Episode 31

Before the Sale: Guest Craig Arthur on Profitable Relationships - Part 2

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.

Transcript
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.

Next Episode All Episodes Previous Episode

About the Podcast

Show artwork for Connect & Convert: The Sales Accelerator Podcast
Connect & Convert: The Sales Accelerator Podcast
Insider Strategies for Small Business Sales Success

Listen for free

About your hosts

Profile picture for Dennis Collins

Dennis Collins

Profile picture for Paul Boomer

Paul Boomer

I help businesses grow up after they've grown their revenue. Think about that for a moment. You'll understand what I mean.