Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

WHY You Need to and HOW to RESET Your Marketing TODAY [Jay Baer Interview]

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 178

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The digital first mindset that your business needs to survive today is only part of the story. My special guest for today, the legendary marketing author and speaker Jay Baer, argues that the circumstances that we live in today require every business to function as a startup and create an entirely new relationship with your customers and potential clients.

Listen in as Jay gives some specific advice as to how to do this - hint: "FAQ" is a strategic keyword here - as well as also provides some strategic wisdom around the customer experience marketing gap that he sees and why it is critical to close it to remain relevant today.

Key Highlights

[03:07] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Jay Baer

[05:20] Who Is Jay and His Books

[09:05] Jay's Advice To Other Businesses On Resetting Marketing Strategy

[10:58] The Power of FAQs

[13:41] Jay's Advice on Post-Coronavirus Customer Experience

[17:36] Three Things Customer Care About

[19:16] Why You Need To Be Quick?

[23:40] Making Your FAQ Better

[32:21] Pivot Needs To Be Part of Your Business DNA

[33:58] Connect With Jay

[34:21] Final Advice

Notable Quotes

  • Today, in the strange kind of COVID times, it doesn't really matter whether you've been in business for five years or 25 years or 75 years or 115 years. Every business today has to function essentially like a startup. Because you have to fundamentally rewire the relationships between your business and your customers, and prospective customers. You can't take any customer knowledge for granted. 
  • Customer experience is a term of art that was invented to describe what is in reality, a collection of hundreds of individual intersection points, between any business and any customer. The customer experiences the totality of every decision you make about your business.
  • Whatever the situation might be in your organization, making the relationship between your business and the customers transcend the transaction.
  • Everything about the pandemic sucks. We're all on the same page. But trust me when I tell you, you will never have this opportunity again. So you can either go under a tortoise shell and bemoan the fact that everything sucks, or you can continue to be unhappy about that, but recognize that from a business standpoint, this opportunity is unlikely to reoccur, and you can completely re-engineer your business for the better if you choose to do so.

Jay Baer Links:

Convince & Convert: https://www.convinceandconvert.com/

Jay Baer: https://www.jaybaer.com/

Social Pros Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/social-pros-podcast/id499844469

Episodes Mentioned in the Show:

138: Custo

Learn More:

Neal Schaffer:

Why does Jay Baer say that every business today has to function as a startup and that you need to begin a brand new relationship with your customers? Why is that the case? You're gonna have to listen to this next episode of the maximize your social influence podcast to find out Welcome to the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help marketers, entrepreneurs and business owners grow their businesses using innovative marketing techniques, leveraging the concept of digital influence throughout digital and social media. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode number 178 of the maximize your social influence podcast. How are we all doing today? Well, another day in work from home life become quite used to the routine as I'm sure a lot of you have as well. And because we're all spending more time at home, hopefully you're continuing to listen not just to my podcast, but to other excellent podcasts as well. I want to give a shout out for those that have actually gone the extra mile. taking a minute to review this podcast on their favorite podcast app. We had GH marketer, just recently, give a review on Apple podcasts want to give GH marketer a shout out said it was binge worthy. I discovered your podcast a few weeks ago after connecting with you want to social Summit. Normally, I don't get excited about doing yard work. But that changed once I started listening to your podcast, man, it's almost like I paid this person to say this, but I didn't. Okay, I have since been 20 to 30 episodes look forward to more. What I enjoy about your podcast is both the technical recommendations you provide and the stories you tell. To put it all into context. I appreciate you're also willing to share your own data overall and say this is the best marketing podcast I've listened to with thank you so much. For those who love to binge Listen, this is episode number 178. That means there's 177 More episodes you can listen to. And I do want to say that I began if you've listened to previous episodes, you know that I had taken a few years off this podcast, I'll be very, very open and honest, I go through the reasons why. But since October 6 of 2019, I have published that's in the last year, I have published about 31 episodes. So that's a lot of binge, obviously, you can go further back. Oh, actually, sorry, that number should be 37 episodes, I'm getting close to once a week consistently, as I've been doing recently. And there's a lot of great interviews and a lot of what I would call evergreen content as well. So don't be afraid to go past, you can skip the episodes about Google Plus and about ello, if any of you even remember that social network. So there's obviously things that aren't as relevant today as others. But there's also a lot of other old content that is just as relevant today as it was then. So I hope that you go back and listen so that it can help you grow your business on the digital and social media. Alright, so today we have an interview with the amazing Jay Baer. This is the second time Jay is man, I think he's only the second person after Mike Gingrich, who I've had on twice. So it's an honor, Jay is a great guy. And he's just an absolute thought leader. But on the flip side, he's one of the nicest and friendliest people that you will ever meet at any conference that hopefully we're all going to be able to get to go in person. Once this pandemic is over. You know, we talked about a lot of things, you're going to find out a lot of interesting trivia about Jay as well and his past. But we really talked about and J is really passionate about the fact that businesses have to reset, how they do their marketing today. Because obviously, the environment has changed and things that were normal, are now sort of taken for granted. He's going to give you some specific examples, going to talk about why every business has to function as a startup, also, why the FAQ on your website is your biggest competitive advantage. And he's going to talk about how CMOS think the best way they can differentiate their company is and why 70% fail at doing that. So hope you're excited for this interview. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Jay Baer alright everybody join me in giving Mr. Jay Baer a warm welcome to the maximize your social influence podcast. Jay.

Jay Baer:

Thank you. I'm clapping myself up, Neil. How are you, buddy?

Neal Schaffer:

doing awesome. You know, it's funny, the first I've gone so far in my journey as a podcast, but the first time I had you, on my podcast, we were talking about utility. Mm hmm. We didn't even do it live. I don't know if you remember I sent you audio questions and you were giving me audio.

Jay Baer:

It was like it was like a live chat podcast. It was a different format. Back in those days,

Neal Schaffer:

it definitely was. But now we're live. Everything's digital. And as we were just talking J, businesses are rethinking everything. But before we get to that topic, I'm sure everybody knows you. But just in case for those few people, maybe outside the United States, please give her one a brief intro as well as enjoy some of the books you've written in the past.

Jay Baer:

Of course, I'm Jay Baer. I'm the founder of Convince and Convert, we're a boutique digital strategy, and customer experience consultancy that works with some of the most iconic brands in the world to keep the customers they've already earned and help them acquire new customers. We work with United Nations with Oracle, Cisco Hilton Hotels, Chiquita banana, which is weird because I don't even like bananas. But hey, what are you gonna do? I am the author of six books most recently talk triggers. Also Hug Your Haters utility, and several others. I'm the host of the Social Pros podcast as well as the standing ovation Podcast. I'm an inductee into the professional speaking Hall of Fame and the word of mouth marketing Hall of Fame, and most importantly, a confidant of Neal Schaffer.

Neal Schaffer:

Thank you, Jay. You know, it's funny, I'm sure I've told you this story. I don't know how many I've told outside of you. But I first knew about just what an incredible professional that Jay is. When I had a chance to speak at the Arizona interactive marketing association,

Jay Baer:

and that is old school, baby. But dude,

Neal Schaffer:

that was like, probably 10 years ago, well, nine or 10 years ago,

Jay Baer:

there was more there. That was I can tell you when that was that was at least 12 years ago.

Neal Schaffer:

Okay. Well, they said that you had just moved.

Jay Baer:

Yes, that's right. I just moved. So I just come back. Yeah. So probably 10 years. You're right.

Neal Schaffer:

Okay. And they said that you had already get like you had already been speaking 10 years previous to that had already been speaking. So you've literally been speaking now for like, 20 years, right? If not,

Jay Baer:

yeah, kind of. I mean, it depends on how you think about it. So I've been speaking since I was 15. I mean, even when I was in high school, I was the one that I we need somebody to emcee the talent show. JL do it. He's not scared. But I never really thought it was a business until much later. And I am somewhat unusual in what I consider to be sort of the professional speaker ranks, and that I didn't really give a paid presentation until I was 40, which is, you know, a pretty late start in that in that biz, but I really do like it I was, I was named most likely to be a game show host in high school. And I feel like you know, I'm right on the precipice of making that happen.

Neal Schaffer:

That is awesome. And for all of you that want to be speakers, I know we always have that continuum of the podcast listeners, that's really, really good to know. It's, you know, none of this is never too late, right?

Jay Baer:

No, I mean, look, I've said this before that speaking is the best, sort of second half of your life career you could ever have, right? You get to, at least in the old days, be pre pandemic go interesting places to meet with interesting people to do interesting things. And many of the most powerful, effective successful speakers are I know, are in their 60s 70s, even 80s. So there really isn't a finish line in that business if you don't want one. So it's a it's cool gig.

Neal Schaffer:

Yeah. And you know, come to think of it. I just did the math. I spoke for my first time professional when I was 41. So join the club, right?

Jay Baer:

Yeah, there you go. There you go. All right.

Neal Schaffer:

So with that in mind, let's shift a little gears. Now. We've also on this podcast that I'm sure in every podcast, you've been listening to talk about what's been happening with you know, Coronavirus, the pandemic. And, you know, Jay and I were talking about before we started, and I think he has a really unique perspective on what a lot of businesses are probably going through right now, in terms of just having to rethink everything. And, you know, I know that you have like a better way of of talking about this. So for those who you're, you're telling me about restarting a complete reset on everything. And I think that's a really, really good way of looking at instead of trying to tweak things, this is just a significant, significantly different situation that we're in. So, you know, for everyone listening, Jay, what have you been advising other businesses on this sort of reset strategy?

Jay Baer:

Yeah, I'm fortunate in a way that even though we do a lot of big company work, commit to convert, I live in a college town, right. So there's 100,000 People here. 40,000 of them are students. It's a classic Midwestern American college town. And many of my friends here in town are small business owners, restaurant tours, retailers, professional services, medical, etc. And, and one of my observations, Neil, is that today, in the strange kind of COVID times, it doesn't really matter whether you've been in business for five years or 25 years or 75 years or 115 years. Every business today has to function essentially like a startup. Because you have to fundamentally rewire the relationships between your business and your customers, and prospective customers. You can't take any customer knowledge for granted. To give you an example, on my podcast on Social Pros show that you've been on in the past on Social Pros, recently, we had as our guest, Laurie Meacham, and Laurie is the head of digital customer care for JetBlue airlines. We had her on the show. And she said that according to their digital department, there has been a huge spike in Google searches for the phrase, are airlines still in business? Are airlines still in business? Imagine that. Now, that is a search term that you would not see in February or before. And now there are so many of them, it was flagged by their digital team. And they actually had to create social media content that says, I assure you, we are still in business. You cannot assume anything, right? Are you open? What do you charge? Do you take reservations are masks required, or whatever the deal is? And so today, I really believe that the FAQ is your greatest potential marketing and customer experience advantage all customers have, right now, a tremendous amount of confusion. I mean, I went to get my haircut recently, and my first haircut since that pandemic, and I look, I am a middle aged man, I know a thing or two about haircuts. Or thought I did. Do I need an appointment? Where do I park? Now our parking meter still enforced? Do I still need to bring change for a parking meter? Do I need to make an do I need to text you before I get there? Or just come in? If so where do I wait? Do I wear a mask? Does she wear a mask? Is it contactless payment or some other way of making a payment? Right? I mean, there was literally 10 or 12 questions that I had to get answered to successfully execute the daunting task of a single haircut. Now multiply that across every business. And you see that there's a tremendous amount of dissonance in the marketplace. So as a marketer, as a business owner, your number one job right now is to close this uncertainty gap, to say how do you build confidence in the minds of your customers and prospective customers. And that is, frankly, done through information. So the FAQ is your friend. And what I've been advising people to do, Neal is literally take a piece of paper and a pen, and write down all the questions that your customers have for you today, starting with Are you still in business? If you will probably have 30 or 40 questions, then methodically and strategically and systematically answer those questions on your website via email, in social and beyond. Right, just just make sure that people are not confused. That needs to be job one right now, as you're

Neal Schaffer:

saying that, I'm reminded of Marcus Sheridan and how he started his business of just answering but now it's not about sales and marketing. It's about customer experience operations.

Jay Baer:

Yeah, yeah.

Neal Schaffer:

So based on all that, the customer experience, and we were talking about this before we started as well, obviously, is fundamentally changed right now. It's digital. It's consumers with lots of questions. And I'm sure that FAQ strategy that you talked about, it's just one of many things you're advising companies on right now. So with this shift, you're saying that people overcomplicate the customer experience in the way they look at? Yeah, you know, I know that on this podcast. I've had Dan gayness on Dan's a great guy. We talked about customer experience as well. And I know that every cmo survey, you know, most important thing top of mind is always customer experience. Yes. So what is that advice now that this this post Coronavirus advice that you would give on customer experience?

Jay Baer:

Yeah, I mean, that the data show, Neal that I think that the most recent report on this was 86% of Chief Marketing Officers say that they expect to compete primarily on the basis of customer experience this year. And that's because fundamentally, at least pre pandemic, there isn't really a lot of difference in products and services in most categories, right? You're going to sell about what everybody else is going to sell and you're going to sell it for about the same price. Right? There isn't that many defensible moats or secret sauce in most categories? There just isn't right. There may be some, you know, bullet point differences on the margins, but it's not a core difference. And CMOS know that. So they figured that customer experience is the way to differentiate. That makes sense. But as a practical matter, the corresponding research that nobody talks about and they should is that 70%, seven out of 10 Customer Experience initiatives fail to produce ROI. They fail. Everybody wants to get better at customer experience. I've been doing this a long time. I've never met a business. I was like, You know what, Jay? I don't believe in it. I don't think we should have a good customer experience. I don't think it's worth it. Like, I never hear that, right? Nobody ever says, Man, they're on their own. So how can everybody believe in a thing? And then 70% of the time, it doesn't actually work. I'll tell you why. Customer experience doesn't actually exist. Customer experience doesn't actually exist.

Neal Schaffer:

Because marketers imagination. It's

Jay Baer:

it's a nickname. Okay, so customer experience, and I'm throwing up my air quotes for listeners right now, customer experience is a term of art that was invented to describe what is in reality, a collection of hundreds of individual intersection points, between any business and any customer. The customer experiences the totality of every decision you make about your business. How do you answer the phone? What is their receipt, say? What's the sign on the restroom? You ever go to a bathroom in a restaurant, they got cute with it. I'm not talking about you know, gender fluid bathrooms where they don't care one way or the other. But sometimes, like they'll say, you know, it's kabayan, gross and dama. So whatever, right? And like, okay, look, man, I'm not looking for a Spanish one on one class here, I just have to piece what you just tell me, which is, you know, men and which is women, like, I understand you're trying to stay with your Mexican restaurant theme here. But like, let's just keep it simple. So that's part of the customer experience, right? You know, if you order something off a menu, and they don't have that thing, they're out of specials, that's a customer experience, right? All of that is customer experience. And so we have trained ourselves in business to say, again, air quotes, let's make the customer experience better. But that's not actually possible. Because it isn't a thing. It isn't holistic, you ever get one of those, Neal one of those, like eight foot long, I don't how many meters, that is enough to help me eight foot long, you know, like party sandwiches like Subway, one of those like, you know, places will bring you and they bring it on a board like a two by four, you know, at a party, right? You cannot eat that lady in the tramp style where I get on one end, and you get on the other end, we eat towards the middle, right, the only reason you can eat an eight foot long or three meter long sandwich is if they cut it into slices, you have to treat customer experience the same way. So what I've been telling everybody, as we talked about off air, if I write a new book, it'll be about this. To win with customer experience, you have to think small. What everybody tells you is to think big, and that is terrible advice. You have to think small. So my team and I, a customer at convincing convert have done a ton of research on this. What we found Neal, is that of the hundreds of things that you could do to impact the quote unquote, the imaginary customer experience, there's three that customers actually care about three things, and they want you the customers want you to be quick, they want you to be clear. And they want you to be kind, quick, clear and kind. And if you can find a way to be 15% better in those three critical areas. 15% Faster, 15% less confusing, and 15% more empathetic, you will succeed disproportionately, especially now. Because yes, this pandemic sucks, and it's terrible, and people are dying, etc. But I will also tell you that this is quite literally the single greatest opportunity you will ever have in your entire life to steal market share. This will never happen again like this. So if you can be faster than anybody else in your category, less confusing than anybody else in your category starting with Are you open and more empathetic than everybody else in your category. This is the time that you can start to leapfrog competitors in a way that would have been unthinkable six months

Neal Schaffer:

ago. So the empathy obviously make I'm sure everyone is nodding. It makes a lot of sense. I think that we've been as marketers, we've been trying to do more of that in our communication. Yes. Once this pandemic started, being clear, relates back to the FAQ that you talked about getting that information out there clarity around the situation. What about the quickness? You're saying that it's not necessarily a better product? It's not necessarily a cheaper product or service. But quick, can you guess, elaborate on that a little bit about what

Jay Baer:

there's two sides to it? It's either either speedier delivery of their products and services. Okay, you know, is the Uber realization of everything right. I don't want to wait, or it's speedy resolution of any questions or concerns. So there's an accounting firm not far from here in Indianapolis about an hour from me, and they're called Bogdan off and dodges. And they are a small business and and individual tax preparation and tax advice company. There's two principles Paul and Tim. They have an associate and a front desk person. They are indistinguishable Neal from from 10,000 other accounting firms in the US that do exactly the same thing for exactly the same money. I mean, it is, there is no difference. Except they are different. They have chosen to be quick. They answer calls and emails from their clients every day, every time within five minutes. Do

Neal Schaffer:

they have that branding on their website or on their business cards? And everything? Your

Jay Baer:

website? Yes, a business card? I don't know. And what's interesting is you see it in our review. So if you go to like their Google reviews, every Google reviews, like, I cannot believe how fast these guys are. They answered my question in 30 seconds, right. And they have literally designed their operations to be able to do that. Right. They're just like, look, we're just gonna be faster. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of opportunity there in every category. Because especially right now, where everybody has that uncertainty that that confusion in their head, that dissonance that on we, the faster you can eliminate that the more people will appreciate it.

Neal Schaffer:

And I almost think, you know, with this pandemic, I just for some reason, my mind flashed back to this book called Future Shock in the 80s. And now, everything is accelerating. And with digital technology, and now that everybody is home, and everybody's online, that expectation for even quicker responses has to be on the increase. I'm sure businesses are feeling this, like what's taking you so long, right? And where before, if you're busy in your day, and you're here in there, it's one thing but now that we're all home and staring at a laptop, you're like, hey, yeah, what's going on? What's taking so long? And I felt that, you know, oh, I think the whole you know, Coronavirus test results that their hospitals probably need us like fax machines and stuff. Yes. What's now in American efficiency here. But it's so true.

Jay Baer:

Yeah, everybody's expectation curve has changed. And it's almost like it doesn't matter what the contact mechanism is. phone, email, text, everybody expects a social media speed response now. Right? The when I wrote the book, Hug Your Haters, one of the things we did in that project is a lot of research on speed expectations by channel. And at that point, we did that research. Three years ago, I think four years ago, I guess, we found that people would expect a return phone call, right in a day, or maybe six hours, return email in a day or two, you know, return social media tweet or what have you in a couple of hours, return, you know, a reply to a Yelp review and maybe a week, right. So so there was a lot of differentiation in terms of what people expected in terms of where they they generated that feedback. Now, I don't have full data on this. But anecdotally, what I'm hearing from my clients is that that array has narrowed considerably, that people want it right now. Period, I don't care where they talk to you whether smoke signal hostage note, it doesn't matter. They want it right now.

Neal Schaffer:

So do you see almost, you know, I go back once again, another book flash, my wife's called reengineering, which is, you know, really big with the internet. Now, you know, computers can talk to computers, companies conduct companies, I worked at a manufacturer at the time. So instead of having to wait for someone to place a purchase order, why don't we just hook up our, you know, our manufacturing computers, theirs and everything, you know, we re engineer everything. So it almost sounds like, we need to have a reengineering of real time communication, or how we communicate with the world as

Jay Baer:

Yeah, well, the thing about speed, right? Is of all the customer experience related optimization you could do. That's the only one that you don't really need anything special, you just have to re engineer Right? Like, anybody could do it. Like Bogdan often dodges five minute response time as an accounting firm.

Neal Schaffer:

Right?

Jay Baer:

Anybody could do that if they chose to. I'm not suggesting you could do it tomorrow. I suggest it'd be easy, but anybody could, it requires nothing special other than want to, and and, you know, a measure of organization and process reengineering, but I will tell you, that quick and clear are increasingly interrelated. Because the better your FAQ is, the fewer people have to ask you a question because the question can be self answered, right. It's a self serve information, kind of an idea. Right. And, and one of the things I love I wrote about this in a book once is Amazon has this philosophy internally. Now, this is not practical, day to day for most companies. So let me acknowledge that before I tell you, but I love it as a thought exercise right as sort of a call to arms as a poster you put in the break room I love this idea. And what they say Neal, is that they should never have to answer the same question twice. So if a customer has a question, they answer it, but they answer it in such a way that every subsequent customer can find the answer themselves. Therefore, it never has to be asked again. Again, not practical in the in the real world, but I love the premise, right? I love the idea of Yeah, you know what, like, why are we why are we answering the same question over and over? over why don't we just nip that in the bud? And and we've got that solved like, okay, so a couple years ago, right? A couple years ago I'm in Vegas giving a speech as you know, I do used to do eight or 10 times a year, and I'm in some fancy hotel doesn't matter which one you'll know what I'm talking about. And a lot of those Vegas hotels, especially the nicer rooms, which they gave me because as a speaker, which is fantastic, thank you have this very, you know, it's like the marble shower, right, and there's all kinds of stuff going on and, and I go to take a shower and get to get down there for soundcheck. And I'm in the shower, and I'm sort of looking around and there is 12 different knobs. There's knob, there's dials, there's like switches. You know, there's like, there's a bunch of different hoses. Like, hmm, this, there's a lot going on here. So I am, you know, I'm late for soundcheck already, and I'm fiddling and I'm fuddling. And I'm clicking and I'm clacking, and I'm turning and I'm twisting, as God is my witness, I could not make water appear. I, Jay Baer Hall of Fame keynote speaker had to leave the shower, go to the telephone, and somewhat sheepishly called the front desk and say, I'm sorry, I cannot evidently turn on the water in my shower. And she said, Oh, that's okay, Mr. Bear, we get many of those calls each day. To which I thought, How about us sign? Or a sticker? Right? Like this is totally solvable? Like, if you're answering that question several times a day, in a casino, a small sign would save you a lot of money in the long run and would increase customer satisfaction dramatically.

Neal Schaffer:

But to that point, everybody at that hotel has their job, they're doing their job. So what department does that fall under? If you don't have a dedicated?

Jay Baer:

Man, is it right? You nailed it. I mean, that's why that's why I am a big believer in having a Chief Customer Experience Officer in a lot of organizations. And if that's not in the cards in your business, for whatever reason, you know, I feel like, I feel like your customer service people are the best place to lead that initiative, because they're, they're getting the byproduct of that, right, they're getting the confusion, and the complaints, and the and all that. And they can usually identify some of those easier quickly, or kind fixes because they they're getting the calls all the time, or the emails, or the live chats or the or the tweets. As a practical matter. However, as you know, Neil, in many organizations, and I think mathematically, they may be most organizations now, marketing is, is in charge of customer experience, or becoming in charge of customer experience. And as a lifelong marketer, I'm not totally sure how I feel about that. You know, I certainly believe that customer experience is a great way to acquire customers, we just talked about it quickclear kind like i i see the relationship. But marketing as a discipline is so rooted in customer acquisition, and is typically not at all aligned around customer retention, that I just not, I'm just not sure that the headspace of people who are marketers is ideal for outstanding customer experience.

Neal Schaffer:

I always talk about this, like what you know, Visa be like influencer relationships, is this really something you know, marketing is one to many, right? Whereas those sorts of relationships require more one to one approach more of a sales reports or a customer service approach. So yeah, and I suppose customer experiences exact same thing with the exception of those FAQs, which I suppose well, actually customer service, people probably going to write a better one, aren't they? Because they face the issues? They're responding to the questions, you would

Jay Baer:

think so? Yeah, yeah, it's just, I'm fascinated to see what's going to happen in a year, or a year and a half. And, and I think one of the very under discussed byproducts of the pandemic will be in a lot of organizations, especially everybody's working from home. And there's different ways of collaborating with colleagues, etc. I think we'll see some pretty significant kind of org chart changes in business, that that emerge out of all of this, which will be fascinating.

Neal Schaffer:

Yeah, we'll be so yeah, one thing I forgot to ask and I'm sure you get asked this a lot. Is this renewed interest in customer experience, not just the fact that differentiation is some of it because of what we hear about younger generations, valuing experience, more than anything, does that sort of tie into it as well?

Jay Baer:

A generations been interesting. Yeah. If

Neal Schaffer:

we want to acquire the new customer tomorrow, then your generation, is that something we need to be focused on?

Jay Baer:

Well, certainly from At a differentiation perspective, and in categories where the big guys have a natural advantage, you're exactly right. One of the things I've been thinking about is this notion that how do small organizations survive, you know, when you don't have a supply chain advantage, you don't have a price advantage, you don't have a selection advantage, you don't have a convenience advantage. What is your life raft? And I think it is, to your point, Neil, an experience that the big guys can't match, right? Whether that's calling you back in five minutes, whether that's doing demonstrations of fishing lures in your boutique fishing shop that you can't do on Amazon, or whatever the situation might be in your organization, making the relationship between your business and the customers, transcend the transaction, deliver entertainment, or humor, or ah, or empathy or something else that's beyond like, I traded money for a good or a service, that I think that is the secret that is the solution. And eventually, if you look at the trends and retail and manufacturing and services, those who can deliver on that will survive and those who cannot will not survive, because it's just math at some point.

Neal Schaffer:

Right? So it's almost developing an emotional relationship with each and every customer transaction.

Jay Baer:

Yeah, like there's a there's a bookstore here that that used to just be a bookstore, right? It's college town. But people don't buy books like that anymore, right? It's too easy to buy them online. And so now it's a it's it was pre pandemic, a art and performance space, right. So it's like a concert venue that happens to sell books. But it's great, because you go in there for a concert while you're there. They've got books related to the artist, they've got books related to the topic that that artist sings about, etc. They've got other interesting books, a lot of local books, things like that, like, Oh, all right, we're not just trying to sell books to sell books, because we can't win that fight. You know, so we're going to change, we're going to, we're going to change the ground upon which we fight. And that I think, is a really interesting idea.

Neal Schaffer:

That's really, I mean, I think a lot of this reminds me of what we've been talking about with this pandemic, which is really, this this pivot it, pivoting should be never ending, regardless. But just a reminder of that the pivot needs to be a part of your business DNA. Yeah. And for those that have been really rigid, they're the ones that are probably struggling right now, I assume.

Jay Baer:

Yeah, I think so. I mean, we've certainly done a lot of reengineering in our own business that convinced a convert, I mean, we, we totally changed, what we sell, how we package it, how we price it, how we deliver it to clients, since the pandemic, you know, we had to, we typically sold 18 to 24 month long strategic plans. Can't sell somebody a 24 month long strategic plan right now. Yeah, who knows what's gonna happen in 24 months? Nobody knows. Right? They don't nobody wants to buy that right now. And so we've had to completely change kind of how we go to market as well which is which is difficult and challenging, but but necessary.

Neal Schaffer:

Yeah, just just anecdotally, I was on LinkedIn last night and just looking at all these profiles of speakers and not everyone as a virtual speaker including myself so just you know, one small way and with so many you're trying to pivot But Jay this has been awesome as the oh man the landscape people are just coming right outside my home. I've been down that road a few times. Always the perfect time so but it is a good reminder that you know, our time is sort of coming to an end I want to make sure that people know i mean they should know where to find you Jay but I know you got converted to convincing convert calm you got Jay baer.com I don't know if you have like talk triggers calm. You got a lot of stuff going on. Yeah. So can you please tell our listeners where they can find you?

Jay Baer:

You nailed it I'll give you four things give us a give our calm is our main site more than 3000 articles for owners and business managers and marketers that's Convince and Convert calm. My personal site is Jay baer.com Be A E are the most recent book about word of mouth is talk triggers talk triggers.com. And my podcast about social media is social proz.com.

Neal Schaffer:

Awesome. Jay, any last minute word of advice, something you may have forgotten to mention about what we were talking about. We are good. I just forgot to

Jay Baer:

mention. I just want to reiterate, though that, look, I get it. Everything about this sucks. We're all on the same page. But trust me when I tell you, you will never have this opportunity again. So you can either go under a tortoise shell and bemoan the fact that everything sucks, or you can continue to be unhappy about that. But recognize that from a business standpoint, this opportunity is unlikely to reoccur, and you can completely re engineer your business for the better if

Neal Schaffer:

you choose to do so. It's funny because this interview will be broadcasting right after an interview I did with Joe Pulizzi, who is absolutely bullish on the opportunity that this crisis is presenting. And that was a really good reminder and reiterated on a bigger scale that in crisis, there truly is opportunity. Mr. Jay Baer. Thank you so much. I know we all love your work, looking forward to your next book, seeing you on stage when all this clears and shaking your hand in person. Thanks. You know, thanks for coming on the podcast. And hey, wherever you're on the world, make sure you follow Jay. Check out his blog, subscribe to his podcast. And we'll be at you again soon with another episode of the Maximizer social influence by good Thanks, Jay. Thanks. Alright, everybody, I hope you love that interview. Whenever I have a chance to chat with Jay, I always learned something new, some new perspective. And I hope that you did as well. I hope that after listening this podcast, you'll hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss future episodes. There are a lot of podcasts out there. And I sincerely appreciate your investment of time in listening to this one. Also, I do have a new book out on the market called the age of influence. For those of you that might be relatively new to this podcast, it talks about the concept of Digital Influence, and how your business can leverage it both as an influencer, as well as primarily engaging with other influencers and content creators that it oftentimes already like know and trust your brand. So I hope you'll check that out. And if you have already read it, and you've listened this far at the end of the podcast, I hope in addition to reviewing this podcast that you'll consider reviewing the book on Amazon or wherever you bought it as well so that other people can find out about the content. Alright everybody, that's it for another episode. I look forward to speaking with you again next week. And until then make it a great virtual social Day. Bye Bye everybody. And CYO nada