Episode #010 Permission Marketing and Your Irresistible Offer

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Good morning. Welcome back again this morning. Today we're going to talk about a concept that you may or may not have heard of called permission marketing. So whether you're a bookkeeper, or you're running another type of business, you've probably thought at some time, I don't seem to be able to understand how marketing works. Perhaps you don't feel confident with marketing, or maybe when it comes to marketing, you're just not quite sure what you're actually meant to be doing.

So, the concept of permission marketing isn't original. It comes from … Oh, well, I first learned it from Seth Godin. I'm not sure if its original to him, perhaps, I don't know. I guess over the years, he's learned these concepts from other people, but he's written a book called Permission Marketing. I remember when I was reading his book, I found the concepts so interesting and really, really mind blowing, because it was so different to what I've heard before.

So, you might be thinking to yourself, “Well, what actually is permission marketing?” Now, obviously, I'm going to explain that to you, but the actual definition, according to Seth Godin of permission marketing is that permission marketing is a privilege not the right of delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. I know, it's mind blowing, right? Doesn't that sound like the opposite to marketing to you? He goes on to say, it recognizes the new power of the best consumers ignore marketing.

It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention. It's cool, so if you've ever actually read his book or seen his book, so the subtitle of that book is called Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers. I know, if this is a brand new concept to you, you're probably thinking, “Wow.” Like even just hearing this little bit here, even just hearing the title of the book. I remember when I saw the title of the book I thought, “Wow that's such an amazing concept,” because I don't know if you've noticed the language that is used in marketing, but we talk about marketing in kind of gross terms, I don't know about you. But I remember when I first heard the term marketing funnel, and it was being bandied around all over Facebook usually something to do with funnels and I just thought, “Gross, like what the heck is a marketing funnel?”

I was thinking the only two funnels I can think of are like obviously there's the traditional funnel where something goes in the top and something comes out of the bottom. So when I think of that concept, which is actually what a marketing funnel supposedly is, and so you might have seen diagrams online like what … When you start to really study marketing, you might be grossed out by some of the things that you learn.

So, a marketing funnel is you'll see these images of like so people go in the top of the funnel so that you fill … The whole idea is that you fill your funnel, it's like fill your funnel with what? Well, you fill your funnel with people. Then what happens? Well, those people filter down the funnel, and it gets … So, you've got a lot of people at the top and then it's getting less and less, then the people are getting refined at the bottom. Then at the bottom something is coming out of the bottom of the funnel, and you just think wow, “What's going to come out of the bottom of the funnel?” Guess what comes out? Money. I think, “Oh, isn't that nice?”

So we're putting people into our funnel, and we're turning them into money. I don't know to me, I don't know if that doesn't sound gross to you, I don't know. To me, it just sounded weird, like I remember hearing it and thinking, “What on earth? Why are we putting people in funnels and why is funnel even a word?” Because the only other word I can think of … The only other thing that comes to my mind when I think of a funnel is like a funnel web spider. I don't know why, but that also comes into my mind, that's actually not way out of line with what we're talking about here because in marketing language, there's a lot of it. So, what does a funnel web spider do? Well, a funnel web spider builds a funnel like long narrow kind of I don't know how to describe it. Like a tube.

So then, he does that, a funnel web spider does that, I'm assuming that it's a he, I don't know if this funnel is a he, I assume it can be a girl as well. But anyway, so the funnel web spider and makes the web to attract its prey. So, the funnel web spider … and I know this isn't what it means in marketing concept, but as the funnel web spider awaits with his funnel to capture something, to capture I guess another spider or maybe a fly, or … I don't know anyway. So it's pretty to me, that's pretty gross as well. You might think well what is funnel web spider have to do with marketing. You will notice that if you pay attention to marketing lingo that we're talking about capturing leads.

I always think to myself, “Why are we got to capture leads?” We're talking about leads here. When we talk about leads, we're talking … What is a lead? A lead is a person, and a lead is a human being. So, what we're going to do is we're going to capture that human being. So a lead specifically. So a lead is someone who has only just heard about your message. Then once that person's heard about your message, once they decide to get in contact with you, or in marketing language, once they're captured by your funnel, once they're captured into your sales pipeline, whatever you want to call it, then that person becomes what we call a prospect.

So I do teach a little bit about this in the bookkeeping project. There's nothing wrong with it. These are terms that we need to use, but I often think to myself, “Why are we got to capture people, why are we got to call them leads? Why are we got to put them in our funnel? I don't really like that, I find the language of marketing to be predatory in nature.

So to see Seth Godin's book where he says, Turning strangers into friends and friends into customers, I thought like, “Isn't that a nice fresh marketing?” Because if you've ever wondered why marketing creeps you out, so some people they say that they feel creeped out by sales and marketing. Probably, the reason why you feel creeped out by it, and you think that it's sleazy is because the language that is used in marketing and sales is sleazy. It's actually … Like we use words … so pay attention to those words and what other words can we possibly use. I guess that's where the concept of you've got your customer journey. I guess at some point people started saying instead of wanting to put leads into a funnel and for those funnels to like filter down a sales pipeline and get converted into cash, people started recognizing that these are human beings. I guess that's where they started referring it to the customer journey, the customer life cycle, using different words there.

I think if you have a read of Seth's book that you will be refreshed by that. you don't have to write his whole book, he also has a blog as well so you can just google Seth Godin blog and have a little bit of a raid, what some of his videos he's a very interesting guy. So he's got a lot of books, he's very marketing focused. So, check out Seth's stuff, I definitely guarantee it will change your mind about marketing especially if, I don't know, I always make a joke that 2% of bookkeepers love marketing, and the other 98% are normal. So, it is common in our industry for bookkeepers to not like marketing, but there's a reason why. I think it's just a lack of education about what marketing actually is.

I think if I can shed some light on that for you then you'll actually understand that marketing it ain't all that, it's like, whatever. Marketing is talking to people. Marketing is helping people. Marketing is serving people, and leading them on a journey and building relationships with people. That's what marketing is, that's what sales is as well. So, you don't have to have on a checked jacket, and a sleek hair do, and all that kind of thing. It's like marketing doesn't have to be creepy. So, Seth's Godin concept is all about you don't do marketing to people. You don't market to people until you have their permission.

So his concept is where … I guess that's where the concept comes from to give a lot and then ask for a little. So to actually put off asking for a sale from somebody in order to build that relationship with them. In order to get the attention of a business owner that you'd love to work for, assuming that everyone listening here is in the B2B space, you need to make an offer to that person that they can't resist. That often needs to be something that you can actually deliver on as well. So you can't just talk … I'm not talking about just make empty promises or well manipulate to people, although sadly a lot of people do that as a marketing tactic.

I actually worked for a company a little while ago where I just didn't feel comfortable working there because their sales and marketing technique is just to gently manipulate people through telling stories I guess to present them one thing but then once you get on the inside, there's something different. Then you're made to feel bad, like there's something wrong with you if you don't get it right. But it's all about money. So, I'm not talking about that, what I'm talking about is looking at what you're good at and what you're actually able to do, what you want to do, something that's within your skill set, and then making irresistible offers to your clients.

Now, that's not exactly something that's easy to do. The reason is not easy, is A, you might not know what you're good at. Then secondly, you might not know what your offer is.

I work with bookkeepers every day, and a lot of them want to … They come to me because they want help with marketing. They say like, “I want to market myself, I want to put my business out there. I want to grow my business. I want to get more clients.” Very often they'll say, like, they might say to me, I don't know what my offer is, or don't know what I'm good at. But that's something that we discover along the way. So often, every time I meet with a bookkeeper, I always ask them, “Can you tell me the top five problems that you sell for your clients?” Guaranteed, like one in 100 will actually do that correctly. So, probably one in 100, I think I've only had one person ever do it actually.

So, one person will say to me, but I will actually list the problems that they sell for their clients, and the other 99 will list the solutions that they offer to those problems. So there's a little bit of a disconnect there in the bookkeeping space, and I don't know if this is something that's in the broader business community that people kind of don't know what the … They don't really know what they're doing they just kind of do stuff. One of the things that we teach at savvy is that you need to understand the pain points of your clients, and you need to actually understand the frustrations that they have, and the things that they going through, and also what they're trying to achieve.

So, one of the things that I see quite often in Facebook groups is, business Facebook group, somebody will come along, and they'll say, “Hey, can somebody please recommend someone for something?” Then what you'll notice is a flood of people come on to that post and everyone will jump on to that post and start pushing their agenda. So what this looks like is someone will ask that question and then someone else will come along, and they'll say, “I can do this for you, and I can do that for you, and you should do this, and you should do that.” That's how it looks when you're reading the post.

So often, if someone asks for help with something, someone else will come along and tell them, “All you should use the software,” or “You should go to this person” or “You should do this ” or “This is what I did” that kind of thing. So what those people are actually doing is that they actually recommending themselves, or they're recommending something that they sell themselves, or that someone they that they really like sells. So it's kind of all about them. When they're coming along to help this “person” what they're actually doing is … They're not actually being helpful to that person.

Because they're biased towards their own service or their own friend or their own … Yeah, just whatever. They might not even know that person's service, they might just like the person. So they're just saying, “Hey you should get in touch with this person.” Look, if you're listening here, and you're thinking, “Oh my gosh! I've done this.” So someone will ask a question about bookkeeping, every bookkeeper like they might not even say they're looking for bookkeeper, but someone will say are some question about that looks like they're asking about bookkeeping. Maybe they mentioned Xero or something, and a hundred bookkeepers will flock on to the post.

I always make a joke, it's like seagulls on a chip. They come on, and they start by recommending themselves. I'm thinking, “This person didn't even say that. They didn't even ask for a bookkeeper.” So, I don't know, I think that's something that we need to stop doing. I'm not saying this to make … If you're listening to this, I'm not saying that you should feel bad or embarrassed because I've done this myself in the past as well.

It's a human habit. It's just something that we do naturally until we start to learn. That's what it is that we're doing. Then when we recognize that's what it is we're doing that we're just kind of not being helpful, that we're not actually listening, what we're doing is we're on the alert we're looking for how can I promote myself. It's quite funny, because as bookkeepers, we always say, “Oh, I don't like promoting myself,” and stuff like that. Bookkeepers love promoting themselves like you should see a fly on to a Facebook post with a question about Xero, like seagulls on a chip. We love promoting ourselves, so bookkeepers we do actually enjoy promoting yourself. It's just we've got to know the right time to promote ourselves, and we've got to actually be willing to listen and to say what the person's actually saying what they actually asking for.

I've definitely done this. I've come along and just kind of dropped, you should use the software, or I can help you or go to this person that I particularly like. Usually, my motivations for doing it are about me. Normally, what I'm doing is trying to either make a sale for myself or sale for my friend or sometimes I don't even care if I make a sale, I'm just kind of … I don't know, I'm just doing it. I wouldn't say that I'm there … It's not something that I care about the person who's asking the question, but it's really have I actually thought about what this person is trying to do, and am I actually trying to help them.

Sometimes I'll even tag someone and go, I guess like just to earn brownie points, and I've never used that person service before. So we've all done that. It's natural, but what I've learned from this experience is that this ways of doing things is actually not helpful. When I put myself in the shoes of the person asking the question … and this is something that I really want to get across. I talked about this in my podcast about PITA clients, which is like a really want to horn in about how much we need to put ourselves in other people's shoes.

Because the reason for that, and I've gone on about this before, but 60% of small businesses fail within the first three years. That's a real statistic. That's not just something that people say, that is an Australian Bureau statistic. So, that is a reliable statistic that there is a failure of small businesses in Australia. To add to that of those 60% that fail, 50% of those small businesses are profitable businesses.

Now, I've already gone on about this before, but I'm going to say it again, it's not about us. Like if you're thinking how do I market my services? I don't have the confidence, I don't know how to get myself out there, you have to remember something that I had to teach myself, which is, It is not about you. It is not about you. So, what we need to think about is that, when you see someone, and they asking for help, and you think that maybe you're able to help them because you have the skills, and the abilities to help that person, how are you going to stand out? How are you going to stand out amongst all the other seagulls going for that chip?

How is it that you're not going to just look like just another person spamming your information on top post” How do you actually stand out? How does a person going to actually say what you're writing and see that there is something different? Well, the way that you're going to do that is you need to be able to know how to cut through all of the … I don't know what to call it, what I have in my mind is the noise that seagulls make when they're going on the chip plank. How do you get through that noise? How do you cut through the noise? How do you cut through the noise of other people pouncing and pushing their agenda? The way that you do that is you need to appear to that person as different to everybody else

As bookkeepers we say I don't like sales people I find sales people pushy but when we get in a situation like we are pushy. I think firstly we need to recognize that that pushy salesperson like that can be us, and if you're listening to this are you thinking like, “I never pushed anybody into a sale.” I'm sure you've done it at some point in time, but if you haven't, that's fine, but what I'm actually saying here is that if you feeling nervous because you don't like to be salesy, then learning to come up with this irresistible offer … You can't just come up with an irresistible offer, you have to do the groundwork, you have to understand what you're good at, and what your purpose is and what your offer actually is. In order to do that, you have to understand the other people. You have to understand the business owners, you have to understand what business owners are going through at the moment in Australia based on the statistics that we say so 60% of failing the first three years, 50% of those are profitable businesses.

Profitable businesses are going under, and what's that doing to those people in their families and what's causing that? I won't go into that now I do talk about that in another podcast, I think the first episode of the bookkeeping project, so you can listen to me preach on about that there. So, what you need to do is you need to present the person with an offer that's so irresistible that they will notice you offer above everybody else's. I'm not saying like do that, so that they can look at you and go, “Oh, you're the best.” only do that don't try and make your offer more irresistible than someone else's if it's not. So but if your offer is … If you have something to offer someone that you … if you really believe in your services and what you offer, and how you can help a business owner, then you have the responsibility to actually be able to get that message across.

So the reality is, that when a business owner posts on a Facebook group and asks for help for something they usually don't know what they're asking for. I really want you to remember this. So, I was actually speaking to someone just this week, and she said to me that she was in another mentoring program that in our industry and that they're expected to come forward with the questions each week about their business. And she said like I couldn't join those calls because I don't know what questions to ask. So when you're stuck … when you're a business owner and you're stuck, to ask someone to come forward and ask questions, they might not know what questions to ask.

So what I want you to now realize is that when someone asks a question in a Facebook group, they may not know what question to ask. So, they're asking a question but then perhaps not asking the question. So, they might not be asking the question that you think they asking because they don't even know what to actually ask. So often, business owners, and I think this is the reason for those failing rates that I've mentioned is that business owners they don't know where to go to get good advice, they don't have that kind of support network around them, and they don't know what kind of questions to ask.

So, here comes a business owner in a Facebook group, and he actually says … This is a real life example, he said in a Facebook group, “I need a software program that can send an invoice to the client which is going to allow me to put photographs on the invoice so that I can do my quoting.” And so you can guess what happened. A million bookkeepers came along and they go Xero, Xero, Xero, Xero, Xero, Xero and I'm thinking, like,] I don't know it just made me think of that noise that seagulls make at the beach. So he's got all these people going Xero Xero, Xero, and I was reading this post and I thought, “This poor guy he hasn't asked about Xero at all.” But what had happened there is we see things through our own filter and we just come along because we only know what we know as well.

So, as a bookkeeper, we're very heavily focused on the types of software we use and how they can help people. So what we do, is we read this posts, it says I need a software program. So we go, “Oh, software program. I know software program” That can send an invoice, “Oh, invoice, invoice. I know an invoice,” Which is going to allow me to put photographs into an invoice so that I can do my quoting. So when you're in the bookkeeper head space, you're going to go, “Oh, that person needs and an invoice with a photo on it, but what he was actually saying was something else.” So, I came along and I said to him, “It sounds like, to me, what you're needing is a quotation software.”

So, what I did in this example, as I came along to this person, I thought, “Okay, well, like I don't know if I can answer his question.” So, the first step when approaching somebody when I asked this kind of question is to say to yourself, “This person is stating a problem that they have, and I think I know the answer, but I probably don't.” What that's going to do is buy you a little bit of time to actually work out like A, do you know the answer to the question that that person's asking? Also is that person asking the question that they need to know the answer to.

So if you're a bookkeeper and you're going to look at something like that, and go, “Oh, that person wants invoicing, they should use Xero because I like Xero,” what you're actually missing out on is what the person's asking for. So the man did actually mention quoting, and so I thought to myself, “Okay, he seems a little confused. So I need to actually find out the information about his business.” So what I did, was I went I sat down quickly and I put all these two questions together that I could ask him, that would help him to be able to get further in understanding what he was asking for.

So what I did, was I said to him what industry are you in? How many items do you have in your catalogue? Do you already have photos and descriptions about those items, and what current software are you using for quotations? What current method are you using for invoicing? And I also asked him what kind of method do you use to take payments for your clients. So I thought by asking him a whole series of questions about the little information that he gave that I would be able to help him to work out what he really wanted to ask.

So that's basically what I did. So, that's how I got that man's attention above 100 other bookkeepers who were all in there just saying Xero, Xero, Xero, Xero. So firstly, the guy is on Myob, so for him, if you just come in and say Xero, he's going to go up and already smile. A bookkeeper might go, “Oh we'll just change to Xero,” but you don't actually … If you don't understand all the other software programs that this guy potentially has his Myob like he's already got processes in place. I'm not saying he's got all his MAB file connected to other software for example, but he might have other documented processes that rely on the MAB process, whatever. I guess what I'm saying is think about the bigger picture.

So what I did was I said … I came back to this place and said hello and I used his name, and I made sure that my post was formatted well, so I didn't just kind of talk on my phone or just type up a quick note, what I did was I typed it up on a note and formatted it properly on my computer with dot points and spaces between the paragraphs. What I did was … I firstly so the first thing you'll notice that I did there was I greeted him, so rather than just going, “Use Xero,” I went … So what actually did so I would have in those questions, I would have actually asked him what industry he was in. But I had a little bit of a look at his Facebook profile and I saw that he was in the hospitality industry selling furniture. So, what I actually did was I get actually gauged the type of business owner that he was.

Because I wanted to have a look and say, so even before you put these responses, check out the person's profile, see what the person is actually like. Is this person going to be worth your time? Is that even going to be someone you'd like to work with? So I saw his profile and I thought, “Okay, he's in the hospitality industry selling furniture.” So, if I looked at the person's profile and thought, this isn't an industry that I would want to work in, then wouldn't really reply to that person unless I thought I could genuinely just be helpful.

So, I thought, “Okay, we'll selling furniture in the hospitality industry, it looks like a well-established business.” I had to look these websites, I said, “Okay, probably any decent amount of money.” So that's the other thing you want to think about. They're like, can this person afford the service, if I go in and try and give him my help? Secondly, I want to work at, is it worth my time? So I want to work out maybe what industry is the person in, because that's going to change the approach of how I speak to the person as well.

Then I thought about it, and I thought, “Okay, he's in the hospitality industry, so what kind of people are in hospitality?” So, the people who are in hospitality they're often very outward focused people, they have people’s people, they usually very warm and friendly. I'm not saying that everybody in the hospitality industry is, but usually business owners in the hospitality industry, they're in hospitality because they're hospitable people. So I thought, “Okay,” so I put all that information together. I thought, “Okay, it looks like he's running a fairly decent sized business and operating at a level where he definitely doesn't want to be spoken to about the basics. So, you might not have a clue when it comes to bookkeeping, but he's certainly an expert in his field, so I need to speak to him in that way. So I said to him, “Hello such and such, I hope you've had a great weekend.” So that's how I started my post.

Then starting off being polite, acknowledging that it's outside of my business hours potentially not his, but acknowledge that it's the weekend so that I've set myself up there, so that I don't have to have an in depth conversation there on the spot if I don't want to, and setting expectation with him that it's the weekend. So, I've started off with a nice warm introduction, and I said to him, I'd love to be able to help you further, but I firstly I need some more information.

So, what I've done there is actually connected with him and I've shown him that I care, and I show him that I'm interested in what he's saying. I haven't just given him a spam response, but what I've done was shown him that I'm interested in taking the time to ask him questions. Then what I did was, so then I said … After saying hello, I need to ask you a couple questions. Then once I've got the answers from those questions, I'll see if I can provide you with some more information.

So, what do you think happened? What do you think when someone's posted something asking a question that where they might not really even know exactly what they're trying to ask or how to work the question that have come along, and a hundred bookkeepers have told him to use Xero and tell told him how to do it in Xero. Then one person, only one person comes along and says hello to him, acknowledges that it's the weekend, and says to him I'd like to ask you a couple more questions so shows an interest in him. Then I waited for his response, so he responded and he said he'd be happy to answer my questions. So, that's when I sent him a list of the questions, and what I determined that he was not looking for invoicing software at all. He was looking for quotation software and preferably quotation software that interacts with his existing invoicing software.

So I saw that he's already using Myob, and then he didn't have a supporting software in place. Then from there, I was able to respond to him according to what he's actually asking for. Obviously, it was the weekend, I didn't want to get in a big long discussion with a person on the weekend, that's not my business hours. So, what I did was I thanked him for the information that he provided, and I said, If you're happy for me to send your private message with an email address, then what I'll do is I will send you this. What I did was I told him I'd sent him a list of things, I said what I do is I recommend him three software solutions that he may be able to use going forward, and how much that would potentially cost him to set up.

Then I said have a look at the options that are present you and basically if that's something that interests you then send me a private message with your email address I will reply to you on Monday. So, what I've done there is I basically told him, “Hey I would love to help you, I'm interested in you. I will not work on the weekend, I don't work outside of business hours.” Because the thing is also you don't want to come across as desperate so you don't want someone to think like if you let this person think that you work on weekends, well they're going to expect you to respond to them on weekends all the time. So what I've done is actually presented him with what I'm going to offer him, and then I've got my weekend back.

So, there you go like out of let's say a hundred bookkeepers responding to these posts only one person, I don't know maybe other people messaged him privately. but I'm one person who has permission to send a private message with him, and not one other person on the post responding in that way. If I were that man, I wouldn't give my email address out to people on Facebook unless, I felt that I trusted them. What I've done in this situation was built trust with this particular business owner. So, going back to what we talked about at the start, what I did there was I asked his permission.

So, there's no way that I'd send a private message to someone without them saying, yes, you may send me a private message. So, what I did there on the post was ask his permission. So, once I have the person's permission, I can then … once I've got their permission, I've earned their trust, and then once you've earned their trust, then you're able to engage in that process of talking to them about your services. Which is very different to just kind of telling them to do something and expecting that they're going to pick you out of a hundred other people that also are doing the same thing. Like, what are they going to go off? I guess the only thing they're going to go off is like, maybe they like your name, or maybe they like your logo, or maybe they're like the person who recommended you or something like that.

But the way to earn somebody's trust and to be able to market to them is to gain their permission by showing respect to them by respecting them as an expert in their field, and to be able to approach them in that way. Also, to approach them in a way that potentially the question that they're asking is not the actual question that they're trying to get an answer to. So anyway, I thanked him for his information and I left him to respond to me.

So, the reason that I want to share with you this story in the first place is … It's not to talk to you about how I'm somehow better at getting business owners attention on Facebook posts like that doesn't really matter. But what I'm hoping to show you out of this example is how to be more effective when you're approaching people with your business offer, so that you don't sound pushy, so that you don't sound like you don't know what you're talking about, so that you're able to build genuine connections with the client in your particular field.

The way that it turned out with that business owner he wasn't actually looking for a bookkeeper. So this person I ended up giving him a quote for a few alternatives of how he might be able to use PandaDoc for his quoting which is something that so I'm a gold partner in PandaDoc, I do a lot of setups for people. I don't actually work in the hospitality industry, but I wanted to test this … I actually want to test this out as an example and I was willing to help him out as an example, so I really only work with bookkeeping businesses setting up. I set up their pricing and all their proposals and that kind of thing. I guess I kind of effectively step in and set up their sales department for them and then step out. I train up on the stuff to be able to do the coding.

So, normally I specialize in doing that for bookkeepers, but I thought this was an interesting case study to me, and so I gave him a recommendation of how he might be able to use PandaDoc in this scenario. Then what I did was he asked me if I'd give him a demo, and so I said, “Yes, I can give you an online demo.” Now I did break my own rule here and that I know he's in hospitality and that he would love to meet face to face, unfortunately, at the time I had literally just had a baby like maybe four weeks earlier or something like that, so I couldn't meet him in person. So I apologized for that, but I said, “I'm happy to do a full demonstration for you, along with your staff members present.” So, I sent him an invoice for that. So I charged him $450 plus GST for the hour, recorded session, then I sent him a copy of the video because I thought well, that's the other thing I guess you need to think about.

So, once I did what I did, I was able to … It's not like I'm just going to go and work for free doing this demo where I'm actually sharing my intellectual property with him and all of the training that I've done. But what I actually did there, and he was more than happy to pay that, like he saw the value in that, he saw the value in being able to have this demonstration down on a software that he thought would potentially be able to help him and so he was more than happy to pay for that. So I did the demo for his staff, and then I think what we ended up leaving it at was from doing that demo they were going to have a go at implementing it themselves, and I gave them some tips on how they could do that.

Because I don't really want to do I've kind of whole setup and the implementation, although I would have because I offered it as a case study. So what I did was I just empowered his staff to be able to do that. So I was able to really help this person for 495 bucks, I was able to actually help this person to be able to get what he had been looking for. So, I guess the other point I can make out of that, because I did that as a case study. It was good because I love doing things as case studies, which is why I haven't started the bookkeeping project, because when you do something as a an experiment, you're not attached to the outcome.

So when I was offering help to a business owner, like when I was offering help to that guy, I didn't have an agenda. I had no personal agenda whatsoever. I was just like, “Oh, I just want to try this and see how it goes. I want to see if I can get myself to stand out above all of these other people competing for his attention. I want to test out because obviously I read a lot, I study a lot about different kinds of different things in the business space. I like to test them out to be able to see what this looks like in practice, and what kind of lessons I can derive from that so that I can teach you.

I have a genuine desire to help business owners and I wanted to help this guy. I saw his post, I saw that he didn't know what he was doing, and he didn't know how to ask. He looked like maybe he hadn't really use Facebook that much before. Like, maybe it wasn't really much of a Facebook user as well. So, to be able to equip him to go and make his own choices, I feel that's what I did there. I didn't walk into my service, I didn't do anything like that. I just equipped him to be able to go on and make his own choices and I made a little bit of money from it on the side.

If he had wanted to engage me for doing the whole service, I would have done that. Because even though it's outside, it's specifically outside the scope of doing the setup for bookkeepers. It's still beneficial. The reason that I would do something that's outside of my target market or something like that, is because it's still benefits my target market. So, for me to be able to do something like that, completely on attached to be able to work with a business owner in that capacity to be able to come out of that with a case study where I can say, “Have you thought about this, this, and this.”

Everything I learned from that exercise, I'd learned a little bit from reading books and then I learned it through applying what I had learned side, I'd learned about, making irresistible offers and permission asking for somebody permission before trying to sell them something, to be able to step out of what I was… my own space and being able to put myself in their shoes and see what the business owner was actually looking for in needing.

So I want to thank you for your time today. I hope you've really learned something out of today's lesson, and if you have, I would love to hear from you. Because it's really your feedback that helps me to know what you want more of, and what you would like to hear more about. So, if you have the any of the podcast apps, I'd love it if you can leave a review. There's a button there on the podcast app where you can leave a review ,you can pick the number of stars, hopefully, you'll give it five. Leave a little comment there. Let me know what you would actually love to hear more about.

Or if you're in the Facebook group or in the Savvy Bookkeeper Facebook group, or if you're in the bookkeeping projects Slack channel. I'd love to hear your feedback about the episode I just want to know, what did you learn today? What did you get out of this? Because, I don't make these podcasts because I like the sound of my voice, I make these podcasts to help you, so I want to know what you specifically learn out of it.

I never want anyone to ever go, “Oh, that's a nice podcast it's entertaining” or, helpful, whatever. I want to know specifically, what did you learn? What did you learn as you were listening to what I said, and even if you go away and give it a go and apply it, even if you come back in a month's time and let me know, “Hey, I heard your lesson about permission marketing and the irresistible offers, and I actually tried it and it worked.” So that's what I'd love to hear. I love to know that, the work that I'm doing is helping you and it's working in your business and in your life. So anyway, thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. Have a great weekend.

Good morning. Welcome back again this morning. Today we're going to talk about a concept that you may or may not have heard of called permission marketing. So whether you're a bookkeeper, or you're running another type of business, you've probably thought at some time, I don't seem to be able to understand how marketing works. Perhaps you don't feel confident with marketing, or maybe when it comes to marketing, you're just not quite sure what you're actually meant to be doing.

So, the concept of permission marketing isn't original. It comes from … Oh, well, I first learned it from Seth Godin. I'm not sure if its original to him, perhaps, I don't know. I guess over the years, he's learned these concepts from other people, but he's written a book called Permission Marketing. I remember when I was reading his book, I found the concepts so interesting and really, really mind blowing, because it was so different to what I've heard before.

So, you might be thinking to yourself, “Well, what actually is permission marketing?” Now, obviously, I'm going to explain that to you, but the actual definition, according to Seth Godin of permission marketing is that permission marketing is a privilege not the right of delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. I know, it's mind blowing, right? Doesn't that sound like the opposite to marketing to you? He goes on to say, it recognizes the new power of the best consumers ignore marketing.

It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention. It's cool, so if you've ever actually read his book or seen his book, so the subtitle of that book is called Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers. I know, if this is a brand new concept to you, you're probably thinking, “Wow.” Like even just hearing this little bit here, even just hearing the title of the book. I remember when I saw the title of the book I thought, “Wow that's such an amazing concept,” because I don't know if you've noticed the language that is used in marketing, but we talk about marketing in kind of gross terms, I don't know about you. But I remember when I first heard the term marketing funnel, and it was being bandied around all over Facebook usually something to do with funnels and I just thought, “Gross, like what the heck is a marketing funnel?”

Marketing Funnels

I was thinking the only two funnels I can think of are like obviously there's the traditional funnel where something goes in the top and something comes out of the bottom. So when I think of that concept, which is actually what a marketing funnel supposedly is, and so you might have seen diagrams online like what … When you start to really study marketing, you might be grossed out by some of the things that you learn.

So, a marketing funnel is you'll see these images of like so people go in the top of the funnel so that you fill … The whole idea is that you fill your funnel, it's like fill your funnel with what? Well, you fill your funnel with people. Then what happens? Well, those people filter down the funnel, and it gets … So, you've got a lot of people at the top and then it's getting less and less, then the people are getting refined at the bottom. Then at the bottom something is coming out of the bottom of the funnel, and you just think wow, “What's going to come out of the bottom of the funnel?” Guess what comes out? Money. I think, “Oh, isn't that nice?”

So we're putting people into our funnel, and we're turning them into money. I don't know to me, I don't know if that doesn't sound gross to you, I don't know. To me, it just sounded weird, like I remember hearing it and thinking, “What on earth? Why are we putting people in funnels and why is funnel even a word?” Because the only other word I can think of … The only other thing that comes to my mind when I think of a funnel is like a funnel web spider. I don't know why, but that also comes into my mind, that's actually not way out of line with what we're talking about here because in marketing language, there's a lot of it. So, what does a funnel web spider do? Well, a funnel web spider builds a funnel like long narrow kind of I don't know how to describe it. Like a tube.

So then, he does that, a funnel web spider does that, I'm assuming that it's a he, I don't know if this funnel is a he, I assume it can be a girl as well. But anyway, so the funnel web spider and makes the web to attract its prey. So, the funnel web spider … and I know this isn't what it means in marketing concept, but as the funnel web spider awaits with his funnel to capture something, to capture I guess another spider or maybe a fly, or … I don't know anyway. So it's pretty to me, that's pretty gross as well. You might think well what is funnel web spider have to do with marketing. You will notice that if you pay attention to marketing lingo that we're talking about capturing leads.

Capturing leads

I always think to myself, “Why are we got to capture leads?” We're talking about leads here. When we talk about leads, we're talking … What is a lead? A lead is a person, and a lead is a human being. So, what we're going to do is we're going to capture that human being. So a lead specifically. So a lead is someone who has only just heard about your message. Then once that person's heard about your message, once they decide to get in contact with you, or in marketing language, once they're captured by your funnel, once they're captured into your sales pipeline, whatever you want to call it, then that person becomes what we call a prospect.

So I do teach a little bit about this in the bookkeeping project. There's nothing wrong with it. These are terms that we need to use, but I often think to myself, “Why are we got to capture people, why are we got to call them leads? Why are we got to put them in our funnel? I don't really like that, I find the language of marketing to be predatory in nature.

So to see Seth Godin's book where he says, Turning strangers into friends and friends into customers, I thought like, “Isn't that a nice fresh marketing?” Because if you've ever wondered why marketing creeps you out, so some people they say that they feel creeped out by sales and marketing. Probably, the reason why you feel creeped out by it, and you think that it's sleazy is because the language that is used in marketing and sales is sleazy. It's actually … Like we use words … so pay attention to those words and what other words can we possibly use. I guess that's where the concept of you've got your customer journey. I guess at some point people started saying instead of wanting to put leads into a funnel and for those funnels to like filter down a sales pipeline and get converted into cash, people started recognizing that these are human beings. I guess that's where they started referring it to the customer journey, the customer life cycle, using different words there.

I think if you have a read of Seth's book that you will be refreshed by that. you don't have to write his whole book, he also has a blog as well so you can just google Seth Godin blog and have a little bit of a raid, what some of his videos he's a very interesting guy. So he's got a lot of books, he's very marketing focused. So, check out Seth's stuff, I definitely guarantee it will change your mind about marketing especially if, I don't know, I always make a joke that 2% of bookkeepers love marketing, and the other 98% are normal. So, it is common in our industry for bookkeepers to not like marketing, but there's a reason why. I think it's just a lack of education about what marketing actually is.

Marketing doesn't have to be gross

I think if I can shed some light on that for you then you'll actually understand that marketing it ain't all that, it's like, whatever. Marketing is talking to people. Marketing is helping people. Marketing is serving people, and leading them on a journey and building relationships with people. That's what marketing is, that's what sales is as well. So, you don't have to have on a checked jacket, and a sleek hair do, and all that kind of thing. It's like marketing doesn't have to be creepy. So, Seth's Godin concept is all about you don't do marketing to people. You don't market to people until you have their permission.

So his concept is where … I guess that's where the concept comes from to give a lot and then ask for a little. So to actually put off asking for a sale from somebody in order to build that relationship with them. In order to get the attention of a business owner that you'd love to work for, assuming that everyone listening here is in the B2B space, you need to make an offer to that person that they can't resist. That often needs to be something that you can actually deliver on as well. So you can't just talk … I'm not talking about just make empty promises or well manipulate to people, although sadly a lot of people do that as a marketing tactic.

I actually worked for a company a little while ago where I just didn't feel comfortable working there because their sales and marketing technique is just to gently manipulate people through telling stories I guess to present them one thing but then once you get on the inside, there's something different. Then you're made to feel bad, like there's something wrong with you if you don't get it right. But it's all about money. So, I'm not talking about that, what I'm talking about is looking at what you're good at and what you're actually able to do, what you want to do, something that's within your skill set, and then making irresistible offers to your clients.

Now, that's not exactly something that's easy to do. The reason is not easy, is A, you might not know what you're good at. Then secondly, you might not know what your offer is.

I work with bookkeepers every day, and a lot of them want to … They come to me because they want help with marketing. They say like, “I want to market myself, I want to put my business out there. I want to grow my business. I want to get more clients.” Very often they'll say, like, they might say to me, I don't know what my offer is, or don't know what I'm good at. But that's something that we discover along the way. So often, every time I meet with a bookkeeper, I always ask them, “Can you tell me the top five problems that you sell for your clients?” Guaranteed, like one in 100 will actually do that correctly. So, probably one in 100, I think I've only had one person ever do it actually.

So, one person will say to me, but I will actually list the problems that they sell for their clients, and the other 99 will list the solutions that they offer to those problems. So there's a little bit of a disconnect there in the bookkeeping space, and I don't know if this is something that's in the broader business community that people kind of don't know what the … They don't really know what they're doing they just kind of do stuff. One of the things that we teach at savvy is that you need to understand the pain points of your clients, and you need to actually understand the frustrations that they have, and the things that they going through, and also what they're trying to achieve.

So, one of the things that I see quite often in Facebook groups is, business Facebook group, somebody will come along, and they'll say, “Hey, can somebody please recommend someone for something?” Then what you'll notice is a flood of people come on to that post and everyone will jump on to that post and start pushing their agenda. So what this looks like is someone will ask that question and then someone else will come along, and they'll say, “I can do this for you, and I can do that for you, and you should do this, and you should do that.” That's how it looks when you're reading the post.

So often, if someone asks for help with something, someone else will come along and tell them, “All you should use the software,” or “You should go to this person” or “You should do this ” or “This is what I did” that kind of thing. So what those people are actually doing is that they actually recommending themselves, or they're recommending something that they sell themselves, or that someone they that they really like sells. So it's kind of all about them. When they're coming along to help this “person” what they're actually doing is … They're not actually being helpful to that person.

Because they're biased towards their own service or their own friend or their own … Yeah, just whatever. They might not even know that person's service, they might just like the person. So they're just saying, “Hey you should get in touch with this person.” Look, if you're listening here, and you're thinking, “Oh my gosh! I've done this.” So someone will ask a question about bookkeeping, every bookkeeper like they might not even say they're looking for bookkeeper, but someone will say are some question about that looks like they're asking about bookkeeping. Maybe they mentioned Xero or something, and a hundred bookkeepers will flock on to the post.

I always make a joke, it's like seagulls on a chip. They come on, and they start by recommending themselves. I'm thinking, “This person didn't even say that. They didn't even ask for a bookkeeper.” So, I don't know, I think that's something that we need to stop doing. I'm not saying this to make … If you're listening to this, I'm not saying that you should feel bad or embarrassed because I've done this myself in the past as well.

It's a human habit. It's just something that we do naturally until we start to learn. That's what it is that we're doing. Then when we recognize that's what it is we're doing that we're just kind of not being helpful, that we're not actually listening, what we're doing is we're on the alert we're looking for how can I promote myself. It's quite funny, because as bookkeepers, we always say, “Oh, I don't like promoting myself,” and stuff like that. Bookkeepers love promoting themselves like you should see a fly on to a Facebook post with a question about Xero, like seagulls on a chip. We love promoting ourselves, so bookkeepers we do actually enjoy promoting yourself. It's just we've got to know the right time to promote ourselves, and we've got to actually be willing to listen and to say what the person's actually saying what they actually asking for.

I've definitely done this. I've come along and just kind of dropped, you should use the software, or I can help you or go to this person that I particularly like. Usually, my motivations for doing it are about me. Normally, what I'm doing is trying to either make a sale for myself or sale for my friend or sometimes I don't even care if I make a sale, I'm just kind of … I don't know, I'm just doing it. I wouldn't say that I'm there … It's not something that I care about the person who's asking the question, but it's really have I actually thought about what this person is trying to do, and am I actually trying to help them.

Sometimes I'll even tag someone and go, I guess like just to earn brownie points, and I've never used that person service before. So we've all done that. It's natural, but what I've learned from this experience is that this ways of doing things is actually not helpful. When I put myself in the shoes of the person asking the question … and this is something that I really want to get across. I talked about this in my podcast about PITA clients, which is like a really want to horn in about how much we need to put ourselves in other people's shoes.

Because the reason for that, and I've gone on about this before, but 60% of small businesses fail within the first three years. That's a real statistic. That's not just something that people say, that is an Australian Bureau statistic. So, that is a reliable statistic that there is a failure of small businesses in Australia. To add to that of those 60% that fail, 50% of those small businesses are profitable businesses.

Now, I've already gone on about this before, but I'm going to say it again, it's not about us. Like if you're thinking how do I market my services? I don't have the confidence, I don't know how to get myself out there, you have to remember something that I had to teach myself, which is, It is not about you. It is not about you. So, what we need to think about is that, when you see someone, and they asking for help, and you think that maybe you're able to help them because you have the skills, and the abilities to help that person, how are you going to stand out?

How are you going to stand out?

How are you going to stand out amongst all the other seagulls going for that chip?

How is it that you're not going to just look like just another person spamming your information on top post” How do you actually stand out? How does a person going to actually say what you're writing and see that there is something different? Well, the way that you're going to do that is you need to be able to know how to cut through all of the … I don't know what to call it, what I have in my mind is the noise that seagulls make when they're going on the chip plank. How do you get through that noise? How do you cut through the noise? How do you cut through the noise of other people pouncing and pushing their agenda? The way that you do that is you need to appear to that person as different to everybody else

As bookkeepers we say I don't like sales people I find sales people pushy but when we get in a situation like we are pushy. I think firstly we need to recognize that that pushy salesperson like that can be us, and if you're listening to this are you thinking like, “I never pushed anybody into a sale.” I'm sure you've done it at some point in time, but if you haven't, that's fine, but what I'm actually saying here is that if you feeling nervous because you don't like to be salesy, then learning to come up with this irresistible offer … You can't just come up with an irresistible offer, you have to do the groundwork, you have to understand what you're good at, and what your purpose is and what your offer actually is. In order to do that, you have to understand the other people. You have to understand the business owners, you have to understand what business owners are going through at the moment in Australia based on the statistics that we say so 60% of failing the first three years, 50% of those are profitable businesses.

Profitable businesses are going under, and what's that doing to those people in their families and what's causing that? I won't go into that now I do talk about that in another podcast, I think the first episode of the bookkeeping project, so you can listen to me preach on about that there. So, what you need to do is you need to present the person with an offer that's so irresistible that they will notice you offer above everybody else's. I'm not saying like do that, so that they can look at you and go, “Oh, you're the best.” only do that don't try and make your offer more irresistible than someone else's if it's not. So but if your offer is … If you have something to offer someone that you … if you really believe in your services and what you offer, and how you can help a business owner, then you have the responsibility to actually be able to get that message across.

So the reality is, that when a business owner posts on a Facebook group and asks for help for something they usually don't know what they're asking for. I really want you to remember this. So, I was actually speaking to someone just this week, and she said to me that she was in another mentoring program that in our industry and that they're expected to come forward with the questions each week about their business. And she said like I couldn't join those calls because I don't know what questions to ask. So when you're stuck … when you're a business owner and you're stuck, to ask someone to come forward and ask questions, they might not know what questions to ask.

So what I want you to now realize is that when someone asks a question in a Facebook group, they may not know what question to ask. So, they're asking a question but then perhaps not asking the question. So, they might not be asking the question that you think they asking because they don't even know what to actually ask. So often, business owners, and I think this is the reason for those failing rates that I've mentioned is that business owners they don't know where to go to get good advice, they don't have that kind of support network around them, and they don't know what kind of questions to ask.

So, here comes a business owner in a Facebook group, and he actually says … This is a real life example, he said in a Facebook group, “I need a software program that can send an invoice to the client which is going to allow me to put photographs on the invoice so that I can do my quoting.” And so you can guess what happened. A million bookkeepers came along and they go Xero, Xero, Xero, Xero, Xero, Xero and I'm thinking, like, I don't know it just made me think of that noise that seagulls make at the beach. So he's got all these people going Xero Xero, Xero, and I was reading this post and I thought, “This poor guy he hasn't asked about Xero at all.” But what had happened there is we see things through our own filter and we just come along because we only know what we know as well.

So, as a bookkeeper, we're very heavily focused on the types of software we use and how they can help people. So what we do, is we read this posts, it says I need a software program. So we go, “Oh, software program. I know software program” That can send an invoice, “Oh, invoice, invoice. I know an invoice,” Which is going to allow me to put photographs into an invoice so that I can do my quoting. So when you're in the bookkeeper head space, you're going to go, “Oh, that person needs and an invoice with a photo on it, but what he was actually saying was something else.” So, I came along and I said to him, “It sounds like, to me, what you're needing is a quotation software.”

So, what I did in this example, as I came along to this person, I thought, “Okay, well, like I don't know if I can answer his question.” So, the first step when approaching somebody when I asked this kind of question is to say to yourself, “This person is stating a problem that they have, and I think I know the answer, but I probably don't.” What that's going to do is buy you a little bit of time to actually work out like A, do you know the answer to the question that that person's asking? Also is that person asking the question that they need to know the answer to.

So if you're a bookkeeper and you're going to look at something like that, and go, “Oh, that person wants invoicing, they should use Xero because I like Xero,” what you're actually missing out on is what the person's asking for. So the man did actually mention quoting, and so I thought to myself, “Okay, he seems a little confused. So I need to actually find out the information about his business.” So what I did, was I went I sat down quickly and I put all these few questions together that I could ask him, that would help him to be able to get further in understanding what he was asking for.

So what I did, was I said to him what industry are you in? How many items do you have in your catalogue? Do you already have photos and descriptions about those items, and what current software are you using for quotations? What current method are you using for invoicing? And I also asked him what kind of method do you use to take payments for your clients. So I thought by asking him a whole series of questions about the little information that he gave that I would be able to help him to work out what he really wanted to ask.

So that's basically what I did. So, that's how I got that man's attention above 100 other bookkeepers who were all in there just saying Xero, Xero, Xero, Xero. So firstly, the guy is on Myob, so for him, if you just come in and say Xero, he's going to go up and already has MYOB. A bookkeeper might go, “Oh we'll just change to Xero,” but you don't actually … If you don't understand all the other software programs that this guy potentially has besides Myob like he's already got processes in place. I'm not saying he's got all his MYOB file connected to other software for example, but he might have other documented processes that rely on the MYOB process, whatever. I guess what I'm saying is think about the bigger picture.

So what I did was I said … I came back to this place and said hello and I used his name, and I made sure that my post was formatted well, so I didn't just kind of talk on my phone or just type up a quick note, what I did was I typed it up on a note and formatted it properly on my computer with dot points and spaces between the paragraphs. What I did was … I firstly so the first thing you'll notice that I did there was I greeted him, so rather than just going, “Use Xero,” I went … So what actually did so I would have in those questions, I would have actually asked him what industry he was in. But I had a little bit of a look at his Facebook profile and I saw that he was in the hospitality industry selling furniture. So, what I actually did was I get actually gauged the type of business owner that he was.

Because I wanted to have a look and say, so even before you put these responses, check out the person's profile, see what the person is actually like. Is this person going to be worth your time? Is that even going to be someone you'd like to work with? So I saw his profile and I thought, “Okay, he's in the hospitality industry selling furniture.” So, if I looked at the person's profile and thought, this isn't an industry that I would want to work in, then wouldn't really reply to that person unless I thought I could genuinely just be helpful.

So, I thought, “Okay, we'll selling furniture in the hospitality industry, it looks like a well-established business.” I had to look these websites, I said, “Okay, probably earning decent amount of money.” So that's the other thing you want to think about. They're like, can this person afford the service, if I go in and try and give him my help? Secondly, I want to work at, is it worth my time? So I want to work out maybe what industry is the person in, because that's going to change the approach of how I speak to the person as well.

Then I thought about it, and I thought, “Okay, he's in the hospitality industry, so what kind of people are in hospitality?” So, the people who are in hospitality they're often very outward focused people, they have people’s people, they usually very warm and friendly. I'm not saying that everybody in the hospitality industry is, but usually business owners in the hospitality industry, they're in hospitality because they're hospitable people. So I thought, “Okay,” so I put all that information together. I thought, “Okay, it looks like he's running a fairly decent sized business and operating at a level where he definitely doesn't want to be spoken to about the basics. So, he might not have a clue when it comes to bookkeeping, but he's certainly an expert in his field, so I need to speak to him in that way. So I said to him, “Hello such and such, I hope you've had a great weekend.” So that's how I started my post.

Then starting off being polite, acknowledging that it's outside of my business hours potentially not his, but acknowledge that it's the weekend so that I've set myself up there, so that I don't have to have an in depth conversation there on the spot if I don't want to, and setting expectation with him that it's the weekend. So, I've started off with a nice warm introduction, and I said to him, I'd love to be able to help you further, but I firstly I need some more information.

So, what I've done there is actually connected with him and I've shown him that I care, and I show him that I'm interested in what he's saying. I haven't just given him a spam response, but what I've done was shown him that I'm interested in taking the time to ask him questions. Then what I did was, so then I said … After saying hello, I need to ask you a couple questions. Then once I've got the answers from those questions, I'll see if I can provide you with some more information.

So, what do you think happened? What do you think when someone's posted something asking a question that where they might not really even know exactly what they're trying to ask or how to work the question that have come along, and a hundred bookkeepers have told him to use Xero and tell told him how to do it in Xero. Then one person, only one person comes along and says hello to him, acknowledges that it's the weekend, and says to him I'd like to ask you a couple more questions so shows an interest in him. Then I waited for his response, so he responded and he said he'd be happy to answer my questions. So, that's when I sent him a list of the questions, and what I determined that he was not looking for invoicing software at all. He was looking for quotation software and preferably quotation software that interacts with his existing invoicing software.

So I saw that he's already using Myob, and then he didn't have a supporting software in place. Then from there, I was able to respond to him according to what he's actually asking for. Obviously, it was the weekend, I didn't want to get in a big long discussion with a person on the weekend, that's not my business hours. So, what I did was I thanked him for the information that he provided, and I said, If you're happy for me to send you a private message with an email address, then what I'll do is I will send you this. What I did was I told him I'd sent him a list of things, I said what I do is I recommend him three software solutions that he may be able to use going forward, and how much that would potentially cost him to set up.

Then I said have a look at the options that are present you and basically if that's something that interests you then send me a private message with your email address I will reply to you on Monday. So, what I've done there is I basically told him, “Hey I would love to help you, I'm interested in you. I will not work on the weekend, I don't work outside of business hours.” Because the thing is also you don't want to come across as desperate so you don't want someone to think like if you let this person think that you work on weekends, well they're going to expect you to respond to them on weekends all the time. So what I've done is actually presented him with what I'm going to offer him, and then I've got my weekend back.

So, there you go like out of let's say a hundred bookkeepers responding to these posts only one person, I don't know maybe other people messaged him privately. but I'm one person who has permission to send a private message with him, and not one other person on the post responding in that way. If I were that man, I wouldn't give my email address out to people on Facebook unless, I felt that I trusted them. What I've done in this situation was built trust with this particular business owner. So, going back to what we talked about at the start, what I did there was I asked his permission.

So, there's no way that I'd send a private message to someone without them saying, yes, you may send me a private message. So, what I did there on the post was ask his permission. So, once I have the person's permission, I can then … once I've got their permission, I've earned their trust, and then once you've earned their trust, then you're able to engage in that process of talking to them about your services. Which is very different to just kind of telling them to do something and expecting that they're going to pick you out of a hundred other people that also are doing the same thing. Like, what are they going to go off? I guess the only thing they're going to go off is like, maybe they like your name, or maybe they like your logo, or maybe they're like the person who recommended you or something like that.

But the way to earn somebody's trust and to be able to market to them is to gain their permission by showing respect to them by respecting them as an expert in their field, and to be able to approach them in that way. Also, to approach them in a way that potentially the question that they're asking is not the actual question that they're trying to get an answer to. So anyway, I thanked him for his information and I left him to respond to me.

So, the reason that I want to share with you this story in the first place is … It's not to talk to you about how I'm somehow better at getting business owners attention on Facebook posts like that doesn't really matter. But what I'm hoping to show you out of this example is how to be more effective when you're approaching people with your business offer, so that you don't sound pushy, so that you don't sound like you don't know what you're talking about, so that you're able to build genuine connections with the client in your particular field.

The way that it turned out with that business owner he wasn't actually looking for a bookkeeper. So this person I ended up giving him a quote for a few alternatives of how he might be able to use PandaDoc for his quoting which is something that so I'm a gold partner in PandaDoc, I do a lot of setups for people. I don't actually work in the hospitality industry, but I wanted to test this … I actually want to test this out as an example and I was willing to help him out as an example, so I really only work with bookkeeping businesses setting up. I set up their pricing and all their proposals and that kind of thing. I guess I kind of effectively step in and set up their sales department for them and then step out. I train up on the stuff to be able to do the coding.

So, normally I specialize in doing that for bookkeepers, but I thought this was an interesting case study to me, and so I gave him a recommendation of how he might be able to use PandaDoc in this scenario. Then what I did was he asked me if I'd give him a demo, and so I said, “Yes, I can give you an online demo.” Now I did break my own rule here and that I know he's in hospitality and that he would love to meet face to face, unfortunately, at the time I had literally just had a baby like maybe four weeks earlier or something like that, so I couldn't meet him in person. So I apologized for that, but I said, “I'm happy to do a full demonstration for you, along with your staff members present.” So, I sent him an invoice for that. So I charged him $450 plus GST for the hour, recorded session, then I sent him a copy of the video because I thought well, that's the other thing I guess you need to think about.

So, once I did what I did, I was able to … It's not like I'm just going to go and work for free doing this demo where I'm actually sharing my intellectual property with him and all of the training that I've done. But what I actually did there, and he was more than happy to pay that, like he saw the value in that, he saw the value in being able to have this demonstration down on a software that he thought would potentially be able to help him and so he was more than happy to pay for that. So I did the demo for his staff, and then I think what we ended up leaving it at was from doing that demo they were going to have a go at implementing it themselves, and I gave them some tips on how they could do that.

Because I don't really want to do I've kind of whole setup and the implementation, although I would have because I offered it as a case study. So what I did was I just empowered his staff to be able to do that. So I was able to really help this person for 495 bucks, I was able to actually help this person to be able to get what he had been looking for. So, I guess the other point I can make out of that, because I did that as a case study. It was good because I love doing things as case studies, which is why I haven't started the bookkeeping project, because when you do something as a an experiment, you're not attached to the outcome.

So when I was offering help to a business owner, like when I was offering help to that guy, I didn't have an agenda. I had no personal agenda whatsoever. I was just like, “Oh, I just want to try this and see how it goes. I want to see if I can get myself to stand out above all of these other people competing for his attention. I want to test out because obviously I read a lot, I study a lot about different kinds of different things in the business space. I like to test them out to be able to see what this looks like in practice, and what kind of lessons I can derive from that so that I can teach you.

I have a genuine desire to help business owners and I wanted to help this guy. I saw his post, I saw that he didn't know what he was doing, and he didn't know how to ask. He looked like maybe he hadn't really use Facebook that much before. Like, maybe it wasn't really much of a Facebook user as well. So, to be able to equip him to go and make his own choices, I feel that's what I did there. I didn't walk into my service, I didn't do anything like that. I just equipped him to be able to go on and make his own choices and I made a little bit of money from it on the side.

If he had wanted to engage me for doing the whole service, I would have done that. Because even though it's outside, it's specifically outside the scope of doing the setup for bookkeepers. It's still beneficial. The reason that I would do something that's outside of my target market or something like that, is because it's still benefits my target market. So, for me to be able to do something like that, completely on attached to be able to work with a business owner in that capacity to be able to come out of that with a case study where I can say, “Have you thought about this, this, and this.”

Everything I learned from that exercise, I'd learned a little bit from reading books and then I learned it through applying what I had learned side, I'd learned about, making irresistible offers and permission asking for somebody permission before trying to sell them something, to be able to step out of what I was… my own space and being able to put myself in their shoes and see what the business owner was actually looking for in needing.

So I want to thank you for your time today. I hope you've really learned something out of today's lesson, and if you have, I would love to hear from you. Because it's really your feedback that helps me to know what you want more of, and what you would like to hear more about. So, if you have the any of the podcast apps, I'd love it if you can leave a review. There's a button there on the podcast app where you can leave a review ,you can pick the number of stars, hopefully, you'll give it five. Leave a little comment there. Let me know what you would actually love to hear more about.

Or if you're in the Facebook group or in the Savvy Bookkeeper Facebook group, or if you're in the bookkeeping projects Slack channel. I'd love to hear your feedback about the episode I just want to know, what did you learn today? What did you get out of this? Because, I don't make these podcasts because I like the sound of my voice, I make these podcasts to help you, so I want to know what you specifically learn out of it.

I never want anyone to ever go, “Oh, that's a nice podcast it's entertaining” or, helpful, whatever. I want to know specifically, what did you learn? What did you learn as you were listening to what I said, and even if you go away and give it a go and apply it, even if you come back in a month's time and let me know, “Hey, I heard your lesson about permission marketing and the irresistible offers, and I actually tried it and it worked.” So that's what I'd love to hear. I love to know that, the work that I'm doing is helping you and it's working in your business and in your life. So anyway, thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. Have a great weekend.