How to add value to your Business | Justin Varuzzo

Justin Varuzzo is a successful marketing professional with over twenty years of sales and marketing experience. With a heart of a teacher, Justin is working at building a community of like-minded marketing and sales professionals, small-business owners, and entrepreneurs through his “MarketingAndService.com” podcast. Justin’s passion and focus is at the intersection of marketing and customer service – it’s here where he believes organizations can build the strongest relationships with their clients and customers.

Justin has been featured in The New York Times, ABC’s 20/20, AmericanExpress.com, and has had content licensed by Investigation Discovery. He’s also been honored as a Dutchess County 40 Under 40.

As a marketing consultant and coach, Justin helps guide business leaders that are overwhelmed with analysis-paralysis given the broad range of marketing options available to businesses today. Justin provides guidance to enable immediate action to tackle the most important and fundamental elements in creating an incredible customer experience. Each customer journey is tailored to your organization and all focused on growing a long-term and loyal customer base. 

Discover More
https://marketingandservice.com
https://www.facebook.com/MarketingAndServicePodcast
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-varuzzo/

Transcript

Justin V: 0:13

All right, and let me just make sure I got everything set here. Yeah. All right. Cool, man. Can you hear me? All

Josh Bolton: 0:18

right? Coming to you? Fantastic, especially with that mic.

Justin V: 0:21

Yeah, it's like I love this microphone. It works out great for this type of stuff.

Josh Bolton: 0:25

Yeah, I will say the shear and the hail, hail. I forgot what his name is. But those two are like, fantastic mics.

Justin V: 0:33

Yeah, I for awhile, use a Shure SM 58. And that actually, if you take a little time to EQ, you can make it sound almost identical to an SM seven be here for about a quarter of the price.

Josh Bolton: 0:44

But it takes a lot of E cueing and settings. It does. Yeah, it

Justin V: 0:47

takes some some messing around. I have no audio background. So this was the this was the easy part of podcasting for me. So do you have your own show than I do? I have a show called Marketing and service.com. And it's basically all marketing and service and kind of the intersection of marketing and service and how small businesses can really leverage that opportunity to compete.

Josh Bolton: 1:09

Interesting. Okay. I'm saying not many, I've talked to many marketing, like podcasters not from that angle, though.

Justin V: 1:18

Okay, interesting. Yeah. So my background has been, I've worked for the same company for about 20 years, and we're in the music space. We do music, education, music, sales, audio equipment sales. And, you know, I found during my career, the best customers have been the ones that I've developed long term relationships with. And in doing that, I've realized a lot of it is just empathy and serving the customers. And you know, so many companies, they say, Hey, you know, customer service, such a big deal to us. But, you know, we know that most companies don't really provide great customer service, right? Don't lucky to get a hold of somebody lucky to if you can get someone to answer the phone. And if you get that you chances someone calling you back with a solution to your problem is pretty low. It gets really low

Josh Bolton: 2:05

after that, maybe that person answering like, is willing to work, and then you they send you to whoever, I'm still waiting on someone to call me back from a company and I'm like, they're not going to send anything.

Justin V: 2:15

Right, right. Yeah. So it's, it's, uh, you know, that's kind of the world we live in. But I do think that that is the place where we're, especially small businesses can can really dig in and leverage that competitive advantage.

Josh Bolton: 2:29

So I'm just curious, I've talked to a lot of business people, but they didn't see it, the way you did is the empathy and compassion to the customer. Is that just literally just sitting in could be, for an example sitting and just listening to their problems?

Justin V: 2:43

Yeah, I mean, I well, I should preface that with the I think the the first rule there is authenticity. Because you can't be empathetic, and and be inauthentic. And what I mean by that is, if you don't really care about what you're doing, and you don't care about the customer, and you don't care about the product, there's no way you can really care about their needs or care about the problem they're having. And that'll always, it'll always come through. And even if you do fix their problem from a from a technical perspective or procedural, you're not going to build that long term relationship. And it's just not going to pass the smell test. If you're not really authentic and passionate about what you're doing.

Josh Bolton: 3:23

That's interesting, because the way you said it that way remind me I used to teach martial arts, I don't anymore. i He was one of the sharks just trying to get a real job. And I had a very lucrative side thing going but that was like, it was one of those. So I grew up not fully Down syndrome, but not fully mainstream, normal people was that weird middle group. And so I grew up with a lot on Down Syndrome and autistic but like functioning, but not most of my life. So when I went to go teach martial arts, it was one of those weird things I've come to realize I was targeting them not to be creepy because I knew how to talk to them how to understand them. And it's one of those actually, my instructor I go to see him in a couple days. He even told me last week, he's like, I made more money off you dealing with those customers, because you brought you were just so kind, you understood where they were, that they were paying 1000s of dollars to get your time on like, and you only paid me barely $50 for the week.

Justin V: 4:20

Yeah, so we come from a very similar background, because I started with teaching music. And I assume very much like in martial arts, you know, when you have this direct interaction with people you're working with face to face and you see them on a weekly basis. And you see them grow and you see them progress, and you see them achieve these goals they had set out for it just naturally creates a human connection. Right? And that's kind of the foundation of how do you take that bad experience where you know, you're really proud of their success when when when they're succeeding and you You feel good about it when they're happy, and they're enjoying the process? And how do you take that it's such a personal level of this one to one, you know, teacher student type thing? And how do you apply that to, let's say, Verizon Wireless deal or a cable company, if you're dealing with it with cable or a cell phone, like they're, they're always like, the worst offenders, right? trying really hard. And that's kind of my whole, my whole purpose and mission with my podcast is kind of really think about that for a minute. And I know, it's a lot harder than it sounds, you know, when you're talking about a call center with 150,000 operators in it, versus, you know, maybe you and one other person in a dojo somewhere, you know, in a local community that you live in. Right, right. But I do think it's those small businesses that can create those relationships, every step of the way, whether, you know, whether it's martial arts, or maybe you're a plumber, or contractor or an auto mechanic, or, you know, all these local fields that businesses usually get involved with, they all have that opportunity to really leverage that type of relationship for for long term success. Well, 100%,

Josh Bolton: 6:14

and actually, that's one of those guests I had on Friday, and he was explaining all the different stuff. But I told him the same stimuli, like this is a service, it's kind of hard to transition into business as I've, I've been talking to great entrepreneurs and business people I've come to realize, it's not necessarily I have to implement it, I have to make sure my employees are comfortable and happy at my workplace. Therefore, they give the employee the customer a wonderful and happy time to write. And I'm like, and there's there's a weird disconnect, where for some reason, upper management, whether they've been C suite too long, or they just have forgotten that it's people there, they're dealing their business, and people have emotions.

Justin V: 6:55

Yep, yep. And how do you you know, how do you keep those people engaged and interested again, I I'll fat I'll go to the big side to a to a, you know, a Verizon or an AT and T, you've got 700 different divisions, you've got 30,000 agents, you know, how do you keep them engaged and passionate about resetting cable modems? Yeah,

Josh Bolton: 7:14

it's kind of hard. Yeah. The main one, I was telling him and I said it was like, I get I'm observant person. I was keeping tabs on us in my story is the one Do you know the largest tech company and FYI, just curious, Justin. All right. I don't. Okay, cool. Big company is just as big or even bigger than JB Hunt. Okay. But they're private. So I don't think they're ever gonna go public either. But this warehouse, they just recently bought 50 warehouses when I was working for them. And they were buying like an AR 15 On top of that. Oh, wow. So yeah, they're big. And it was just one of those The guy came up with this old dude, if you looked at him, you would assume he's dirt poor, like Siemens is kind of thing, right man's making 50k a month. And he just say, Hey, Josh, you're observant. This is my like my baby that helped me get to where I'm at. Why is my dying kind of thing? I'm sick. Well, that one guy that came in near the Hell's Gate tattoo firing demon spawn coming out? Well, yeah, Chuck, I'm sure that guy. Will Chuck just wished to break his leg. So you can go home for six months instead of working here for one day. Wow. I said, so the word morale has way more power than what's happening here.

Justin V: 8:23

Yeah, yeah. And I think we see that everywhere in a lot of places, right? There's a lot of businesses that there's the great resignation, with people quitting left and right and moving different companies and really valuing that that work life balance and valuing an environment that's going to foster their career and their growth. And it's definitely something that companies have to take a look at.

Josh Bolton: 8:44

And that's pretty much what I told him indirectly before I said this back in, like 2018 to him before was even a huge problem. But uh, I told him, I said, you know, you don't have to understand their pain and know that they're human. And they understand they're coming to work. They're trading their time for your money. But we humans, whether we're competitive or not, love games. We love games don't know why we just do. I said, so make it a contest can you afford saving 500 of your own dollars, not the company's at first and just give it to them? I said 100 bucks, sadly for WSU is game changing? Right? Can you give them 100 bucks to Albertsons or Walmart, whatever you insert whatever here, you make it just a simple player number first player gets 200 bucks and the rest I'll get like, 100. And then the last one gets 50 Because he got to even it out and all that. And he's like, cool. Yeah, I can do that. No problem. Within a month and a half. He went from, for math sake. 2000 packages an hour to 8000 packages an hour.

Justin V: 9:46

Oh, that's significant. Yeah, that's really significant.

Josh Bolton: 9:51

And that's where I told him Well, Mike, you totally forgot what it's like to be a manager, where you're rooting for your team. You're doing everything to make sure they're happy and getting stuff done. And then you can Take the company car to go buy that expensive taco died down the street you've wanted to try, but never had a good reason to. Now you get to use their money and give it to the crew. I said, it's a really hit a big goal. I said, I don't know how you work out with the company, you can figure that part out. Give them like a paid day off. Or they could just cash it in an extra hour a day's pay without working. Is it again? Game Changing? Sad to say for WT worker?

Justin V: 10:26

Yeah, yeah, there's, there's there's different perspectives to on that right? I mean, certain employees want different things. Someone might be interested in more money or opportunities to make more money. Someone else might be interested with flexibility in their hours, somebody else might be interested in, you know, having a lunch party, or you know, birthday celebration or something like that. So yeah, it's really kind of tuning in and trying to figure out what what those things are and see how you can get to a point where you can make them happen.

Josh Bolton: 10:56

And although a lot of them wanted it, and it was again, I was just saying offhandedly, this is what I would expect if I were working for you, I said, but you never say thank you to any of them. It's the simplest thing and it means the world to them.

Justin V: 11:09

Yeah, yeah, gratitude.

Josh Bolton: 11:13

And that's where then that shift that I worked. That warehouse went from the laughingstock of the company to everyone call him going, What the hell did you just do?

Justin V: 11:22

There you go. Yeah, that sometimes that's all it takes is little changes. And it's no different than dealing with a customer, right? Little empathy, appreciation, gratitude, authenticity, those kinds of words resonate at every level.

Josh Bolton: 11:36

100% like, there's this one coffee shop actually, probably gonna go pick them up tomorrow. He, he knows me, we talk about his shop, because I'm good about business. And it looks especially with coffee prices going up. I'm like, man, you're gonna have to keep just spiking your prices like Starbucks. He's like, I don't want to but I have to.

Justin V: 11:53

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's tough. Well, it's really tough today with the inflation and oh, my gosh, availability, inventory availability, it's been a really difficult and challenging time that I think a lot of companies probably never thought that would be a problem they would have to face you know, you always think about am I going to get enough customers? Am I you don't usually think am I actually going to be able to get the core product that I sell? Am I going to actually be able to get inventory that people want? That's not something that I think I've seen in my lifetime it to this extent,

Josh Bolton: 12:24

oh, same. I have a group of people. I'm going to talk to you tonight around 4pm. And that symbolism lived through the 70s. And they're saying that it's almost identical. What's happening in the 70s is happening today.

Justin V: 12:38

Right, right. Just to be clear, I didn't live through the 70s either.

Josh Bolton: 12:41

I'm a 90s. I grew up on the original Power Rangers, and

Justin V: 12:47

I got up by almost a decade, but not quite the 70s. You got that

Josh Bolton: 12:51

parachute jeans? But yeah, so I'm just loving this, can we tell me a little more about the customer empathy, experience and more nuances of that?

Justin V: 13:05

Right. So I use the word experience. And that's another one of those things you hear a lot of big companies are hiring now. Right? Like chief experience officer, okay, Head of Customer Experience, there's a customer experience department. The problem with those is that no matter how passionate that person is, you really have to have buy in from the entire organization, especially at the top levels of management. Because your job in creating a good customer experience is really looking at the entire customer journey, right? How are they coming into the business? How are they working through the business? What's the sales process? What's the post sales support process? What's the what's the life cycle? Like, you know, do they finish this product and go back to the beginning? And you look at all these things, and you say, how do I make every single step as easy and as frictionless and as enjoyable as as you possibly can for a customer? The problem is, if you suggest something, and then someone else says, no, no, we're not going to do that. We can't afford to do that. And service is a big one, right? Because most executives and a lot of business owners, they look at service as a expense and not as an income or revenue generating element of the business, right? You've got your sales team driving revenue, you've got a marketing team that's driving inbound leads to the sales team generating revenue. And then you've got this thing called service, which is after you've already gotten the money, and now this is just a big expense. But what I found is that, especially in a small business, there's so many amazing opportunities on the service end, to get that little extra right and to give that little extra to solve a problem and potentially upgrade a service, upgrade a product, maybe sell a complementary product. There's a lot of opportunity for sales on the service side because At the end of the day, the salespeople more or less by necessity, they're usually not going to go back too often to the old people, they've already sold something to just to say hi, they should, but they're usually right. But they're driven by commissions usually, or they're driven for new sales. So they're usually they do their thing. And then they want to move on and find the next customer. So the service team is the one that does interact regularly with the customer after the sale. So it's important that you have a service team that one knows the product, and is knowledgeable in the product and is interested and has some type of passion and commitment to the product. But also have some level of, I don't know if I want to say sales training, because the goal of the service call is not to end with the sale. But the opportunity in the service call can potentially lead to additional sales in the future, right? If it's a positive outcome, whatever it is, then that person is going to go back to the beginning of their journey, and maybe they buy a new product or a new service that you offer. And you want to just be able to really focus on that end of it on the tail end of the journey, is where I think there's more potential for competitiveness, in today's business landscape than there is that right? Everyone's fighting for top of funnel. You know, again, if you're if you're if you're a plumber, if you're a contractor, if you're a teacher, right, if you're all these things, everyone is fighting for that top of funnel, and everyone's fighting for that customer acquisition. And I think a lot of people, it's easy to get so caught up into that, that you forget to foster the relationships you already have.

Josh Bolton: 16:43

Yes, no, that's very true. Like, when I was teaching martial arts, that was my whole thing is I actually didn't really actively go out and market it was all word of mouth for me. And that was just a foster relationship. And they grew the they had a great experience. And that was just one of those. They went ranting and raving to their friends like, oh, you need to go to this kid, Josh at this martial art studio. Usually he's sitting in his office eating a sandwich, several weeks sandwich don't mind that kind of thing. And yeah, and it just got to the point I was, I didn't eat, I actually hadn't had to tell him like, I'm like bookfull. Now, like, you might have to pay more for me to move someone around. And still pay it.

Justin V: 17:24

Yeah. So that that that's you take that and you amplify it right. And now imagine it wasn't word of mouth, you actually had a sales team. And your only job with the sales team was to drive leads to you that are well, at this point, you're you're the you are the product. So your sales team is selling you, right, and you're taking in these customers, and then you're not following up with them, you teach the class, but instead of fostering them one on one, like you do in real life, now you have a service team, that's gonna monitor their success, right, you might have a, you have a customer success manager, that's a term you hear a lot today, you have onboarding, they're going to be the ones who kind of set the customer up for you, right, and then you have the support team that's going to follow through and make sure that that whole process has been smooth for the customer. And if they have any issues, they're going to go to them. But who actually goes back and make sure the results were positive, right? Like as a teacher, one on one, you're always monitoring, and you're always looking for results, you want your students to be successful. But as organizations grow, I think it's easier and easier. As those roles get narrower and narrower and definition of what they do. There's really nobody looking out at the end. You know, like who who who have Verizon Wireless, is looking out for me, and making sure that I'm really enjoying my cellular service. And then it's a trouble free experience. And at the reception is crystal clear. And that my range is good that my equipment is efficient, right? And there's really nobody who does that. It just you kind of move along this journey and even even even retention. I hate to say it nowadays, I had switched to at&t from Verizon, and they made zero effort to retain me whatsoever. I was 20 year customer. Not even one person said, hey, you know, is there anything we can do? You know, why are you dissatisfied? It was just like, Alright, no problem. Thanks. Have a nice day. And that, to me is a very bizarre attitude for big companies to have. But again, I'm not there. I don't know how that scales. And I don't claim to be the expert in enterprise service.

Josh Bolton: 19:28

At least on that caliber. Both of us are not that good. Yeah.

Justin V: 19:31

But at the small and medium sized business, when you look at big companies, and you think wow, how am I going to compete? Right? How am I going to compete with this big corporation? How am I going to compete with this big national company and the bottom line, you're going to compete because you're going to provide a better experience. You're going to provide more fostering, and you're going to provide better support and service and a better environment and just a more authentic and genuine care that they are achieving the positive outcome that they need to be successful.

Josh Bolton: 20:05

Oh, yeah. And then that's actually one of those the coffee shop guy. He was already doing it, but it was just like I was a regular. So he just knew me by whatever. And it's one of those I asked him, I said, Hey, do you train your employees specifically? To remember people who if they've, like, show up three times a week, remember their name, their general order? Get it started in advance? And he's like, No, I haven't. I like I kind of suggest the over never have the name on like that right there. That's the main reason why I come I know, if you see me, you're really porn, that coffee, capping it. By the time I'm at the counter. All I gotta do is pay and go. Right.

Justin V: 20:42

Right. And it's it builds loyalty.

Josh Bolton: 20:45

And I said, I know you do it correctly. I said, If I said few, because he hires a lot of college kids and said, a few of the college girls, they have picked up from you, your habits being around you so long. But I'm like, if your whole team was like that, as it oh my gosh, I'd be yelling at everyone to go to you was like screw Starbucks or this guy.

Justin V: 21:04

Right? Yeah. And I, I think, I think a really important thing to look at there is that when you're in that type of environment, again, it's even if it was a Dunkin Donuts, you know, a huge franchise, but it's still you know, usually the same people working there every day. And you see these people, you have that one to one. And now they remember you they remember your name. I am a huge proponent, especially if I'm doing any consulting with small businesses to CRM systems. And I don't care which one that there's so many of them today. They're all pretty good.

Josh Bolton: 21:36

Honestly, what's the one do you usually recommend people though,

Justin V: 21:39

I have a lot of experience with HubSpot. And that's one that I've used quite a bit. I used Infusionsoft. I wasn't a huge fan of that. I like the email automation. But the CRM itself wasn't that great. But what I what I really think people need to do is take the time to take notes and actually use the CRM for what it's really for. Right? So like, I could sit down here and say, Okay, I talked to Josh today, Josh taught martial arts, I just put little notes, right. And then if we connect two years from now, say, Hey, Josh, how's the teaching going with the martial arts? You know, how is the trucking job yet? Or, you know, how did that second warehouse come out? And now you're creating this authenticity, because you took notes, and you took the time to care and write it down? Because you're not going to remember these things. Six months later, a year later? No.

Josh Bolton: 22:29

But when they message you in the CRM system, you know, it's okay, hang on.

Justin V: 22:33

Yeah. And think about, you know, what's the difference between a company that a year after you buy something, they email you and say, Hey, we hope you enjoyed your product. By the way, we have these 10 things on sale, or the company that says, Hey, Josh, you bought this, you know, model one 2x y thing about a year ago, and at the time you bought it, it was because you were struggling with this, this and this from From what I recall, I just wanted to let you know, I hope that's worked out. And I hope you've had those positive results. But hey, you might be interested in this check, check this out. This is a new product we have that kind of goes along with those other issues we were having a year ago, that we hopefully solved your problem for right now, obviously, it's a vague, but like, that's an example of if you have that CRM and you have that customer information in front of you, as a salesperson, it allows you to provide a much higher level of service and personalization. And again, you know, in a very small business, you might only have a couple 100 clients, and you will remember all these things. You see him every month, or you see him every quarter, or maybe you see them once a year, but you know them, they're your neighbors or your community. But as you grow, you have to think about how do I scale up? And you know, and scale works at every level, right? You might, how do you scale from one customers to 100 customers? How do you scale from 100 to 1000? How do you scale from 1000 to 10,000. And of course, those processes will change over time. But things like HubSpot, it's completely free, which is why I'm an advocate of it. For the core services. There's no reason any business shouldn't be running something like that. And again, doesn't have to be HubSpot. There's there's tons of CRMs out there. I just use that one as an example because I've used it and it's free. And that's the type of thing where like, alright, that's one thing you can do today, right now is you can go create a HubSpot account, dump your email into it and start creating your contact list. And just put a few little notes every time you hang up the phone. Or every anytime you end a visit with a client or a customer. You just put a little note in the system. It can be any customer had a golden retriever in the store today. Cute little dog named named Alf, right? And these are things that you can use later on you that person comes with oh, hey, how's the dog doing? Or, you know, how's that project going? That you were you know, last month you were working on building a wall at your house? How did that finish up? Did that all go well, and it really helps create that flow of conversation. That's have a much more humane and authentic conversation than then robotic follow ups that we're so used to.

Josh Bolton: 25:06

Yeah, it's sad to say. So the the tie in real quick earlier the reason I asked you what your CRM you recommend people is I had a business coach and he was advocating for kartra. Do you know that one?

Justin V: 25:20

That one? I don't know offhand? No. Okay.

Josh Bolton: 25:22

Honestly, it's a Bichon system. They do automate everything, it's plug and play. It was it was great. It was like 100 bucks a month. But the only problem for me is I couldn't leave my email, my website domain to the Karcher account. Alright, so just a really small thing. I did their video exactly how they explained it. And because I'm using the same system they're using I know, they can see my attempts and everything I've emailed them. And finally, I just told them why, hey, it's been literally a month all you've just given me the runaround the copy and paste, like, can I just get my money back at this point? Because what's the point of running my CRM if I can't even put my link on it? Right? And one guy, new guy, he even said, like, I'm new. I'm just I had to read through your whole profile. And he's like, yeah, they totally give you the runaround, the copy and paste. And he's like, we're all about the thoroughness, and follow up. And I told him like, Dude, you have been more helpful than everyone else. They're like, your fault. Figure it out.

Justin V: 26:21

Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's kind of one of those scenarios where you have multiple people that accompany there usually is someone who cares. It's unfortunately, not always the person you're going to be dealing with. So you know, how do you how do you distill that down to the entire staff? Or, more importantly, how do you have a track in which the customer can get to the person they need to get to? relatively quickly, right?

Josh Bolton: 26:50

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's what I told him. I said, Is there a way I could, because there was Google domains that are like, I input an email, and then one of the devs just go in and flip all the switches they need it flipped? And he's like, No, the devs are very particular. And I'm like, Well, yeah, they're the ones getting the 150k a year, their God in their world.

Justin V: 27:11

Right, right. Yeah, that that's another another big thing I'm a proponent of is everyone really having responsibility and taking responsibility throughout an organization? Nothing. Nothing is more annoying than calling a company and then blaming a different department. And I totally, yeah, I told the story a few times on my own podcast about a situation where a service tech came to my home to fix a washing machine and said, Ah, I don't know this thing's a piece of junk. And I don't know who the hell fix it last time. They were an idiot, blah, blah, blah. And it said it was it was you, you fix it last time, like six months ago. That, yeah, that attitude, though, is is you know, that's something where companies do have to take time to train service teams, and say, Hey, listen, you know, you don't want to badmouth other parts of the company. Even if you're going to fix the problem. It didn't make me feel better. Even if the guy fixed everything he left. I mean, I didn't feel better about the brand. I didn't feel better about the washing machine. I didn't feel better about the experience. I just felt worse about it all. Now I felt guilty that I really wasted my money and made the wrong decision.

Josh Bolton: 28:17

Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna say it takes. It was some book I was reading where it says essentially, you could have a wonderful experience, but the last end of the experience, if it's terrible, the whole thing's terrible, then

Justin V: 28:30

you're exactly right. Yep, you're right. And that's kind of what I said at the beginning, right? Like everyone spent so much time at the front end of the journey. And then as customers make their way through the journey, and they get towards the tail end of the journey, is when companies really usually take the nosedive and stop paying attention. And you're exactly right, people remember the last thing that happened, not the first thing.

Josh Bolton: 28:51

And that's where, like, I had the lady on, and she makes a journals for Dungeons and Dragons. And I was like, Hey, this is cool. We're talking. But I told her, I said, because I bought a product. And I was also just chatting with her. I said, the reason I really liked you and wanted to help you out is you personally followed up or you have a really good copy because it felt like you were actually like following up with me. And it felt like you genuinely cared and were curious and all that. I said, everyone else is just like a generic. Here's your receipt. Here's your tracking number. Get the hell out.

Justin V: 29:21

Yeah, yeah, it's a bit and that's what I like it. What? How much does it cost? Let's put it in dollars and cents. How much does it cost for someone to care? Not much, nothing. Nothing. It really costs. Yeah, yeah, very, very little. For you know, you just gave that example of a company that didn't really care. But, you know, they don't have to spend a million dollars to make someone care. They just need to make a few tiny little adjustments in how they either handle the customer data, adding those little notes, maybe a little empathy training and and take Taking the time to just listen for a minute. And now all the sudden you have an ordinary experience turn into extraordinary experience, right?

Josh Bolton: 30:09

Well, yeah, this this one company I use, I do trading on the side. And I always joke with the guy calling in his name's Joe, Mike, I just say, Hey, Joe. It's one of those. He gets 1000s of calls a month. So he's like, oh, yeah, it can hear this. He's pulling upstream, Josh. Yeah. But it was just one of those. We're talking and I'm going to Tereus for using the software. It's intended, but still breaking it somehow. Yep. Yep. I don't know what it is. And I'm like, I'm trying to figure out how to capitalize on it. But. And it was one, as I said, hated the sales guy, Travis in the back and write the note of that. I actually, like broke the system. And he's like, he starts flipping through. He's like, Oh, my God, he did. And a developer wrote on that, do they never do? I said, Wow, yes. It's a couple explicit words, because I genuinely broke the software. And he's like, and developers shouldn't just say, to cussed you out on mic? Of course they did. But it was just one of those. He's like, wow, he's like, I didn't you like one of those? I didn't even think of scrolling back and your, your, your notes? Right. I was just, I told him, I said, Yeah. If your CEO ever wants to, like, send something out, send it to me, I'll break it for free. Right, right.

Justin V: 31:26

That's exactly. That's another example of, you know, sometimes people say, Oh, that's, that's cheating. Like, you're just cheating or fake empathy. At that point. It's like, well, no, because if you actually took the time to listen, and you took the time to put some notes in, of what you heard, and what you listen to, it means that you took the time to care. And then you took the time to read the notes. When the customer calls again, or before you call the customer, obviously, someone calls you on the spot, it's not so easy to read three years worth of notes. But in a lot of instances, if you're following up if you're looking for a repeat sale, you know, a lot of times people don't take time to read the notes there either. You might have some ongoing crisis. And then all sudden, you get a, you know, a phone call from a salesperson, hey, oh, Paul, as well, I want to sell you this new thing. It's like, whoa, wait, I'm in the middle of a huge, I'm about to sue your company, because the last thing you sold me was so bad. So those are the little things that I think can really make a big difference for a lot of small businesses.

Josh Bolton: 32:23

Yeah. So then, let's just talk the mom and pop coffee shop. Well, they don't necessarily have a CRM in front of them. How would you recommend them to approach a similar tactic? Well,

Justin V: 32:35

the first thing is the training, right? So in in retail, I know a lot of places you'd kind of just get thrown in there. There's a really high turnover rate in retail in general. So you see a lot of employees that will be there for maybe months at a time. Very rarely do you see them stay years and years and years, because either they're going to move up, and they're gonna move out of that position, or they're going to move on to something else in their life. So it's retail is really difficult in training, because there's always such a high turnover rate. And I had experience working at quite a few retailers when I was when I was a kid. And one that actually seemed to put the biggest emphasis on service was Sears. Obviously, in the long run, it didn't work out for him, we don't see Sears anymore. They they fell, they fell to bankruptcy. But Sears had a really good training program. And as a, you know, 18 year old kid, it taught me a lot of the fundamentals of service. And one of the pillars of that that I live to, to this day is employee empowerment. Nothing is more obnoxious than when you're at a store. And there's a price tag. That's not right. There's a line of people behind you. And now this person is trying to page a manager. And now you're standing there for 15 minutes with a bunch of angry people, Everyone's upset, productivity is screech to a halt. Because this person wasn't empowered to make a decision. And Sears had an opposite approach and said, Listen, we don't want to stop traffic, you know how much it costs to shut down a lane on Black Friday at a major retail store? Just do it, do whatever you got to do, you know, take a guess. If the customer is happy, just move the line. If they're returning something, and they're a day outside of a return window, or two weeks outside of the return window. No, you don't have to get a manager for approval. Just go ahead and approve it. And that was something that stuck with me my whole career. And I believe in that now very, very strongly, because I feel like it's something that I haven't seen. I thought it was something that would get adopted by a lot of companies. But how often it's like, well, I have to get a manager's approval. How many times do you hear that? I have to I have to get the manager's approval. And yeah, it's it's really a waste of everyone's time. I think you can really set guidelines as to what a retail employee at the you know, very bottom of the rung knew, right? Like, what are they allowed to do? Give them a budget, right? Give them a little more responsibility and say, hey, you know what, we'll give you a budget for refunds or extended returns. And we're going to call it a marketing budget. Because by you doing this, you're creating the tail end of that experience, and you're making it incredible. And we know that that's going to result in long term loyal relationship. Like you said, when they remember your name, they remember your order, you're not going to want to go to a different coffee shop now. You've built this relationship. Right? You're married, you're literally married at this coffee shop now, right? You don't want to start all over again, that's really, really difficult and scary. And what if the new place isn't as good? What if they don't remember your name? What if they screw it up? You know, there's so many things that you're going to be worried about. And we don't want anxiety in life, we want everything to be easy. And what you described is easy. I walk in, and they say, Hey, Justin, Here's your coffee. You're all set three bucks. Hey, that's easy. I'll pay a premium for easy, right? No stress, no anxiety?

Josh Bolton: 36:01

I do. And it's sometimes I actually, like it casually just throw my tip. And like, I tried to give it to them. They put it in a jar and my there's no cameras just take it. Yeah, yep. But yeah, it's honestly and that's like what I told him. I said, I assume now, I don't like going to Starbucks unless, like, there's only one I can kind of trust that I can get the order right. As it but I know if you even if he the you are not there your crew is trained correctly to they may not know me, but they can get the drink correct every time.

Justin V: 36:33

Right? Right. Yeah, and of course that, you know, again, watering things down on a podcast is a little different than real life. As as a product gets more complicated, and the variety of products becomes greater. And the size of the organization, the number of customers that come through the doors, all those things grow, those challenges become a little a little more difficult. A great example in my in my business was there was a a national store that wanted to get into music sales, and they were gonna sell all sorts of instruments, they want to be like a full blown music store. Okay, and build this department into the rest of their their corporation.

Josh Bolton: 37:13

I'm just curious, what was that place?

Justin V: 37:16

I don't know if I want to say the name. It's I will I

Josh Bolton: 37:23

will skip that. Nevermind. Yeah,

Justin V: 37:25

I mean, they they look like your shirt.

Josh Bolton: 37:30

Oh, okay, a blue company

Justin V: 37:32

that sells a lot of electronics. And, and their big pitch was we're having all the manufacturers come in, and they're going to train the staff, every manufacturer of every major Instrument Company is going to go there. They're going to train the staff and all these stores, and they're going to be so smart and so incredible. And it's going to it's going to blow the doors off the whole music industry. I remember reading this and I'm thinking to myself, Okay, that that would be nice. I mean, everyone would love that. Right? If you if you had a personal rep, from every manufacturer to come in and just train every day. But I thought to myself, what happens in six months, when there's not one single person left, that went through that training training from the original training? Are they going to just keep coming back every month? Well, nonetheless, I don't think most people ever saw musical instruments in any of those stores.

Josh Bolton: 38:17

Or if it was, it was like it was really minimalistic, like a electric guitar in an app. And that's it. Yeah.

Justin V: 38:22

And it was for a very, very short time. And if you look in the corner of the store that you've never been in, you might even see some remnants of that era, which was probably, I'm thinking 10 plus years ago, but I still see some random stuff that they just don't know what to do with no one's gonna buy it. They didn't want to throw it away. And they haven't liquidated it. But every now and then I see one of these cookie things on a shelf. And I just think to myself, that's been there for 10 years, and nobody's addressed it.

Josh Bolton: 38:49

Yeah, I wouldn't say the best buy near me, obviously, since I

Justin V: 38:52

figured that. I didn't say that. I don't know who it was.

Josh Bolton: 38:55

Oh, God, no, nevermind, it was a Walmart. But, uh, yes, randomly, I just read random for electric guitar. Because they had this whole big area for fridges and all that. But me and my buddy knew if we wanted like the good amps, and speakers, you had to go to the one music area. A less fancy version of yours in the back. Was it just like, this $50 One they're trying to sell for $200 electric guitar and I'm like, I'm not a musician. I know. This is a piece of shit. Yeah, yeah,

Justin V: 39:30

you've got that issue. And you've got, you know, there's instruments. And I'm not just saying this because I'm biased because I'm in the music business. But they're, they're fairly complicated things, right? They're not just, you don't just take them out of the box and turn them on right a guitar, you've got six strings, they break easy. So you got to replace strings. You've got to tune the guitar. There's lots of little knobs. There's the wire that connects the guitar to the amp. There's the cable that connects the amp to the wall. There's all these little things that make up that process. And there's a lot of things that can go wrong, right can Tables break all the time and every guitar player has a bunch of cables. Because no matter how much you spend on cables, eventually they're gonna break. You know, these aren't like, stuck behind your computer, you plug in once and never touch again. Most people are plugging and unplugging these guitars three, four or five times a day, 10 times a night if they're a professional gigging musician, and they were out and they break. And what Where are you going to go when you go back to a store like that? And you think someone there is gonna know how to tune your guitar, or help you put a string on it? Not a chance. It'll never happen.

Josh Bolton: 40:28

No. And honestly, like, during college, I was trying to learn the old school acoustic guitars. Yep. And it was I found my old guitar I bought back in high school, I just want to impulse buying and bought one. So I was like, Oh, finally, I can learn this thing. Well, like you said, I was just playing it not anything aggressive, and the sixth string broke. And it was just during the lesson. So the teacher just pretty much lent me his. And I took it to some place. And then I actually had to, like, call him to teach him like, where am I supposed to go to get this replace? Because I don't know how to do this. Right? Right. And this year, he's like, go over like guards, music or some other shop and they'll fix it for you. He's like, Hell Guitar Center, but he's like, That's a hit or a mess.

Justin V: 41:08

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's an example. That's, you know, that's a giant corporation. They've got stores all over the place. And yeah, that's really tough. They fall victim to that, you know, a passion product knowledge. You know, I don't think it's unique to the music world. If you're buying something expensive, certainly$500 $1,000. Maybe it's a computer? Are you going to have a better experience? Buying a let's say, a Mac, at a store, like Best Buy? Or do you think you'll have a better experience at an Apple Store, if there's one next door and store the Apple store? Yeah, generally, most people are going to realize that the Apple Store is going to be a much better experience, because they're going to invest more in product training. And it's a much more limited number of products, right? If you work at Best Buy, you should have some basic knowledge of all the computer systems that they sell, right? If you work at a Apple Store, you only need to know one, right? As long as you know the basics of a MacBook and an iMac, you're you know, you're good to go. You got like 90% of your job down. So that's one of those examples of again, like investing the time in the service, investing the time in the product knowledge and the training, you're going to have a better outcome. No matter what business in no matter what product or service you're selling, you're going to have a better outcome. And you should want to be the Apple Store, not the best buy. Right? And you know, great if you want to go buy a DVD, there's usually not a lot of questions. There's not a lot of product knowledge. It would be interesting if someone really enjoys movies, right? You know, I back in, when I grew up, if you've worked at, you know, if you're really into movies, go get a job at Blockbuster. Because you were surrounded by movies all day long. Yeah, it was fun, right? So naturally, your passion kind of aligns with where you work normally, right? Especially today, there's every retailer on the planet is looking for staff. So if you're into if you're into electronics, it would be very, very odd for you to take a job at Bed Bath and Beyond if you could get a job at Best Buy.

Josh Bolton: 43:10

And I wouldn't say that was the one thing for me. I've known at least my best buy here in my city. The the one guy that is the go to all of them, just say you go talk to whoever is usually the overweight guy. That's the gamer loves his tech, though, you're generally right. And you you have to get through the arrogance of a geeky gamer and you'll get the best knowledge because like I was buying a laptop and let's get a guy came over. She was like, Okay, let me check in and I'm like, I'm buying like 1000 $2,000 laptop, I want like the best for my money. And he's like, you want to talk to jack up Justin, for whatever sake. And he's like, he I don't know anything about these laptops. But he could tell you exactly. The pros and cons. If he comes over had his Cheetos and everything. I'm like, Yeah, I got the guy now.

Justin V: 43:59

Yeah, and the best part of that story is everyone in the world right now that has ever been into a Best Buy is shaking their head up and down saying yeah, I know that guy. I know exactly who you're talking about. Every Best Buy has that guy. Right?

Josh Bolton: 44:11

And it's funny. It's like he was in the backend doing his thing. He wasn't even out in the field. And he just says like, hey, good, Justin, customer in the front. Yeah, you just hear grown and come over. And as for he, I explained to him, like I'm needing a laptop for this, this and this. And he's like, okay, you don't want that one. You want this one for what you're doing. And I was like, it was an extra $500 over budget, but I'm like, Screw it. It's the best I can get. And I'll take it I'll just get some extra credit.

Justin V: 44:37

And that's important. Lesson Two is knowing who in the organization I kind of alluded to that before making sure there's a path for the customer to get to the people they need to get to. And, you know, I don't know what Best Buy training is like, but I would imagine if I were doing it, I would say hey, you know, this is this guy here. We'll call him Bill. Bill is the resident gamer. He's an expert at this. He knows everything about gaming. machines. Don't be afraid to tell someone Hey, for this, you should really talk to Bill. And then maybe got someone who loves music and they're passionate about, hey, you know, you're looking for a new album or something or a new movie. This is the movie guy, this guy. You want to talk to ampere kind of thing? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that is something that I think companies don't always take the time to do. There's not always a path. It's just luck of the draw, right? Like you said, you call a company. Sometimes you get someone who can help. Sometimes you don't. But it's, it's it's okay. To not have the answer. If someone calls me and says, Hey, I got this situation with, you know, XY and Z. And I don't mind saying, I'm not going to try to make the supper idea. I don't know. Let me get you someone who does know, immediately, I'm not going to waste your time asking you questions about something I know nothing about, that you probably don't know anything about, let me get the person who can can do this for you. And that's important having having that pathway and that ability, because I know, in a lot of companies, especially in the Customer Service realm, you know, not resolving a ticket within a timeframe or not resolving a customer complaint in the first phone call are negatives, right? So but yet, you're not enabling that person to pass you on to the person who can actually help. So you end up with someone who's wasting time. And then they're basically being encouraged to lie or end the call at any circumstance so they can get their, you know, their radio. Yeah, clear ticket, close it and be done to move on to the next one.

Josh Bolton: 46:29

Yeah, I have to agree. Like, the every time I usually call it the the one, this one company, it's not the trading one, but I don't even call the right extension. I just say, Hey, Jimmy, I know you're not the guy for this question. But can you transfer me to whatever department who whoever knows this better kind of thing? And he's like, oh, yeah, no problem. Hang on it just because they let me shoot him. And I am. So make sure he's not in the meeting. And then I wait like two minutes tops. Is it alright? He's free to hear you go and just sends me out.

Justin V: 47:01

Hey, listen, worst case scenario, they say, Hey, listen, he's out today. But I'll send him and he'll call you first thing tomorrow morning. Oh, yeah. If he called you and He gave you the answer, you're still going to be happy. You know, that's the thing people aren't I don't think most people are unreasonable, right? Every now and then you get someone who's hungry. But most people are reasonable. They just want to know that you care. And that you're being truthful, right? If you if you say hey, he'll call you first thing tomorrow, and you don't hear anything for a week, and you call 10 more times, and you still don't hear back. That's a really negative experience. That's not going to make you happy. But if someone's very upfront says, Hey, listen, this guy is on vacation for a week. I can try it, I can try to help you with this. Or if you want, you know, I'll send him a message. And I'll make sure he calls you as soon as he comes back from vacation. Now, depending on the urgency of your issue, you might say no problem. You know, it's not an emergency. But I know he knows my application and what I'm doing with it. It's worth it for me to just wait because I know if I talked to him, it'll be fixed in 30 seconds. Yeah. It sounds like common sense when we talk like this as to people. But it's not you, you know it. And everyone knows that who's listening that they've all dealt with customer support? And it's not common sense.

Josh Bolton: 48:10

Yeah, my running joke, but it's kind of more of a truth than anything else. It's common sense isn't as common as it used to be. Right? Yeah. It's

Justin V: 48:18

like too much knowledge isn't necessarily a good thing. It's

Josh Bolton: 48:21

not. And like your your analogy of the whole, I'll put you on a list. Amelie, so my podcast hosts, their whole thing is within 24 hours to get if you shoot them an email, they'll reply to you kind of thing. And they've been very accurate. There was one time they got DDoS attacked. Like someone was trying to just shut their whole servers down. And I was just saying, like, Hey, I can't see my podcast on my like, website, what's going on? And it was so bad. Lilly, the CEO of his home, eating pal in the company says, Hi, I'm whatever. I'm the CEO of the company. I am now in the trenches with my crew. You I'm sorry to say yours is not an emergency. I will put this at the top of the list once we get over this attack, and you will be answered. He's like, and it was just one of those I replied to him. I don't know anything about podcasting, but the fact that you're in the trenches with your crew connect work for you.

Justin V: 49:14

Very cool. Very cool. Who's the podcast host? sprout? Oh, yeah, I use bedspread too. Yep.

Josh Bolton: 49:21

Yeah, they're awesome. And that's where I tell people Mike you're paying a premium but you more paying for the back end. Right? Because it's honestly if you have a any question even if it's dumb, like, why is the sky blue? Don't be like why are you asking this but blue?

Justin V: 49:37

They do a good job of their content as well. Yeah, they seem like a solid company.

Josh Bolton: 49:42

So I'm curious how long do I got you for?

Justin V: 49:44

I probably got to wrap it up in the next five or 10 minutes.

Josh Bolton: 49:49

Perfect and I got this has been actually awesome. Justin Elliot definitely have clarified a lot of things at least for me. I got three questions for you. Don't wait hold up forefinger. So Um, the first one other than work, what have you been doing to keep yourself busy during these COVID times?

Justin V: 50:06

So interestingly, the one thing I've been doing the most keeping me busy is learning how to play this bass that's behind me on the wall. That that that I took home, the day new, I'm in New York, and I took that home the day that New York shut down, I had ordered it a month earlier. Not not ordering it as a result of COVID. But just because I want to learn bass, and then it actually showed up the day we shut down in New York, so I got to take it home and night. And I learned the bass and I started a podcast that's now gone on over a year now and over 50 episodes, so it's, that was a lot of fun and a learning process in and of itself. And, yeah, that those are kind of my two main hobbies. That's awesome.

Josh Bolton: 50:49

Okay, side question. Do you prefer bass or guitar?

Justin V: 50:54

Ah, well, I have a can't really see the guitar. But I do have a guitar behind me as well.

Josh Bolton: 50:59

I can see the answer for it. Yeah.

Justin V: 51:01

So I I am not that talented when it comes to bass or guitar. And not to be little bass, but it's a little bit easier than guitar. So, I've been I've been trending more towards bass lately. But I am trying to learn guitar as well. I'm a drummer by trade, so.

Josh Bolton: 51:20

Okay. That's awesome. So let's say someone aspiring to be like you successful man, great jobs, playing bass, what are some tips, tricks or advice you'd give them to start down a similar path?

Justin V: 51:35

I think the one of the most important things is finding something, have some passionate, if you're passionate about something, you're you're naturally going to be inspired to learn more about it. And I'd say this, you know, I look at the beginning of my career, I worked a lot of retail I worked at Sears, I'm not really much of a, I don't build a lot of things like out of wood, or you know, like physical things. Sears was a tough job for me, you know, people would come in and ask about tools and drills and Sanders. And, you know, I just I wasn't into it. And I really wasn't inspired to learn much about it, which made me not really that great at that job. Whereas I worked at GNC, the health food store, that was just a job I took because it was a job. But it turned out, I was actually genuinely curious and interested in supplements and vitamins. And you know, within a month of working there, you know, I was reading every book I could find on it. I was reading magazines, periodicals, whatever I could find and learn more about. And, you know, again, this is an 1819 years old, and I learned that doing that made me much, much, much better at my job, because now when someone came in, I could recommend things, I could cross sell things, I could upsell things. And I could do it with passion and enthusiasm and with knowledge. Right? And it you know, I remember they said, I don't know if they still do it, they said this gold card Tuesday. And we would get a commission for that. And I remember thinking like, this was always the best day of the month. Like I could make so much money on that one day working retail, it was amazing. So generally speaking, learn and become an expert at whatever it is you want to do. Because I think more than a college degree more than certifications, having a passion and a knowledge will just naturally kind of elevate you in whatever it is you're doing.

Josh Bolton: 53:29

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the main one I tell people do is if you're passionate about it, as long as there's a means to make money, then figure it out. If there's like, obviously, like certain things, you can't make money off it, keep it a great hobby, maybe you could somehow tie it in. But just keep the passion and just know when business gets involved. It gets a little bit grindy but it's worth it.

Justin V: 53:52

Yeah, I beat up on car salesmen the most because in most instances, they don't know the cars they're selling. And and I think to myself, you know, most manufacturers exception of a few above, Toyota probably has like 30 models. But yeah, if you work at a BMW dealership, or you work at an Acura, you know, one of the especially one of the higher end companies that don't really have a massive product line, you should really know those cars inside and out every year, you should know what the differences are between the 2020, the 2021 and the 2022. You should know what's coming out in 2023. And it never happens. I mean, you know, if you have any interest in a car, you'll probably find you always know a lot more about it than the guy who's trying to sell it to you. And that's kind of in my experience the epitome of lazy salesmanship. And and, you know, certainly an area for the same reason as the Walmarts. Right, because dealers have a lot of really high turnover rate. Most people don't, you know, go in and say I want to sell cars as a career. They do it as a temporary bridge to something else and they don't take it too seriously while they're there. But there are people who've had really nice and proud marketable and well paid careers in that industry that do take the time to learn and stick with the company for 1015 20 years. And yeah, that would that would be my advice is just never stop learning and become an expert at whatever it is you're doing. Even if it's something you don't think is that exciting. If you make yourself an expert in it, you will, you will naturally end up being you'll you'll be the guy Best Buy who comes out when someone needs to buy a gaming machine, right?

Unknown: 55:27

It will be the one or the cheetahs standing like we have right one now.

Justin V: 55:31

The question is how does Best Buy reward that person? They don't? They don't? Yeah, I don't think they do. And that's the sad part. And if there's a lesson to be learned by anyone listening, who runs a large organization, you got to find that person. And you got to make sure you keep that person and pay them more because that is worth so much more than having to train a new employee who doesn't care who's never going to have the knowledge and is going to create a negative outcome for your customer.

Josh Bolton: 55:58

Oh, yeah. No, and that's when I tell people to it's like, back to the Best Buy guy if you have someone you know, he may not be good at sales itself. But the one or two he does he just locked in way more than you can ever price and just so where can everyone get you at?

Justin V: 56:17

So my website is marketing and service.com. The podcast is marketing and service.com with yours truly, Justin Peruzzo. Yours Truly isn't in the title. But it's J Usti N V as in Victor AR use Vizio. So that's anywhere podcasts are. And you can always check out the website marketing and service.com which also links to the podcast.

Josh Bolton: 56:39

Awesome. Yeah. Then I will. I said I'm probably going to be sending you an automated email within the next four minutes. So anything else all that will be linked in the description too?

Justin V: 56:48

Perfect, man. I appreciate that. Thanks for the pleasure talking to you Josh and I hope you have success with your podcast and I hope I've been able to offer a little bit of value today.

Josh Bolton: 56:57

Oh 100% It's been awesome.