December 23, 2024 • 50 mins
Ever lost a client that you really liked and wanted to win them back? Well, the good news is, it is all possible! But there is an art and science to a successful winback. I am speaking with the author of Million Dollar WinBack Dan Pfister from WinBack Labs in Canada in this podcast. Dan has published his findings from his firm and countless interviews with others on how to do a WinBack Strategy and the tremendous benefits it offers in his new book, "Million Dollar WinBack" which I am also excited to say Dan has included me in. I am truly honoured.
Dan's Proven 7 Step Winback System is one of the most profitable and successful marketing and sales strategies and organisation can do yet it is also one of the most overlooked. I have used winback strategies throughout my career and can attest to Dan's ROI numbers. I have also implemented winback strategies for clients of mine and seen the extraordinary results it can deliver no matter the size of your business.
You can find out more about Dan on LinkedIn (Dan Pfister) and his website https://winbacklabs.com/ where you can view his blog and case studies.
Dan's Proven 7 Step Winback System is one of the most profitable and successful marketing and sales strategies and organisation can do yet it is also one of the most overlooked. I have used winback strategies throughout my career and can attest to Dan's ROI numbers. I have also implemented winback strategies for clients of mine and seen the extraordinary results it can deliver no matter the size of your business.
You can find out more about Dan on LinkedIn (Dan Pfister) and his website https://winbacklabs.com/ where you can view his blog and case studies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Am I looking to your eyes?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's very romantic.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Then, well you know you got you got a romantic
looking sounding voice.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
All right, let's kick into it. The most successful people
in the world all have one thing in common. They've
learned how to think big by developing a perspective of possibility.
And the good news is we all have the potential
to apply the same strategies to achieve amazing things in
(00:35):
our work and lives. Hi, I'm Rob Hartnett, and as
your chief possibility Officer and host, I'm here to inspire
you to become the star of your world as a
person of possibility through learning how people from all areas
of life are thinking big and chasing down their dreams.
So I'm super excited this episode because we've got an
(00:58):
overseas guest. I've got the wonderful Dan Fister all the
way from Canada, and Dan is the author of the
new book Million Dollar Win Back, which I am so
excited about that Dan's finally got this great book out,
So million Dollar Win Back, Dan Fister, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Thanks so much for having me. Rob, great to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, it's so good. You've now got this great book out.
I believe it's just out now, isn't It's just it's
just can you get it from Amazon?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
It's you can get it from Amazon now. It's up there,
all ready to go fantastic.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
We'll talk about that a bit later on though. Dan,
we talked a few years ago about this the concept
of win back, which which I love and I practiced
and you know that, and I really like it as
as a style strategy. But why the book and why now?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Well, why the book? You know, win back is this
tremendous revenue strategy and and they're really it really isn't
talked about much. And you know, over the years, I've
learned so much. I've done win back for eight years now.
I've done a couple of million dollar win backs, went
back thousands of lost customers, learned a lot of lessons
(02:07):
and so so that's what I've learned, like on my own.
And then I did this win back study and I
talked over one hundred and seventy revenue leaders or interacted
with them. I didn't talk to every one of them,
and I learned so much more about win back, about
you know, what works what doesn't, And I learned all
these commonalities of what's working, and also got a ton
(02:30):
of metrics. We can talk about some of the metrics
about win back. And the other thing is I did
a win back podcast and talked to fantastic people like you, you know,
who share, who so generously shared their win back strategies.
So I learned all this stuff over these last years
from you know, all these revenue leaders and my own experience,
and I thought, why don't I put this into a book?
(02:53):
You know, why don't I kind of put out everything
that I've learned. So I spent way too long writing
this book. And so that's the reason why, because there
is this is this tremendous strategy that not many people
talk about, and and you know, there's and like why,
you know, like like why now? And you know, if
(03:15):
you if you google, if you go into Amazon and
you think a look at how many sales books they've got.
There's there's over sixty thousand sales and marketing books. Wow.
And if you google win customer, win Back, you'll only
find two books dedicated to win back, and it's nuts.
And you know the other book it's called Customer Win Back.
It's written by Jill Griffin and Michael Lowenstein. It's a
(03:36):
brilliant book, original research, they did all their own study.
But it's twenty years old and it's still relevant to you.
Don't get me wrong, it's not relevant. It's a brilliant book,
but you know, times have changed in some ways, and
this book is just one more piece, you know, more,
one more thing that will help you structure your own
(03:58):
wind back program.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I think that's that's a really good point. It really
gives me the answer in terms why you wrote it,
which I'm so glad you wrote it, and why now
I think is important. But we might just define win back.
And so we were talking about win back. We're talking about
when you've lost a really significant customer but you didn't
you didn't really want to lose them, like you lost
them for whatever reason, and you really want them back,
(04:21):
because there there are some customers you lose you don't
want back. That's true, isn't it. Some of you like
you're really happy they've gone. But this is about the
customers that you had. You might have had a whole
might have had the whole of business, You might have
had some of the business, but they've gone somewhere for
some reason. But now you want them back, and that's
what That's what we're talking about. Is this is what
a win back strategy is. It's really about saying that
(04:42):
saying to yourself and your team, we really want that
we missed that customer. It was a great customer. And
this is the reason I like the win back strategy.
Talk to me about though. Win back strategies to me
is always about growth mindset and realizing that that as
an organization, sometimes we're not perfect. Sometimes we will make
mistakes and customer as we'll leave. But I think the
(05:02):
win back strategy you need to have a growth mindset.
And I just want to get your thoughts on that
about saying, hey, we might have stuffed up, they've left
for a particular reason, but we make mistakes. Doesn't mean
we can't win them back again. It doesn't mean we
can't learn from the mistakes and win them back again.
Would you say that after talking through the leaders you
spoke to that most of those leaders who are doing
win back well have a growth mindset.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
They definitely did. They definitely did. It's you know, I
think of it almost as a possibility mindset. You know,
that's what you've got, right RB you've got this, I
think everything's possible. Like, let's just take a shot at it.
Let's give it a real shot, and let's see if
it will work. And that's what I found. Like, you know,
the thing that holds so many people back from win
(05:46):
back is that they're afraid to connect with their past
customers because they it's a fear thing. You know, they're
afraid that they left you because you did something wrong
or because of your product, and you know, nothing could
be further from the truth. You know, people leave for
all kinds of reasons. You know, they could have been
lured away by a by a competitor, and you know,
they might have found that competitor doesn't do a good
(06:07):
as good a job as you. You know, so they
might be more than ready to come back. You know,
new leadership could have come in, they could have brought
their prefer their preferred vendor, Their circumstances could have changed,
you know, so for the time being, they don't need
what you're offering. There's all kinds of reasons. So you know,
you've got to really have that growth mindset. You've got
to think this is there's there's real possibilities here, you know,
(06:29):
because there really are, and we can we can touch
on those in a few minutes.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
That's a really good point. And you know, and I've
just been finishing reading a fantastic book called Worthy by
Jamie Jamie Kern Lena who is very successful in the
cosmetics industry. But one thing she talks about is sometimes
you talk about the fear. Then we have a fear
of not going back to our past customers because you know,
we're afraid of what they might say. And she actually
(06:54):
puts that right back to sometimes we don't think we're
worthy enough. We haven't got enough self worthiness to go back.
But if you've got worthiness in yourself and in your team,
you actually look at it from that perspective of which
you just said. It could be they wanted to move on.
It could be they thought the grass was greener, they
had an attractive price point. It could be that you'd
be you've been a victory of exchange rates or what
(07:15):
or what Canada's facing you do tariffs right from me
incoming your president right, it might not be your fault.
And so I think having them some self worth around
yourself and your team, do you go back and go, hey,
you know what, maybe things have changed. And as you said,
I know you've got some examples where that's happened a
number of times where people have gone away, gone, You're
(07:37):
gone to a competitor. But many times not not everybody
in the in your client wanted to go to the competitor.
It might have been a couple of buying influencers who
made the decision, but the other people are gone, hey,
how can we move away from Dan? Were like, Dan,
what's going on? We're not going with Dan anymore? And
they know we've made this change, blah blah blah. And
there's a whole bunch of people who actually just go, oh,
okay then, or I'm reporting to a leader, so I
(07:58):
kind of have to go with it. But they weren't happy.
They actually were really happy where they were. So I
think that's a really interesting point. And that's that point
also about saying, well I got to make move. What
can we learn from the experience? What what didn't we
do well? Did we get a bit fat, dumb and happy?
Did we get complacent in the account management which I
often see a little bit of laziness, creepy, and they
(08:18):
just they call it run rate business, which I hate
the word that phrase, Oh, it's just you know, we've
got new business, we're chasing you logos, then we've got
our run rate business. They almost treat those great customers
like second class citizens. Have you found that to be
a case?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Oh it's it's yeah, it's it's crazy. You know, here's
your bread and butter, and you you start taking them
for granted. Yes, there, it's it's and it's amazing. There
was a there was one company that Laney Cimbi took over.
They were they were faltering, they were they were a
NASDAC company. They got delisted and Lannie was brought in
(08:56):
and he had found that they had these five huge
telco companies that were customers and they each left and
he couldn't like, how on earth could you let these
companies go? And so he reached out and he talked
to them, and they felt they felt undervalued, they felt unappreciated,
they felt like they really didn't matter, and they left
one by one. Anyway, Lonnie went back added added tremendous
(09:21):
new value, showed them exactly why he was committed to
making them really uh you know, central to their importance.
And he ended up winning all all five of these
these huge telcos back. And then what he was able
to do, he was able to go out to his
salespeople were able to go out to all all kinds
(09:42):
of new accounts saying, listen, these five huge telcos use us.
You know you should too, yes, you know, and then
he and then he went also he also went back
to other customers that they'd lost, and he said, these
big players have given us a second chance, and they've
they've loved us, so why don't you give us a
second So there's this tremendous castid cascading effect. So yeah,
(10:05):
so it's.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
A big deal and it did it also really go ahead? Sorry, y, yes,
I I guess that's a big deal. So this might
be a really nice time to talk about some metrics.
So when you get a moment, just tell us about
some of the metrics that you worked out and calculated
about win back. As I've heard some of these and
I just gotb interested to see what they were in
a new book and what are some new metrics you've got?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, so what one of the things that I wanted
to find out is like when I was originally doing this,
like when I did my first win back, it was
like it blewed the doors off my thinking around win back.
We can you know again, we can talk about that later,
but I wanted to find out is my experience unique?
Because what I found was that went back was basically
(10:45):
the fastest, easiest money I'd ever made, you know, in
twenty years of marketing, you know, and we generated like
fifty thousand customers. We had all kinds of huge companies
like you know, Wells Fargo on AMAS, you know, not
fifty thousand of those, you know, we had. We had
a lot of We had a fair amount of sale success.
(11:05):
And this win back was the numbers were nuts. It
was better than anything we'd done anywhere else. Like we
of course we'd made more money, but I'm talking about
this much money in this shorter period of time at
this cost. So I did the study and what I
found was that my experience was very common. The average
win back for a small to medium sized business, we
(11:25):
found was four hundred and eighty five thousand dollars. And
of course, large organizations make millions, so it's very hard
to get put a number on large organizations because if
you're Starbucks, you're making tens of millions, or your Netflix
you're making tens of millions. But that kind of gives
you an idea. You know, you're a company with less
than two hundred employees. Most of them that we surveyed
were more like ten to fifteen employees, but four hundred
(11:47):
and eighty five k And so why why is there
so much revenue? Well, what we found, what my study
found was that on average, one in four customers come back.
That's like twenty six percent return And there was a
study in the Harvard featured in the Harvard Business Review,
and they found it thirty one percent returned and that steady.
(12:09):
That one involved I think it was forty thousand customers
and about twelve thirteen thousand of them came back. So
customers will come back, and they'll come back in large numbers.
And I know that that some people like you, you know,
can enjoy tremendous returns much higher than that. But that's
what the study found. And so you know, if you're
(12:30):
going to make a lot of money out to win back,
and it's not just how many return, but it's how
much they spend when they return. And when they come back.
What we found was that lifetime value more than doubles.
So if they spent one thousand dollars in their first
lifetime value with you before they left. They'll chances are
they'll spend more than one thousand dollars when they come back.
(12:51):
And that study that was featured in the Harvard Business
Room you found the exact same thing. They found that
after a customer came back, they spent about one hundred
and ten percent of what they've spent the first time around.
Win back costs very very low. For an SMB, they
averaged hundred five thousand dollars. So that was an that's
the ninety seven XROI And so you know.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Isn't it. I mean, I think that's one of the
key points is that win back is low cost in
terms of a marketing strategy because so much of the
work has been done before. They remember the good things,
they know your brand, they're aware of you. You don't
have to go through the kind of seven to nine
touch points before someone will kind of get be interested
in talking to you or in the end, this market,
(13:34):
I think it's way more than seven to ninety more,
it's about seven eight hundred, some people are telling me.
Before people start through the ract, so you already have
that they're already you're a nun quantity. So I mean,
taking Lonnie's example before when he called, they knew he was,
they knew the organization, they knew the good points, and
there were some bad points that's where they left. But
there was so much done. That's I think it's a
(13:55):
really interesting point that that low cost of marketing and
it's and the upside is is so so compelling.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, it's it's it's tremendous. I mean, you know, your
leads are free, they're just sitting there in your CRM.
You have to pay for ads. You don't have to
you know, buy lists, you know, you don't have to
pay people to create relationships and build trust. You know.
It's it's, it's, it's amazing. So obviously the ROI is
very high. The study in the study found that at
(14:25):
the low end, the ROI is about thirty two averages
around thirty two x, and at the high end it's
around one eighty two x. And at the lower.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Times low end and then was it one and eighty times.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
On n eighty two at the high end two x.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And the high end that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, So I could give you a couple of examples
to nail that down a bit, or we could drive.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
On sho now that Yeah, give us some examples would
be great.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Okay. So so the thirty two x like a good
example of that was a company that had to that
had a very high cost of acquiring a customer, even
high cost of reacquiring a customer. So it was an
HR agency and they had to wind and dine in
(15:07):
entire HR teams to get to get the business back.
And so that campaign generated one point five million, but
the cost was fifty thousand dollars to wine and dine
all these HR teams. So that was a thirty x ROI.
And again it was because the cost of a reacquisition
was high. But normally the cost of reacquisition isn't that high.
(15:29):
That's why the average is ninety seven x FORSMBS. Something
that's much more typical is a much higher ROI. And
you know, if it's if it's an enterprise deal, chances
are it's you're you're getting on the phone and talking
to someone. But to bring it down a little bit,
(15:50):
there's a gentleman. His name is Ron Conterno, and he
does win backs for Major league ball clubs. I'm actually
working with Ron right now, and he did a campaign
where he he did postcards. This was simply postcards reaching
out to past customers, and he got I think with
(16:11):
the Rangers he got one hundred and seventy something X
and with the Troit Tigers he got over one hundred
and eighty X. It's because you know, the cost of
reacquiring a customer was just so low. It was a postcard,
you know, and and you know, you know runs Run
created a brilliant postcard. But the point is is that
(16:31):
his win back strategy was getting like those big numbers. Yeah, yeah,
maybe we just touched on one more thing is that
sales happened so much faster, right because you've already been
through everything once, right, right, and.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
You're on a panel and things like that too, you know,
so from a procurement point of view, they haven't taken
you off the panel. If there's that sort of stuff
as well, you're still last used to switch back on
again is pretty.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Simple, one hundred percent. Right, You're already an approved vendor,
You're you've already been through all their security protocols. You know,
there's all these advantages at the enterprise level, and you
know they already know you your brand, they've already used
your product. They can give you a real comparison between
you and the competition. You know, so so yeah, so sales.
(17:17):
What we found for SMBs is sales happened seventy percent faster.
And if you do the inverse of that, it means
you can sell basically three past customers in the time
it takes to sell one new one.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, it's incredible. So you and I talk about this
and I wean know how compelling it is. But if
we go back on a few steps, you said your
your sister Lisa played a key role in getting you
to think about win back because you were, like many
sales people and sales leaders, focused on new logos and
focused on new customer acquisition. Headed tell me about how
(17:52):
Lisa got you switched on to win back.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Well, Lisa is a very pragmatic person. I'm I'm I'm
more of I want the win, you know, and I
focused on the win. I want to win, and we
had Hm, you're thinking, well, this is what happened with me,
Like it took us a long time to figure out
(18:17):
who our icp ways, it took a long time to
find the value that that really resonated with them and
then have the messaging so they ut understand that we
that we were delivering that value.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, so hey, I said, just just for the for
the people listening. So ICP Dan talks about his ideal
customer profile, right, so that's your ideal customer profile. And
and that's a level of maturity when you when you
realize who actually do we service based and we're like
working with what's our ideal customer profile? So once you
had that nailed, and then you knew the messaging that
that went with that particular customer.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Exactly, and and and just a little more perspective like
this company, like in in we got killed in the
dot com crash and we had to refigure out to
our ICP was a refund your messaging and get and
then we got killed again in two thousand and eight
with the with the financial crisis. Who so you know,
it was a big deal for us to go and
(19:10):
figure this stuff all out again, you know, for for
new new economic times. So anyway, I'd invested a lot
in ICP. We finally get something that's winning, and we're
really excited. We're growing thousands and thousands of new customers.
And then in twenty and sixteen, Churn really started a spike.
(19:32):
And Lisa had always bugged me shore We said, you know,
we lose you know, a lot of customers every year.
Why don't we try to win some of them back?
And so I just did ad hoc outreach and they
didn't do anything. And and but in twenty and sixteen,
when we had this big spike in Churn, she basically
held my feet to the fire. She said, Dan, this
(19:53):
is you're responsible for this, you know, fix it. You're
responsible to fix it. Great family loved and yeah, yeah,
I tell you I got more love for my other partners,
you know. But but you know, she wasn't She wasn't
you know that blunt. But but she made a really
good point. You know, she said that we've got at
(20:13):
least test this and test it really seriously. Like you know,
they did business with us before. You know, relationships are sticky.
They chose us for a reason, So why don't we
go all out and really do a real test to
see if people will come back or not. So what
happened was I took everything I knew from like twenty
(20:34):
years in marketing. I just threw it into the mixer,
and I made a really good effort. And so what
we did is I just said to Lisa that I remember,
I remember the day before we launched, I said, listen,
you know, I don't think this is a good pool
of prospects. We've already been out to a bunch of
them once and they didn't come back. I really don't
(20:55):
think there's much that's going to be come out of this.
And anyway, but we launched and we got like a
fifty seven x ROI right out of the game. But
you know what, you know, what's really interesting, Rob is
that I don't think I did win back because I
wasn't confident that people would come back. Like I didn't
want to hear crap from people, you know what I mean? Yes,
(21:18):
I wanted, I want I wanted to have people new
and happy, and and what I got is a lot
more confidence because I found, jeez, a lot of people
did like our product, did like what we offered. They
felt that they did get value, and so it just
it just so so that made me feel like we're
doing a good job because I think I think one
(21:38):
of the underlying currents I had was that I'm not
doing a good job leak for everybody, you know, and
I want to do a good job for everybody.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
But that's our mindset, Dan too. And you've kept in
a really good point there. Their mindset is always going
to be negative. Our biases towards negativity and negative self talk,
which said, we lost that customer. I must have done
a bad job, we must have done a bad job,
that products sucked. And you amplify, You amplify a lot
of negatives that really aren't negatives or really don't need
the amplification, and you do it to yourself. And it
(22:08):
reminded me of someone I was chatting to the other
day and a very successful athlete, and I said, what
was a big shift when you really really went to
the elite level? And I was fascinating what they said,
and I think this is very relevant to your point.
They said, the shift came when I stopped listening to
myself and started talking to myself. Ah. Right, stop listening
(22:29):
to the negative self talk and started talking about and
started using positive affirmations and talk about the stuff that's
going right. Because our mind wants to protect us. So
it's a safety bias we have in our brains that
goes to all the bad stuff. It's just got this
It protects us on some days and other days it's
just not really helpful. And so I'm guessing what you
found is when you call back and you didn't have
(22:51):
a confidence, didn't think it was going to work, didn't
want to hear a sob story, didn't want to hear
a negativity because no one, no one wants to hear
that as humans. But you found these people going, actually,
you know, we we we've got to digger a really
good value from you, and we found this product is
still working. In fact, we're still using it, or that
kind of thing. You go, hang on a second here.
What I was telling myself and what we were telling
ourselves is an organization wasn't actually true.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah. I think I think we're we are we're we're
our own worst enemies. In some ways, we're our own
harshest critics. You know, we knew, we know every little law,
every little piece of our program that might not be
one hundred percent, you know, it might be eighty percent,
and then for most of us that's just not good enough.
I think we've got this perfection bias. Yeah, And I
(23:37):
mean I think that's that's One of the things I
love so much about your work, Rob is that you,
you know, you show people what's possible, and and you
come from a place where you've got where you can
back it up what you've done. I mean, look at
the what do you have? Like I can't remember the
exact story, but when you went into Australia for a
(24:00):
Miller Hymen and you just busted all sales records, people
had this this four minute mile in their mind. I
don't know what it was, a million dollars or yeah, yeah,
and you just like and what did you do? You
just multiplied that? Yeah exactly. I was afraid to say that, yeah,
because and it was all and I think it was
your mindset. Obviously you're you know, you're brilliant at sales,
(24:21):
but there's other brilliant people at sales at Miller Hymen too,
you know, and you were and I think that, you know,
because of that story, it lends so much heft to
your ideas, like this is this is real stuff. This
isn't like some woo stuff, this is this is real.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah. Well you know the secret to that, though, is
hanging out with the people who also understand that. And
that was the catalyst for me it was actually hanging
out with the ones who were doing five x ten X,
you know, and so going I had to be intentional
about that. So that made me getting off my ass
in Australia and getting to America and sitting down and
getting audiences with great people you would know, like Tom
(25:04):
Williams and is listening the time or it's still count
as a mentor and listening to how he did it,
and I'm like, wow, that's different. You know, I'm going
to take that learning back. And that's really what was
the catalyst for for doing that. So I think sometimes
you've got to hang with the right people who I think.
It's like cycling. They say, if you're if you're the
fastest guy in your group, get a new group, right.
So that's essentially how how I kind of live my philosophy. Anyway,
(25:27):
That's why I went and found a group that was
doing that because I just think differently.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, yeah, I remember talking to a Joe Conrath once.
She's I don't know if you know her, but she's
like been yeah, and she just holds everything to a
higher standard, you know, and it's just like just talking
to her the first time it's like, wow, you know,
(25:53):
I'm going to have to hold myself to a high standard.
That's it.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
It pushes you. It's yeah, yeah, because so much more
than you stress. You know, it's a positive stress. It's
a positive serience. Lift lifts your high. Hey, you talked
about a couple of things on the on the wind
back you've got in the bulk you talk about seven
steps to a win back strategy. Can you run us
through what the seven are that I get a detail
(26:17):
on it, but just give us a seven sure?
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So yeah, So the first thing is you want to
identify your best win back prospects. You know you talked
earlier about getting the people back that you actually want. Yes, right,
so so you know you you want the so this
this this step. What we do is we figure out
who's going to generate the most revenue and who has
the highest probability of returning. So that's we do in
(26:40):
step one. And and and you know we talked about
before about how lifetime value doubles are more so there
was there was kind of like one idea, right if
you're if you want to go and do this yourself.
Step two it's understanding your best prospects you want. You
want to find out why they left and what's needed
to win them back, and so you need to we
(27:02):
have a three step process. First, we talk to people
within the company to you know, the people whove actually
had those accounts, the customer success people, the salespeople who
created the accounts, customer success people who are supporting the accounts.
So we do the internal work first, and then we
do external work where we do surveys, qualitative surveys, because
(27:29):
we want to find out what the big rocks are.
We don't want to guess. We want to ask what
are the big rocks, why did you leave? What it'll
take for you to win to win people back? And
after we start hearing the same thing over and over again,
we know that piece of the work's done. So now
we know what the big rocks are. Now we want
to know what the relative importance of each of those
rocks are. So that's when we survey everyone and we
(27:51):
ask them which of these three things is most important.
So we get this really solid understanding I find. So
then the step three is getting went back ready and
so there might be reasons why people left, you know,
maybe there's new value you need to create. Maybe your
market is shifted and you weren't really you didn't realize
that you were losing customers to a competitor who had
(28:14):
something that you need. Maybe your customer service isn't as
good as it needs to be. Maybe you need up
your game there. Maybe there's nothing you need to change,
but step three is fixing what anything that needs to
be fixed.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
I can also help new product development roadmaps count it
as well, so when you're thinking about which way we
go in terms of product development and product marketing, and
product managers sometimes like that, and ladies like way way
do we invest yah for the future new Productcause it's
expensive and you have a roadmap. So this can definitely
influence that. I'll imagine it's it's huge, it's huge.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
We we learned so much about where the market was
was heading. There. There are you can even take a
look at it. You can even get a little more granular.
There's people who changed because of this, and it can
be like a canary in the mind shaft when you start.
When you when you do this on a continuing basis,
you see, oh, we lost five customers this month to
(29:07):
this particular competitor. Well, we ask them why did you
go to that particular competitor, what was attractive to them
versus all the other competitors. So you start to see
value that is starting to emerge, that the need is
starting to emerge in the market. And then there's going
to be other things where all kinds of people left,
you know, So these are the things you've got to
take care of right away. But yes, it's a it's
(29:29):
a tremendous for new product development and for new functionality
for current product. So the next step, step four is
creating the windback revenue engine, and basically that means creating
the messaging and the offer. Right So now you because
of your previous work, you know the number one, two
and three reasons why they left that one, two and
(29:49):
three reasons why they what would take to win them back.
So now you create an offer based on that, You
create messaging based on that, and that's what we do
in step and four the revenue engine. Next step is
step five, getting lunch ready. Basically, you know what, you
want to make sure that everybody knows what their job
is and creating like a really strong on board onboarding
(30:13):
process to make sure that you know you've done all
this work to win them back, make darn sure that
customer service, customer success. I've got a process to give
them this tremendous first impression that they made the right
decision to come back, believe it or not. That's that's
where a lot of people falter. Unfortunately, it's very easy.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Dan, Can I just give you a great story here's yeah, yeah,
senior leader tell me about this now. I was talking
about problems in his business, and he said, we do
this great win back. At the moment we're doing this
great win back, the messaging is right, the ICPS right,
he said. We pull up at the door of their
building and we put them into a beautiful batley GtC
(30:57):
and then we take them across the one boarding. We
put them on a moped, he said, and it all
falls over. So your pint, I think it might be.
Step five is a really critical one. And I want
to tell you this was literally two weeks ago. This
leader told me this story. He said, we've got what
are we going to do? We just we just didn't
on board ride, like the experience was so good until
(31:18):
we brought them back again, and we're just we're dropping
the ball here. What can we do? So I just
want to share that one because he's analogy of the
Badley GtC picking him up and it's fantastic. Wevery champagne
and we dropped them off and give them a moped
and a crash.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Almen, that's nuts. That is nuts. So now you launch
the campaign, and what we like to do is like
to do a test campaign with maybe twenty five percent
of your of the people that you identified want to
win back. So we launched the campaign and then after
the campaign we do step seven, which is basically we
(31:53):
want to make your business stronger and more profitable and
be ready for the next lunch. So I'll just try
to make this fast. So after you launch, after you
do the test campaign, you do a win loss analysis,
and you want to find out why they bought. You
want to find out why the people who bought. You
want to find out why they bought. The people who
(32:14):
didn't buy. You want to want to find out why
they didn't buy. They told you something in the surveys,
and you've got knowledge out of the surveys, but what
people tell you and how they act or too not
always the exact same thing, right, So you want to
you want to find out, you want to find out
the real reasons why, and they might be very close,
so they probably are. So then what you do is
(32:35):
you take what you learn from that wind loss, you
adjust your program, adjust your messaging, adjust your offer if needed,
and then you do the role out. So you know,
you've got tremendous stories about about that. If you want
to share a win loss story, Rob or we can
drive on.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, no, it's really it's one thing I'm really thinking
about here. I would think I would answer role. So
thinking about this a couple of couple of points. One
is on this to do a success for windbag needs
to have sales marketing customer service really aligned. And that's
(33:14):
not given in some organizations. Some organizations are running silo
or have KPIs that are not aligned, or have OKRs
it are not aligned. I've seen that and you've probably
seen that. So I think one of the key elements
of getting the wind back right is actually having the
sales marketing, customer success or customer service really aligned it
in the strategy. Would that be correct?
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I like that everybody right from day one. Like, so,
when we do the when we do the selection of customers,
when we do the serving, everybody is involved from day one,
because you know, sales knows things about customers that marketing
doesn't know. Marketing knows things that customer success doesn't know.
Customer service those things that customer success doesn't know, and
(34:00):
they all have their ideas on how we should be
how things should be approaching. We've got to put this
all into the hop ron. Everything has to be considered.
And because we want everybody rowing in the same direction,
you know, we want we want everybody's voices to be heard,
and then we want to test whatever makes the most sense,
you know, and then if that doesn't work, then we
(34:21):
try what, you know, whatever the secondary thing is.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
But so who do you need, Dan tell me about,
who do you need to coordinate this? I'm thinking about
a real growth mindset, sort of catalyst leader who can lead.
Is there a point person you found the most successful
in leading a good win back. Is it's someone who's
over the top of sales and marketing, customer service. Is
that some one particular leader it takes the lead. Where
(34:44):
have you're seeing that work best?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
I think that I think that what I've seen is
that it's somebody who's first of all, they've got to
be sold on the idea, right, you know, and and
if they're sold, because because you really need a cheerleader.
This is something that can get put on the back
burners so easily because there's always, you know, something more
important to do. So it's got to be somebody who's
really uh, he's really excited about the possibility. And it
(35:09):
also has to be somebody who's fairly high up uh
and and and like what I find is, uh, customer
success people are some of the best people to head
this up. And and even CROs what would I would
be really interested in hearing what because you do so
much work with enterprise what what who do you find
(35:30):
is the best?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Well, I find it's I find it can be a
variety of leaders. But I think you said it earlier
that they've got to have they've got to have credibility
with the leaders above them. Credibility with their own peers
is the key, because they've got to they've got to
coordinate a number of peers to make this happen. So
sometimes it doesn't matter if it's the head of customer service,
customer success or a sales leader or even a marketing leader.
(35:53):
If they're the cheerleader. The evangelist The key is that
they've got credibility and that they can sell it into
so it doesn't get rale right or it doesn't get
put on the back. But that's where I've found the
most success. So it doesn't matter which one of it is.
They've got to understand it. They're gonna be bull they
got to be sold on. But they're also that can
evangelize and sell it to the rest of their organization.
(36:16):
That's what I found to be the most successful.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, yeah, and and and they've got to they've got
to have enough clout to get people to do the
work that they're supposed to do, you know, So it's
got to be somebody high enough up. And also, you know,
one of the great things about win back is that
you can really do small tests and because as soon
as people see the numbers for their own organization, that's
(36:41):
what's going to cause the real buy in. Because as
soon as your CRM or your c r O or
CMO or CEO sees these numbers or the board, they're
gonna they're gonna be all in. Everybody wants to make
super high profitable revenue, you know, of course, you know,
but they but they but they'll tell you see numbers
(37:02):
for your own business. It's just it's just it's vapor
for a lot.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
I think the other thing is that where I've also
seen it successful at least start to get momentum. To
your point is, I've seen key account managers lead this.
So I've seen key account managers who are running some
large key accounts that make a big difference because that's
the money side. I've seen them start and go, but
work with their sales lead and asked for permission from
their sale and saying, hey, I want to win this
one back. This was a great company. I'm going to
(37:27):
need your support, mister sales manager, to help me with
your peers because I'm going to need a bit of
marketing time and but a customer success time. I want
to do some outreach, but I want to go for this.
And so I've seen some pilots work even in very
big organizations, and then the numbers come back in and
then everyone's going, hang on a second, Well, I thought
we lost them, we're winning them back. Where I think
(37:47):
there's one story I gave you where one organization like that,
just you know you talked to when the company came back,
they tripled tripled the revenue, and that gave the momentum
to the leader to go, you know, we invest a
little bit out of it here, how can we skyle
this now? And now they have a full win back
strategy or it's a wind back is a pillar of
the of the marketing, which is yeah, the end goal yep.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
And and when you win back these customers. There's so
many ways we go with this rop. I just want
to I want to make sure there's one thing we
really hit with this when you reach out to people
and they were unhappy because we haven't been talking early
about unhappy customers yet, but if they are unhappy with you,
you get a chance to fix a problem. Because now
(38:33):
you've you know, especially in B to B, you know
so much of it is UH is peer recommendations or
G two or something like that. So if you've got
these people who've got unresolved issues with you, you've got
all these down. Not only are they not saying great
things about you, they're they're it's causing problems. But when
(38:54):
you reach out to people and you say, listen, something
happened here. Things one sideways we'd like to really under
stand and if we can fix things fine, but at
minimum we would like to learn, you know, how we
can do better in the future. And so many people
will react to that, you know, they'll take that call.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
And the best person that make that call from the
organization that lost the business, who do you find best?
Is it a third party? Is it someone different than
the account team to make that call?
Speaker 1 (39:22):
In your experience, I hate to give it. It depends, but
this is important. First of all, it's got to be
it's got to be it's got to be somebody who's
really good with people, right, because they've got to be empathetic.
It can't be anybody who's defensive. It's got to be
somebody who's who's like, you know what, I'm going to
(39:42):
take responsibility, even if it's if I'm not fully responsible,
you know, it's got to be that kind of a
mindset person. It's it's also better if it's somebody who
didn't have direct contact with the customer. So if it's
maybe a customer success manager or a sales manager, and
if they've got some position within the company, it shows
(40:04):
that customer that these people are taking this seriously, right,
So that's also a factor. Yeah, so so yeah, so
somebody higher up somebody who hasn't had direct customer contact,
because that customer will be much more likely to tell
you the truth because nobody wants to hurt anybody else's feelings.
(40:25):
Nobody wants Yeah, so that's what you do, right. So
you so somebody's you know, one step about now, and
I would prefer to be somebody within the organization, but
there's also some great third parties you can find that
will do this kind of surveying for you.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Right, right, Okay, so we're up to step six, I think,
am I? Right?
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yeah? So step six is launching the campaign, which is
basically the test, right, So we do the test. So
step seven is you want to get everything you can
out of this test, right, So you've done the test,
so now you've done the learnings and step seven is
(41:12):
like a big coagulation of everything now, right, so you
now you know everything that why people came back, why
they didn't come back, so you can change your messaging
or modify it for the rollout. Right. So then you
do your rollout. You've talked to all these people about
why they've left, and you find, well, you know what
(41:34):
they left because of, say it was because of customer service.
Say that thirty percent left because of customer service. So
what you before you do the win back, you want
to plug any of those holes in customer service, right,
and you might also find it maybe some people left
because there's this one particular value that you aren't offering
that your competitors are offering, and maybe a few percent
(41:56):
of people left because of that. So what you do
is you offer those things to your current customers. So
maybe you gave them an extra level of customer service,
maybe you gave them premium service for example, right to
get people back, offer that to all your current customers,
(42:16):
you know, and maybe yeah, so so and what and
what you do is you'll find that that that kind
of thing increases retention. But the biggest thing that will
increase retention is you're going to find out you're going
to find the biggest hole in your leaky sales bucket.
And and that can be massive. I mean Tom Williams
(42:37):
he did this and he found and he was able
to raise his his retention rate from eighty three percent
to ninety seven percent.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, because he found, he.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Plugged, he found what the leak was, and he plugged.
You know, Tom's brilliant. He did a lot of digging,
and he did a lot of research, and he worked
with the exactly the VP of sales. But the point
is is that unless they did this work, they would
have never found why they were losing these fourteen percent
of people. Any any did the work and he found
(43:10):
that what it was was it was a it was
a sales problem. They were selling into into middle management.
They should have been selling you the C suite. So
they went back and they did their selling into the
C suite. They won back ninety percent of their lost customers,
and they reduced churn from eyighty three percent. I mean
(43:31):
they increased retention from maybe three percent to ninety seven percent.
So what you learn is from win back is tremendously
important for increasing retention, and a lot of people find
that they that's the biggest benefit of of win back
is there is the retention. Another big thing is you're
going to improve your your your brand reputation. Right, so
(43:54):
you've reached out to all these people, showed that you care,
asked them to check at and so so what happens
is there's two things kick in that. There's something called
the peak end rule, and the peak end rule basically
says is that your feelings about something or someone or
(44:14):
an experience is based on the peak of that experience
and the end well, at the end of the experience
with your lost customers, for some of them, they were
so unhappy that they left right, So that was the
that was the end experience. So when you reach out
and you offer and you want to hear them out something,
now this last experience that has a disproportionately large effect
(44:37):
on how they feel about you is much more positive
because you're asking them. People want to people want to
feel validated, They want to feel cared for and and heard,
and this is this is what you do. And then
when you offer to actually do something about it, something
is kicked in called the Pratfall effect. And basically the
(44:57):
Pratfall effect says that if you have a problem with
somebody and you fix that problem, they not only like
you more, but you're also seen as more competent. And
so when you combine the peak and rule, I'm really
sure making Yeah, you combine the peak and rule, I
like it, and the proffile effect, you can literally turned
unhappy customers into advocates. Yeah, And I've got a story
(45:20):
about that in the book where the CEO of Refine Labs.
I did that.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, it also taps It also taps into the the
to the SCARF model about how the brain works, because
the first part of SCARF is status. You actually elevated
someone's status. You actually call them back and you said, hey,
I want to hear from you, and not only I
want to hear from you, I've listened to you, and
that's really important what you just raised. I'm going to
go fix that now. Right, So you've just elevated someone's status.
(45:54):
You know, you've also give them a bit of autonomy
as well. But and you probably a little bit of
r related this, right, So I think there's that start
of the brain gets gets also twitched on. And just
an interest of time, I had another question for you.
We've talked a lot about talking about winning back customers
that have left. What is your thinking about doing doing
that's much a win back call? But actually we talked
(46:16):
about win loss analysis. They're actually calling customers when you
win and finding out why you won.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Do you think that's what That's brilliant, That's just brilliant.
I mean, I remember you told the story about someone
who had won an account and they didn't they didn't
get it the second time around because they didn't understand
why they won.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I found great value in actually reaching
out why you won, just to find out, you know,
just find well what actually what were the top three reasons,
you know, and finding out why you actually appointed us.
And I find there's just there's gold in that as well.
And I just am not sure if you give a
cover that or you had any thoughts on win analysis
(47:00):
as well as no.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
I think I think when analysis is tremendously important. I
think that it's it's it's so important. You know, we
we think we win because we put on we got
more value in the competition, because we are our salespeople
put on the best presentationship. I mean, you know, we're
(47:23):
so wonderful and and and but the fact of the
matter is you really don't know why you won. And
and it's it's you know, I think it's you know,
I know, for myself, I remember, we win this this
this this huge deal with a big mutual fund company,
and I did not want to go back and ask
them what we want because I was afraid they would
(47:45):
have second thoughts about us, you know, And that's I mean,
that's this is this is it? It's just like, oh
my god, you know what I mean? From we it
took so long to get this deal and they ad
bet at us and everybody else anyway, but I was
still a freed and yeah, anyway, so I probably lead
(48:08):
out a little bit, probably lead well.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
No, I think you're very honest and Dan, and I
think it's for a lot of people, as the people
you know with one let's just move on with us.
So I think it's a lot of that we make
assumptions while we won, and we believe those opinions to
be facts. And that's the tricky that's where you can
fall over. And especially if you've been a successful sales
personal sales team for a while, you can kind of
start believing your own hype. And I think that's dangerous.
(48:34):
And I think as just as you have that kind
of independent or a different person, you all find out
why you're lost and you're doing a win back. It's
really have about independent going and find out actually why
we won and because nothing bad can come of that.
So I'm definitely a firm believer in hey, we're just
about out of time, but I wanted to find out
where can so s it's win back Labs. It's Dan.
So where do we find out more about you and
(48:55):
win back Labs?
Speaker 1 (48:56):
And when?
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Where can we find out more about the book?
Speaker 1 (48:59):
So if you go to win back labs dot com,
there's a link to the book. There parks all about
the book and way everybody should get it.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
For sure, I highly read it.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
It's right now up until the end of up until January.
It's in with the Kindle promotions. For ten bucks you
get all the Kindle books, so all those Kindle free books.
So it's in there until then and after that it'll
be nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Fantastic. And Dan, you're on LinkedIn anywhere else we can
find you. Obviously, your website and LinkedIn is probably the
most one big month for you.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
Yeah, the website and LinkedIn are the two main places
that I hang out.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah. Beautiful, Hey Dan, great to catch up again. So
much information this for both large enterprises and small businesses
and midsize organizations. So the book is million dollar winback.
Go get it. I love it. If you've enjoyed this podcast,
give us a like to and give us a few comments,
but also go by the book. Thanks Dan for your time.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Thanks Rob great to be here.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
I hope you we enjoyed this episode of the It's
All Possible Podcast. You can contact me at Rob at
Robhartner dot com or my website Robharder dot com, or
on LinkedIn. Remember to check out the previous seasons and
episodes of the podcast and the show notes for more
details on this episode's guest. For more inspiration, remember to
(50:19):
check out the All Possibility Players on spotted by, which
contains a collection upbeat, positive music I use for inspiration
in my live performances. Until next time, live with passion
and a perspective of possibility.
Am I looking to your eyes?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's very romantic.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Then, well you know you got you got a romantic
looking sounding voice.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
All right, let's kick into it. The most successful people
in the world all have one thing in common. They've
learned how to think big by developing a perspective of possibility.
And the good news is we all have the potential
to apply the same strategies to achieve amazing things in
(00:35):
our work and lives. Hi, I'm Rob Hartnett, and as
your chief possibility Officer and host, I'm here to inspire
you to become the star of your world as a
person of possibility through learning how people from all areas
of life are thinking big and chasing down their dreams.
So I'm super excited this episode because we've got an
(00:58):
overseas guest. I've got the wonderful Dan Fister all the
way from Canada, and Dan is the author of the
new book Million Dollar Win Back, which I am so
excited about that Dan's finally got this great book out,
So million Dollar Win Back, Dan Fister, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Thanks so much for having me. Rob, great to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, it's so good. You've now got this great book out.
I believe it's just out now, isn't It's just it's
just can you get it from Amazon?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
It's you can get it from Amazon now. It's up there,
all ready to go fantastic.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
We'll talk about that a bit later on though. Dan,
we talked a few years ago about this the concept
of win back, which which I love and I practiced
and you know that, and I really like it as
as a style strategy. But why the book and why now?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Well, why the book? You know, win back is this
tremendous revenue strategy and and they're really it really isn't
talked about much. And you know, over the years, I've
learned so much. I've done win back for eight years now.
I've done a couple of million dollar win backs, went
back thousands of lost customers, learned a lot of lessons
(02:07):
and so so that's what I've learned, like on my own.
And then I did this win back study and I
talked over one hundred and seventy revenue leaders or interacted
with them. I didn't talk to every one of them,
and I learned so much more about win back, about
you know, what works what doesn't, And I learned all
these commonalities of what's working, and also got a ton
(02:30):
of metrics. We can talk about some of the metrics
about win back. And the other thing is I did
a win back podcast and talked to fantastic people like you, you know,
who share, who so generously shared their win back strategies.
So I learned all this stuff over these last years
from you know, all these revenue leaders and my own experience,
and I thought, why don't I put this into a book?
(02:53):
You know, why don't I kind of put out everything
that I've learned. So I spent way too long writing
this book. And so that's the reason why, because there
is this is this tremendous strategy that not many people
talk about, and and you know, there's and like why,
you know, like like why now? And you know, if
(03:15):
you if you google, if you go into Amazon and
you think a look at how many sales books they've got.
There's there's over sixty thousand sales and marketing books. Wow.
And if you google win customer, win Back, you'll only
find two books dedicated to win back, and it's nuts.
And you know the other book it's called Customer Win Back.
It's written by Jill Griffin and Michael Lowenstein. It's a
(03:36):
brilliant book, original research, they did all their own study.
But it's twenty years old and it's still relevant to you.
Don't get me wrong, it's not relevant. It's a brilliant book,
but you know, times have changed in some ways, and
this book is just one more piece, you know, more,
one more thing that will help you structure your own
(03:58):
wind back program.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I think that's that's a really good point. It really
gives me the answer in terms why you wrote it,
which I'm so glad you wrote it, and why now
I think is important. But we might just define win back.
And so we were talking about win back. We're talking about
when you've lost a really significant customer but you didn't
you didn't really want to lose them, like you lost
them for whatever reason, and you really want them back,
(04:21):
because there there are some customers you lose you don't
want back. That's true, isn't it. Some of you like
you're really happy they've gone. But this is about the
customers that you had. You might have had a whole
might have had the whole of business, You might have
had some of the business, but they've gone somewhere for
some reason. But now you want them back, and that's
what That's what we're talking about. Is this is what
a win back strategy is. It's really about saying that
(04:42):
saying to yourself and your team, we really want that
we missed that customer. It was a great customer. And
this is the reason I like the win back strategy.
Talk to me about though. Win back strategies to me
is always about growth mindset and realizing that that as
an organization, sometimes we're not perfect. Sometimes we will make
mistakes and customer as we'll leave. But I think the
(05:02):
win back strategy you need to have a growth mindset.
And I just want to get your thoughts on that
about saying, hey, we might have stuffed up, they've left
for a particular reason, but we make mistakes. Doesn't mean
we can't win them back again. It doesn't mean we
can't learn from the mistakes and win them back again.
Would you say that after talking through the leaders you
spoke to that most of those leaders who are doing
win back well have a growth mindset.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
They definitely did. They definitely did. It's you know, I
think of it almost as a possibility mindset. You know,
that's what you've got, right RB you've got this, I
think everything's possible. Like, let's just take a shot at it.
Let's give it a real shot, and let's see if
it will work. And that's what I found. Like, you know,
the thing that holds so many people back from win
(05:46):
back is that they're afraid to connect with their past
customers because they it's a fear thing. You know, they're
afraid that they left you because you did something wrong
or because of your product, and you know, nothing could
be further from the truth. You know, people leave for
all kinds of reasons. You know, they could have been
lured away by a by a competitor, and you know,
they might have found that competitor doesn't do a good
(06:07):
as good a job as you. You know, so they
might be more than ready to come back. You know,
new leadership could have come in, they could have brought
their prefer their preferred vendor, Their circumstances could have changed,
you know, so for the time being, they don't need
what you're offering. There's all kinds of reasons. So you know,
you've got to really have that growth mindset. You've got
to think this is there's there's real possibilities here, you know,
(06:29):
because there really are, and we can we can touch
on those in a few minutes.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
That's a really good point. And you know, and I've
just been finishing reading a fantastic book called Worthy by
Jamie Jamie Kern Lena who is very successful in the
cosmetics industry. But one thing she talks about is sometimes
you talk about the fear. Then we have a fear
of not going back to our past customers because you know,
we're afraid of what they might say. And she actually
(06:54):
puts that right back to sometimes we don't think we're
worthy enough. We haven't got enough self worthiness to go back.
But if you've got worthiness in yourself and in your team,
you actually look at it from that perspective of which
you just said. It could be they wanted to move on.
It could be they thought the grass was greener, they
had an attractive price point. It could be that you'd
be you've been a victory of exchange rates or what
(07:15):
or what Canada's facing you do tariffs right from me
incoming your president right, it might not be your fault.
And so I think having them some self worth around
yourself and your team, do you go back and go, hey,
you know what, maybe things have changed. And as you said,
I know you've got some examples where that's happened a
number of times where people have gone away, gone, You're
(07:37):
gone to a competitor. But many times not not everybody
in the in your client wanted to go to the competitor.
It might have been a couple of buying influencers who
made the decision, but the other people are gone, hey,
how can we move away from Dan? Were like, Dan,
what's going on? We're not going with Dan anymore? And
they know we've made this change, blah blah blah. And
there's a whole bunch of people who actually just go, oh,
okay then, or I'm reporting to a leader, so I
(07:58):
kind of have to go with it. But they weren't happy.
They actually were really happy where they were. So I
think that's a really interesting point. And that's that point
also about saying, well I got to make move. What
can we learn from the experience? What what didn't we
do well? Did we get a bit fat, dumb and happy?
Did we get complacent in the account management which I
often see a little bit of laziness, creepy, and they
(08:18):
just they call it run rate business, which I hate
the word that phrase, Oh, it's just you know, we've
got new business, we're chasing you logos, then we've got
our run rate business. They almost treat those great customers
like second class citizens. Have you found that to be
a case?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Oh it's it's yeah, it's it's crazy. You know, here's
your bread and butter, and you you start taking them
for granted. Yes, there, it's it's and it's amazing. There
was a there was one company that Laney Cimbi took over.
They were they were faltering, they were they were a
NASDAC company. They got delisted and Lannie was brought in
(08:56):
and he had found that they had these five huge
telco companies that were customers and they each left and
he couldn't like, how on earth could you let these
companies go? And so he reached out and he talked
to them, and they felt they felt undervalued, they felt unappreciated,
they felt like they really didn't matter, and they left
one by one. Anyway, Lonnie went back added added tremendous
(09:21):
new value, showed them exactly why he was committed to
making them really uh you know, central to their importance.
And he ended up winning all all five of these
these huge telcos back. And then what he was able
to do, he was able to go out to his
salespeople were able to go out to all all kinds
(09:42):
of new accounts saying, listen, these five huge telcos use us.
You know you should too, yes, you know, and then
he and then he went also he also went back
to other customers that they'd lost, and he said, these
big players have given us a second chance, and they've
they've loved us, so why don't you give us a
second So there's this tremendous castid cascading effect. So yeah,
(10:05):
so it's.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
A big deal and it did it also really go ahead? Sorry, y, yes,
I I guess that's a big deal. So this might
be a really nice time to talk about some metrics.
So when you get a moment, just tell us about
some of the metrics that you worked out and calculated
about win back. As I've heard some of these and
I just gotb interested to see what they were in
a new book and what are some new metrics you've got?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, so what one of the things that I wanted
to find out is like when I was originally doing this,
like when I did my first win back, it was
like it blewed the doors off my thinking around win back.
We can you know again, we can talk about that later,
but I wanted to find out is my experience unique?
Because what I found was that went back was basically
(10:45):
the fastest, easiest money I'd ever made, you know, in
twenty years of marketing, you know, and we generated like
fifty thousand customers. We had all kinds of huge companies
like you know, Wells Fargo on AMAS, you know, not
fifty thousand of those, you know, we had. We had
a lot of We had a fair amount of sale success.
(11:05):
And this win back was the numbers were nuts. It
was better than anything we'd done anywhere else. Like we
of course we'd made more money, but I'm talking about
this much money in this shorter period of time at
this cost. So I did the study and what I
found was that my experience was very common. The average
win back for a small to medium sized business, we
(11:25):
found was four hundred and eighty five thousand dollars. And
of course, large organizations make millions, so it's very hard
to get put a number on large organizations because if
you're Starbucks, you're making tens of millions, or your Netflix
you're making tens of millions. But that kind of gives
you an idea. You know, you're a company with less
than two hundred employees. Most of them that we surveyed
were more like ten to fifteen employees, but four hundred
(11:47):
and eighty five k And so why why is there
so much revenue? Well, what we found, what my study
found was that on average, one in four customers come back.
That's like twenty six percent return And there was a
study in the Harvard featured in the Harvard Business Review,
and they found it thirty one percent returned and that steady.
(12:09):
That one involved I think it was forty thousand customers
and about twelve thirteen thousand of them came back. So
customers will come back, and they'll come back in large numbers.
And I know that that some people like you, you know,
can enjoy tremendous returns much higher than that. But that's
what the study found. And so you know, if you're
(12:30):
going to make a lot of money out to win back,
and it's not just how many return, but it's how
much they spend when they return. And when they come back.
What we found was that lifetime value more than doubles.
So if they spent one thousand dollars in their first
lifetime value with you before they left. They'll chances are
they'll spend more than one thousand dollars when they come back.
(12:51):
And that study that was featured in the Harvard Business
Room you found the exact same thing. They found that
after a customer came back, they spent about one hundred
and ten percent of what they've spent the first time around.
Win back costs very very low. For an SMB, they
averaged hundred five thousand dollars. So that was an that's
the ninety seven XROI And so you know.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Isn't it. I mean, I think that's one of the
key points is that win back is low cost in
terms of a marketing strategy because so much of the
work has been done before. They remember the good things,
they know your brand, they're aware of you. You don't
have to go through the kind of seven to nine
touch points before someone will kind of get be interested
in talking to you or in the end, this market,
(13:34):
I think it's way more than seven to ninety more,
it's about seven eight hundred, some people are telling me.
Before people start through the ract, so you already have
that they're already you're a nun quantity. So I mean,
taking Lonnie's example before when he called, they knew he was,
they knew the organization, they knew the good points, and
there were some bad points that's where they left. But
there was so much done. That's I think it's a
(13:55):
really interesting point that that low cost of marketing and
it's and the upside is is so so compelling.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, it's it's it's tremendous. I mean, you know, your
leads are free, they're just sitting there in your CRM.
You have to pay for ads. You don't have to
you know, buy lists, you know, you don't have to
pay people to create relationships and build trust. You know.
It's it's, it's, it's amazing. So obviously the ROI is
very high. The study in the study found that at
(14:25):
the low end, the ROI is about thirty two averages
around thirty two x, and at the high end it's
around one eighty two x. And at the lower.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Times low end and then was it one and eighty times.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
On n eighty two at the high end two x.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And the high end that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, So I could give you a couple of examples
to nail that down a bit, or we could drive.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
On sho now that Yeah, give us some examples would
be great.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Okay. So so the thirty two x like a good
example of that was a company that had to that
had a very high cost of acquiring a customer, even
high cost of reacquiring a customer. So it was an
HR agency and they had to wind and dine in
(15:07):
entire HR teams to get to get the business back.
And so that campaign generated one point five million, but
the cost was fifty thousand dollars to wine and dine
all these HR teams. So that was a thirty x ROI.
And again it was because the cost of a reacquisition
was high. But normally the cost of reacquisition isn't that high.
(15:29):
That's why the average is ninety seven x FORSMBS. Something
that's much more typical is a much higher ROI. And
you know, if it's if it's an enterprise deal, chances
are it's you're you're getting on the phone and talking
to someone. But to bring it down a little bit,
(15:50):
there's a gentleman. His name is Ron Conterno, and he
does win backs for Major league ball clubs. I'm actually
working with Ron right now, and he did a campaign
where he he did postcards. This was simply postcards reaching
out to past customers, and he got I think with
(16:11):
the Rangers he got one hundred and seventy something X
and with the Troit Tigers he got over one hundred
and eighty X. It's because you know, the cost of
reacquiring a customer was just so low. It was a postcard,
you know, and and you know, you know runs Run
created a brilliant postcard. But the point is is that
(16:31):
his win back strategy was getting like those big numbers. Yeah, yeah,
maybe we just touched on one more thing is that
sales happened so much faster, right because you've already been
through everything once, right, right, and.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
You're on a panel and things like that too, you know,
so from a procurement point of view, they haven't taken
you off the panel. If there's that sort of stuff
as well, you're still last used to switch back on
again is pretty.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Simple, one hundred percent. Right, You're already an approved vendor,
You're you've already been through all their security protocols. You know,
there's all these advantages at the enterprise level, and you
know they already know you your brand, they've already used
your product. They can give you a real comparison between
you and the competition. You know, so so yeah, so sales.
(17:17):
What we found for SMBs is sales happened seventy percent faster.
And if you do the inverse of that, it means
you can sell basically three past customers in the time
it takes to sell one new one.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, it's incredible. So you and I talk about this
and I wean know how compelling it is. But if
we go back on a few steps, you said your
your sister Lisa played a key role in getting you
to think about win back because you were, like many
sales people and sales leaders, focused on new logos and
focused on new customer acquisition. Headed tell me about how
(17:52):
Lisa got you switched on to win back.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Well, Lisa is a very pragmatic person. I'm I'm I'm
more of I want the win, you know, and I
focused on the win. I want to win, and we
had Hm, you're thinking, well, this is what happened with me,
Like it took us a long time to figure out
(18:17):
who our icp ways, it took a long time to
find the value that that really resonated with them and
then have the messaging so they ut understand that we
that we were delivering that value.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, so hey, I said, just just for the for
the people listening. So ICP Dan talks about his ideal
customer profile, right, so that's your ideal customer profile. And
and that's a level of maturity when you when you
realize who actually do we service based and we're like
working with what's our ideal customer profile? So once you
had that nailed, and then you knew the messaging that
that went with that particular customer.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Exactly, and and and just a little more perspective like
this company, like in in we got killed in the
dot com crash and we had to refigure out to
our ICP was a refund your messaging and get and
then we got killed again in two thousand and eight
with the with the financial crisis. Who so you know,
it was a big deal for us to go and
(19:10):
figure this stuff all out again, you know, for for
new new economic times. So anyway, I'd invested a lot
in ICP. We finally get something that's winning, and we're
really excited. We're growing thousands and thousands of new customers.
And then in twenty and sixteen, Churn really started a spike.
(19:32):
And Lisa had always bugged me shore We said, you know,
we lose you know, a lot of customers every year.
Why don't we try to win some of them back?
And so I just did ad hoc outreach and they
didn't do anything. And and but in twenty and sixteen,
when we had this big spike in Churn, she basically
held my feet to the fire. She said, Dan, this
(19:53):
is you're responsible for this, you know, fix it. You're
responsible to fix it. Great family loved and yeah, yeah,
I tell you I got more love for my other partners,
you know. But but you know, she wasn't She wasn't
you know that blunt. But but she made a really
good point. You know, she said that we've got at
(20:13):
least test this and test it really seriously. Like you know,
they did business with us before. You know, relationships are sticky.
They chose us for a reason, So why don't we
go all out and really do a real test to
see if people will come back or not. So what
happened was I took everything I knew from like twenty
(20:34):
years in marketing. I just threw it into the mixer,
and I made a really good effort. And so what
we did is I just said to Lisa that I remember,
I remember the day before we launched, I said, listen,
you know, I don't think this is a good pool
of prospects. We've already been out to a bunch of
them once and they didn't come back. I really don't
(20:55):
think there's much that's going to be come out of this.
And anyway, but we launched and we got like a
fifty seven x ROI right out of the game. But
you know what, you know, what's really interesting, Rob is
that I don't think I did win back because I
wasn't confident that people would come back. Like I didn't
want to hear crap from people, you know what I mean? Yes,
(21:18):
I wanted, I want I wanted to have people new
and happy, and and what I got is a lot
more confidence because I found, jeez, a lot of people
did like our product, did like what we offered. They
felt that they did get value, and so it just
it just so so that made me feel like we're
doing a good job because I think I think one
(21:38):
of the underlying currents I had was that I'm not
doing a good job leak for everybody, you know, and
I want to do a good job for everybody.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
But that's our mindset, Dan too. And you've kept in
a really good point there. Their mindset is always going
to be negative. Our biases towards negativity and negative self talk,
which said, we lost that customer. I must have done
a bad job, we must have done a bad job,
that products sucked. And you amplify, You amplify a lot
of negatives that really aren't negatives or really don't need
the amplification, and you do it to yourself. And it
(22:08):
reminded me of someone I was chatting to the other
day and a very successful athlete, and I said, what
was a big shift when you really really went to
the elite level? And I was fascinating what they said,
and I think this is very relevant to your point.
They said, the shift came when I stopped listening to
myself and started talking to myself. Ah. Right, stop listening
(22:29):
to the negative self talk and started talking about and
started using positive affirmations and talk about the stuff that's
going right. Because our mind wants to protect us. So
it's a safety bias we have in our brains that
goes to all the bad stuff. It's just got this
It protects us on some days and other days it's
just not really helpful. And so I'm guessing what you
found is when you call back and you didn't have
(22:51):
a confidence, didn't think it was going to work, didn't
want to hear a sob story, didn't want to hear
a negativity because no one, no one wants to hear
that as humans. But you found these people going, actually,
you know, we we we've got to digger a really
good value from you, and we found this product is
still working. In fact, we're still using it, or that
kind of thing. You go, hang on a second here.
What I was telling myself and what we were telling
ourselves is an organization wasn't actually true.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah. I think I think we're we are we're we're
our own worst enemies. In some ways, we're our own
harshest critics. You know, we knew, we know every little law,
every little piece of our program that might not be
one hundred percent, you know, it might be eighty percent,
and then for most of us that's just not good enough.
I think we've got this perfection bias. Yeah, And I
(23:37):
mean I think that's that's One of the things I
love so much about your work, Rob is that you,
you know, you show people what's possible, and and you
come from a place where you've got where you can
back it up what you've done. I mean, look at
the what do you have? Like I can't remember the
exact story, but when you went into Australia for a
(24:00):
Miller Hymen and you just busted all sales records, people
had this this four minute mile in their mind. I
don't know what it was, a million dollars or yeah, yeah,
and you just like and what did you do? You
just multiplied that? Yeah exactly. I was afraid to say that, yeah,
because and it was all and I think it was
your mindset. Obviously you're you know, you're brilliant at sales,
(24:21):
but there's other brilliant people at sales at Miller Hymen too,
you know, and you were and I think that, you know,
because of that story, it lends so much heft to
your ideas, like this is this is real stuff. This
isn't like some woo stuff, this is this is real.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah. Well you know the secret to that, though, is
hanging out with the people who also understand that. And
that was the catalyst for me it was actually hanging
out with the ones who were doing five x ten X,
you know, and so going I had to be intentional
about that. So that made me getting off my ass
in Australia and getting to America and sitting down and
getting audiences with great people you would know, like Tom
(25:04):
Williams and is listening the time or it's still count
as a mentor and listening to how he did it,
and I'm like, wow, that's different. You know, I'm going
to take that learning back. And that's really what was
the catalyst for for doing that. So I think sometimes
you've got to hang with the right people who I think.
It's like cycling. They say, if you're if you're the
fastest guy in your group, get a new group, right.
So that's essentially how how I kind of live my philosophy. Anyway,
(25:27):
That's why I went and found a group that was
doing that because I just think differently.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, yeah, I remember talking to a Joe Conrath once.
She's I don't know if you know her, but she's
like been yeah, and she just holds everything to a
higher standard, you know, and it's just like just talking
to her the first time it's like, wow, you know,
(25:53):
I'm going to have to hold myself to a high standard.
That's it.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
It pushes you. It's yeah, yeah, because so much more
than you stress. You know, it's a positive stress. It's
a positive serience. Lift lifts your high. Hey, you talked
about a couple of things on the on the wind
back you've got in the bulk you talk about seven
steps to a win back strategy. Can you run us
through what the seven are that I get a detail
(26:17):
on it, but just give us a seven sure?
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So yeah, So the first thing is you want to
identify your best win back prospects. You know you talked
earlier about getting the people back that you actually want. Yes, right,
so so you know you you want the so this
this this step. What we do is we figure out
who's going to generate the most revenue and who has
the highest probability of returning. So that's we do in
(26:40):
step one. And and and you know we talked about
before about how lifetime value doubles are more so there
was there was kind of like one idea, right if
you're if you want to go and do this yourself.
Step two it's understanding your best prospects you want. You
want to find out why they left and what's needed
to win them back, and so you need to we
(27:02):
have a three step process. First, we talk to people
within the company to you know, the people whove actually
had those accounts, the customer success people, the salespeople who
created the accounts, customer success people who are supporting the accounts.
So we do the internal work first, and then we
do external work where we do surveys, qualitative surveys, because
(27:29):
we want to find out what the big rocks are.
We don't want to guess. We want to ask what
are the big rocks, why did you leave? What it'll
take for you to win to win people back? And
after we start hearing the same thing over and over again,
we know that piece of the work's done. So now
we know what the big rocks are. Now we want
to know what the relative importance of each of those
rocks are. So that's when we survey everyone and we
(27:51):
ask them which of these three things is most important.
So we get this really solid understanding I find. So
then the step three is getting went back ready and
so there might be reasons why people left, you know,
maybe there's new value you need to create. Maybe your
market is shifted and you weren't really you didn't realize
that you were losing customers to a competitor who had
(28:14):
something that you need. Maybe your customer service isn't as
good as it needs to be. Maybe you need up
your game there. Maybe there's nothing you need to change,
but step three is fixing what anything that needs to
be fixed.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
I can also help new product development roadmaps count it
as well, so when you're thinking about which way we
go in terms of product development and product marketing, and
product managers sometimes like that, and ladies like way way
do we invest yah for the future new Productcause it's
expensive and you have a roadmap. So this can definitely
influence that. I'll imagine it's it's huge, it's huge.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
We we learned so much about where the market was
was heading. There. There are you can even take a
look at it. You can even get a little more granular.
There's people who changed because of this, and it can
be like a canary in the mind shaft when you start.
When you when you do this on a continuing basis,
you see, oh, we lost five customers this month to
(29:07):
this particular competitor. Well, we ask them why did you
go to that particular competitor, what was attractive to them
versus all the other competitors. So you start to see
value that is starting to emerge, that the need is
starting to emerge in the market. And then there's going
to be other things where all kinds of people left,
you know, So these are the things you've got to
take care of right away. But yes, it's a it's
(29:29):
a tremendous for new product development and for new functionality
for current product. So the next step, step four is
creating the windback revenue engine, and basically that means creating
the messaging and the offer. Right So now you because
of your previous work, you know the number one, two
and three reasons why they left that one, two and
(29:49):
three reasons why they what would take to win them back.
So now you create an offer based on that, You
create messaging based on that, and that's what we do
in step and four the revenue engine. Next step is
step five, getting lunch ready. Basically, you know what, you
want to make sure that everybody knows what their job
is and creating like a really strong on board onboarding
(30:13):
process to make sure that you know you've done all
this work to win them back, make darn sure that
customer service, customer success. I've got a process to give
them this tremendous first impression that they made the right
decision to come back, believe it or not. That's that's
where a lot of people falter. Unfortunately, it's very easy.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Dan, Can I just give you a great story here's yeah, yeah,
senior leader tell me about this now. I was talking
about problems in his business, and he said, we do
this great win back. At the moment we're doing this
great win back, the messaging is right, the ICPS right,
he said. We pull up at the door of their
building and we put them into a beautiful batley GtC
(30:57):
and then we take them across the one boarding. We
put them on a moped, he said, and it all
falls over. So your pint, I think it might be.
Step five is a really critical one. And I want
to tell you this was literally two weeks ago. This
leader told me this story. He said, we've got what
are we going to do? We just we just didn't
on board ride, like the experience was so good until
(31:18):
we brought them back again, and we're just we're dropping
the ball here. What can we do? So I just
want to share that one because he's analogy of the
Badley GtC picking him up and it's fantastic. Wevery champagne
and we dropped them off and give them a moped
and a crash.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Almen, that's nuts. That is nuts. So now you launch
the campaign, and what we like to do is like
to do a test campaign with maybe twenty five percent
of your of the people that you identified want to
win back. So we launched the campaign and then after
the campaign we do step seven, which is basically we
(31:53):
want to make your business stronger and more profitable and
be ready for the next lunch. So I'll just try
to make this fast. So after you launch, after you
do the test campaign, you do a win loss analysis,
and you want to find out why they bought. You
want to find out why the people who bought. You
want to find out why they bought. The people who
(32:14):
didn't buy. You want to want to find out why
they didn't buy. They told you something in the surveys,
and you've got knowledge out of the surveys, but what
people tell you and how they act or too not
always the exact same thing, right, So you want to
you want to find out, you want to find out
the real reasons why, and they might be very close,
so they probably are. So then what you do is
(32:35):
you take what you learn from that wind loss, you
adjust your program, adjust your messaging, adjust your offer if needed,
and then you do the role out. So you know,
you've got tremendous stories about about that. If you want
to share a win loss story, Rob or we can
drive on.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, no, it's really it's one thing I'm really thinking
about here. I would think I would answer role. So
thinking about this a couple of couple of points. One
is on this to do a success for windbag needs
to have sales marketing customer service really aligned. And that's
(33:14):
not given in some organizations. Some organizations are running silo
or have KPIs that are not aligned, or have OKRs
it are not aligned. I've seen that and you've probably
seen that. So I think one of the key elements
of getting the wind back right is actually having the
sales marketing, customer success or customer service really aligned it
in the strategy. Would that be correct?
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I like that everybody right from day one. Like, so,
when we do the when we do the selection of customers,
when we do the serving, everybody is involved from day one,
because you know, sales knows things about customers that marketing
doesn't know. Marketing knows things that customer success doesn't know.
Customer service those things that customer success doesn't know, and
(34:00):
they all have their ideas on how we should be
how things should be approaching. We've got to put this
all into the hop ron. Everything has to be considered.
And because we want everybody rowing in the same direction,
you know, we want we want everybody's voices to be heard,
and then we want to test whatever makes the most sense,
you know, and then if that doesn't work, then we
(34:21):
try what, you know, whatever the secondary thing is.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
But so who do you need, Dan tell me about,
who do you need to coordinate this? I'm thinking about
a real growth mindset, sort of catalyst leader who can lead.
Is there a point person you found the most successful
in leading a good win back. Is it's someone who's
over the top of sales and marketing, customer service. Is
that some one particular leader it takes the lead. Where
(34:44):
have you're seeing that work best?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
I think that I think that what I've seen is
that it's somebody who's first of all, they've got to
be sold on the idea, right, you know, and and
if they're sold, because because you really need a cheerleader.
This is something that can get put on the back
burners so easily because there's always, you know, something more
important to do. So it's got to be somebody who's
really uh, he's really excited about the possibility. And it
(35:09):
also has to be somebody who's fairly high up uh
and and and like what I find is, uh, customer
success people are some of the best people to head
this up. And and even CROs what would I would
be really interested in hearing what because you do so
much work with enterprise what what who do you find
(35:30):
is the best?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Well, I find it's I find it can be a
variety of leaders. But I think you said it earlier
that they've got to have they've got to have credibility
with the leaders above them. Credibility with their own peers
is the key, because they've got to they've got to
coordinate a number of peers to make this happen. So
sometimes it doesn't matter if it's the head of customer service,
customer success or a sales leader or even a marketing leader.
(35:53):
If they're the cheerleader. The evangelist The key is that
they've got credibility and that they can sell it into
so it doesn't get rale right or it doesn't get
put on the back. But that's where I've found the
most success. So it doesn't matter which one of it is.
They've got to understand it. They're gonna be bull they
got to be sold on. But they're also that can
evangelize and sell it to the rest of their organization.
(36:16):
That's what I found to be the most successful.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, yeah, and and and they've got to they've got
to have enough clout to get people to do the
work that they're supposed to do, you know, So it's
got to be somebody high enough up. And also, you know,
one of the great things about win back is that
you can really do small tests and because as soon
as people see the numbers for their own organization, that's
(36:41):
what's going to cause the real buy in. Because as
soon as your CRM or your c r O or
CMO or CEO sees these numbers or the board, they're
gonna they're gonna be all in. Everybody wants to make
super high profitable revenue, you know, of course, you know,
but they but they but they'll tell you see numbers
(37:02):
for your own business. It's just it's just it's vapor
for a lot.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
I think the other thing is that where I've also
seen it successful at least start to get momentum. To
your point is, I've seen key account managers lead this.
So I've seen key account managers who are running some
large key accounts that make a big difference because that's
the money side. I've seen them start and go, but
work with their sales lead and asked for permission from
their sale and saying, hey, I want to win this
one back. This was a great company. I'm going to
(37:27):
need your support, mister sales manager, to help me with
your peers because I'm going to need a bit of
marketing time and but a customer success time. I want
to do some outreach, but I want to go for this.
And so I've seen some pilots work even in very
big organizations, and then the numbers come back in and
then everyone's going, hang on a second, Well, I thought
we lost them, we're winning them back. Where I think
(37:47):
there's one story I gave you where one organization like that,
just you know you talked to when the company came back,
they tripled tripled the revenue, and that gave the momentum
to the leader to go, you know, we invest a
little bit out of it here, how can we skyle
this now? And now they have a full win back
strategy or it's a wind back is a pillar of
the of the marketing, which is yeah, the end goal yep.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
And and when you win back these customers. There's so
many ways we go with this rop. I just want
to I want to make sure there's one thing we
really hit with this when you reach out to people
and they were unhappy because we haven't been talking early
about unhappy customers yet, but if they are unhappy with you,
you get a chance to fix a problem. Because now
(38:33):
you've you know, especially in B to B, you know
so much of it is UH is peer recommendations or
G two or something like that. So if you've got
these people who've got unresolved issues with you, you've got
all these down. Not only are they not saying great
things about you, they're they're it's causing problems. But when
(38:54):
you reach out to people and you say, listen, something
happened here. Things one sideways we'd like to really under
stand and if we can fix things fine, but at
minimum we would like to learn, you know, how we
can do better in the future. And so many people
will react to that, you know, they'll take that call.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
And the best person that make that call from the
organization that lost the business, who do you find best?
Is it a third party? Is it someone different than
the account team to make that call?
Speaker 1 (39:22):
In your experience, I hate to give it. It depends, but
this is important. First of all, it's got to be
it's got to be it's got to be somebody who's
really good with people, right, because they've got to be empathetic.
It can't be anybody who's defensive. It's got to be
somebody who's who's like, you know what, I'm going to
(39:42):
take responsibility, even if it's if I'm not fully responsible,
you know, it's got to be that kind of a
mindset person. It's it's also better if it's somebody who
didn't have direct contact with the customer. So if it's
maybe a customer success manager or a sales manager, and
if they've got some position within the company, it shows
(40:04):
that customer that these people are taking this seriously, right,
So that's also a factor. Yeah, so so yeah, so
somebody higher up somebody who hasn't had direct customer contact,
because that customer will be much more likely to tell
you the truth because nobody wants to hurt anybody else's feelings.
(40:25):
Nobody wants Yeah, so that's what you do, right. So
you so somebody's you know, one step about now, and
I would prefer to be somebody within the organization, but
there's also some great third parties you can find that
will do this kind of surveying for you.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Right, right, Okay, so we're up to step six, I think,
am I? Right?
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yeah? So step six is launching the campaign, which is
basically the test, right, So we do the test. So
step seven is you want to get everything you can
out of this test, right, So you've done the test,
so now you've done the learnings and step seven is
(41:12):
like a big coagulation of everything now, right, so you
now you know everything that why people came back, why
they didn't come back, so you can change your messaging
or modify it for the rollout. Right. So then you
do your rollout. You've talked to all these people about
why they've left, and you find, well, you know what
(41:34):
they left because of, say it was because of customer service.
Say that thirty percent left because of customer service. So
what you before you do the win back, you want
to plug any of those holes in customer service, right,
and you might also find it maybe some people left
because there's this one particular value that you aren't offering
that your competitors are offering, and maybe a few percent
(41:56):
of people left because of that. So what you do
is you offer those things to your current customers. So
maybe you gave them an extra level of customer service,
maybe you gave them premium service for example, right to
get people back, offer that to all your current customers,
(42:16):
you know, and maybe yeah, so so and what and
what you do is you'll find that that that kind
of thing increases retention. But the biggest thing that will
increase retention is you're going to find out you're going
to find the biggest hole in your leaky sales bucket.
And and that can be massive. I mean Tom Williams
(42:37):
he did this and he found and he was able
to raise his his retention rate from eighty three percent
to ninety seven percent.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, because he found, he.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Plugged, he found what the leak was, and he plugged.
You know, Tom's brilliant. He did a lot of digging,
and he did a lot of research, and he worked
with the exactly the VP of sales. But the point
is is that unless they did this work, they would
have never found why they were losing these fourteen percent
of people. Any any did the work and he found
(43:10):
that what it was was it was a it was
a sales problem. They were selling into into middle management.
They should have been selling you the C suite. So
they went back and they did their selling into the
C suite. They won back ninety percent of their lost customers,
and they reduced churn from eyighty three percent. I mean
(43:31):
they increased retention from maybe three percent to ninety seven percent.
So what you learn is from win back is tremendously
important for increasing retention, and a lot of people find
that they that's the biggest benefit of of win back
is there is the retention. Another big thing is you're
going to improve your your your brand reputation. Right, so
(43:54):
you've reached out to all these people, showed that you care,
asked them to check at and so so what happens
is there's two things kick in that. There's something called
the peak end rule, and the peak end rule basically
says is that your feelings about something or someone or
(44:14):
an experience is based on the peak of that experience
and the end well, at the end of the experience
with your lost customers, for some of them, they were
so unhappy that they left right, So that was the
that was the end experience. So when you reach out
and you offer and you want to hear them out something,
now this last experience that has a disproportionately large effect
(44:37):
on how they feel about you is much more positive
because you're asking them. People want to people want to
feel validated, They want to feel cared for and and heard,
and this is this is what you do. And then
when you offer to actually do something about it, something
is kicked in called the Pratfall effect. And basically the
(44:57):
Pratfall effect says that if you have a problem with
somebody and you fix that problem, they not only like
you more, but you're also seen as more competent. And
so when you combine the peak and rule, I'm really
sure making Yeah, you combine the peak and rule, I
like it, and the proffile effect, you can literally turned
unhappy customers into advocates. Yeah, And I've got a story
(45:20):
about that in the book where the CEO of Refine Labs.
I did that.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, it also taps It also taps into the the
to the SCARF model about how the brain works, because
the first part of SCARF is status. You actually elevated
someone's status. You actually call them back and you said, hey,
I want to hear from you, and not only I
want to hear from you, I've listened to you, and
that's really important what you just raised. I'm going to
go fix that now. Right, So you've just elevated someone's status.
(45:54):
You know, you've also give them a bit of autonomy
as well. But and you probably a little bit of
r related this, right, So I think there's that start
of the brain gets gets also twitched on. And just
an interest of time, I had another question for you.
We've talked a lot about talking about winning back customers
that have left. What is your thinking about doing doing
that's much a win back call? But actually we talked
(46:16):
about win loss analysis. They're actually calling customers when you
win and finding out why you won.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Do you think that's what That's brilliant, That's just brilliant.
I mean, I remember you told the story about someone
who had won an account and they didn't they didn't
get it the second time around because they didn't understand
why they won.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I found great value in actually reaching
out why you won, just to find out, you know,
just find well what actually what were the top three reasons,
you know, and finding out why you actually appointed us.
And I find there's just there's gold in that as well.
And I just am not sure if you give a
cover that or you had any thoughts on win analysis
(47:00):
as well as no.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
I think I think when analysis is tremendously important. I
think that it's it's it's so important. You know, we
we think we win because we put on we got
more value in the competition, because we are our salespeople
put on the best presentationship. I mean, you know, we're
(47:23):
so wonderful and and and but the fact of the
matter is you really don't know why you won. And
and it's it's you know, I think it's you know,
I know, for myself, I remember, we win this this
this this huge deal with a big mutual fund company,
and I did not want to go back and ask
them what we want because I was afraid they would
(47:45):
have second thoughts about us, you know, And that's I mean,
that's this is this is it? It's just like, oh
my god, you know what I mean? From we it
took so long to get this deal and they ad
bet at us and everybody else anyway, but I was
still a freed and yeah, anyway, so I probably lead
(48:08):
out a little bit, probably lead well.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
No, I think you're very honest and Dan, and I
think it's for a lot of people, as the people
you know with one let's just move on with us.
So I think it's a lot of that we make
assumptions while we won, and we believe those opinions to
be facts. And that's the tricky that's where you can
fall over. And especially if you've been a successful sales
personal sales team for a while, you can kind of
start believing your own hype. And I think that's dangerous.
(48:34):
And I think as just as you have that kind
of independent or a different person, you all find out
why you're lost and you're doing a win back. It's
really have about independent going and find out actually why
we won and because nothing bad can come of that.
So I'm definitely a firm believer in hey, we're just
about out of time, but I wanted to find out
where can so s it's win back Labs. It's Dan.
So where do we find out more about you and
(48:55):
win back Labs?
Speaker 1 (48:56):
And when?
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Where can we find out more about the book?
Speaker 1 (48:59):
So if you go to win back labs dot com,
there's a link to the book. There parks all about
the book and way everybody should get it.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
For sure, I highly read it.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
It's right now up until the end of up until January.
It's in with the Kindle promotions. For ten bucks you
get all the Kindle books, so all those Kindle free books.
So it's in there until then and after that it'll
be nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Fantastic. And Dan, you're on LinkedIn anywhere else we can
find you. Obviously, your website and LinkedIn is probably the
most one big month for you.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
Yeah, the website and LinkedIn are the two main places
that I hang out.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah. Beautiful, Hey Dan, great to catch up again. So
much information this for both large enterprises and small businesses
and midsize organizations. So the book is million dollar winback.
Go get it. I love it. If you've enjoyed this podcast,
give us a like to and give us a few comments,
but also go by the book. Thanks Dan for your time.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Thanks Rob great to be here.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
I hope you we enjoyed this episode of the It's
All Possible Podcast. You can contact me at Rob at
Robhartner dot com or my website Robharder dot com, or
on LinkedIn. Remember to check out the previous seasons and
episodes of the podcast and the show notes for more
details on this episode's guest. For more inspiration, remember to
(50:19):
check out the All Possibility Players on spotted by, which
contains a collection upbeat, positive music I use for inspiration
in my live performances. Until next time, live with passion
and a perspective of possibility.
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