because frankly there’s a lot of employees who are like, do my company sucks. Like they did not keep take care of me at all.

Um, so, so essentially we’re we’re growing businesses is what we do for a living. Okay, cool. Yeah, I actually have, um, uh, I want to dig pretty deep on that, because like you said, it’s applicable to the current economic environment, but not until I ask you question number two, which is, what do you suck at?

Like, well, we probably should get my wife in here cause she would, she would probably tell you, you know, it’s funny because. I, I was doing, uh, a personality test with some people. And there were like all these flaws that showed up and I was like, I was like, this test sucks. And so I got home, I got home.

Sure. Her name is my, my wife’s name is joy. And I was like, can you believe how jive this test is? And she’s like, Oh yeah, that’s all you sure.

I would say I probably I’m super sarcastic. And so I’m, I’m pretty sucky at like going deep with people. Like it’s hard for me to like, not make a joke. And especially like when my wife is like really feeling raw about something and I make some comment and she’s like, all right, I’m calling my sister.

Listen. Yeah. So I would say, aye. Aye. I mean, I can have deep conversation and not that all the therapists listening are like, what’s wrong with this guy? I just, I just like humor, you know, I just like to make jokes and I dunno, it’s just my personality, I guess. So I was, um, we were talking to Todd Hartley, I guess the other day.

And, and, uh, he runs this big company. He was kind of saying the same thing. He’s like, man, when I’m in meetings, like I’m just waiting for the punchline. Like I can’t stare at spreadsheets and numbers and the whole time I’m looking for jokes, let’s see. Isn’t that kind like, you know, you think about it and like so many meetings get so in the weeds, you kind of need that person to like.

Bring people out of it and be like, okay, let’s, let’s actually lighten up and really think about what we do. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So a thousand raving fans, um, I’m familiar with concept and I assume that some of the people might, even if they’re not familiar with concept, they they’re probably familiar because of like the what’s what’s the other thing, a hundred.

Your dream 100. So I assume it’s like, kind of, yeah. There’s tons of variants of it. Yes. I say that with me having a variant of it. I mean, it’s, it is very intuitive. I mean, it doesn’t take it. Doesn’t take rocket science to understand the concept. Uh, but in case maybe your listeners aren’t fully familiar of it.

The bottom line is. To, to grow a sustainable business. You don’t need to chase thousands and thousands or millions of customers. What’s actually more profitable and sustainable for your business is to build a tribe of people who love your brand and who actually will buy from you over and over and over again.

And it there’s a lot of, um, uh, you can get really into the weeds on the details of looking at like the. The value of a return customer versus what you spend to acquire a new customer. Um, all of these things together, kind of what build this, um, very common strategy in business. So how did you get into specializing in this?

So I was working for a consulting. I was an executive coach at a consulting company here in Northwest Arkansas, um, which I got to plug Northwest Arkansas for a second. Cause anytime I mentioned that people are like, actually I mentioned that the other day and someone was like, Oh man, I was in Phoenix the other day.

And I was like, okay, well that’s Arizona, you know, you got the a right. You know, but, um, so people really mix it up. Oh yeah, man. Well, you know, the South is, you never know what state you’re in, I guess. I don’t know. But, uh, comments, I get comments like that all the time or, you know, they’re like, Oh, what’s even in Arkansas.

And I’m like, well, that’s a fair question, but. In Northwest Arkansas, we actually have the headquarters of Walmart, Tyson, JB hunt, three really awesome fortune 500 companies. And so probably about four years ago, I was working as an executive coach for this really awesome consulting company in our area.

And we were serving companies like Walmart, Tyson, JB hunt, these other companies. But part of what was happening in this process was I was realizing that. We were leaving a lot of money on the table by really not nurturing the relationships we had. We were kind of all over the place. And so whenever I left that company, I kind of had that in the back of my mind.

And when I went on to start good advice, I started working with business owners who. And this is so true in business. I’m sure you see this all the time as well. There’s, there’s nothing, there’s no new concept in business. Like a lot of this stuff is really, um, basic. It’s easy to understand. However, it’s hard to actually implement.

And so I started working with business owners and I was just, I was just talking about growing businesses. I wasn’t even talking about raving fans. But it starts talking to business owners who were doing things that were, so they were, they were in such opposition of the concepts. So here’s a great example.

I was working with a guy who sells, basically sells protein powder and he had a customer who, you know, the average customer buys like a, a, um, A two quart container of protein and it’s maybe like 20 bucks, 30 bucks or whatever. Well, he had this one customer who bought something like $300 worth of protein powder.

And then the customer asks and you know, those little like obnoxious plastic, uh, cup things that, you know, they get lost in the protein powder. You can never find it. I, yeah. Yeah. Well, so I say it, like, I work out, like, I just know what I know about it. So. You had these really obnoxious little cups, they get lost in the protein powder.

Well, this customer says, Hey, could I possibly get a couple of extra just since I bought so much? Um, sometimes I typically lose it. Would it be okay? Well, this business owner got so offended and talking to me was like, I feel like my customers taking advantage of me that he’s trying to get an extra buck out of me.

Like, how do I tell this person? No. And I’m like, You know, you’re crazy. What are you doing? And I’m like, how much does this little plastic thing costs you? And he’s like, well, it cost me. Yeah. It cost me, pennies cost me nothing. And I’m like, what, what is wrong with you? You need to tell them. Yeah, of course you can have these cups, like, absolutely thank you for your business.

And that’s an extreme example, but, but over and over and over again, I was seeing business owners who were really tanking their company by not. Not understanding what good customer service looks like and really, how do I really retain a really incredible customer rather than, um, actually I had one business owner who was like, well, if they don’t like what I’m selling, they can go somewhere else.

And I was like, well, they, they, they will go somewhere else. That’s, that’s how business works. And so I would say over the last couple of years of my business, it’s really sort of, it’s just been a passion project for me. I’ve kind of just. The business has evolved to really hone in on and you need to be building those raving fans.

If you’re going to have something meaningful. All right side. Now on the protein guy, because I’m in that pain. I see the, I ha I am that problem customer, but I don’t know if you still talk to the guy, but you know, what you need to do is, is I can’t remember who does it, but I’ve seen brands that they have a little slit underneath the lid and it slides in.

And so it just stays there. So then when you take off, it’s just there. Yeah, so that would be great. But see, here’s, what’s funny about that though, is that maybe I bet that top the plastic top for that container, I would say that top maybe cost them an additional maybe like two or 3 cents, like nothing, but this type of business owner would cause again, these types of people are so cost cutting focused that we’ll let the customer experience suffer.

That kind of person wouldn’t ever, it would never indulge in that kind of idea, you know? Um, All right. So, um, what type? So I imagine that some of the listeners are thinking like, okay, this sounds cool. Um, you know, Sure Blake, a thousand thousand or eight pounds is all I need, but I am the guy or the woman that sells two millions.

And my sales is based on volume. So is there like a difference in this concept of businesses that do low dollar high volume versus high dollar low volume? Because it sounds like it makes more sense for K you don’t need as many people, but you have a higher ticket. Item. Well, I would say don’t get lost in like the details of like literally how many customers, like, for example, if you have, if you are closing 10,000 customers a month, you know, on some, on basically a product that’s nine 95 or whatever, you know, it’s, it’s not like, Oh, this doesn’t apply to me.

The concept at its heart is how do I take someone? And on like the funnel of how they perceive my business, how do I build enough trust with them and give them such a great experience that they will buy from me again and again and again. So like Amazon’s a really great example of this, Amazon it, in terms of like the two day shipping, that’s really, it, it’s a great.

It’s a great offer, but now you have other companies like Walmart who are offering the same thing. What Amazon does that makes them so valuable in the customer’s mind is anytime you need to return something, I mean, you could do it. You could snap your fingers. It doesn’t matter. You know, if it’s open, it doesn’t matter how you’ve used it.

Nine times out of 10, if you try to return something on Amazon, it’s a no questions asked. Sure. Send it off. We’ll get it returned. What have you, that creates a lot of trust in the customer’s mind and it makes them more likely to buy from you. So it’s, it’s less about how many customers you’re dealing with.

And it’s more about how am I crafting an experience that someone says, okay, wow, this wasn’t just a transaction for me. I’m actually, I’m interested in this brand. Now. I I’m excited about this brand. And another great example of this would be something like Chick-fil-A. Um, here in the South Chick-fil-A is like, it’s like, God, I mean, people are, you mentioned Chick-fil-A people lose their mind.

You have people who are so, um, just jazzed about Chick-fil-A, even though they’re doing, you know, they’re serving millions of people. And you don’t have to work hard to see how many times Chick-fil-A