Sales & Cigars | Jim Packard | Employee & Client Retention | Episode 200

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, Walter Crosby with Helix Sales Development, your host of Sales & Cigars. Today's episode is a lot of fun. It's sort of fast-paced with my friend Jim Packard. Jim has got a history of entrepreneurship and business ownership. And we're going to talk about client retention and employee retention and how they're connected and how you can use these principles to grow your business.

[00:00:31] And if you focus on those two things, what magic can happen? And Jim tells a couple of stories. We're going to get into how he did it. So go grab a cigar, grab a cocktail, strap in for another fun, exciting episode of Sales & Cigars. Thanks.

[00:01:02] Jim, welcome to Sales & Cigars. I appreciate you taking some time out of your afternoon.

[00:01:08] Well, I've been really looking forward to having this discussion with you.

[00:01:11] We've had a couple of start and stops, my fault, and I appreciate your patience.

[00:01:19] And you know, I appreciate, let's like kind of start here. You sent me a series of cards, like greeting cards, with cool images on the front.

[00:01:32] And, you know, it's kind of just gets your attention, keeps you top of mind.

[00:01:37] I find that, you know, it's sort of like those, we used to write handwritten notes.

[00:01:43] This is something that ilk, it gets somebody's attention.

[00:01:47] And the one I got today was like a little Halloween card.

[00:01:52] But it's a cool feature.

[00:01:54] Can you share a little bit about how that works?

[00:01:58] And if somebody's interested in this, like we'll have all that in the show notes.

[00:02:03] But can you, can we start there?

[00:02:06] Yeah, I'd be more than glad to.

[00:02:07] I, I realized that only 3% of the mail that you and I receive is personal.

[00:02:13] So when somebody does get a greeting card, they open it.

[00:02:16] And I built my first business all around customer retention.

[00:02:22] And this was just a great follow up to that customer retention.

[00:02:26] You actually create it on a computer.

[00:02:28] I mean, I can go to the website, find the greeting card I want to send.

[00:02:32] Type my message in my own handwriting if I wanted to.

[00:02:36] Hit a button that says send and our company prints it, stuffs it, mails it for you.

[00:02:41] You don't even touch it.

[00:02:43] Yeah, it's sort of like a no brainer.

[00:02:46] But what was cool was when we were talking about setting up this, this podcast, I had asked you, you know, you, you have any relationship with cigars?

[00:02:57] And you're, you were like, yeah.

[00:02:59] And, and then, like, five days later, a greeting card shows up that's totally personalized to me with like you and, and, and some family smoking cigars on the, at the beach.

[00:03:11] Right.

[00:03:12] So it was kind of.

[00:03:13] Absolutely.

[00:03:13] Yep.

[00:03:14] We, we celebrate with cigars.

[00:03:17] Yeah.

[00:03:18] It's a, as a family, that's a thing that you guys do?

[00:03:22] Is that?

[00:03:22] Well, my two sons and I have been in business together for over 20 years.

[00:03:27] And we usually celebrate not, not necessarily my wife.

[00:03:31] She did in that one picture, but she doesn't normally smoke cigars with us.

[00:03:35] So she, she, she filled in for this.

[00:03:37] She stepped up a little bit.

[00:03:39] Okay.

[00:03:39] So we'll have in the, so that's a, that's a, that's a cool thing that people can reach out to you.

[00:03:48] I'll have some stuff in the show notes to build for people to look out, but it's, it's a, it's a great little service that they can provide.

[00:03:55] It's, they sign up for it and just go do it themselves whenever they want.

[00:03:59] Is there a sort of that, is it that simple?

[00:04:02] Yeah.

[00:04:03] It's really that simple.

[00:04:04] They even can send them out themselves or I'll do it for them.

[00:04:06] One or the other.

[00:04:07] Cool.

[00:04:08] All right.

[00:04:09] I love it.

[00:04:10] It's really in these days, I think it's less than 3% of mail that's personal, right?

[00:04:18] Cause I don't consider bills personal.

[00:04:20] Um, and most of the mail I'm getting this last three weeks are those big ass postcards with pictures of the candidates that are running for various offices.

[00:04:30] And you get them too.

[00:04:31] We get them, we get them out here as well.

[00:04:33] Well, it's crazy that I have a, you pull out the drawer in the kitchen for, you got the trash can and then there's a recycle bin.

[00:04:43] I, I, I, that whole recycle bin is full of those postcards.

[00:04:47] We go to pick up our mail at a, um, it's a mail drop, a bunch of mailboxes down there.

[00:04:53] And there's a great big container waste container.

[00:04:56] And it is absolutely jam packed with promotional cards.

[00:05:01] Uh, the, the, the post, the, the post office could use that help, um, the revenue right now, but, um, it's, it's crazy.

[00:05:10] So don't you wonder how much money they spend on all that?

[00:05:13] My goodness.

[00:05:14] Millions of dollars are spent on, um, all of those races and, and some of the races, uh, I'm here in Michigan and some of these are highly contested.

[00:05:26] It's a, uh, they're calling it a swing state this year.

[00:05:29] By the time this, this episode drops, we will have, that'll all be sorted.

[00:05:35] Um, we'll know.

[00:05:37] I'm from Arizona.

[00:05:38] So I'm from another swing state and we had them all here in the last couple of days.

[00:05:42] They've all been out here.

[00:05:44] Yeah.

[00:05:45] They've, they've been popping in here.

[00:05:47] The VPs.

[00:05:49] Um, yeah, it seems like every three days, one of them is in some part of the state.

[00:05:55] Um, and they're saying the same damn thing, which is nothing.

[00:05:58] Um, anyway.

[00:06:00] All right.

[00:06:00] So let me, let me go, let me go back to a question.

[00:06:03] I like to ask folks.

[00:06:05] Um, is there a book that you gift, uh, often or that you reread for yourself on a regular basis?

[00:06:12] Yeah.

[00:06:12] Yeah.

[00:06:12] There's one book that I seem to take on vacation every time I go.

[00:06:17] And in that book, it was written by Jay Abraham.

[00:06:20] Mm-hmm.

[00:06:21] He's a marketing guru.

[00:06:23] Are you familiar with Jay Abraham?

[00:06:25] I assume you are.

[00:06:26] Jay Abraham University is one of my subscriptions.

[00:06:30] I have access to all this stuff.

[00:06:31] Okay.

[00:06:32] Well, Jay Abraham wrote a book called Getting All You Can Out of All You've Got.

[00:06:37] And, and that's the book that I read.

[00:06:39] That's the one that I gift.

[00:06:40] I was fortunate enough to spend a week with him one time.

[00:06:43] Oh.

[00:06:43] Just in some training.

[00:06:45] Um, but it's, uh, in his book, he, he states that if you look at industries that

[00:06:53] are successful and you look and you can copy an idea from an industry that's been successful

[00:07:01] and you can apply it to your own industry, what might be as common as Durek in their industry

[00:07:08] might have the effect of an atomic bomb going off in yours.

[00:07:11] And I love looking at other industry, looking at other products, see what companies are doing

[00:07:16] and grabbing those ideas, uh, borrowing them and putting them to use.

[00:07:21] And that's what I've done for years.

[00:07:24] It, it, it, it's, it's really simple ideas, um, that you can get out of a book and I, and

[00:07:30] I, there's a couple of books I go back and reread on a regular basis.

[00:07:34] Um, and I probably should put that one in my, in my rotation, but it, it, it just, you, sometimes

[00:07:40] you're sitting there at the beach or, or in a chair and, and you read the same thing you've

[00:07:45] read maybe 20 times, but it just clicks that, that time about something that you saw and

[00:07:52] it, you can turn it into a little kernel can be turned into revenue or can help somebody.

[00:07:58] It can, it can take you, uh, to a place, uh, just, just by rereading.

[00:08:03] So yeah, his book is, is, is very complex, uh, concepts inside the book.

[00:08:12] And I can read one one day and not get anything out of it.

[00:08:15] The next time I read it, like you say, you go, Oh, this is what he meant.

[00:08:19] And, uh, so it's a, it's a great book to take with me when I go on vacations.

[00:08:23] Yeah.

[00:08:24] Cause your mind is open, right?

[00:08:25] And hopefully vacation, we get to relax a little bit, um, and, and, and do that.

[00:08:30] So that's, that's a great, that's a great book for people who want to pick up and think about.

[00:08:37] So, um, so one of the things that when we've talked over the last couple of months was your,

[00:08:45] the, the story you told me about customer and client retention, how that philosophy helped you grow your business.

[00:08:54] Um, and ultimately helped you exit, um, create something special and you're still using those ideas.

[00:09:03] So can we talk a little bit about that, that, that philosophy around how that, that helps you hold on to customers and helps you hold on to employees?

[00:09:14] Oh, absolutely.

[00:09:16] Well, I, I started a business.

[00:09:18] I went to university in Maine, actually graduated when Stephen King was in my class.

[00:09:24] Oh shit, really?

[00:09:25] Yeah.

[00:09:26] Oh yeah.

[00:09:26] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:09:27] And he was just as scary and weird back then, those days as he is today.

[00:09:31] And, and the other person I spent a lot of time with was Jay Leno.

[00:09:35] So you talk about two contrasts.

[00:09:38] I mean, it's amazing.

[00:09:39] Yeah.

[00:09:40] So I, uh, when I started, I couldn't, I'm this type of guy.

[00:09:44] I couldn't wait to get out of college and get a job.

[00:09:46] And I took a job in a big retail store.

[00:09:49] I was on the executive training squad and, and I worked there for a couple of years.

[00:09:55] And, and really what happened was they had a contest where the highest percentage over quota won a trip to Bermuda.

[00:10:02] And I won that, I won that contest.

[00:10:05] And when I got back home, there was a letter in the mail and the letter basically said, your name has come to our attention as the type of person that possesses the qualities that we like, that we're looking for.

[00:10:17] We'd love to talk to you.

[00:10:19] And I look, and I'm looking at my wife, Sherry, and I'm going, yeah, they, they probably heard about the contest that I won.

[00:10:26] So let's go and meet with them.

[00:10:28] So they said, well meet us at holiday in at seven o'clock.

[00:10:31] So we went down, we met with them.

[00:10:34] I, little did I know it was a network marketing meeting, you know, Sherry and I, we, we, we bought $3,200 worth of, I have a, of a dream.

[00:10:47] And we joined the company and the company got shut down after a couple of years.

[00:10:53] But what it really did for me, it exposed me to positive thinking and goal setting and goal writing.

[00:10:58] In fact, I've got my original set of goals on the wall over here from 1971.

[00:11:03] And it's, and they're matted and framed.

[00:11:06] I got, I got them there though.

[00:11:08] But it gave me the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, go out and start my own business.

[00:11:15] And, or, or go out and get a sales job.

[00:11:18] Anyway, initially I got a sales job and then it led to owning my own business.

[00:11:22] And when I, when I started our own business, I knew I wanted to make it big.

[00:11:28] Okay.

[00:11:29] I knew that we're gonna, we weren't gonna, you know, I, and I, I didn't want it to have a, just a me too company.

[00:11:35] I wanted to be different.

[00:11:36] So I really wanted to put the, the emphasis on, on taking care of our employees and taking care of our customers and doing so better than our competitors were doing.

[00:11:50] And I, I think we accomplished that because I remember that during this, that was time period, I was taking a Dale Carnegie course.

[00:11:59] I don't know if you've ever taken one or not, but I took the course.

[00:12:02] Okay.

[00:12:02] I took the course and, and I, and in the course, I originally took the course cause my dad did years earlier and he won a thermometer.

[00:12:12] And I wonder, I wonder, am I as good as my dad?

[00:12:16] You know, cause he said he was a pretty good salesman.

[00:12:18] So I took that class.

[00:12:20] I think I won every honor that you can get every award in that class.

[00:12:24] There was no thermometer.

[00:12:26] I don't know where he got the thermometer, but he did not get it from that class.

[00:12:30] So, but, but it's, um, but it's stuck in your mind that he got it there.

[00:12:36] That's all.

[00:12:36] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:12:38] You know, as it turned out, I, I put all my employees to the Dale Carnegie class in the years that we had the business.

[00:12:44] And, and, uh, I remember they had a, they had a session where you had to write down what your ideal day would look like in 10 years and 15 years, whatever it was, 20 years.

[00:12:55] And I wrote down that goal that how much I wanted, I knew I eventually wanted to sell the business.

[00:13:01] I knew how much I wanted to sell it.

[00:13:03] And I knew what my ideal day was.

[00:13:05] And the day we sold the company was a month before my 50th birthday.

[00:13:09] We sold it for exact amount that I wrote down on that paper.

[00:13:13] So I know that it got into my head those days where I was out selling photocopiers on a Friday afternoon in a snowstorm in Farmington, Maine.

[00:13:22] I kept thinking of that word picture that I drove that I wrote down and that's what drove me.

[00:13:28] And I eventually sold the business for the dollars that we wanted.

[00:13:32] But when we, we started out, we weren't, you know, it was just three of us.

[00:13:36] It was myself, another salesman and a technician.

[00:13:40] And I go, well, what do we do with the technician all day long?

[00:13:44] We don't have enough machines for him to service.

[00:13:47] And I, most people know that technicians can't, can't sell anything.

[00:13:52] So I said, well, I took a page out of my dad's old West.

[00:13:55] He used to be an insurance salesman for West End and Southern.

[00:13:58] And he had to go out and collect a debit every single month.

[00:14:01] You know, had to collect money that was owed him.

[00:14:03] And I said, well, we'll have Ronnie go collect, we'll have Ronnie go collect, you know, go check on every machine that we have out, check on the supplies.

[00:14:13] And, and he got it done in a week.

[00:14:16] I mean, not a month.

[00:14:17] He did everything in a week.

[00:14:18] And he says, what do you want me to do this week, Jim?

[00:14:20] I go, go visit the accounts again.

[00:14:23] Just keep rotating them.

[00:14:25] All right.

[00:14:25] And we started doing that.

[00:14:27] And when we sold the company 25 years later, we were doing 122 hours per week of courtesy call visits.

[00:14:36] And that's just, I mean, our customers loved it.

[00:14:39] And if you, if you, if you, if you have customer loyalty, I read somewhere where 70% of your potential comes from, you have a 70% better chance of selling to an existing customer than you do going out and finding a new one.

[00:14:56] It's so much less expensive to hold on to an existing account, treat them properly.

[00:15:04] Right.

[00:15:05] All of that is, I mean, it might even be higher than, than, than that.

[00:15:11] Right.

[00:15:11] It might, it might be worth more.

[00:15:14] I read this 10 times the, you know, the, you know, the lifetime value of a customer can be 10 times the original purchase price.

[00:15:22] Yeah.

[00:15:23] Yeah.

[00:15:25] Right.

[00:15:25] But, but it, but it, you said a couple of things I want to, I want to, I want to touch on.

[00:15:30] You were training your employees.

[00:15:33] You were, you were, you were, you were showing them that it was important to go have those touches with the customers because the customers are the ones that were giving us reason to, to exist.

[00:15:48] But making that investment.

[00:15:50] And I was talking to a colleague of mine this morning.

[00:15:53] We're having breakfast.

[00:15:57] We were talking about experiences that we had, you know, getting breaks done on a car with experience that he had with his veterinarian.

[00:16:06] And the, the staff that we've had to encounter.

[00:16:11] They're not trained to deal with customers to make the customer feel like they're being heard.

[00:16:20] They're, they're, they're, they're not helping the, the, the customer feel welcome.

[00:16:24] Right.

[00:16:25] They're just not, they're not giving that customer service hospitality kind of mindset.

[00:16:30] And you know, whose fault is that?

[00:16:33] And, you know, I, I think individually we have to take responsibility for our own career and, and, and try to get better.

[00:16:40] But I think the business owner needs to provide some guidance, some training, onboarding, right.

[00:16:46] To give, give the employees make that investment.

[00:16:49] And, and is it fair to say that you, that you know from experience that making that investment in them helps them stick around?

[00:16:58] I think I know there's two reasons why a customer leaves you.

[00:17:03] Number one is because they simply forget you.

[00:17:08] And number two is because they felt you took their business for granted in the first place.

[00:17:14] And we were, we weren't going to allow that to happen to our customers.

[00:17:18] We worked so hard to get a customer.

[00:17:20] We're going to allow anybody to take that customer away from us, at least due from apathy on our part.

[00:17:26] It was not going to happen.

[00:17:28] And I think that, you know, maybe we were just big, dumb and lucky.

[00:17:34] You know, we, we just, we had an extra employee.

[00:17:38] We had them start visiting all those accounts.

[00:17:40] When we hired our first employee after that, we, we continued that same service.

[00:17:45] And we just realized, I mean, just the byproduct of, of getting referrals from our customers because they were happy with it.

[00:17:53] And when we, we ended up selling the business, I, I, I remember looking at all the testimonials that we had matted and framed down our walls.

[00:18:02] We had 188 testimonials matted and framed throughout the entire building.

[00:18:08] And, you know, it was just because, I mean, we got the referrals from the customers and it was, and that was a byproduct of all those customer visits.

[00:18:17] And, and we, you know, we reached a point where we had a customer rep and that customer rep would go into every account every single month and check on the supplies, take an order.

[00:18:30] And then she would leave flavored popcorn every single month at every single account.

[00:18:35] And we would give them the Curry and Ives containers, the beautiful Curry and Ives containers that you could buy.

[00:18:41] And every month that she would go in, she'd go in with a different flavored popcorn.

[00:18:46] It could be blackberry one week, caramel corn the next week, the next week it could be lobster, whatever it was.

[00:18:52] All right. And she would fill it up. And that was just another thing that we did for our customer.

[00:18:58] And we eventually, I came up with the idea of sending the, our, and this is where the greeting cards come into play.

[00:19:05] I started sending our, our copiers and our faxes that we were marketing.

[00:19:10] I started sending them birthday cards.

[00:19:13] So you can imagine as a CFO or our owner of a company, you get a birthday card in the mail and you go, it's not really my birthday.

[00:19:22] And then when you open it up, it says, when you walk by your copier today, pat, pat the copier on the glass because your copier is two years old today.

[00:19:31] All right.

[00:19:32] Yeah.

[00:19:33] Your customers love that. They love that.

[00:19:36] And when I, when I eventually sold the company 25 years later, I remember that and I got into the greeting card business, but that's how we took care of our, our customers.

[00:19:46] And our employees, we did things like we'd send the, the spouses flowers on the anniversary of the day that they joined our company.

[00:19:56] We did company trips and, you know, and all that stuff and took them to the Red Sox games and the Patriot games and stuff.

[00:20:02] But one thing we did, what was really a little bit unusual, every Friday afternoon, we closed down the company.

[00:20:12] And this is when we had, we had about 120 employees at one point.

[00:20:16] And we closed down the company.

[00:20:18] We had a great big office in Portland, Maine.

[00:20:20] It was about a 30,000 square foot building.

[00:20:23] And we closed the company down at one o'clock.

[00:20:26] We'd have everybody come to the Portland office and we'd have a barbecue every Friday afternoon.

[00:20:32] And we do the barbecue and myself and general manager and a couple of the sales managers would do all the cooking and everything.

[00:20:40] And when everybody got done, they each had a section of the building that it was their section to clean up.

[00:20:47] And we had cleaned the building.

[00:20:49] And then when that was done, they got to go home.

[00:20:52] So our guys were leaving at three o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday, and they loved that.

[00:20:57] And that built such loyalty.

[00:20:59] And when we sold the company, the first five, excuse me, the first five people that were with us when we started the company were with us when we sold the company 25 years later.

[00:21:10] Wow.

[00:21:10] I mean, customer testimonials are really, really important and taking care of our customers, right?

[00:21:16] Because they're the ones who are going to keep us going and keep growing revenue and get referrals and introductions to other people.

[00:21:25] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:21:26] But it's our employees that can screw something up, right?

[00:21:31] And I go back to what I was talking about earlier, like the service guy at a dealership or the receptionist at a veterinarian office.

[00:21:40] We're just like, I don't, they don't just act like they don't care.

[00:21:45] And that's not probably not the feeling of the owner or the veterinarian, whoever owns the facility.

[00:21:52] But it's your impression.

[00:21:55] And it's so easy to like just listen to somebody when they're upset.

[00:22:01] In sales, I talk about it as we want to lower resistance when somebody comes in, right?

[00:22:07] They could come in really hot and be upset and listen to them.

[00:22:11] And like, I understand why you're upset.

[00:22:12] I really do.

[00:22:14] And then you start knocking that resistance down and then you start collaborating with them as to how you solve the problem in a way that's meaningful to everybody.

[00:22:23] And, but you can't do it when everybody's emotional.

[00:22:27] And that kind of a conversation, a kind of coaching with somebody that's customer facing salespeople, but everybody's a salesperson to a degree that, you know, deals with hot people on the phone or people coming into the office.

[00:22:43] They're all emotionally charged, right?

[00:22:45] Because, you know, they're worried about their pet.

[00:22:47] They're not there to, for happy time.

[00:22:49] Right.

[00:22:50] It's all about the cultural that you create in the company.

[00:22:54] Top down, right?

[00:22:55] Top down.

[00:22:55] Oh, absolutely.

[00:22:56] Absolutely.

[00:22:57] And I mean, cultural strategy or, you know, we'll eat the strategy for breakfast.

[00:23:04] And I, you know, the time that I realized that we had a great culture in our company, our office was in Portland, but I didn't work out of Portland.

[00:23:12] I worked out of the Augusta office, right?

[00:23:14] Which is about an hour and a half away.

[00:23:17] Yeah.

[00:23:17] I would go, I went down to our Portland office and I was standing by the receptionist when a salesman walked in one day and he, the salesman happened to ask our receptionist.

[00:23:27] So it was sitting there and says, you know, how many, how many salespeople do you have working here?

[00:23:31] And without missing a beat, she said 117.

[00:23:37] And, and I, I didn't train, I did not train her to do that.

[00:23:40] I wished I had.

[00:23:41] Okay.

[00:23:42] But I didn't train her to say that.

[00:23:44] That's, that was the culture that we had created there.

[00:23:47] And it was, you know, and.

[00:23:50] But I mean, especially your texts where the tech has gone out, those people are upset.

[00:23:55] They're trying, they need to get something corrected so that they can, you know, copy or print the thing for the, for the presentation.

[00:24:03] Everybody's stressed out, you know, and they gotta, they gotta be able to go deal with that.

[00:24:08] Well, you know, most technicians don't have the training that, you know, that you would have, or I would give.

[00:24:16] I made sure that every single technician went through a Dale Carnegie class, how to win friends and influence people.

[00:24:22] Yeah.

[00:24:22] When we conducted those, all new employees.

[00:24:25] We also, we bought all our technicians suits.

[00:24:29] Cause they didn't, you know, most technicians don't have the money to go out and buy suits, but we required suits.

[00:24:36] So we bought suits for all our technicians.

[00:24:39] We put them through the Dale Carnegie class.

[00:24:41] We did everything that from a company standpoint that I could think of, make our company better.

[00:24:48] And I don't know who, who's responsible for like in the vet's office to make, you know, make the customer feel better.

[00:24:56] I don't know.

[00:24:57] I think it has to come from the top down.

[00:24:59] Don't you?

[00:25:00] It's a, I have a friend who's a, who's a Cajun, Louisiana, you know, born and bred.

[00:25:07] And he used to say the fish rots from the head.

[00:25:12] Right.

[00:25:12] It's kind of gross.

[00:25:14] Yeah.

[00:25:15] It makes sense, doesn't it?

[00:25:16] But it makes the point if, if we're as a leader aren't out there and we're all leaders.

[00:25:22] Right.

[00:25:23] But if that business owner, that entrepreneur, that sales leader, isn't being consistent with that message is empowering people to make decisions.

[00:25:32] I wrote a book and there's a whole chapter designed around getting alignment with your vision as the, as the owner and helping the employee understand what they can do within the scope of their job to fulfill that vision.

[00:25:49] Everybody has that, that ability.

[00:25:53] Everybody in the, the guy on the, on the loading dock, the guy that's doing the shipping, the, the, the, the, the gala answering the phone or the, the, the dude that's doing customer service.

[00:26:05] All of those people have an opportunity to fulfill that, that vision.

[00:26:09] And if we haven't helped them see what that is, then we failed to, to share our vision properly.

[00:26:15] And it's, it's, it's not difficult and you can quickly determine how, if that person is a good culture fit.

[00:26:25] And if they're not, then you got to make some hard decisions, but you should figure it out in advance before you hire them.

[00:26:31] Well, you know, it's, you talk about making a hard decision.

[00:26:34] I mean, when we ran our company, we had a great company and, but at one point we were 34 to one debt to equity ratio.

[00:26:42] Wow.

[00:26:42] And I think about that just for a second, for every dollar that I own inventory, I owed $34.

[00:26:49] Yeah.

[00:26:49] And we were in such bad shape that our, you know, a good friend of mine owned a company next, the next state over would love to buy us out, but he couldn't absorb the debt.

[00:27:00] And I remember that, uh, I mean, we turned it around within 90 days.

[00:27:05] We, we did what we had to do, but I went back to my old Jay Abraham book.

[00:27:09] And in the book, he says, look at other industries, see what they're doing.

[00:27:14] And if you can copy what they're doing, it could have an effect of atomic bomb going off.

[00:27:19] So we took a bunch of employees to a sandals resort in the Bahamas.

[00:27:24] And the sandals resort is one of those all inclusive places where you, once you get there, you just put your wallet in the safe and everything's paid for.

[00:27:33] Right.

[00:27:33] And I remember standing by the bar and going, I ordered a drink.

[00:27:37] I didn't particularly like it.

[00:27:38] It's no problem.

[00:27:38] Here's another one.

[00:27:39] Here's another one.

[00:27:40] I mean, everything was paid for.

[00:27:42] And I got thinking, you know, what a great concept this is.

[00:27:45] So I took that concept when I went back to Maine, I go, well, I'm going to, I'm going to try a program.

[00:27:52] And let's just say you have a copier in your office and let's just say you paid $1,500 for it.

[00:27:57] Well, you also have to buy the maintenance agreement.

[00:27:59] You have to buy the supplies for it.

[00:28:02] And you have to, you know, you have to finance it somehow.

[00:28:05] I came up with a program.

[00:28:06] I said, well, I'll put a copier in your office and I will charge you a nickel, a copy.

[00:28:12] At the end of the month, I'll come and read the meter on the copier.

[00:28:16] And if you made 500 copies, I'd bill you 500 times a nickel a copy.

[00:28:21] You didn't pay for anything.

[00:28:23] Right.

[00:28:23] And we started that cost per copy program and it turned our company around.

[00:28:28] I mean, our competition, it took them years to figure out what we were doing, but we found a finance company that would, you know, that would finance it.

[00:28:36] And we started doing that with all of our major accounts and it made all the difference in the world.

[00:28:42] But that, that concept, I remember Xerox.

[00:28:48] I bought a, I didn't buy it.

[00:28:51] They gave me the quote unquote, gave me a printer.

[00:28:54] Right.

[00:28:54] Yeah.

[00:28:55] Back when they had those wax, beautiful wax printers.

[00:28:59] And it was a similar, I had a, I had a set fee I would pay for all of my consumables and it was all based on usage.

[00:29:07] Right.

[00:29:08] So I got the equipment and I just, what I consumed was what I paid for.

[00:29:12] So it's very similar to your nickel idea.

[00:29:14] What, what year was that?

[00:29:16] Do you remember?

[00:29:19] Two thousand, 2001.

[00:29:22] Two thousand, I think 2002.

[00:29:25] We started this in 1979, 1981 in that area.

[00:29:30] Took them a while to catch up.

[00:29:31] It took them a while to catch on.

[00:29:33] I used to be a Xerox agent for the state of Maine too.

[00:29:36] So I'm very familiar with them and, and some of their, their equipment.

[00:29:40] But yeah.

[00:29:41] So, I mean, it's, it's, it's that we go back to the Jay Abraham book, but it's in the Dale Carnegie.

[00:29:47] And we make those investments in our, in our people share what we're really trying to accomplish and, and help them understand what they can do and why they, why we're asking them to do it and what they can do in their, their scope of work to help us fulfill that.

[00:30:03] And you're really trying to help customers.

[00:30:06] And I, I remember you told me that story before about the changing the way you delivered the product just from standing around a bar at a sandals.

[00:30:17] Right.

[00:30:17] So you never know where, where, where, where.

[00:30:19] Well, you know, and again, it was a book I took on vacation with me and it was, and I got thinking, God, what a great concept.

[00:30:27] Everything's paid for.

[00:30:28] Why couldn't we do that in our industry?

[00:30:31] And, and that's what we, you know, introduced.

[00:30:34] And I mean, initially we even gave away the paper with the machines and we figured that we realized that some of our larger accounts, the paper was walking out the back door.

[00:30:43] So we eliminated the paper from it and just did the supplies that we can control.

[00:30:48] Yeah.

[00:30:49] Yeah.

[00:30:49] But, but, but it's that creativity and that desire to, to, to, to do something to create an advantage for everybody and a win, win, win.

[00:31:00] Right.

[00:31:01] Right.

[00:31:01] Absolutely.

[00:31:02] Yeah.

[00:31:03] I, I, I love it.

[00:31:04] Um, I mean, we could probably have a conversation about all of these stories for, for another hour or so.

[00:31:11] Um, but what I, um, I want to go back to the, the, the cards, um, the kind of just walk through like what somebody needs to go to a website.

[00:31:24] How do they sign up for this?

[00:31:25] Well, first, first of all, they can, anybody can just get ahold of me at just Jim at Jim Packard.com.

[00:31:33] Just write me an email and I'll, you know, I'll talk to him personally, or they can go right directly to the website, which is send out cards.com forward slash rainmaker, which is my code.

[00:31:46] I've been using the system for over 20 years now.

[00:31:51] Uh, it's a, it's a great customer retention tool.

[00:31:55] I mean, it's, especially in today's age where everything is digital.

[00:31:59] I mean, it's a real physical card that comes in the mail.

[00:32:03] Yeah.

[00:32:03] So it really stands out to people.

[00:32:05] I, I have one client that's a, um, he's a roofer, but you know, and every time there's a hail storm and, uh, you know, he loves it because people need to have more roofs.

[00:32:17] Right.

[00:32:18] And he's been a customer now for about three years of mine.

[00:32:21] And I've sent his clients, he's, he's done 267 roofs.

[00:32:27] So every two months we send out 267 cards to his database.

[00:32:33] Now he can't go out to these people and put another roof on.

[00:32:36] You don't need another roof.

[00:32:38] However, these people love him and give them nothing but referrals.

[00:32:42] And he was telling me about a month ago, he says, Jim, he says, I have one customer that we've sent.

[00:32:48] Uh, we've sent out a total of 15 cards in the last three years for this customer.

[00:32:52] Did you realize he's given me 11 referrals alone this year?

[00:32:57] Wow.

[00:32:57] I mean, that paid for all the cards.

[00:32:59] So, I mean, you can use it as a customer retention.

[00:33:02] You can use it for prospecting if you want to.

[00:33:05] It's in the, it is not expensive.

[00:33:06] It's very inexpensive.

[00:33:08] So we'll have that in the show notes where people can go, uh, go check it out with your Rainmaker piece.

[00:33:15] That's fine.

[00:33:15] And then in your email will be there.

[00:33:17] And I can tell you, uh, Jim answers his emails.

[00:33:21] He, he, he's responsive.

[00:33:23] Every of the stories that he shared are based in, in, in fact, in reality, it's, it's just, it's a, it's the approach.

[00:33:31] So, um, and, and you can get as creative as you want.

[00:33:35] And when it, when you get the, when you get that envelope, you know, you get, you get, it, it stands out.

[00:33:41] It literally stands out from in the mail, right?

[00:33:44] Because it doesn't look, it's got a color to it.

[00:33:46] Um, it's, it's, it looks like it's handwritten.

[00:33:49] Um, but it's in the shape of like, oh, that's a card.

[00:33:53] Like, I wonder what that is.

[00:33:54] Yeah.

[00:33:54] You can also with our system, you can send out a gift card or, or a gift.

[00:34:01] And I remember going into one customer that had sent out, they were sending out Starbucks cards, $20 Starbucks gift cards to all their loyal customers.

[00:34:10] And I went in and I said, do you realize that you could now, you could send a greeting card and a box of brownies, right?

[00:34:21] To these same customers.

[00:34:22] And you're going to reduce your cost.

[00:34:25] And when they open up the brownies, four people get to enjoy the brownies versus one person enjoying the Starbucks card.

[00:34:32] So you get four times the bang for your buck.

[00:34:35] That particular customer bought $150,000 worth of brownies from us.

[00:34:40] That one month, just by doing so you, that's the extreme.

[00:34:44] It hasn't happened since then, but it's, uh, but it shows you what you can do with the, with our system.

[00:34:51] And the brownies are good.

[00:34:52] Cause, uh, my wife and I shared them.

[00:34:55] Oh, did I send you some brownies too?

[00:35:00] My wife was like, what are those?

[00:35:02] I'm like, they're, they're brownies.

[00:35:04] You don't need to talk about it.

[00:35:05] Same guy that sent you the silly card with the, with the people smoking on it.

[00:35:09] Right.

[00:35:10] Yeah.

[00:35:10] So, I mean, I was going to ask you like, you know, you have a relationship with cigars, but

[00:35:14] we kind of covered that with the, with the card of the, of the family celebrating.

[00:35:18] So, um, I mean, let me ask this.

[00:35:20] Is there a particular cigar that you like to celebrate with?

[00:35:23] Well, probably the Patron.

[00:35:25] Oh, the drones are like, that's my go-to.

[00:35:29] Patron.

[00:35:29] And only because I heard you say it on one of your, I wouldn't know.

[00:35:35] I wouldn't know one from a Tipperillo.

[00:35:38] But I remember watching basketball growing up in the Northeast, Red Auerbach.

[00:35:44] Red Auerbach.

[00:35:45] Yeah.

[00:35:45] Always had a cigar as well.

[00:35:47] Oh yeah.

[00:35:47] That would not fly today.

[00:35:48] That wouldn't fly.

[00:35:49] No, no, it would not fly today, but he would light it up when he felt that he had the game

[00:35:53] under control.

[00:35:54] And that's what I built two or three minutes left in the game.

[00:35:57] He's like, that stokey up and, uh, we'd go wild watching that.

[00:36:01] So, and that would, that, that would create a little tension with the, with the other bench

[00:36:05] too.

[00:36:06] So we need to, that's all.

[00:36:08] Yeah.

[00:36:08] Absolutely.

[00:36:09] All right.

[00:36:10] Sir, I appreciate, I appreciate you taking the time.

[00:36:13] I'm glad we were able to do this.

[00:36:14] And if, you know, if you're out there and you, you're looking for something creative to

[00:36:18] try to help you create that, cause it works internally as well.

[00:36:22] You can send those cards to your, your own customers.

[00:36:25] I just got back from a three day seminar just on how to write, you know, how to, uh, you

[00:36:35] can use it internally as well as externally to your customers.

[00:36:39] Absolutely.

[00:36:39] Jim, thank you.

[00:36:40] I really appreciate it.

[00:36:42] Oh, my pleasure, Walter.

[00:36:43] Thank you.