July 1, 2025 • 44 mins
John Liebler, formerly of Signet and currently VP of Operations at Clientbook, shares how independent jewelers can maximize sales through client retention strategies and relationship building in the digital age.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Welcome to In the Loop, thought it was kind of
epitomized by I had about athree minute conversation with
John before we started recordingand in that time he just asked
me a little bit about myself,where I'm from.
You know what?
I was wearing a jersey.
He asked me hey, what jerseyare you wearing?
And I said, oh, it's myfavorite team, la Thieves.
He's like, oh, what kind ofteam is that?
And little did I know and hebrings it up later in the
(00:40):
recording that he was kind ofdoing some client research on me
as well, learning a little bitabout me.
That he later made some coolpoints.
I thought it was a reallyinteresting conversation and he
brings up a lot of ways thatindependent jewelry stores can
maximize and also increase theirsales through these retention
(01:00):
methods and just an overall kindof strategy.
It was a really coolconversation.
I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the
jewelry industry's favoritewebsite platform and digital
growth agency.
Our mission reaches way beyondtechnology.
With decades of experience andlong-lasting industry
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in any marketplace.
We consider our clients ourfriends, as many of them have
(01:30):
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(01:52):
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Slash go.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And now back to the show.
What is up everybody?
My name is Michael Burpo.
I'm joined by John Liebler, theVP of operations at ClientBook.
How are you doing today, John?
I'm good.
How are you, Michael?
So well, I'm really excited toget a chance to speak with you.
Clientbook, making some news.
(02:25):
I just got a chance to meetyour team at JCK.
We had a booth right next toyou guys, just in the Edge
Village space.
It was really cool getting achance to talk with your team
about everything that's going on.
Could you maybe give me like alittle background on your
industry experience as well askind of what led you to your job
(02:47):
at Clampbook?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah, I'd be happy to , and I'll give you the
four-minute version.
I can't make it any shorterthan that.
I apologize because I am not amillennial, as you so introduced
yourself a couple of minutesago when we learned all about
your gaming career.
So when I got into the army Ididn't need to buy.
I was going to buy a young ladya ring and I didn't have a job.
So I walked into the mall and Iwalked into Belden Jewelers and
(03:11):
I said I need a ring and theysold me a three eighths of a
carat, a radiant cut and atwisted band for $750 to give to
Lisa.
Lisa unfortunately said no,which is the sad part of the
story.
But the happy part of the storyis I said are you hiring?
And they said sure, so I startedmy jewelry career in 1989 at
(03:32):
Belden Jewelers, right beforeValentine's Day, and on that day
, mark my manager, handed me alittle plastic notebook and said
, john, this is your PT notebookand this is how you will define
your career.
Jewelry is not about selling anitem.
It's about buildingrelationships and selling
generationally right.
(03:53):
It's about the guy buying thenecklace for his girlfriend that
soon becomes his fiance, thatthen becomes his wife, that then
becomes his 50th anniversaryand all their kids.
And that really resonated withme and I was very coachable, so
I just started using my PTnotebook.
That was a fortuitous decisionto take that job because
(04:13):
Belladons got acquired and thenwe acquired somebody and by the
end of my career, I was thedivision vice president of
strategy for Signet.
So Jared Zale, kay Peoples,mappins and I ran stores for
about 20 years.
So I ran the Kay division andthen the last five years I
handled all the logistics,strategy, real estate, training,
(04:35):
blah, blah, blah for Signet,but I left in 2018.
I've spent the last seven yearsbuilt my own consulting gig, but
it's just me, so I'm like Ihave a big, a big thing, and
during that time I took on otherjobs with companies, so I did
some time in workforcemanagement because and and and
(04:55):
and time studies while doing myown consulting.
I was the head of stores forShinola for about 18 months and
then, through my consultingbusiness and some of my software
uh companies that I workedthere, that I had the
opportunity to work withHelzberg, uh Icebox, diamond
Watches, uh Hanush and just amyriad of other jewelers I
bumped into ClientBook uh.
In January they asked me tocome on as a consultant to help
(05:18):
build out their brand program,which we can talk about in
another podcast, and um fell inlove with the company, fell in
love with the people, and theyasked me to stay and they sucked
me out of retirement.
And here I am.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Man, what a rollercoaster.
That's a very impressive resume.
I mean you even mentioned, youknow, like a life before even
working in jewelry.
That's pretty impressive Nowwhen you talk about Signet.
So, if you don't mind me, justkind of staying on this topic
for one more second, I sometimesfeel, when it comes to, like,
going to a jewelry show, Isometimes feel like there's a
(05:53):
independence versus these bigbox kind of I don't want to say
race, because it's notcompetition where it's like head
to head.
It's more like we're racingahead and we're trying to see,
um, you know what we can do thebest.
It seems like climb book isabout optimizing, um like the
reach and the strengths of, uh,different stores and especially
(06:13):
for independents.
Um, is that kind of somethingthat was by having your
experience with these big boxplaces, uh, it's kind of like
allowed you to see what's whatcan be done differently as an
independent jeweler.
Is that's kind of like allowedyou to see what's what can be
done differently as anindependent jeweler?
Is that like kind of part of it?
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Michael, that is an incredibly insightful question.
Seriously, Thank you.
You know when, look, if youlook at the totable, the TAM
right, the totable addressablemarket for jewelry, right, I
think it's somewhere around $73billion.
Right, you've got Signet, whichis six, 7 billion.
Right, you got got Signet,which is six, $7 billion.
Right, you've got Tiffany's inthere, you have Helzberg, you
have some other big players, butthen you have everybody else.
(06:50):
Right, you've got somewhere on20,000 independents that do less
than a million bucks a year.
Then you've got this groupingof 10,000 to 15,000 jewelers
that do between a million and100 million, and so, literally,
you've got Signet, a coupleother players and then everybody
else.
And when I left and I'll be very, very transparent about it like
(07:12):
I walked out going on, thenumber one ops guy there is, and
I learned quickly, yeah, andthen my first gig was Barnes
Noble and I'm like I have noidea what I'm doing because what
Barnes Noble does.
And then, as I've developedover the last seven years and
I've been on an adventure andI've said to yes to so many
things, what I've learned is Iwas the number one ops guy for a
(07:34):
publicly traded $6 billionjewelry company, which makes me
qualified to do one job Right,and running an independent is
far more complicated.
Yeah, I mean, look, I had ateam of 75.
It's great.
I was talking to somebody onceand they're like what would you
do as an interview, what wouldyou do to do this analytics?
(07:54):
I said I'd call Rich in myoffice and say do this analytics
for me, right?
So, as I've learned this notonly independent jewelry,
independent businesses, becauseI've worked with a lot of small
and medium businesses thisbusiness owner, as you well know
, has to be great at everything,or has to be great at hiring
(08:14):
people, or has to have a greatsystem that they can rely on.
That's number one, what makesjewelry very different and
actually we had an executivemeeting today and we're talking
about it very different, andactually we had an executive
meeting today and we're talkingabout it it is really the last
vertical that exists where therearen't one or two giant players
that have gobbled up the marketright, the number one player
only has 6%, 7%, everyone elseand so you have to be able to
(08:38):
cater to the independent mindsetof every business owner if you
want to be successful as atechnology company in this
market.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
That's really interesting, you know, you're
right, I'm thinking about it andthey are.
It really does seem likejewelry is about.
Again, it always comes back tothis relationship building and
what I always think about isthat we have to adapt to that
too, because punch marks so wedo websites for jewelers, even
though we are B2B.
(09:07):
The fact is jewelers, they wantto be treated the way that they
treat their clients when theyare B2C, which is to say, very
deep relationships, very hightouch, lots of handholding,
which honestly is great.
High touch, lots of handholding,which honestly is great, makes
(09:28):
it difficult to scale sometimesbecause when you hold people's
hands you kind of need someoneon the other hand doing the
handholding.
That can be difficult.
But I guess, where do you kindof see this big topic of client
retention working into it?
Because in the end, when wetalk about jewelry, it is sort
of a, I guess it's a nonconsumable luxury good, which is
(09:49):
to say, if you buy that ring itshould last theoretically
forever and theoretically theyshould never need another one of
those again.
So where does that retentionkind of aspect start to work
into the the, I guess theequation of it all?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
sure um?
Are you married?
Uh, no, sir.
Do you have a significant other?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
nah, unless anyone out there is listening all right
.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
well, I won't go down that that path with you.
But the reality.
First of all, I want to go backto one thing.
The other interesting aspect ofindependent jewelers is so many
of them are multi-generationaland so you have to take not only
the jewelry as a product andthe emotion behind it.
You have to take a familybusiness at scale, and that's
what makes it really interesting, for because the the passion,
(10:39):
the desire and the love of thebusiness is ingrained generation
after generation aftergeneration.
Right Now, client retention,this is.
I could talk for four hours onthis, and so feel free to edit.
Let's lock in, I'm in.
Let's lock in, brother.
So the reality is, at best,conversion in a jewelry store is
20%, okay, and that's prettymuch a standard number you would
(11:01):
see from the NRF or otherthings.
Somebody's going to go oh, I'mat 22.
And someone, but let's use 20as a number.
That means of 100 customersthat walk in, only 20 of them
buy.
That means 80 people walked in,they got out of their car, they
walked in, they greeted blah,blah, blah and they left.
Or they were walking throughthe mall and they turned left
and walked into a store.
It has changed who's buyingjewelry.
(11:22):
Right.
For years it was 98% of allrings were bought by men for
women.
It's now probably 94.
But the predominant buyer ofjewelry is still the male buying
for a female or aself-purchaser, or a female
buying for herself, right, andyou've got all these categories
in there.
But most men A were horribleshoppers, right, and I try not
(11:44):
to speak in absolutes.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
So for all those people listening, the good
shopper guy out there.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I apologize if I offended you, but for the most
part, we're not good, right?
I can't speak for everyone, butI've got my wife's birthday, my
wife's anniversary, I haveValentine's Day, I have Mother's
Day, I get blessed withHanukkah, so I have to come up
with eight gifts, right?
So I don't know how many.
Is that?
10 gift-giving occasions I needto come up with.
Trust me when I tell you theengagement ring was not the last
(12:10):
piece of jewelry I ever bought.
Yes, right.
And so when we talk aboutclient retention, I'm going to
ask you to think and if I had awhiteboard I'd show you, but
break it down in your mind 100customers of them came in and
bought nothing.
We paid to get them in there.
You charged a jeweler money tobuild a website to get them in
right.
They did something to get aGoogle review.
They threw up a billboard.
(12:30):
That customer walked in.
The term is CAC, right.
You know CAC is probably betterthan I do, right?
Customer acquisition cost Notall of them are going to buy.
The bridal buying cycle is fourtouch points.
It's over the course of a year.
She starts thinking about itway before he does.
She comes in and investigates.
He comes in three months later.
We need to be able to capturethat customer and retention
(12:53):
starts before the purchase.
That's the biggest mistake.
That I see is everyone's likewell, I'll capture them in my
POS, but that relies on atransaction and 80% of your
customers are not transactingthe first time they walk in your
store Post-transaction.
First of all, I want to thankyou.
You want to stop returns.
Send out a thank you note.
You reduce returns by 70 to 80%if you simply send out thank
(13:17):
you for coming in right.
And then you want to nurturethem, give them additional
information through outreach andthen help them find gifts for
their life events, for thoseones I mentioned, for their
promotions.
And the more you canpersonalize that and it's not
mass messaging the more you willretain those customers.
One last piece, and then I'llpause.
You got your 80% of the peoplewho don't buy.
(13:39):
You've got your 20% who didSplit them down the middle.
Half of them are loyalists.
They love you.
They're going to come shoppingwith you all the time.
It's probably a little lessthan a half, but we'll just say
half.
The other half only buy fromyou.
Once it's me driving homeneeding a gift and pulling off
to the left because I saw thebillboard Great job on your
billboard right.
Or I did a search for jewelryand you popped up I walk in, I
(14:00):
buy it, I walk out.
That customer, that's the oneyou want to capture, that's the
one you want to reach out to andgo.
Hey, john, by the way, I hopeshe liked her birthday gift.
We did mention that heranniversary, your anniversary,
is two months later.
Why don't we get her thematching necklace?
All of that is how you retaincustomers.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
So it sounds like it's a mixture of both ends.
You know like when they talkabout being having more margin,
they talk about you either haveto reduce expense or you have to
raise your gross, and I thinkthat it sounds almost like when
you're talking about that.
You know this theoretical 100customers or potential customers
that walk through your door andhow you either have to close
(14:42):
more of them so go from 20 to 25, or you need to have more of
the original 20 come in morefrequently.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Do you find or there's one other, or sell more
higher ticket to the one thatyou sold to, right.
So you've got conversion right.
You got of the 100, can I takeit from converting 20 of them to
21?
Can I get more people to comeback in?
Or can I take my AOV, myaverage order value, from 1,000
(15:12):
to 1,100?
Yes, Right, Well, 100 bucksmore times 10,000 customers,
that's real money.
So those are your three buckets.
Sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
No, no, that makes a lot of sense because for me it
starts to some of those things Ijust feel like are not always
in the cards of those three.
Some of them don't feel withinreach very often when it comes
to every store so we're dealingwith.
We have just short of 500clients across North America and
some of our stores we are veryaware are dealing with a
different clientele anddemographic than some of our
(15:48):
other ones.
We have some clients that arein San Francisco and the average
, the AOV, is through the roofcomparatively to these people in
these other parts of the nationor in Canada.
And do you find that that issomething that all three of
those branches are worthtackling?
Or is there usually like gofind the you know the most
(16:10):
within reach, attack that onefirst and then save the other?
I guess more difficult toaccomplish ones and get those
ones later.
Or is it best to do all of themat the same time?
Speaker 3 (16:21):
This is something that I talk about rarely because
it can get confusing.
I actually use a number calledvisit value.
So conversion, right, 10 peoplewalk in, one person buy.
My conversion is 10% Averageorder value and, by the way,
$1,000,.
You're right, I've got somecustomers.
Average order value is 5K.
A lot of it's 250 bucks, right,if I sell Pandora.
(16:43):
Right, it's going to be as muchlower if I'm selling one.
So to me, don't get hung up onthe AOV, it's a question of can
I take $20 to $22?
That's a 10% increase.
I do that across every customer.
I just increase my revenue by10%, by 10%.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Wow, that's a great way to look at it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Right, but visit value is basically what's a
customer worth.
So if 10 customers walk in andmy total revenue for the day is
a thousand dollars, the value ofeach customer was a hundred
bucks with me?
I think so.
Okay, if one customer spent athousand, or 10 customers spent
a hundred, the value, the totalvalue, is still $1,000 in
(17:22):
revenue.
And so what I teach my teams isI don't want them focused on
one metric, I want them focusedon the customer.
Every customer has a story.
Every customer has a need.
They're not there unless theyhave one, and I want to maximize
their value based on their need.
The rest will take care ofitself.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
That's really a great way to kind of put it, and I am
starting to see it.
So we had just mentionedearlier, though, that there is
this like retention andrelationship kind of aspect, the
handholding and this how.
Jewelry is all about buildingup the relationships.
A lot of times, we're both techcompanies over here, so I feel
(18:00):
like a lot of retailers balk atthe idea of leveraging
technology when it comes to thisthing.
That has been, verytraditionally, the absolute
antithesis of technology, whichis to say, very personalized.
How do you start to talk andlike broach the subject of
leveraging technology when itcomes to client retention?
(18:23):
Like I still had, I had a JCK,we just had this one.
People were like, yeah, wedon't sell online because we
want to make sure that we builda relationship and we get a
return you know, customer out ofit.
We want them to come into thestore, and sometimes I just have
to be like yeah, but like ifyou make the sale, you can
encourage them to either comeback or maybe they become a
(18:44):
recurring customer online, whichis, you know to say, just as
loyal of a customer If you doall of the things along the way
appropriately, which is to say,like you know, send good
tracking information, set athank you, include stuff in your
box.
What's the conversation like onyour end when you start to have
the discussion about clientretention through technology?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Well, I know I'll actually respond to the thing
you just said.
I mean, I'm old enough to be.
We remember sitting in the roomlike when we were debating acom
and I was a district manager,and saying it's going to destroy
my business, like no one'sgoing to shop for me anymore.
We can't like I was.
I'm a very passionate guy andI'm like like no, no, no.
Well, the reality is,multi-channel sales is the way
(19:29):
to go, and somebody very smartstood in front of the room and
showed us all of that.
And you're right, you are soright.
Look, buy the thing online.
And then I that says hey,michael, I saw you bought this
thing, congratulations.
Come on in for a custom fitting.
When you come in from thecustom fitting, I'm going to
show you 17 other pieces thatyou didn't think about and sell
you a bunch of like it's.
It's.
That's the mindset that peoplehave to have to take and you
(19:51):
can't do any one channelexclusively.
You have to have them all worktogether.
In response to the technologyquestion, I'm seeing something
very interesting happen in theindustry.
The generations are turningover, right.
So you know full disclosure.
I'm about to be 60 and I my sonis probably your age.
He's 30.
He's a brilliant guy.
If I ran my own business, Iwould hand him and my daughter,
(20:13):
who's 26, my business in aheartbeat.
They're going to have new ideas.
I'm a traditionalist, yes, I'ma technology guy, but I still
believe in certain things.
Right, and I don't useInstagram.
I know what it is and mymarketing vice president tells
me I should pay attention to it,but I don't, right.
And so what I'm seeing, michael, is that there's this dynamic
(20:36):
going on where the generation mygeneration is turning over the
business to their kids.
The kids are wanting to bringit forward from a technology
standpoint, but they want tohonor the traditions of their
parents.
Right, and you know, I promisedyou I wouldn't make a sales
pitch about client book, but Iam going to make a sales pitch
about technology and clienttelling.
(20:56):
Client telling does bridge that, right, because what all I'm
doing with clientelling isdigitizing the PT notebook that
first thing.
I told you, where I filled outmy little notebook with my pen
and my paper.
Well, five years later, I builtit in Excel and I just had my
computer on the counter.
I typed people's names in, butI still had eye contact to you.
Well, now it's on an iPad,right, but what it's doing is
(21:17):
making the relationship strongerbecause I can stay contacted
with you, I don't have to relyon my memory and I can keep my
promises.
I can make you a hero.
Every single time I reach outto you and say, go get her
something or congratulations onyour promotion.
So the best way.
I was once giving a talk at aconference and someone asked me
a very similar question abouttechnology, and I explained it
(21:38):
this way.
I remember the first time I gotin my car to go to work and
Google said to me or my phonesaid to me I don't know if it
was Google's somebody saidyou're 28 minutes from work, and
I went oh my God, that's socreepy, like, really.
I came home that night.
It's so creepy.
The next day I got in my carand it said you're 38 minutes
from work.
However, if you take this route, you'll save 10 minutes.
I went oh my gosh, that'samazing.
I love it.
(21:59):
That's amazing, right.
Technology works when you makeit make sense to the person
who's using it and you make itimportant to them.
You can't shove it down theirthroat, right?
And so that's the bridge thateveryone seems to struggle
making sometime.
We probably don't have time totalk about AI in this podcast,
but that's the next like I'm allinto AI.
(22:21):
It makes sense to me, well,podcast.
But that's the next like I'mall into ai.
It makes sense to me, well,it's.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
And it's invasive, it's taking your thoughts away
no right, like thinking aboutyour thoughts in the way that I
feel like, uh, a computer istaking away your thoughts.
It's like almost like a.
It's a tool, and I meantheoretically I could hand craft
my entire house for me, or Icould have a tool that would
craft the house for me as well,and I think that the end result
will be faster and probably moreefficient.
(22:47):
And I think it's like a.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
It's the medium, I think, but I think I'm with you
all I know is that I dropped outof college to join the army.
That's why I went and bought aring at the mall, because I got
out of the army and you can't doanything when you go to the
army and you blow up tanks.
You can't very well like go geta job, yeah, you'll figure
something else out.
Had we had ai when I went tocollege, I'd be a physicist.
Oh right, because the way mybrain processes stuff, it didn't
(23:11):
work for me, right?
I couldn't look up things inthe library, I couldn't sit in a
lecture hall.
So technology is a tool, justlike a hammer.
You have to choose how to useit and you have to use the right
tool at the right time.
To use your analogy when youbuild a house I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Wow, what a concise and beautiful way to put it,
john.
We're going to take a quickbreak and when we come back I
want to talk about the retentionflow.
So everybody stay with us.
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(23:47):
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Thank you, slash email dashmarketing.
(24:08):
And now back to the show.
(24:35):
All right, everybody stillspeaking with John Liebler from
ClientBook.
So, john, we were talking aboutthe kind of retention flow.
So I'm interested when it comesto online shopping.
I've been doing a lot of onlineshopping just because there's
not a lot of department storesaround here.
So I'm interested when it comesto online shopping.
I've been doing a lot of onlineshopping just because there's
not a lot of department storesaround here.
So I have to get a lot of mystuff online and I do try to
avoid buying everything I dofrom Amazon.
But I do find that some ofthese brands there's like almost
(24:58):
like this, this flow, or likerace to it or like this kind of
I guess a journey to actuallydecide to buy this, and what's
really interesting is they areabsolutely not all the same.
I just bought a man.
I got this targeted ad.
It was incredible.
It was so right on.
(25:18):
It was this horseshoe crabblueprinted on this beautiful
plate and I bought it offInstagram.
It was this horseshoe crab blueprinted on this beautiful plate
and I bought it off Instagram.
It was $100, which is more thanI probably would buy a plate
you know, like a serving trayoff of.
But it was exactly what Iwanted.
It was so my aesthetic and theynailed it and I bought it,
bought it with Apple Pay, tookone second bang done.
But then there are other things.
(25:38):
I've talked about it in thepast with my.
I have a series called BreakingDown the Best and one of those
series was about I hemmed andhawed about this $300 jacket for
like a year.
I thought about it nonstop, butthey kept on getting in my
inbox.
They kept on sending me newthings.
I was kind of waiting for alittle sales coupon to come
(26:00):
through.
It never did because theyprobably knew I was on the hook.
Those relationships I didconvert at the end and, yes,
they are kind of difference invalues but still no less
valuable to me.
I love my jacket.
I love my horseshoe crab plate.
I think they're both beautifuland a great utility.
Now, how do you kind of see theflow you mentioned?
(26:22):
Engage your Rings starts maybeeven a year ahead of time.
It goes through, then throughthe sales cycle and then the
actual kind of relationshipmanagement and retention process
which I usually see aspost-sale.
What does that flow look likeand what are the key checkpoints
?
What does that flow look likeand what are the key checkpoints
?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Well, there's a lot there that's good, it's really
good.
I would one encourage everyoneand this is probably people are
going to go.
No, it's crazy, just take thevalue of the item out of the
equation.
People seem to think thathigher value important as the
(27:05):
person right, buying the $20,000, whatever, or $15,000, $100,
right, and so I've alwaysattempted to treat these
relationships the same when itcomes to value of the product,
because the value is the personbuying the product, right.
Then you put on top and fromthe jewelry, and if it's a gift,
(27:26):
it's an emotion.
Even if it's a gift foryourself or gift for somebody,
jewelry represents an emotion.
By the way, are you wearing anaura ring?
No just a what do you got there?
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Just a regular old signet ring engraved with my
family crest there you go,what's your family crest?
I actually designed it formyself.
It's a series.
Yeah, one of our listenersactually engraved it for me.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I love it.
What, what, what metal is that?
Speaker 1 (27:51):
It's actually just a silver.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Okay, so a couple of hundred bucks, right, less than
that, probably a hundred bucksExactly, and yet it's probably
the most important thing you own.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, probably it's up there.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
it's definitely one of those things I'm gonna, I
hope, to pass on one day correctthat conversation, that
understanding you can't everpossibly get from amazon or
alexa or whatever it happens tobe.
So to sort of answer yourquestion, look, I, I can like
sometimes I'm on zoom calls, Iorder stuff for people on a call
.
I'll say, hey, alexa, me dogfood, and I'll speak in the back
(28:23):
and order dog food, right?
You can't do that with jewelryand people have tried, right,
and certainly you know there'sthe last minute shopper, the one
who got too much, going toleave their house.
But jewelry is still emotionaland having someone that helps
you define those emotions andthen express those emotions that
(28:44):
humanity is still incrediblyimportant.
Now you still have to beefficient, right.
You have to help people get inand out.
You can't waste their timeasking the same kind of
questions and that's why when Ifirst meet you like I've written
down since you and I've talkedMichael, your favorite sports
thing is thieves.
You're into e-baseball, right?
You?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
live outside of New York.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
City.
You you have like I know allthis stuff about you, right.
The next time I see you, we'regoing to have this conversation
You're going to make oh my God,this guy's amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Well, I'm not amazing , I'm going to put it.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I'm going to put it in my phone.
I wrote it down.
I'm going to put it in my phoneBefore I see you Right, that
five minutes of my time.
You and I will be friendsforever and if I was your, if I
was your guy selling yousomething, you would buy it for
me a million times.
If I sent you a message comingoff of this and said by the way,
I can duplicate your the creston your family ring and a really
nice necklace, you'd probablygo oh, let me see it.
(29:35):
I don't know if you'd buy it,but you know right.
I consider it so we would have aconversation and I'd tug in
your heartstrings in a way.
You would go because you canwear the family crest close to
your heart and that would mean alot.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
And when you're doing the thing.
Yeah, thank you, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
So I didn't even know what your question was anymore.
But but it's, it's convenienceand price are the lazy way to
sell.
I see Okay, if I make itcheaper or I make it easy, I
don't have to build value.
Great salespeople build value.
Now, if I can build value whilemaking it easy and saving a
(30:12):
couple of bucks, that's fine.
But you never build brandloyalty by making it easy and
making it cheap.
You build brand loyalty by youknow me and I know you.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Wow, what a great way to put it.
Because I do think that whenyou start comparing on price I
mean just the nature of numbersthey can always go up, they can
always go down, until you getdown to zero, essentially, and
then it's just like no one'swinning.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I mean, you're getting cheaper, but how close
are you to the lab-grown diamondmarket?
Speaker 1 (30:38):
I follow it.
Yeah, we just lab-grown diamondmarket.
I follow it.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, we've done lots of episodes on it, but that's a
great example.
It is the example, right.
There's all this natural andeverybody's like lab-grown is
going to destroy the industry.
But then somebody jumped in itand everybody got excited and
there was a 30 or 40% disparityin the pricing.
But that was okay.
Customers weren't trading down,right, they were getting bigger
.
So if I had a budget for onecarat, I'd buy a two carat.
Well, now the disparity is sogreat, my daughter's 26.
(31:05):
She's not going to get a fivecarat diamond from her boyfriend
, it just she wouldn't want one,right.
So now she's trading down.
And so what it's doing, right,that value proposition is so
great that people are nowshifting back to the more
expensive item, and thatillustrates it more than
anything else you can mentionwhen you talk about.
(31:25):
Don't spend your lifediscounting, right.
Build relationships, buildvalue.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Wow, that's a great way to look at it, especially
when you start talking about theI guess maybe the word is
congruous incongruous where,like you're comparing one thing
to another and they're kind ofsort of have that, like you were
saying, oh, it's like one caratequals two carats when it comes
to price and like two caratswithin reach.
But when it comes to, likethese numbers that start to not
(31:52):
make a ton of sense, where it'slike one equals, yeah, like five
and a half carats, suddenly itkind of breaks the illusion and
then suddenly you start tofigure it out.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Yeah, yeah, and it diminishes the value.
And I can sit here all day longand tell you how they're
chemically the same.
It doesn't matter, because it'sthe rarity of the piece that
matters.
Right, that's what's reallytelling the story.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah.
So back to this discussionabout this flow.
So you're selling for the valueand a lot of the times there's
so much relationship buildingthat kind of comes together.
Relationship building that kindof comes together.
Is there a way?
Again, this whole questioncomes down to how do you keep
the human touch while stillscaling it, and I have found
(32:38):
that I would love to have donethis a study to see the like
number of stores, number oflocations, and I feel like they
always kind of stall out rightaround.
I think it's like five isprobably the max that I see, but
a lot of the times it's at twolocations and I feel like it's
(32:58):
because the retailer, the mainowner kind of, still needs to
keep that relationship and itjust starts to become
unmanageable.
Now I do feel like ClientBookis probably positioned in a way
to help ease that.
How do you get thisrelationship management and
(33:19):
retention tool in people's handsbut not let them lose that
human aspect?
Is there a way to do that?
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yeah, I mean, it's the core of any robust
clienteling system, right, andwe could talk about client book.
You could talk about salesforce, right, salesforce is basically
a clienteling system on onsteroids.
That's super complicated andcost you a whole bunch of money
and a lot of money, and you need14 administrators to help you
to do it, and yada, yada, yadaso.
(33:46):
So client book and othersystems like it are basically
taking the concept of of, youknow, your traditional CRMs.
Where I'm going to, I'm goingto get a lead and I'm going to
capture that lead, and then I'mgoing to turn that lead into an
opportunity and then I'm goingto close that opportunity right.
Where it then becomes anotherstep forward is you've said
(34:08):
something very interesting inthe beginning of this podcast
right, you buy an engagement andyou're done.
No, you buy a software systemand you're done so for you, you
sell whatever it is that yousell at your company.
Well, I'm not going to buyanother website, I only need one
website.
Right, jewelry, you buy three,four or five times a year and
you buy every single year.
And so what we need to do andwhat ClientBook does is makes it
(34:34):
scalable, and it's not locationLocations don't matter, it's
number of customers.
You can have one location.
We've got customers with onelocation doing $70 million right
.
And then I've got customerswith 10 locations doing $20
million.
So it's not the location, it'show many clients are coming in
and how many customers can myteam create a personal
(34:54):
relationship with, right?
Well, that means creatingopportunities.
That means creating reminders.
That means giving me theability to create personalized
messages at scale.
That's not sending out masstexting.
I hate mass texting.
I hate getting a text that'slike it works for some
businesses, but that's not whatwe can do it.
But that's not what it's about.
It's about me saying toeveryone that I know that has,
(35:17):
you know, an anniversary in thismonth.
How do I message that group ofpeople and make it personal and
make it real?
Okay, and you know, this is nota client book pitch, but the
system, a good system must havean easy way to capture on the
sales floor, not at the POS.
It must have a way to create anopportunity and then build
information.
(35:38):
So what jewelers really want iswhat's their favorite ring size
?
What's their favorite stonecolor?
Right?
What occasions do they'recoming up this concept of
relationships?
Right?
He's buying for her.
How do I capture herinformation within the
application, right.
What occasions do they'recoming up?
This concept of relationships,right?
He's buying for her.
How do I capture herinformation within the
application?
Right?
And then you have to make itrich enough from a task
management system where theteams don't have to think, they
(36:01):
don't have to hunt and peck.
They can open up the app and inthe morning they've got a
message and it says these sevenpeople have this thing coming up
next week.
You need to send them a message, right?
Or this person's repair is due.
You might want to check on it.
If you can make that piece easy, then they can spend all their
time building the relationship.
(36:21):
Does that help?
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, I do actually understand.
Yeah, it's about making itseamless.
I always laugh about like uh,I've increasingly been, I've
been seeing my parents a lotmore lately and what we always
talk about is like firstlanguage versus second language
when it comes to tech literacyand tech fluency, and I don't
really know how to explain itsometimes to them.
How like, oh it's about becauseI do user experience and I
(36:47):
don't really sometimes even knowhow to put it into words that
it was about like oh, it's soseamless, and they're like I
guess I don't really understand.
It's like yeah, have you everused something where it's just
like it feels great and it feelslike it feels like swimming and
they're?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
like.
It's like you get in your carand you're going to drive the
car, but my seat automaticallyadjusted for me, my phone
connected automatically theapple maps I you know what I
mean.
So there's all this technologyaround me, but the technology is
making it easier for me to dowhat I want to do, which is
drive the car yes, right, it'snot necessarily making the car
(37:22):
drive for you, which I mean ifit will, but it's about making
the entire thing, yes, better.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I understand.
The experience is better, it'sconvenient.
I the entire thing make itbetter, I understand.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
The experience is better, it's convenient, I don't
have to think I can focus onthe most important thing, and
that's driving the car I canfocus on.
Clientbook makes you focus onthe most important thing, which
is the customer sitting acrossfrom you or the customer at home
who needs our help.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
That's a great way to put it.
Man, bottle that one up andwe'll send that over to
ClientBook.
Start.
Bottle that one up and we'llsend that over to client.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Books that run in that little ad clip.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
That's great.
One last thing I'd be remiss tokind of leave this one.
I am starting to think we usethis word omni-channel all the
time where it's.
I always say, as above, sobelow, so it's like your digital
presence should also match yourphysical presence.
And we say that a lot of timeswhen it comes to omichannel with
, like, having your productssynced up, so that's kind of a
(38:11):
less you know relevant version,but I also think it's maybe
there's an omnichannel version.
When it comes to clientretention, so there's a tech
version which is as above andthen there should probably be so
below, are there any like Iguess uh?
(38:32):
So below, uh, are there anylike I guess more non-tech or
old school or versions of thatwhere it comes to uh client
retention besides, like I meanprobably just an old-fashioned
phone call to like some of yourclients hey, I see you have a, a
anniversary coming up.
I've also heard people likesending box of cookies and stuff
like that.
Is there anything that you haveheard is like really successful
right now?
Speaker 3 (38:51):
well, I mean, it's not gonna beat the same drum all
over again, but it's it's.
It's not a one-size-fit-allanswer, it's knowing your
customer.
No one's important to you.
If you were one of my topcustomers, uh, and I would look
you up and I would have createda tag that said thieves
seriously, and I would, and ifyou had bought something really
expensive from me, I wouldsurprise and delight you and
(39:13):
send you maybe a custom madebracelet with, like, a little
thieves charm on it, or you knowwhat I mean, but that's very
personal for you, right?
It's not sending out you know,claire's cookies to 8,000 people
, because everyone knows that'swhat it is.
It's not making an AI video andpeople, because everyone knows
(39:35):
that's what it is.
It's not making an AI video,and that's what jewelry can do
for you, more than any otherindustry I can customize.
I was working for somebody.
I was working with somebody andI was on an airplane and they
were traveling to somebody'shouse that was very, very rich
I'm just choosing my words andhe opened up this box and he
showed me this box and there wasa palm tree in there and there
was I'm making some stuff up nowa race car on there and there
was something else on there andI'm going wow, it's amazing.
(39:55):
He custom made this bracelet asa housewarming gift and he knew
that the person liked Hawaii,that liked to race cars, that
played tennis, and he made thisand that was the thing he
brought with him.
And that's what you can do withjewelry.
That's very personal.
Now the problem is you got toremember all that stuff and I
don't know about you, but Ican't remember anything.
(40:15):
So if I don't write it down orI put it in a system and then I
don't have someone alert me 20minutes later that I need, like
I have alerts all day long toremind me to do things, and
people are like, wow, john'sreally organized.
No, I have a system that tellsme what to do.
That's what's missing.
Everyone is trying to rely andthey're saying I don't want
technology, you want technologyto drive the car, right.
(40:37):
And then you, as thesalesperson, personally, I will
give you one little pitch forclient book here.
We pull in the customer'sentire product catalog, right?
So we would connect withPunchbox website and bring in
the entire product catalog.
We also actually work with anumber of brands you know
Gabriel and Cohen and Takori andAJafi, where we bring in their
(40:58):
product catalog and then thesalesperson can create lookbooks
or wishlists from those productcatalogs and then send them off
as part of your messaging.
So I can really personalize theexperience by and create that
omni-channel experience right bycurating those lists and
sending to the customer and thenthey can just click on them and
(41:19):
come in and whatnot.
So the more practical use.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
I think it's about that.
Yeah, like the user experience.
Again, it's, it's one of thethings.
I've been working in this rolefor about five and a half years
and I still don't really knowhow to explain it for someone
without showing them examples.
I don't know how to show thatfeeling of user experience but,
(41:42):
like you were saying, man, I betyou the user, when they got
that housewarming present, man,they felt really good and what
do they remember?
Just that they had a reallygood feeling.
And that that's even less aboutlike the jewelry, it's more
about the feeling.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
So I think it's one of my favorite quotes and I'm
going to get it wrong, so Iapologize for getting it wrong,
but I'm close.
It's by maya angelo and shesaid something along the lines
of people remember what you said.
They won't remember what youdid, but they'll remember how
you made them feel Nice.
And I think to me like, evenwhen I say it, like I get
(42:18):
goosebumps because I think aboutit, because I have a difficult,
like my speech pattern was veryquick and I'm very direct and I
often wonder, like, are peoplefeeling bad when that was not my
intent?
And like if we all just focuson how we're making the personal
crossroads feel, things getbetter very quickly.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
I couldn't have said it better myself.
I love it.
Thank you so much, John.
I really appreciate your time.
Is there a spot that we shouldbe directing people if they want
to learn more about, you know,client retention and client book
in general?
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I was not prepared for that, but I'm guessing
clientbookcom will get you whereyou want to go.
And yeah, or look me up onLinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Sounds good, john.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate your time.
Maybe I'll have you back and wecan discuss more of this.
This is really a fascinatingtopic, everybody.
We'll be back next week,tuesday, with another episode.
Cheers Bye.
All right, everybody.
(43:18):
That's the end of the show.
Thanks so much for listening.
My guest this week was JohnLiebler with ClientBook, and you
can learn more about them inthe show notes below.
This episode was brought to youby Punchmark and produced and
hosted by me, michael Burpo.
This episode was edited by PaulSuarez with music by Ross
Cockrum.
Don't forget to rate thepodcast on Spotify and Apple
(43:39):
Podcasts and leave us feedbackon punchmarkcom slash loop.
That's L-O-U-P-E.
Thanks.
We'll be back next week,tuesdayuesday, with another
episode.
Cheers bye.
Welcome to In the Loop, thought it was kind of
epitomized by I had about athree minute conversation with
John before we started recordingand in that time he just asked
me a little bit about myself,where I'm from.
You know what?
I was wearing a jersey.
He asked me hey, what jerseyare you wearing?
And I said, oh, it's myfavorite team, la Thieves.
He's like, oh, what kind ofteam is that?
And little did I know and hebrings it up later in the
(00:40):
recording that he was kind ofdoing some client research on me
as well, learning a little bitabout me.
That he later made some coolpoints.
I thought it was a reallyinteresting conversation and he
brings up a lot of ways thatindependent jewelry stores can
maximize and also increase theirsales through these retention
(01:00):
methods and just an overall kindof strategy.
It was a really coolconversation.
I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the
jewelry industry's favoritewebsite platform and digital
growth agency.
Our mission reaches way beyondtechnology.
With decades of experience andlong-lasting industry
relationships, punchmark enablesjewelry businesses to flourish
in any marketplace.
We consider our clients ourfriends, as many of them have
(01:30):
been friends way before becomingclients.
Punchmark's own success comesfrom the fact that we have a
much deeper need and obligationto help our friends succeed.
Whether you're looking forbetter e-commerce performance,
business growth or campaignsthat drive traffic and sales,
punchmark's website andmarketing services were made
just for you.
It's never too late totransform your business and
(01:52):
stitch together your digital andphysical worlds in a way that
achieves tremendous growth andresults.
Schedule a guided demo today atpunchmarkcom.
Slash go.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And now back to the show.
What is up everybody?
My name is Michael Burpo.
I'm joined by John Liebler, theVP of operations at ClientBook.
How are you doing today, John?
I'm good.
How are you, Michael?
So well, I'm really excited toget a chance to speak with you.
Clientbook, making some news.
(02:25):
I just got a chance to meetyour team at JCK.
We had a booth right next toyou guys, just in the Edge
Village space.
It was really cool getting achance to talk with your team
about everything that's going on.
Could you maybe give me like alittle background on your
industry experience as well askind of what led you to your job
(02:47):
at Clampbook?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah, I'd be happy to , and I'll give you the
four-minute version.
I can't make it any shorterthan that.
I apologize because I am not amillennial, as you so introduced
yourself a couple of minutesago when we learned all about
your gaming career.
So when I got into the army Ididn't need to buy.
I was going to buy a young ladya ring and I didn't have a job.
So I walked into the mall and Iwalked into Belden Jewelers and
(03:11):
I said I need a ring and theysold me a three eighths of a
carat, a radiant cut and atwisted band for $750 to give to
Lisa.
Lisa unfortunately said no,which is the sad part of the
story.
But the happy part of the storyis I said are you hiring?
And they said sure, so I startedmy jewelry career in 1989 at
(03:32):
Belden Jewelers, right beforeValentine's Day, and on that day
, mark my manager, handed me alittle plastic notebook and said
, john, this is your PT notebookand this is how you will define
your career.
Jewelry is not about selling anitem.
It's about buildingrelationships and selling
generationally right.
(03:53):
It's about the guy buying thenecklace for his girlfriend that
soon becomes his fiance, thatthen becomes his wife, that then
becomes his 50th anniversaryand all their kids.
And that really resonated withme and I was very coachable, so
I just started using my PTnotebook.
That was a fortuitous decisionto take that job because
(04:13):
Belladons got acquired and thenwe acquired somebody and by the
end of my career, I was thedivision vice president of
strategy for Signet.
So Jared Zale, kay Peoples,mappins and I ran stores for
about 20 years.
So I ran the Kay division andthen the last five years I
handled all the logistics,strategy, real estate, training,
(04:35):
blah, blah, blah for Signet,but I left in 2018.
I've spent the last seven yearsbuilt my own consulting gig, but
it's just me, so I'm like Ihave a big, a big thing, and
during that time I took on otherjobs with companies, so I did
some time in workforcemanagement because and and and
(04:55):
and time studies while doing myown consulting.
I was the head of stores forShinola for about 18 months and
then, through my consultingbusiness and some of my software
uh companies that I workedthere, that I had the
opportunity to work withHelzberg, uh Icebox, diamond
Watches, uh Hanush and just amyriad of other jewelers I
bumped into ClientBook uh.
In January they asked me tocome on as a consultant to help
(05:18):
build out their brand program,which we can talk about in
another podcast, and um fell inlove with the company, fell in
love with the people, and theyasked me to stay and they sucked
me out of retirement.
And here I am.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Man, what a rollercoaster.
That's a very impressive resume.
I mean you even mentioned, youknow, like a life before even
working in jewelry.
That's pretty impressive Nowwhen you talk about Signet.
So, if you don't mind me, justkind of staying on this topic
for one more second, I sometimesfeel, when it comes to, like,
going to a jewelry show, Isometimes feel like there's a
(05:53):
independence versus these bigbox kind of I don't want to say
race, because it's notcompetition where it's like head
to head.
It's more like we're racingahead and we're trying to see,
um, you know what we can do thebest.
It seems like climb book isabout optimizing, um like the
reach and the strengths of, uh,different stores and especially
(06:13):
for independents.
Um, is that kind of somethingthat was by having your
experience with these big boxplaces, uh, it's kind of like
allowed you to see what's whatcan be done differently as an
independent jeweler.
Is that's kind of like allowedyou to see what's what can be
done differently as anindependent jeweler?
Is that like kind of part of it?
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Michael, that is an incredibly insightful question.
Seriously, Thank you.
You know when, look, if youlook at the totable, the TAM
right, the totable addressablemarket for jewelry, right, I
think it's somewhere around $73billion.
Right, you've got Signet, whichis six, 7 billion.
Right, you got got Signet,which is six, $7 billion.
Right, you've got Tiffany's inthere, you have Helzberg, you
have some other big players, butthen you have everybody else.
(06:50):
Right, you've got somewhere on20,000 independents that do less
than a million bucks a year.
Then you've got this groupingof 10,000 to 15,000 jewelers
that do between a million and100 million, and so, literally,
you've got Signet, a coupleother players and then everybody
else.
And when I left and I'll be very, very transparent about it like
(07:12):
I walked out going on, thenumber one ops guy there is, and
I learned quickly, yeah, andthen my first gig was Barnes
Noble and I'm like I have noidea what I'm doing because what
Barnes Noble does.
And then, as I've developedover the last seven years and
I've been on an adventure andI've said to yes to so many
things, what I've learned is Iwas the number one ops guy for a
(07:34):
publicly traded $6 billionjewelry company, which makes me
qualified to do one job Right,and running an independent is
far more complicated.
Yeah, I mean, look, I had ateam of 75.
It's great.
I was talking to somebody onceand they're like what would you
do as an interview, what wouldyou do to do this analytics?
(07:54):
I said I'd call Rich in myoffice and say do this analytics
for me, right?
So, as I've learned this notonly independent jewelry,
independent businesses, becauseI've worked with a lot of small
and medium businesses thisbusiness owner, as you well know
, has to be great at everything,or has to be great at hiring
(08:14):
people, or has to have a greatsystem that they can rely on.
That's number one, what makesjewelry very different and
actually we had an executivemeeting today and we're talking
about it very different, andactually we had an executive
meeting today and we're talkingabout it it is really the last
vertical that exists where therearen't one or two giant players
that have gobbled up the marketright, the number one player
only has 6%, 7%, everyone elseand so you have to be able to
(08:38):
cater to the independent mindsetof every business owner if you
want to be successful as atechnology company in this
market.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
That's really interesting, you know, you're
right, I'm thinking about it andthey are.
It really does seem likejewelry is about.
Again, it always comes back tothis relationship building and
what I always think about isthat we have to adapt to that
too, because punch marks so wedo websites for jewelers, even
though we are B2B.
(09:07):
The fact is jewelers, they wantto be treated the way that they
treat their clients when theyare B2C, which is to say, very
deep relationships, very hightouch, lots of handholding,
which honestly is great.
High touch, lots of handholding,which honestly is great, makes
(09:28):
it difficult to scale sometimesbecause when you hold people's
hands you kind of need someoneon the other hand doing the
handholding.
That can be difficult.
But I guess, where do you kindof see this big topic of client
retention working into it?
Because in the end, when wetalk about jewelry, it is sort
of a, I guess it's a nonconsumable luxury good, which is
(09:49):
to say, if you buy that ring itshould last theoretically
forever and theoretically theyshould never need another one of
those again.
So where does that retentionkind of aspect start to work
into the the, I guess theequation of it all?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
sure um?
Are you married?
Uh, no, sir.
Do you have a significant other?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
nah, unless anyone out there is listening all right
.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
well, I won't go down that that path with you.
But the reality.
First of all, I want to go backto one thing.
The other interesting aspect ofindependent jewelers is so many
of them are multi-generationaland so you have to take not only
the jewelry as a product andthe emotion behind it.
You have to take a familybusiness at scale, and that's
what makes it really interesting, for because the the passion,
(10:39):
the desire and the love of thebusiness is ingrained generation
after generation aftergeneration.
Right Now, client retention,this is.
I could talk for four hours onthis, and so feel free to edit.
Let's lock in, I'm in.
Let's lock in, brother.
So the reality is, at best,conversion in a jewelry store is
20%, okay, and that's prettymuch a standard number you would
(11:01):
see from the NRF or otherthings.
Somebody's going to go oh, I'mat 22.
And someone, but let's use 20as a number.
That means of 100 customersthat walk in, only 20 of them
buy.
That means 80 people walked in,they got out of their car, they
walked in, they greeted blah,blah, blah and they left.
Or they were walking throughthe mall and they turned left
and walked into a store.
It has changed who's buyingjewelry.
(11:22):
Right.
For years it was 98% of allrings were bought by men for
women.
It's now probably 94.
But the predominant buyer ofjewelry is still the male buying
for a female or aself-purchaser, or a female
buying for herself, right, andyou've got all these categories
in there.
But most men A were horribleshoppers, right, and I try not
(11:44):
to speak in absolutes.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
So for all those people listening, the good
shopper guy out there.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I apologize if I offended you, but for the most
part, we're not good, right?
I can't speak for everyone, butI've got my wife's birthday, my
wife's anniversary, I haveValentine's Day, I have Mother's
Day, I get blessed withHanukkah, so I have to come up
with eight gifts, right?
So I don't know how many.
Is that?
10 gift-giving occasions I needto come up with.
Trust me when I tell you theengagement ring was not the last
(12:10):
piece of jewelry I ever bought.
Yes, right.
And so when we talk aboutclient retention, I'm going to
ask you to think and if I had awhiteboard I'd show you, but
break it down in your mind 100customers of them came in and
bought nothing.
We paid to get them in there.
You charged a jeweler money tobuild a website to get them in
right.
They did something to get aGoogle review.
They threw up a billboard.
(12:30):
That customer walked in.
The term is CAC, right.
You know CAC is probably betterthan I do, right?
Customer acquisition cost Notall of them are going to buy.
The bridal buying cycle is fourtouch points.
It's over the course of a year.
She starts thinking about itway before he does.
She comes in and investigates.
He comes in three months later.
We need to be able to capturethat customer and retention
(12:53):
starts before the purchase.
That's the biggest mistake.
That I see is everyone's likewell, I'll capture them in my
POS, but that relies on atransaction and 80% of your
customers are not transactingthe first time they walk in your
store Post-transaction.
First of all, I want to thankyou.
You want to stop returns.
Send out a thank you note.
You reduce returns by 70 to 80%if you simply send out thank
(13:17):
you for coming in right.
And then you want to nurturethem, give them additional
information through outreach andthen help them find gifts for
their life events, for thoseones I mentioned, for their
promotions.
And the more you canpersonalize that and it's not
mass messaging the more you willretain those customers.
One last piece, and then I'llpause.
You got your 80% of the peoplewho don't buy.
(13:39):
You've got your 20% who didSplit them down the middle.
Half of them are loyalists.
They love you.
They're going to come shoppingwith you all the time.
It's probably a little lessthan a half, but we'll just say
half.
The other half only buy fromyou.
Once it's me driving homeneeding a gift and pulling off
to the left because I saw thebillboard Great job on your
billboard right.
Or I did a search for jewelryand you popped up I walk in, I
(14:00):
buy it, I walk out.
That customer, that's the oneyou want to capture, that's the
one you want to reach out to andgo.
Hey, john, by the way, I hopeshe liked her birthday gift.
We did mention that heranniversary, your anniversary,
is two months later.
Why don't we get her thematching necklace?
All of that is how you retaincustomers.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
So it sounds like it's a mixture of both ends.
You know like when they talkabout being having more margin,
they talk about you either haveto reduce expense or you have to
raise your gross, and I thinkthat it sounds almost like when
you're talking about that.
You know this theoretical 100customers or potential customers
that walk through your door andhow you either have to close
(14:42):
more of them so go from 20 to 25, or you need to have more of
the original 20 come in morefrequently.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Do you find or there's one other, or sell more
higher ticket to the one thatyou sold to, right.
So you've got conversion right.
You got of the 100, can I takeit from converting 20 of them to
21?
Can I get more people to comeback in?
Or can I take my AOV, myaverage order value, from 1,000
(15:12):
to 1,100?
Yes, Right, Well, 100 bucksmore times 10,000 customers,
that's real money.
So those are your three buckets.
Sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
No, no, that makes a lot of sense because for me it
starts to some of those things Ijust feel like are not always
in the cards of those three.
Some of them don't feel withinreach very often when it comes
to every store so we're dealingwith.
We have just short of 500clients across North America and
some of our stores we are veryaware are dealing with a
different clientele anddemographic than some of our
(15:48):
other ones.
We have some clients that arein San Francisco and the average
, the AOV, is through the roofcomparatively to these people in
these other parts of the nationor in Canada.
And do you find that that issomething that all three of
those branches are worthtackling?
Or is there usually like gofind the you know the most
(16:10):
within reach, attack that onefirst and then save the other?
I guess more difficult toaccomplish ones and get those
ones later.
Or is it best to do all of themat the same time?
Speaker 3 (16:21):
This is something that I talk about rarely because
it can get confusing.
I actually use a number calledvisit value.
So conversion, right, 10 peoplewalk in, one person buy.
My conversion is 10% Averageorder value and, by the way,
$1,000,.
You're right, I've got somecustomers.
Average order value is 5K.
A lot of it's 250 bucks, right,if I sell Pandora.
(16:43):
Right, it's going to be as muchlower if I'm selling one.
So to me, don't get hung up onthe AOV, it's a question of can
I take $20 to $22?
That's a 10% increase.
I do that across every customer.
I just increase my revenue by10%, by 10%.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Wow, that's a great way to look at it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Right, but visit value is basically what's a
customer worth.
So if 10 customers walk in andmy total revenue for the day is
a thousand dollars, the value ofeach customer was a hundred
bucks with me?
I think so.
Okay, if one customer spent athousand, or 10 customers spent
a hundred, the value, the totalvalue, is still $1,000 in
(17:22):
revenue.
And so what I teach my teams isI don't want them focused on
one metric, I want them focusedon the customer.
Every customer has a story.
Every customer has a need.
They're not there unless theyhave one, and I want to maximize
their value based on their need.
The rest will take care ofitself.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
That's really a great way to kind of put it, and I am
starting to see it.
So we had just mentionedearlier, though, that there is
this like retention andrelationship kind of aspect, the
handholding and this how.
Jewelry is all about buildingup the relationships.
A lot of times, we're both techcompanies over here, so I feel
(18:00):
like a lot of retailers balk atthe idea of leveraging
technology when it comes to thisthing.
That has been, verytraditionally, the absolute
antithesis of technology, whichis to say, very personalized.
How do you start to talk andlike broach the subject of
leveraging technology when itcomes to client retention?
(18:23):
Like I still had, I had a JCK,we just had this one.
People were like, yeah, wedon't sell online because we
want to make sure that we builda relationship and we get a
return you know, customer out ofit.
We want them to come into thestore, and sometimes I just have
to be like yeah, but like ifyou make the sale, you can
encourage them to either comeback or maybe they become a
(18:44):
recurring customer online, whichis, you know to say, just as
loyal of a customer If you doall of the things along the way
appropriately, which is to say,like you know, send good
tracking information, set athank you, include stuff in your
box.
What's the conversation like onyour end when you start to have
the discussion about clientretention through technology?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Well, I know I'll actually respond to the thing
you just said.
I mean, I'm old enough to be.
We remember sitting in the roomlike when we were debating acom
and I was a district manager,and saying it's going to destroy
my business, like no one'sgoing to shop for me anymore.
We can't like I was.
I'm a very passionate guy andI'm like like no, no, no.
Well, the reality is,multi-channel sales is the way
(19:29):
to go, and somebody very smartstood in front of the room and
showed us all of that.
And you're right, you are soright.
Look, buy the thing online.
And then I that says hey,michael, I saw you bought this
thing, congratulations.
Come on in for a custom fitting.
When you come in from thecustom fitting, I'm going to
show you 17 other pieces thatyou didn't think about and sell
you a bunch of like it's.
It's.
That's the mindset that peoplehave to have to take and you
(19:51):
can't do any one channelexclusively.
You have to have them all worktogether.
In response to the technologyquestion, I'm seeing something
very interesting happen in theindustry.
The generations are turningover, right.
So you know full disclosure.
I'm about to be 60 and I my sonis probably your age.
He's 30.
He's a brilliant guy.
If I ran my own business, Iwould hand him and my daughter,
(20:13):
who's 26, my business in aheartbeat.
They're going to have new ideas.
I'm a traditionalist, yes, I'ma technology guy, but I still
believe in certain things.
Right, and I don't useInstagram.
I know what it is and mymarketing vice president tells
me I should pay attention to it,but I don't, right.
And so what I'm seeing, michael, is that there's this dynamic
(20:36):
going on where the generation mygeneration is turning over the
business to their kids.
The kids are wanting to bringit forward from a technology
standpoint, but they want tohonor the traditions of their
parents.
Right, and you know, I promisedyou I wouldn't make a sales
pitch about client book, but Iam going to make a sales pitch
about technology and clienttelling.
(20:56):
Client telling does bridge that, right, because what all I'm
doing with clientelling isdigitizing the PT notebook that
first thing.
I told you, where I filled outmy little notebook with my pen
and my paper.
Well, five years later, I builtit in Excel and I just had my
computer on the counter.
I typed people's names in, butI still had eye contact to you.
Well, now it's on an iPad,right, but what it's doing is
(21:17):
making the relationship strongerbecause I can stay contacted
with you, I don't have to relyon my memory and I can keep my
promises.
I can make you a hero.
Every single time I reach outto you and say, go get her
something or congratulations onyour promotion.
So the best way.
I was once giving a talk at aconference and someone asked me
a very similar question abouttechnology, and I explained it
(21:38):
this way.
I remember the first time I gotin my car to go to work and
Google said to me or my phonesaid to me I don't know if it
was Google's somebody saidyou're 28 minutes from work, and
I went oh my God, that's socreepy, like, really.
I came home that night.
It's so creepy.
The next day I got in my carand it said you're 38 minutes
from work.
However, if you take this route, you'll save 10 minutes.
I went oh my gosh, that'samazing.
I love it.
(21:59):
That's amazing, right.
Technology works when you makeit make sense to the person
who's using it and you make itimportant to them.
You can't shove it down theirthroat, right?
And so that's the bridge thateveryone seems to struggle
making sometime.
We probably don't have time totalk about AI in this podcast,
but that's the next like I'm allinto AI.
(22:21):
It makes sense to me, well,podcast.
But that's the next like I'mall into ai.
It makes sense to me, well,it's.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
And it's invasive, it's taking your thoughts away
no right, like thinking aboutyour thoughts in the way that I
feel like, uh, a computer istaking away your thoughts.
It's like almost like a.
It's a tool, and I meantheoretically I could hand craft
my entire house for me, or Icould have a tool that would
craft the house for me as well,and I think that the end result
will be faster and probably moreefficient.
(22:47):
And I think it's like a.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
It's the medium, I think, but I think I'm with you
all I know is that I dropped outof college to join the army.
That's why I went and bought aring at the mall, because I got
out of the army and you can't doanything when you go to the
army and you blow up tanks.
You can't very well like go geta job, yeah, you'll figure
something else out.
Had we had ai when I went tocollege, I'd be a physicist.
Oh right, because the way mybrain processes stuff, it didn't
(23:11):
work for me, right?
I couldn't look up things inthe library, I couldn't sit in a
lecture hall.
So technology is a tool, justlike a hammer.
You have to choose how to useit and you have to use the right
tool at the right time.
To use your analogy when youbuild a house I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Wow, what a concise and beautiful way to put it,
john.
We're going to take a quickbreak and when we come back I
want to talk about the retentionflow.
So everybody stay with us.
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marketing campaigns craftedspecifically for jewelers.
(23:47):
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Thank you, slash email dashmarketing.
(24:08):
And now back to the show.
(24:35):
All right, everybody stillspeaking with John Liebler from
ClientBook.
So, john, we were talking aboutthe kind of retention flow.
So I'm interested when it comesto online shopping.
I've been doing a lot of onlineshopping just because there's
not a lot of department storesaround here.
So I'm interested when it comesto online shopping.
I've been doing a lot of onlineshopping just because there's
not a lot of department storesaround here.
So I have to get a lot of mystuff online and I do try to
avoid buying everything I dofrom Amazon.
But I do find that some ofthese brands there's like almost
(24:58):
like this, this flow, or likerace to it or like this kind of
I guess a journey to actuallydecide to buy this, and what's
really interesting is they areabsolutely not all the same.
I just bought a man.
I got this targeted ad.
It was incredible.
It was so right on.
(25:18):
It was this horseshoe crabblueprinted on this beautiful
plate and I bought it offInstagram.
It was this horseshoe crab blueprinted on this beautiful plate
and I bought it off Instagram.
It was $100, which is more thanI probably would buy a plate
you know, like a serving trayoff of.
But it was exactly what Iwanted.
It was so my aesthetic and theynailed it and I bought it,
bought it with Apple Pay, tookone second bang done.
But then there are other things.
(25:38):
I've talked about it in thepast with my.
I have a series called BreakingDown the Best and one of those
series was about I hemmed andhawed about this $300 jacket for
like a year.
I thought about it nonstop, butthey kept on getting in my
inbox.
They kept on sending me newthings.
I was kind of waiting for alittle sales coupon to come
(26:00):
through.
It never did because theyprobably knew I was on the hook.
Those relationships I didconvert at the end and, yes,
they are kind of difference invalues but still no less
valuable to me.
I love my jacket.
I love my horseshoe crab plate.
I think they're both beautifuland a great utility.
Now, how do you kind of see theflow you mentioned?
(26:22):
Engage your Rings starts maybeeven a year ahead of time.
It goes through, then throughthe sales cycle and then the
actual kind of relationshipmanagement and retention process
which I usually see aspost-sale.
What does that flow look likeand what are the key checkpoints
?
What does that flow look likeand what are the key checkpoints
?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Well, there's a lot there that's good, it's really
good.
I would one encourage everyoneand this is probably people are
going to go.
No, it's crazy, just take thevalue of the item out of the
equation.
People seem to think thathigher value important as the
(27:05):
person right, buying the $20,000, whatever, or $15,000, $100,
right, and so I've alwaysattempted to treat these
relationships the same when itcomes to value of the product,
because the value is the personbuying the product, right.
Then you put on top and fromthe jewelry, and if it's a gift,
(27:26):
it's an emotion.
Even if it's a gift foryourself or gift for somebody,
jewelry represents an emotion.
By the way, are you wearing anaura ring?
No just a what do you got there?
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Just a regular old signet ring engraved with my
family crest there you go,what's your family crest?
I actually designed it formyself.
It's a series.
Yeah, one of our listenersactually engraved it for me.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I love it.
What, what, what metal is that?
Speaker 1 (27:51):
It's actually just a silver.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Okay, so a couple of hundred bucks, right, less than
that, probably a hundred bucksExactly, and yet it's probably
the most important thing you own.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, probably it's up there.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
it's definitely one of those things I'm gonna, I
hope, to pass on one day correctthat conversation, that
understanding you can't everpossibly get from amazon or
alexa or whatever it happens tobe.
So to sort of answer yourquestion, look, I, I can like
sometimes I'm on zoom calls, Iorder stuff for people on a call
.
I'll say, hey, alexa, me dogfood, and I'll speak in the back
(28:23):
and order dog food, right?
You can't do that with jewelryand people have tried, right,
and certainly you know there'sthe last minute shopper, the one
who got too much, going toleave their house.
But jewelry is still emotionaland having someone that helps
you define those emotions andthen express those emotions that
(28:44):
humanity is still incrediblyimportant.
Now you still have to beefficient, right.
You have to help people get inand out.
You can't waste their timeasking the same kind of
questions and that's why when Ifirst meet you like I've written
down since you and I've talkedMichael, your favorite sports
thing is thieves.
You're into e-baseball, right?
You?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
live outside of New York.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
City.
You you have like I know allthis stuff about you, right.
The next time I see you, we'regoing to have this conversation
You're going to make oh my God,this guy's amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Well, I'm not amazing , I'm going to put it.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I'm going to put it in my phone.
I wrote it down.
I'm going to put it in my phoneBefore I see you Right, that
five minutes of my time.
You and I will be friendsforever and if I was your, if I
was your guy selling yousomething, you would buy it for
me a million times.
If I sent you a message comingoff of this and said by the way,
I can duplicate your the creston your family ring and a really
nice necklace, you'd probablygo oh, let me see it.
(29:35):
I don't know if you'd buy it,but you know right.
I consider it so we would have aconversation and I'd tug in
your heartstrings in a way.
You would go because you canwear the family crest close to
your heart and that would mean alot.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
And when you're doing the thing.
Yeah, thank you, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
So I didn't even know what your question was anymore.
But but it's, it's convenienceand price are the lazy way to
sell.
I see Okay, if I make itcheaper or I make it easy, I
don't have to build value.
Great salespeople build value.
Now, if I can build value whilemaking it easy and saving a
(30:12):
couple of bucks, that's fine.
But you never build brandloyalty by making it easy and
making it cheap.
You build brand loyalty by youknow me and I know you.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Wow, what a great way to put it.
Because I do think that whenyou start comparing on price I
mean just the nature of numbersthey can always go up, they can
always go down, until you getdown to zero, essentially, and
then it's just like no one'swinning.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I mean, you're getting cheaper, but how close
are you to the lab-grown diamondmarket?
Speaker 1 (30:38):
I follow it.
Yeah, we just lab-grown diamondmarket.
I follow it.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, we've done lots of episodes on it, but that's a
great example.
It is the example, right.
There's all this natural andeverybody's like lab-grown is
going to destroy the industry.
But then somebody jumped in itand everybody got excited and
there was a 30 or 40% disparityin the pricing.
But that was okay.
Customers weren't trading down,right, they were getting bigger
.
So if I had a budget for onecarat, I'd buy a two carat.
Well, now the disparity is sogreat, my daughter's 26.
(31:05):
She's not going to get a fivecarat diamond from her boyfriend
, it just she wouldn't want one,right.
So now she's trading down.
And so what it's doing, right,that value proposition is so
great that people are nowshifting back to the more
expensive item, and thatillustrates it more than
anything else you can mentionwhen you talk about.
(31:25):
Don't spend your lifediscounting, right.
Build relationships, buildvalue.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Wow, that's a great way to look at it, especially
when you start talking about theI guess maybe the word is
congruous incongruous where,like you're comparing one thing
to another and they're kind ofsort of have that, like you were
saying, oh, it's like one caratequals two carats when it comes
to price and like two caratswithin reach.
But when it comes to, likethese numbers that start to not
(31:52):
make a ton of sense, where it'slike one equals, yeah, like five
and a half carats, suddenly itkind of breaks the illusion and
then suddenly you start tofigure it out.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Yeah, yeah, and it diminishes the value.
And I can sit here all day longand tell you how they're
chemically the same.
It doesn't matter, because it'sthe rarity of the piece that
matters.
Right, that's what's reallytelling the story.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah.
So back to this discussionabout this flow.
So you're selling for the valueand a lot of the times there's
so much relationship buildingthat kind of comes together.
Relationship building that kindof comes together.
Is there a way?
Again, this whole questioncomes down to how do you keep
the human touch while stillscaling it, and I have found
(32:38):
that I would love to have donethis a study to see the like
number of stores, number oflocations, and I feel like they
always kind of stall out rightaround.
I think it's like five isprobably the max that I see, but
a lot of the times it's at twolocations and I feel like it's
(32:58):
because the retailer, the mainowner kind of, still needs to
keep that relationship and itjust starts to become
unmanageable.
Now I do feel like ClientBookis probably positioned in a way
to help ease that.
How do you get thisrelationship management and
(33:19):
retention tool in people's handsbut not let them lose that
human aspect?
Is there a way to do that?
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yeah, I mean, it's the core of any robust
clienteling system, right, andwe could talk about client book.
You could talk about salesforce, right, salesforce is basically
a clienteling system on onsteroids.
That's super complicated andcost you a whole bunch of money
and a lot of money, and you need14 administrators to help you
to do it, and yada, yada, yadaso.
(33:46):
So client book and othersystems like it are basically
taking the concept of of, youknow, your traditional CRMs.
Where I'm going to, I'm goingto get a lead and I'm going to
capture that lead, and then I'mgoing to turn that lead into an
opportunity and then I'm goingto close that opportunity right.
Where it then becomes anotherstep forward is you've said
(34:08):
something very interesting inthe beginning of this podcast
right, you buy an engagement andyou're done.
No, you buy a software systemand you're done so for you, you
sell whatever it is that yousell at your company.
Well, I'm not going to buyanother website, I only need one
website.
Right, jewelry, you buy three,four or five times a year and
you buy every single year.
And so what we need to do andwhat ClientBook does is makes it
(34:34):
scalable, and it's not locationLocations don't matter, it's
number of customers.
You can have one location.
We've got customers with onelocation doing $70 million right
.
And then I've got customerswith 10 locations doing $20
million.
So it's not the location, it'show many clients are coming in
and how many customers can myteam create a personal
(34:54):
relationship with, right?
Well, that means creatingopportunities.
That means creating reminders.
That means giving me theability to create personalized
messages at scale.
That's not sending out masstexting.
I hate mass texting.
I hate getting a text that'slike it works for some
businesses, but that's not whatwe can do it.
But that's not what it's about.
It's about me saying toeveryone that I know that has,
(35:17):
you know, an anniversary in thismonth.
How do I message that group ofpeople and make it personal and
make it real?
Okay, and you know, this is nota client book pitch, but the
system, a good system must havean easy way to capture on the
sales floor, not at the POS.
It must have a way to create anopportunity and then build
information.
(35:38):
So what jewelers really want iswhat's their favorite ring size
?
What's their favorite stonecolor?
Right?
What occasions do they'recoming up this concept of
relationships?
Right?
He's buying for her.
How do I capture herinformation within the
application, right.
What occasions do they'recoming up?
This concept of relationships,right?
He's buying for her.
How do I capture herinformation within the
application?
Right?
And then you have to make itrich enough from a task
management system where theteams don't have to think, they
(36:01):
don't have to hunt and peck.
They can open up the app and inthe morning they've got a
message and it says these sevenpeople have this thing coming up
next week.
You need to send them a message, right?
Or this person's repair is due.
You might want to check on it.
If you can make that piece easy, then they can spend all their
time building the relationship.
(36:21):
Does that help?
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, I do actually understand.
Yeah, it's about making itseamless.
I always laugh about like uh,I've increasingly been, I've
been seeing my parents a lotmore lately and what we always
talk about is like firstlanguage versus second language
when it comes to tech literacyand tech fluency, and I don't
really know how to explain itsometimes to them.
How like, oh it's about becauseI do user experience and I
(36:47):
don't really sometimes even knowhow to put it into words that
it was about like oh, it's soseamless, and they're like I
guess I don't really understand.
It's like yeah, have you everused something where it's just
like it feels great and it feelslike it feels like swimming and
they're?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
like.
It's like you get in your carand you're going to drive the
car, but my seat automaticallyadjusted for me, my phone
connected automatically theapple maps I you know what I
mean.
So there's all this technologyaround me, but the technology is
making it easier for me to dowhat I want to do, which is
drive the car yes, right, it'snot necessarily making the car
(37:22):
drive for you, which I mean ifit will, but it's about making
the entire thing, yes, better.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I understand.
The experience is better, it'sconvenient.
I the entire thing make itbetter, I understand.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
The experience is better, it's convenient, I don't
have to think I can focus onthe most important thing, and
that's driving the car I canfocus on.
Clientbook makes you focus onthe most important thing, which
is the customer sitting acrossfrom you or the customer at home
who needs our help.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
That's a great way to put it.
Man, bottle that one up andwe'll send that over to
ClientBook.
Start.
Bottle that one up and we'llsend that over to client.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Books that run in that little ad clip.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
That's great.
One last thing I'd be remiss tokind of leave this one.
I am starting to think we usethis word omni-channel all the
time where it's.
I always say, as above, sobelow, so it's like your digital
presence should also match yourphysical presence.
And we say that a lot of timeswhen it comes to omichannel with
, like, having your productssynced up, so that's kind of a
(38:11):
less you know relevant version,but I also think it's maybe
there's an omnichannel version.
When it comes to clientretention, so there's a tech
version which is as above andthen there should probably be so
below, are there any like Iguess uh?
(38:32):
So below, uh, are there anylike I guess more non-tech or
old school or versions of thatwhere it comes to uh client
retention besides, like I meanprobably just an old-fashioned
phone call to like some of yourclients hey, I see you have a, a
anniversary coming up.
I've also heard people likesending box of cookies and stuff
like that.
Is there anything that you haveheard is like really successful
right now?
Speaker 3 (38:51):
well, I mean, it's not gonna beat the same drum all
over again, but it's it's.
It's not a one-size-fit-allanswer, it's knowing your
customer.
No one's important to you.
If you were one of my topcustomers, uh, and I would look
you up and I would have createda tag that said thieves
seriously, and I would, and ifyou had bought something really
expensive from me, I wouldsurprise and delight you and
(39:13):
send you maybe a custom madebracelet with, like, a little
thieves charm on it, or you knowwhat I mean, but that's very
personal for you, right?
It's not sending out you know,claire's cookies to 8,000 people
, because everyone knows that'swhat it is.
It's not making an AI video andpeople, because everyone knows
(39:35):
that's what it is.
It's not making an AI video,and that's what jewelry can do
for you, more than any otherindustry I can customize.
I was working for somebody.
I was working with somebody andI was on an airplane and they
were traveling to somebody'shouse that was very, very rich
I'm just choosing my words andhe opened up this box and he
showed me this box and there wasa palm tree in there and there
was I'm making some stuff up nowa race car on there and there
was something else on there andI'm going wow, it's amazing.
(39:55):
He custom made this bracelet asa housewarming gift and he knew
that the person liked Hawaii,that liked to race cars, that
played tennis, and he made thisand that was the thing he
brought with him.
And that's what you can do withjewelry.
That's very personal.
Now the problem is you got toremember all that stuff and I
don't know about you, but Ican't remember anything.
(40:15):
So if I don't write it down orI put it in a system and then I
don't have someone alert me 20minutes later that I need, like
I have alerts all day long toremind me to do things, and
people are like, wow, john'sreally organized.
No, I have a system that tellsme what to do.
That's what's missing.
Everyone is trying to rely andthey're saying I don't want
technology, you want technologyto drive the car, right.
(40:37):
And then you, as thesalesperson, personally, I will
give you one little pitch forclient book here.
We pull in the customer'sentire product catalog, right?
So we would connect withPunchbox website and bring in
the entire product catalog.
We also actually work with anumber of brands you know
Gabriel and Cohen and Takori andAJafi, where we bring in their
(40:58):
product catalog and then thesalesperson can create lookbooks
or wishlists from those productcatalogs and then send them off
as part of your messaging.
So I can really personalize theexperience by and create that
omni-channel experience right bycurating those lists and
sending to the customer and thenthey can just click on them and
(41:19):
come in and whatnot.
So the more practical use.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
I think it's about that.
Yeah, like the user experience.
Again, it's, it's one of thethings.
I've been working in this rolefor about five and a half years
and I still don't really knowhow to explain it for someone
without showing them examples.
I don't know how to show thatfeeling of user experience but,
(41:42):
like you were saying, man, I betyou the user, when they got
that housewarming present, man,they felt really good and what
do they remember?
Just that they had a reallygood feeling.
And that that's even less aboutlike the jewelry, it's more
about the feeling.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
So I think it's one of my favorite quotes and I'm
going to get it wrong, so Iapologize for getting it wrong,
but I'm close.
It's by maya angelo and shesaid something along the lines
of people remember what you said.
They won't remember what youdid, but they'll remember how
you made them feel Nice.
And I think to me like, evenwhen I say it, like I get
(42:18):
goosebumps because I think aboutit, because I have a difficult,
like my speech pattern was veryquick and I'm very direct and I
often wonder, like, are peoplefeeling bad when that was not my
intent?
And like if we all just focuson how we're making the personal
crossroads feel, things getbetter very quickly.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
I couldn't have said it better myself.
I love it.
Thank you so much, John.
I really appreciate your time.
Is there a spot that we shouldbe directing people if they want
to learn more about, you know,client retention and client book
in general?
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I was not prepared for that, but I'm guessing
clientbookcom will get you whereyou want to go.
And yeah, or look me up onLinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Sounds good, john.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate your time.
Maybe I'll have you back and wecan discuss more of this.
This is really a fascinatingtopic, everybody.
We'll be back next week,tuesday, with another episode.
Cheers Bye.
All right, everybody.
(43:18):
That's the end of the show.
Thanks so much for listening.
My guest this week was JohnLiebler with ClientBook, and you
can learn more about them inthe show notes below.
This episode was brought to youby Punchmark and produced and
hosted by me, michael Burpo.
This episode was edited by PaulSuarez with music by Ross
Cockrum.
Don't forget to rate thepodcast on Spotify and Apple
(43:39):
Podcasts and leave us feedbackon punchmarkcom slash loop.
That's L-O-U-P-E.
Thanks.
We'll be back next week,tuesdayuesday, with another
episode.
Cheers bye.
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