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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Ops Experts Club. If you're at all interested in anything we talk about here in this episode, go ahead and check out the description down below and click any of the links there. Or if you just want to know more about us, click the links below. Now on to the episode Ops Experts Club. Taryn Turner, brother.
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B
Hey there.
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A
Hey brother. Just keep yaki it up, right? Like let's just keep it real. Taryn, the good old days. Keith Yacki calling us up with. Hey brothers.
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B
Yes sir.
- [00:33]
A
Love it. Taren, we have got a special guest here today who is a dear friend of mine and somebody we've been in league with a long time here at the Collab team and it's the amazing Dan Tao. He is great at what he does, especially when it comes to making sure your sales stay in the boat. You know, I think that's probably the simplest way we can put it so deep. Dan, thank you so much for joining us today. Brother.
- [00:57]
C
Thanks for having me.
- [00:59]
A
Yeah, yeah. So Taran, I thought what we could talk about today, especially because we have Dan on the show and he's such a good hearted dude, but actually an expert in this topic as well. We could talk about something that a lot of founders, I think, and maybe it's not even founders, I think founders has to have the heart. I think it's team south of founders when it comes to retaining sales. Like I think that a lot of times we're targeting sales, right? We spend so much time and energy on it, right. We, we refine our marketing, we get it to our the book of calls. We get the call on the, you know, like you actually get the customer that shows up instead of the ones that no show you, right? You get them on the call, you anchor the sale, they actually end up making the payment. You collected their money and everybody wins. And then people forget, oh wait a minute, they could still fall off over the next. If it's a payment plan or if it's a recurring subscription, something they have signed up for, they could still fall off. And what do we do about the people that fall off? And I think a lot of people, they just neglect it. I think that they put a lot of attention on. The founder is really passionate about it. But the attention and passion begins to wane on everybody else south of the food chain. From the CEO founder. You want to talk about that a little bit?
- [02:10]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I mean almost everybody we work with has some sort of a payment plan option. But you'll be surprised how many people have asked the question of you Know who's, who's. Who's got their eye on these payment plans because I guarantee you not all of them are going through. You know, there's going to be a big percentage. I don't. It's been a while since I've quoted it, but, you know, first round of payment plans, you can expect 25% to fail for various reasons.
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A
Right.
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B
Not all of them because they're upset just because cards expire, balances are full. They forgot to make a payment. And some people look at me and they're like, what do you mean, who's. Who's tracking these? And I was like, well, you're just. You're just hoping they're coming in and closing your eyes on the rest. Yeah. So it's a big opportunity because that's money people have promised you that could be sitting out there being untouched.
- [03:08]
A
And we talk about it a lot. Dan and I have been friends for a long time. And the way this all started was actually he had been doing this for Pedro Adeo. You know, when it came to helping Pedro with collections. And that started with you, Taryn. You started it actually with Pedro Adeos. And then we passed it to some internal team on the collab side of things. But then we actually. They wanted to bring somebody on full time to do it. And I said, well, I think Dan would do an amazing job at this. And he ended up going full time with Pedro doing this and knocking down hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for Pedro of retained sales. And it was simply by. We came to coin, Dan and I, by doing it from a heart first perspective. Right. Doing it from a place of hey. And a lot of language that Dan and I use when we talk about heart first is people's yes. I mean, like a sales conversion comes from a yes. It started with a yes. It was a yes when they chose to watch your little clip of social media reel. It was a yes when they took, you know, maybe a nudge from a friend to, hey, you got to check this guy out. Go check out this live event. It was a yes when they raised their hand or went to the back of the room or clicked the button to take next steps with you. It was a yes when they paid. It was a yes when they ascended. And. But Dan and I talk a lot about how the tricky thing about a yes is that it's fragile. You know, people a lot of times will make give you a yes in a moment of high energy or a high emotion, but then, you know, buyer's remorse, right? You buy a car, you get off the lot, and you're like, oh, what did I just do? How much did I just sign up for you? I mean, and that, you know, that's a big purchase. But there are a lot of people out there making small purchases where it's like they have that same kind of buyer's remorse, and it's very easy for them just to turn it off. Like, hey, I'm going to step away. I'm going to step back from it. I'm going to stop paying on it without realizing, like, there's some loss for them in that too. And so we're going to talk about that side of it. But the thing that I want for people to hear today as they listen and Taryn, Dan. Dan, I'm going to pull you in here. Is the easiest way you can continue to make sales is just to rightly steward people's. Yes, right. These are people that are going to continue to say, yes, these are, these are your warmest leads. They're your sales that you already have in the boat. How do I nurture them in a way instead of just cutting them off, instead of just cutting them out? Because I think a lot of founders just get frustrated when people stop making payments and they're like, f those guys, dude, we don't, we don't need those guys. Forget it. Let's just move on. Let's just go make more sales instead of. No, no, let's spend a little time nurturing. So, Dan, let's talk a little bit to you about nurturing about. When it comes to. From a heart first perspective, what do you think it's important for listeners to be thinking about when it comes to sales? People have already. You've already made these sales. They just started to fall off. Do you want to talk about maybe just the importance of people and people's hearts and like, like pastoring people's hearts a little bit?
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C
Sure. Well, first of all, again, thanks for having me. And for our clients, what we try to do is reach out with a heart when people are missing, when they fall behind on their payments, we don't want to beat them over the head with a stick. What we want to do is help them get across the finish line of what they've started to do in the first place. And that's invest in themselves. And a lot of times they're. They're investing maybe 3, 5, 15,000 in to themselves. And we just remind them of that and we come alongside, encourage them, uplift them, and help them get back on track again. But it's not pressure, it's just rebuilding the trust. And because what we find is that when a company retains a person, a client, a student, if you will, they, it's easier to turn around and resell them on more products later on down the road and doesn't cost as much money as going out and having to pick up new clients all the time. We don't want to churn and burn. We want to retain them so that, that they have a good long relationship and know that, that the client that we're working with really values the student or the client that they have.
- [07:24]
A
No, that's good, I think. Taryn, I was just on a call right before this with Caleb Peavey from Unmutable and he said something that was really interesting that I thought was great, Great marketing agency. If you're looking for marketing agency, Unmutable is awesome. We love, we love working with them. But Caleb said, you know, the ideal would be once you've sold something on some to somebody really, that marketing doesn't really have to put any more energy into it. Now, now, literally you could clip it over into the op side of things, really largely with. Right. To just maintain that person. Because they already gave you their yes. Right. So now it's just the reminder emails. It's just like, how do we keep them engaged? It's just like minimal touch. Which means for a visionary, it's less cost. Right. Because these people gave you their yes. Right. So the, the cost is low. So just like Dan said, acquisition cost to get them into the next level sale is very, very small because we're not trying to find them. Right. We're not out there on meta or out there on YouTube just shouting into the wind hoping that we can find our ideal client. No, they're already with us. They're already in the boat. How do we keep them nurtured? But, you know, so a lot of people see the value in a strong client list, but sometimes I think that they can get a bad taste in their mouth when those people stop making payments instead of realizing, no, no, this person still loved you at one point. I mean, like this person, you were their solution at one point. But they've just started believing a different narrative. And I think we can all get in our heads like that where it's like, we're going to always be this way. Whether it's like you start a new dieting plan and then you fall off the wagon on the dieting plan. You're like, I'm always going to Be fat, You know what I mean? And you just like settle on it. Or like, maybe you're start a new workout and you're like, I'm always going to be weak because you stopped going to the gym. Or maybe it's, you know, whatever it is that you were trying to learn and get better at. You know, for me, I'm not very handy, you know, so maybe it's like I take, you know, I take upon myself to take this project on around the house and I start working on it. I'm like, I'm always going to suck at this. I'm never going to be good at like we all be embrace a new narrative instead of like, no, no, like what got you to here in the first place? And what's your new solution if you decide that you're going to back away from this as a solution by stopping making payments. Taryn, do you want to talk about that just for a minute? Of like, just false narratives that fill people's heads and the ease of a founder just to want to cut them off instead of realizing no, no, these are just people that just need you to remind them of their yes.
- [09:34]
B
Yeah, I mean I, I feel like in their mind it's harder to get them to say a yes again. But as we've experienced, that's not true. Like you've been saying this whole time, they've said yes once they got the hard part over. Right. So just trying to get them to realize they are worth still contacting and reaching out to people like us. We're probably glued to our phones and emails and our notifications all the time because it's how we work. But when I've talked with people and Dan could probably share that experience, people don't have that same sense as, as we do. They aren't seeing every email that comes through every notification. They're in a different world. So it's a lot of times just ignorance. Even if we are emailing them, letting them know they're card filled, they could be on a vacation and just not wanting to take care of it until they get back. We have no idea what's going on with them until we try. And so just giving it that initial try is the best thing that we can do and in most cases is the easiest way to knock down half of them with the least amount of effort. Just a personal outreach sometimes. I remember back in the day when I was doing it, just leaving people a voicemail and them knowing that, you know, that their card failed would get people to take care of it just because they realize, oh, okay, somebody's got their eyes on my name and my number is calling me. So they really know I'm failing and I need to get this taken care of. Yeah, that's my tips.
- [11:07]
A
I think that. And Dan, I'm going to push this over to you here in a minute. So just to prep you for it. In my mind that the pain point is twofold and that is for most businesses, they haven't identified the who's going to reach out, right. Or then we're going to talk about the pain of whoever it is they think is reaching out. Right. And then number two, like the what they're saying when they reach out, I think those are the two biggest things you have to focus on. Right. So what Dan and I have seen a ton of and Tara and I know this is why we ended up starting Hartfirst to really help people is because we saw it a lot is on internal teams. The sales team, like I think in founders mind, they're like have the sales guy reach out if the payment failed, right? But sales team does not want to double back. Like sales team does not like looking back, right? Sales team is they're looking for the next kill, right? They're looking for the next sale, they're looking for the next commission, right? When you tell them they have to go back on an old sale, something they've already realized, pay on with their commission, they don't want to waste their time going backwards, right? So they, they, they push it off, they treat it least priority. So then other founders I've seen say, well, this should be a customer service function. The downside to it being a customer service function is that you want your customer service experience to always be excellent, right? You want your people that have said to love to talk to your customer service people, they're there to give concierge treatment to help them when they're stuck, to show them where things are at, to just love on them and make them feel important. And when you mix that with now they're a collections agent. The downside is you mix what customer service is there to do. And people get a bad taste in their mouth when they reach out to customer support. And customer support people typically are not the kind of people that want to have a conflicting conversation, right. They don't want to come up against conflict. They don't want to come up against heart. They just want to help. They don't want to have to hold the hard line. So when you can create a space where you're like, no, no, no. Dan actually handles all collections. Dan, you create a new slot. It's not sales. It's not customer support. It's actually a retention specialist. Dan actually handles that. Then it's great, because now customer support can run in their lane, and sales can run in their lane, and then your retention specialist can handle that. So I'd say the position is the first, and then the second. That's the who, the third, the what is how do you deal with it? Because I think that the other side is sales handles things one way, customer service handles another way. You need a whole new verbiage for a retention specialist that they can usher in. Well, so, Dan, will you talk to us a little bit about people that you get on the phone with? You know, you try and set up zoom calls with them, right? Because it's just good to get some face time. But what's some of the verbiage that you'll use with people to try and get them back in the boat?
- [13:35]
C
Well, first of all, when I reach out to them, I want it to be in love, not not just stern. And what I do is be up front. Sometimes we have to have a hard conversation, but we can still do it in a nice way. So, hey, I see that you missed on the payment. Let's get together and talk about it. So generally, I'll reach out by an email and then a text, and then also follow up with a link to schedule a zoom call. A lot of times it will be a phone call. What I found was difference in generations. And I know I'm going off on a rabbit trail rather than speaking directly, but I'll come back to it. But depending on the generations, the older generation, they really want to talk to a live person. It's true. The younger generation, they'd rather text. They don't even look at their emails hardly anymore. But that's why I try to cover all bases so that I can and having more touch points so that when I do meet with them. And I love the zoom because we can see each other face to face. We might not be in the same building, but we can see each other face to face, and they can see that were sincere in wanting to help them. And so some of the verbiage is really to get them across the finish line and remind them that their yes was to invest in themselves. So let me help you do that. Let me help you finish what you started. And okay, we might need to break up a payment to get you back on track, but let's do it, because we're here to see you become successful.
- [15:28]
A
I think that's. Dan, that's so good, man. What you just said there is so key, guys, if you can hear that, those of you who are selling things, if you can remind people their yes wasn't to you, right? They didn't say yes to you because you have some sort of amazing thing. Their yes was to themselves. Yes, I need this help. Yes, I've acknowledged I can't get this. I can't get there on my own. I need a solution. And then they came to you with that. Yes, they had given themselves, Right? So, Dan, you do that a lot, right? When you, when you're making a phone call, it's not just, hey, you gave us your word you were going to keep making payments. Why'd you stop making payments? It's like, no, no, no. Hey, can we just have a conversation? You had identified this was a pain point. If you stop making payments now and you lose access to all these things you previously purchased, not only is it like you're light money on fire because you've made half the payments and now you're just going to lose all that money and lose the access. But how are you going to address this? Yes. That you gave to yourself. You acknowledged you needed help. You acknowledged this was going to be the way you got help. Where are you going to go for it otherwise, Dan, do you talk about that with your, with your clients and the customers that you're dealing with?
- [16:31]
C
Yes, I do. And again, the more touch points we have to that, the better off we're going to be. But I do remind them, you know what, if you stop now, you miss out on, on everything that you've invested so far. So if we, if we work together and, okay, we've got to break a payment up so that you can get the momentum going again. We'll be right here by your side and we'll, we'll see to it that they do complete what they set out to do. There are some occasions where beyond their control or anybody's control that they have to, to leave the program that they're in. But we find that it's minimal. And when they find that we truly care about them, they're gonna be more apt to put the effort in, even though it's a hard effort, that they will accomplish what they first set out to do. And another thing, what I found too is the way technology is now with AI, that might be another touch point, but you still need that human element, use it to the best of our ability. But the human element is what's key.
- [17:55]
A
Yeah, I think Taryn. So I know you and I both really love John Acuff a lot. You know, John was amazing. New York Times bestseller. 9 New York Times bestseller books and was a client of ours for years. Still is a very dear friend. Something that John Acuff says is some beats none, you know, and I think sometimes visionaries can get in their mind. Founders get in their mind. No, no, they owe us this money. I want all of this money. Instead of like, no, no, but could we just collect a little bit of the money? Like, could we just like. And Dan, I know that's an approach you'll make right of, hey, I know you can't make the full payment that you made. Like, could we just scale that back a little bit and you could pay some. Some beats none. Like, is there something you can put towards this? And we could give you some access back. Hey, if you just can put this towards it, you know, all your stuff will stay intact. You're not going to lose your place in what you purchase. Or. Or maybe you'll give them access to a smaller piece so they can continue to build up momentum. I know that's like, what's the saying, Dan? That you draw more flies with honey than you do vinegar, Right? Like, there's a. And a lot of times that's what you'll do, right, is look for a way that you can get a win, give them a win if they could just like bring. Come back on with a little bit, bring in some in. Would you agree with that?
- [19:01]
C
Yes, sir, definitely.
- [19:05]
A
So, like, that can look like a lot of things, right? I've seen times, I've seen you do this in the past, Dan, it's been like, let's say they've said yes to a coaching package that they had a bunch of access to modules, they had an active coach, they were part of an active community. I've seen you come back and say, hey, if you'll pay this much, then we'll actually give you an extra coaching session with this person to help get you back on track. Or if you can pay this much, that will actually turn your visibility back on. You won't be able to engage in the community, but you'll at least be able to see the community. Like, what, What's a win? You can them, right? Nobody likes the feeling of they're just going to give you money and like, they're just stuck still in the same mire, right? Like, they're just still slogging like they, they need a stimulus. Right. They need something that's going to give them that bump to get them back up and over the hump. So if they give you some beats, not if they give you just a little bit, could you give them something in. In return that would actually nudge them to make them reminded of. Oh, yeah, that's why I was in this. Oh yeah, that's why I was. I need to be on these calls. I need to be asking these questions. I. Yeah, it's one thing to hear the question. I've got my own questions. How do I get back in front of this? So I think trying to come up with ways that you can give them a small win.
- [20:06]
C
Absolutely. And, and if the CEO of the company or whoever I am dealing with gives me some latitude, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get their clients back working again with them, to get that income stream coming back in and make them a happy camper, if you will, that, that they are so glad that they invested in themselves and that they did make it across that finish line.
- [20:36]
A
Taren, I know that in the last couple of minutes we have on the show, I know there are a lot of people out there who don't know all the things that we do here at the Collab team, necessarily something you do. I think really well, that where you work in tandem with Dan is creating a dashboard. Right. Like, because some, if you don't, if you don't have metrics, it's impossible to know are we doing better or are we doing worse. Do you want to talk about just like, like some of the dashboarding that you do for Dan? Because I think that whether people come to us, you know, if you are interested, if you're listening today and you're like, hey, this sounds great, I would really like to work with these guys. Heartfirst retention.com is where you can go to check that out. Heartfirst retention.com we would love to help you with that. Even if it's just talking, you know, you don't have, it doesn't have to be a sales pitch. If you want that we just take a percentage of retained earnings is all we do. That's. That's what you pay us. But Taryn, if somebody doesn't want to necessarily work with us or if they're just thinking about it for themselves, would you advocate for the necessity of visibility, having some sort of dashboard?
- [21:29]
B
Yeah, and that's a great point. People have hired Dan. You know, I do come in and help set up that dashboard for them. And it's really easy to just search through stripe, find somebody, pick up a phone and call them. But what's hard is how do we get metrics like you said, how are we tracking the success of what we're doing? How do we know that Hartfirst was successful enough to be able to pitch it confidently to people with metrics we can prove, and that's behind our dashboards that we set up. And so, yeah, it's just about identifying the source. You know, what's your source that you're finding these failed payments from? Can we automate a report or we didn't need to do it manually. And setting up the process and syncing it. And from there, Dan's now got a list he can go through, and we can hit all the right checkboxes to be populating this dashboard. Are people being contacted? Are they being collected on how many. How much in failures, how much in revenue? And that's something solid we can show the client. That's something solid we can show others, too.
- [22:30]
A
I love what I've seen you do, Taryn. For Dan and Founders, people are listening, thinking about this process for yourself. The best gift of advice I can give you is keep it so stupid simple for guys like Dan, who are your retention specialists. The last thing you want is a guy like Dan to go dick around in your CRM, like get lost in, like, pulling data. Get lost in looking for names. Get lost in all these different pieces where he's just. He just wants to get on the phone. He just wants to have conversations with people. He just wants to bring money back into the boat if he loses a bunch of time and having to go dog down answers or look for information. So the thing that I think one of the greatest gifts I think you give Dan Taren is just that automated report like you're saying, where it just feeds into Dan's sheet, Exactly who he's supposed to be calling, exactly how he's supposed to be reaching out, exactly where they're at in their payments. And Dan's just working from one sheet. And then Dan on that same sheet makes some adjustments that actually throw it into the dashboard. Dashboard. So you know exactly what Dan's closing, exactly how it's working, and then a good communication channel back with customer support once he's retained money to, hey, will you turn this access back on for this person? Because received payment create a tight loop, right? Don't waste your attention, specialist time. Dan's best value for you is bringing money back in the Boat securing people's. Yes. Don't make him have to go hunt. Don't make him have to go figure stuff out. He. He's great at what he does. But keep it very, very the sharp end of the spear for Dan because otherwise my. My recommendation for you would be you can lose a lot of time, waste a lot of time instead of really Dan hunting down money or whoever your Dan is. If it's not Dan, I think it's really important that you get really clear on what is the retention specialist role and what is it not and how can team complement that so that Dan can just show up and be the badass he is at what he does. So, gentlemen, another great show.
- [24:11]
C
If I could just. One last thing. Let's say we, we meet with somebody and they, instead of them wanting to retain us, they have somebody special because it takes somebody special to do the retention part of it. I'm happy to train and coach so that from within so that they can increase their. Their retention of their clients.
- [24:38]
A
Yes, Dan, great point. Thanks for pointing that out. So there is a done for you option and a done with you option where Dan will actually train your people. If you just want somebody on the field for a few months to get your people up to snuff so they can get out there and hunt people on their own, I think that Dan's a great solution for that as well. So, OPS experts, thanks for tuning in today. Dan, Taren, thank you for being with us today as hosts. And OPS experts will see you here same place, same time next week here on Ops Experts Club. See you guys then.
- [25:06]
B
Yes, See ya.