Mastering Client Mindsets for Better Engagement with Dr. Chris Phelps
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I did a direct mail piece and I ran it to the same list of people for 10 years and I got a good return. But after I learned these principles and after I learned how to apply them and amplify these things, I stripped down that direct mail piece and I rebuilt it and tried to add as many of the influence principles as I could. And I literally sent it out to the same list I've been mailing to for 10 years.

years, double the new patient count. So no matter what you're doing, if you haven't added any level of influence, all you have to do is add one thing and send it right back out to the same people and you'll get a better response. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today is a very special guest. I got him in the studio. Chris Phelps is here. He wrote...

The complete book on dental marketing, which you might be thinking, why would I have a dental marketing company? But it's so much more than that. He's the CEO of the Choudini Institute. He's the dental practice coach of Sunrise Dental Solutions, the founder and president of Golden Goose Scheduling, certified trainer at Choudini Method of Influence, which

And he was also the president of Dental Membership Direct. Chris, it's a pleasure to have you here. Amazing book. Thank you, Tommy. Just tell us a little bit about you. Yeah, well, you know, it's funny, as you've already pointed out, and for our listeners so that you can tell, I'm an entrepreneur who happens to be a pretty good dentist. Yeah. And it's been a wild ride these last 21 years. And...

You started working – when did you meet Robert Cialdini? So I had – I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina. And in 2003, I joined my wife's dentist, which is kind of an apprenticeship thing. That's what you do in dentistry sometimes. And I bought into his business.

and spent those first couple of years, we had a 10x growth over a seven-year period, going to one location to four. And marketing was really the key, right? Really stretching my marketing legs initially. But it came a time where I was balancing too many things. And sometimes no matter how much you can juggle, your cup always runneth over. So my passion was to be a dentist. I made that decision when I was in seventh grade. So I was still doing clinical dentistry on patients five days a week.

At the same time, I'm the CEO of the company. I'm running operations. I'm managing 100 people. I'm doing all the marketing for the four practices. And after my second son was born, I realized my wife kind of needed me at home and I had trapped myself in my own business. I couldn't be there. So I realized I had to take a hard look in the mirror and go, my mindset was wrong, right? At first, growth for growth's sake had not put me in a good place. So I changed my mindset and

One of my mentors, Dan Sullivan, said buy back your time. Sometimes you have to subtract and multiply. So I did something nutty and I sold my two best offices, highest revenue, least amount of debt, and took over the two worst ones, freeing up myself from some old partners and could really get back to doing it the way I wanted to do it.

But there's a problem when you take over your two worst businesses. They suck. So problems that were small when you've got three other businesses to go with it and three other partners, a struggling business is your investment. But when you're down to one business and one partner, that's a problem. So I had all these fires like why weren't my patients coming back for treatment? Why do I have to keep telling my team to do stuff, right? Why when the cat was away, the mice kept playing and not doing what they're supposed to do?

My associate doctors, why would I pay for them to go to continuing education courses? And they didn't come back and use it. They didn't put it into practice to help our patients. So all these little things, and I couldn't put my finger on the root cause of the problem. And somebody from Strategic Coach invited me to a workshop, and Dr. Cialdini was the keynote speaker. Never heard of the guy before that. And in 90 minutes, he changed the course of my life.

And what year was that? This is 14 years ago. 2010. Yep. Right. So absolutely nutty. And I immediately was like, all right, what's this guy up to? I found his book, read the whole thing in like 24 hours, found out that they did a course here in Phoenix once a year in July of all times, came out here in the heat and did two full days of the workshop training, trying to dive into the problems of those practices and

And it left me with so many ideas on – because what really – the key with Cialdini was that he showed me – one of the principles in particular was the root cause behind all my problems. One thing. So I was like, all right, if I can get to the heart of that thing because this guy knows what he's talking about, then I might have a chance.

And most everybody always asks me, what was the one thing, right? Well, there's this principle called consistency. Yep. Right. If and the short answer of the principle is this. When people make a commitment, they follow through with their commitment. Right. So if you get people to commit, then they do. Well, suddenly that that was my light bulb. Well, why aren't they doing in my case? What was I missing? I wasn't getting a commitment, a commitment out of any of them to do anything.

So I thought, all right, well, if I can change my strategy, get better commitments for my patients, for my team, for my doctors, everything should change. And it did. It changed big time. Let's talk about that real quick. I want to take a deep dive into that. So let's talk about your team and then let's talk about the clients, how to get commitment. Yeah. So with the team, it was more realizing there's two aspects of it. Number one, I needed to be able to influence them, not tell them.

Nobody likes to be told anything. We learn that at an early age. So that's why when the cat's away, the mice will play. When you tell, when you coerce, when you intimidate, when you force people into something or they feel backed into a corner. When you give them choice and you influence them properly, when the cat's away, the mice don't play. They do what you had influenced them to do. So I knew, to use an example, I pictured like I was going to go bowling with my team.

And as the owner of the business, as the visionary, I had to pick the lane. I didn't want to be on lane one and my team's bowling on lane four. That's not going to help me or my patients. But we're all on lane one. And of course, I've got the goals set. So I'm going to pick the pins. But they need to have some control of the process. They need to be involved with it.

If they're not, they fight it. So even if it's just simple, they make one little change to make it slightly more convenient for them or more efficient for them or whatever, you automatically get more of a commitment from them in the process. So I knew I had to give them choices. So what size ball do you want? 8 pounds, 10 pounds, 12? What size holes do you want? Small, medium, large? You want a ball left-handed, right-handed, granny style? Up to you. As long as the ball goes down the lane and knocks the pins, I didn't care.

So it's a two-part system of their instinctive nature is, number one, I had to clearly define the vision of what I wanted. Right. The second thing is, and this is what's important and what a lot of people skip, they immediately go into telling. Well, I went into justifying. If you don't give them enough facts and objective details to justify the change, it's going to be a lot harder for them to instinctively do that. Or they'll do it, again, while you're watching, but it's not consistent while you're going. But if they know the context of why,

and the justification, automatically they're more likely to continue doing. So I had to do that. I had to justify that why. As I said, I had to ask their permission. They had to voluntarily commit. So once I justified why, I asked them a simple question. And this is a simple influence question you should ask anybody you're going to work with. How many of you agree with me that this is a problem? Okay. Looks like all the hands are up. Great. Who's going to help me solve it? Because if the hands don't go up,

What that tells me is that's okay. They see an elephant in the room. Well, instead of hiding from it, let's bring it up. Let's talk about it now. Because if I don't, that's going to be a landmine that sabotages this thing down the road. If all the hands go up, great. Now they're voluntarily committed to helping me get this done. And you automatically have a better chance. Get them involved with that process. So, hey, what's your role going to be in this?

Here's some pen and paper because studies show when what you write down, you tend to live up to, right? So you get it out of their head and let's put it on paper. What's your part going to be in this change, helping us reach this goal, whatever that is. And they have to see you're a part of the process too. So I'm writing my stuff down. Here's what I think I can do to help you guys or directly or indirectly get to the goal or make this change. And now we use this aspect of consistency, which is getting public commitments out of people, which is extremely powerful.

So everybody going around the room saying, all right, Tommy, what are you going to do? What's your role going to be? Let's tell everybody. Great. Now let's ask for feedback from everybody else. Does anybody else have any ideas for Tommy? Here's what I think you could do. Write that down. Okay, great. Let's go to the next person. And then I tell them what I think I could do. And I get their feedback. Great. I can do that. Sure. Now we've all written it down. I get them to sign it and then. Sign it. I love it. Yeah, because now they're committed. They know what their responsibilities are. They're signing that this is what they're going to do.

and you get your most creative, collaborative person on the team, we make a collage of it and we post it. Because what every study on consistency shows is this, right? We all know by definition, you know, why do people do commitments? Why do they follow through with the commitments? Well, it's because they don't want to be perceived as being inconsistent in their stated thoughts, actions, and beliefs, right? There's no good word for people who don't do what they say they're going to do routinely.

Liars, for instance, is not a good word, right? So there's this external influence on us to not be like that. At the same time, there's an internal influence, which is why it's powerful. It's two sources. You don't look at yourself in that capacity, right? So nobody wants to be inconsistent, but we all know people who say and do things but don't follow through. Were they all liars? Were they all intending to fool us or mislead us?

Well, the truth is the studies show that's not the case. Most good people, it's an I got time problem is the mindset. They really intended to do it, but as time goes on, guess where you go when a thousand other things pop up into their life? They don't prioritize. They don't calendar it. That's it. Eisenhower's matrix, right? Exactly. So now they're thinking in their mind they do intend to get to it, but the reality is they never will. So it looks like it never happens.

So the way to combat this with the study show was you just got to remind them of the commitment that they made, constantly reminding them of that commitment. So I post it where they see it every day. So it's the first thing they see when they walk in to the business and they reminds them, Ooh, this is the priority. And this is my part in this and what I need to get done. And the last piece of it is I got to get them to, to do a majority wins vote on not how long it's going to take us to reach this goal or, or,

But how long is it going to – I'm going to use scarcity and limit the time. How much time does it really take for us to start making progress towards this, to start taking action? And because ultimately, because people are built, they're a tortoise or a hare when it comes to change. Some can change on the dime, right? Others, they might get there. But it looks like they're not getting there.

They just need more time before they're going to change because they resist change. They don't adapt to it quickly. So I have to give my team the commitment and allow them to choose their timeline for change of when we're going to start. Once I've gotten all those commitments, I can get out of the way. You push the ball over the top of the hill and just let the momentum take its place. Okay, so commitment. Now let's talk about the client side. Yeah.

So with clients, again, commitment's a big part of it, but really you need the best one-two punch. You need persuasion and you need persuasion. So persuasion is about which of Cialdini's seven principles are present in a situation that you could tap into, bring to the surface in your communication attempts that automatically is going to influence that person to receive your message in a totally different light and be more willing to say yes to it. Okay.

Pre-suasion is what principles are present and other things that you can tap into that happen before they get to you in that moment. So outside of this moment, that changes their mindset. So pre-suasion is all about reshaping mindsets. Because one of the things I didn't realize was that just how powerful mindsets are and how much that was hurting, yes. And a lot of that is just getting the view through a different lens.

This. Well, think of it this way. So like the example I always give is let's say I have a new patient that came to my business for the first time and she's there 30 minutes early. Right. Do her paperwork, whatever. Well, she just gets off the phone, having a knockdown, drag out, tearful fight with her husband. Divorce on the horizon. Not sure what's going to happen with the kids. It's ugly. She hangs up. She's here. She cleans herself up because she's there for the appointment. She has a good experience. And I come in and talk about her dental needs.

Where's her mindset at right now? Is it in her mouth at all or is it in that car? Yeah. Right. So that's what I realized was that in any given situation, when a potential person with sales or whatnot, or in my case, patients are coming into this moment, they're all coming in with a mindset already established. And if you don't do anything to refocus that mindset based on what you want to talk about and get them to recommit to do value statements based on what you want to talk about,

then the mindset they're coming in with is directly competing with what you want to talk about or distracting them from what you want to talk about. And in both cases, the door to yes is already shut. And unless it's a top-of-mind pain situation, it's hard to get it back open. So how do you do that? Well, so there's all kinds of things that affect our mindset, right? The good news is they're fickle little things, okay? You can reshape them as needed. So one of my favorite things to do is, of course, you can change the context of their environment. So the sights, the sounds, the smells around them.

can change that mindset. So for instance, if I've got somebody who may be coming in as a new patient and they're uncertain about their situation, it can look like a standard medical reception office, or it could look like you just walked into somebody's living room, little fireplace there, pictures of all the teams and their families all over the place. So you get that sense of, wow, this, this is like a home. This is not a medical reception office. That doesn't seem right. The smells, right?

You know, they have a smell now called the Disney smell for a reason because it creates a mindset. Like in our world, do you want to come in and smell like if you're like a 70-year-old patient, let's say? They had bad experiences with dental offices as kids, and there's something in our industry we call the dental smell. And it's a very unique thing that if you say that to most older people, they know exactly what you're talking about. It's the kind of smell that just sticks to you no matter where you go for days, okay? Well...

If you come into an office as a new patient and you're 70 and you smell that, you're going to flash back to all those negative experiences. Versus if you come into the office and it smells like fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Now, I don't know about you, but when I grew up, cookies came out of a bag. But on special days when grandma was there or mom was in a good mood, right out of the oven. So again, family is the mindset I'm trying to create in that moment.

In the environment, when they're in the chair, we let them watch TV, but we control the content because the worst thing they can do is watch CNN or Fox News 10 minutes before I get in there and they're seeing, holy crap, the stock market's down, Bitcoin's down. And then I come in and go, oh, by the way, you need two crowns. And they're like, the hell I do. I just lost all this money in the stock market. So it totally creates the wrong mindset versus if I have come in and put on fixer-upper,

Right. Here's a program where people have something at the start of the show where they think has no value. But what do they do? They invest time, money and expert advice. And what comes out on the back end with that investment? A beautiful house. A beautiful house. Metamorphosis, change, rehabilitation, renovation.

That's the mindset. You're pre-programming almost. That's what pre-suasion is. You're priming the pump for a yes to get them in a mindset that's going to be more receptive to what you want to ask and say yes to it before they ever get to you. I'm curious. Let's just real quick. If I wanted to do pre-suasion in a home service, whether I'm a plumber, HVAC, plumbing, garage doors, could be gutters, landscaping, pest control, pool service, whatever.

I don't really control the four walls I'm going into. That's their home and their space. Is there any advice you'd give just off the cuff? You can pre-suede them by sending texts, images. If you can send pictures, images create mindsets. You could text them questions. So asking commitment questions before you get to them can automatically create a better mindset to make them more receptive.

In the pre-suasion book, Cialdini talks about the study where they surveyed random grocery shoppers at a random grocery store on a Tuesday. And they asked them, they're like, hey, we're with the soft drink company. We'd love for you to try this new soda. Can I get all your personal information so I can ship you a free case of this? And then you just tell us what you think. And of course, the majority of people are like, I'm not giving you my personal information, right?

The next part of the study, they didn't ask them the main request. They started out by asking a commitment question first. So they walk into the store and a different group of researchers say, hey, we're just doing a little market survey to all of our customers. Quick question. Do you consider yourself to be adventurous or not? Yes or no? And when you ask somebody a question where the answer kind of has a yin and a yang, where society is going to view one part of the answer as positive, but the opposite of that word as a negative.

Well, automatically, because if you're not adventurous, then what are you? You're boring. You're boring, right? And nobody wants to be associated with that. So what your brain does is it starts searching back through its memory banks, and all it needs, it's crazy, is one piece of evidence to justify the yes to the good answer. So it's like, well, that was that one time at band camp or that one time in college, right? Yes, I'm adventurous. So 100% of the people said, yes, I'm adventurous. Okay. But guess who they are now in this moment?

Adventurous. And guess what adventurous people like to do? Try new things. Try new things. And guess what? Then the next group of researchers, 20 minutes later, ask them, try this new thing. And overwhelmingly, the majority said yes. So if you can pre-sway them with a question in a text before, hey, I'm on the way, quick question. What do you think about this? What are your thoughts? Are you this or that? Automatically, you got a better chance. So I like when he was in here, I used to be a server. And I used to have a lot of ways I didn't realize I was influencing. But when he tried...

When he'd say, listen, here's one peppermint, and the tip went up a little bit, then here's two peppermints. But when you walk away and you say, for my two special guests, I'm really excited you came to visit me. Remember, my name's Tommy. I left you a couple extra mints each here that the tip actually doubled. It was more than doubling.

It was way more than doubled. And he actually went around to each one of them. He said, "And just for you, here's an extra one. And just for you, here's an extra one. And just for you." Like really making the time to point out one-on-one, this is for you. This is for you. And that's gifting? That's reciprocity. Giving a gift of significant value automatically creates, if it's significant to them and meaningful and ideally customized for them, in this case, personalized just for you,

incites in them an obligation that they feel like they have to give back in kind. And just like the opposite of the word consistency, inconsistency, here, what do you call people who don't give, who just take, take, take all the time? Exactly. No positive word. So there's so many things I want to ask, and I'm just going to probably be ADHD as the listeners are used to me doing. Number one, I've always, so I was on a podcast with Grant Cardone. Mm-hmm.

And he asked me, what's more important, sales or marketing? And I think marketing is. I think you're marketing right now when we meet each other, when you meet a significant other. Yep. Talk to me about what your thoughts are on each of them in order of importance. To me, it's the same analogy as which is more important, persuasion or persuasion. And the truth of the matter is, as I said, this is why I didn't realize how important persuasion was. If the mindset's already a no when they get to you,

There's no conversation. Even if they come to you and it's a demand? I mean, dental's a demand. I book the appointment. There's spring breaks on your garage door. Your hot water heater is leaking. Well, that's different. Again, if it's top of mind pain, that's one thing. In my world, only about 20% of the population of customers are pain, right? 80%.

We're talking about what they need, not what they want. Right. And that's the disconnect. So like persuasion, if the door's already shut, you don't have it. It's hard to persuade. So it's a lot more important from that aspect. I feel like marketing and sales is the same. If your marketing's not down and you can't get a customer, how are you going to sell? You can't. My mom used to answer phones in 2010 and to 2012.

And she'd go, thank you for calling me. One garage door service. How I make your day better today? And she used to be so empathetic. And she'd go, thank you, honey. I can't even imagine what you're going through today. And I used to run these calls back then. She started working for me a few years into the business. And they were laid down customers. They'd come give me a hug. They didn't know she was my mom, but the way we took the call. And now the software will actually send out a text message of the technician. And I say, post a picture of your family. Tell them what you like to do. Family occupation, recreation, material things. If you love Harleys.

If you've got a dog, post your dog. If you've got babies, post the babies. And put it on there because they want to get to know you a little bit. They do. And then always offer something on the way. So we call them up. I'm stopping off at 7-Eleven. I'm stopping off at Starbucks. Can I grab you something? Yeah. And then we walk up with a smile. And we don't ring the doorbell. We knock the door because friends knock the door. There's all these little things, but I'm like, you know, I've had a lot of thought about you coming into here. It just –

I don't work with everybody on the podcast, but probably one out of 25. When you get involved with the Cialdini Institute, how does that even work? Well, there's a couple of ways. Number one is it's deepening your education first, right? Getting you familiar with what's above and beyond the books. And that's how do we activate these principles? Meaning if they are present in a moment, how do you turn them on like a light switch? And then once present and you've activated them, how do you amplify their power?

As I said, you know, giving a gift is important, but the type of gift you give is even more important. So there's ways to amplify that situation and take it to another level. How do you, once you've deepened your own knowledge, now it's sometimes you may understand a topic, but people struggle with the application piece. Implementation. Yeah, implementation was key, right? So I found a lot of people struggle with that application and implementation part. So teaching people how to use these things.

And for me, it was learning through examples, right? So when I saw the behavioral science examples, that's what gave me the ideas to try that on my patients, right? And the people that were coming to my businesses and my team at the front desk and the doctors that I had. And I found those examples transcribed and it helped me create my influence systems that I use as well. So learning knowledge, deepening and application is key. So we help in that aspect. Some people,

Don't have time for that. They just want the answer. Don't have to just go right to the top. Yeah, they're just like, just come solve it for us. Okay, we can do that too, right? So it's a combination of those two things. You're learning versus do you just want somebody to take care of it for you? So, yeah, you're just cutting straight to the top, the implementation. That's it. And if you just want to go through a course, where does one sign up? So they can come right to the website, cialdini.com.

There's an online portal you can purchase the product, and you get instant on-demand access with 10 hours of Dr. Cialdini teaching you those activators and amplifiers. And as CEO of the, I guess, U.S.-based, in how many countries? So right now, last I counted, we've got representation in over 30 countries. And what is your day-to-day? So it's a lot of talking. A lot of Zoom calls. Luckily, I'm used to talking to a lot because, you know, talking to my patients every day.

So it's a lot of talking. It's a lot of spreading the word of influence because really, I mean, we're targeting obviously organizations, right, who need to be more influential in what they do. We're targeting individuals. We're targeting – I'm trying to catch them while they're young. So like with ASU University, we just did a Celebrate Cialdini Day this past two days ago.

And the goal there was obviously to celebrate his career, but it's through the business school and we're going to make it to where the business school students are leaving as certified practitioners of persuasion. So I can't even imagine like if I had been trained like that in college with this stuff behind me, how much further my career would have gone and how much faster, what advantages would it have given me back then?

So trying to spread influence to not only the U.S., but all countries in those aspects, from the university aspect early on to whatever stage they are in their business careers.

One of the questions I have is you were able to add $1.4 million of revenue to the practice by implementing a membership plan. We sell memberships as well. Nice. My conversion rate's 17%. It's not what I want it to be. Some of the guys call it a protection plan. We're going to save you money by getting this done today. We come out each year. We lubricate, adjust, tighten everything. We protect everything. We own the system after this. I got one guy converting at 70%.

And now we've got tools to record the technician out in the field and actually examine their calls with a scorecard so we can see who has the most reviews, who has the most this, who has the most that. Study was working, but talk to me a little bit about membership plans and how you were able to convert those. Well, it started when I got an opportunity to go to an active independent living retirement community.

A patient was in my chair, and we had given her a great experience. And just organically, she just asked me, she was like, hey, have you ever thought about coming out to communities and do a talk? I was like, tell me about your community. She goes, well, you know, we've got about 3,500 homes of people my age, active, independent living people. And I was like, okay, so it would be okay if I came out and did a talk to your whole community? She was like, yeah, we'd love that. I organized that. I was like, okay, let's do that.

The challenge was now I got to give a talk and I'm thinking, all right, well, nobody wants to come hear about dentistry. So what's going to be my hook? What can I use to get people in the door? And this is actually when I had just come back from Napa Valley, California for the first time. So I get these folks out and I realized 60 of them came out for a seminar.

for a wine and cheese seminar with dental education. You can't get to Napa, so I'm going to bring Napa to you. Join me for the top five dental reasons affecting the aging population and enjoy some of Napa's wines on meat. And so I get these folks out and I realized during the seminar when I asked them the first question, just curious, how many of you have been to the dentist for any reason in the last 10 out of 60 people raised their hand at this first talk? And I was like, oof, that ain't good. How many of you have dental insurance?

Okay, the 10 who'd been to the dentist have insurance. Now I'm starting to get it. How many of you would have gone had you had insurance? The other 50 raised their hand. So automatically, there's a lot of power when you ask your target market questions and they tell you what they use to decide, right? It showed me this barrier. Our culture is you don't have insurance. You can't go see a doctor or dentist for any reason. So when these folks retired, because my parents were in the same boat at this time,

That's the first thing they lost. They kept medical, but they lost dental. Right. And now they go from an abundance mindset, money's coming in every month, to a scarcity mindset. I've only got a certain amount and it's got to last. Yeah. Right? So they hang on to it. Well, so then, and this is the point, to make membership plans work, you have to know what people are going to compare it to. In this case, I knew they were going to compare it to buying their own insurance policy. Right. Which at the time was too expensive for their mindset.

So I had to lower that barrier. So I knew at the time it was going to cost them $600 a year for their own insurance policy. Well, I was just guessing at the time. I didn't know what the number was. I just cut it in half. I said, you know what? I'm going to make this a dang good value. It's $300 for the year, two cleanings, two exams, your x-rays, come in for an emergency exam. It doesn't matter, right? So for literally less than $30 a month. Yeah. Okay.

And you'll get a 10% discount off anything we do kind of thing. And so that was when I went back the next month, I created the plan because I saw that as the barrier. I presented that and got so much acceptance because in contrast, automatically what they would pay, they knew they needed it, but they want to pay for that. But half the price of their mind.

Now it's a good value. And that's what – and it was still a slow roll. Like the early pioneers were the ones who in the community tried it out because another barrier I realized was that they think – It's too good to be true. It's too good to be true. Sounds great. What's the catch? So it was those early pioneers. I told my team these folks had to have the best experience ever. We cannot have bad word-of-mouth marketing.

And as soon as they went back, they told everybody it's legit. It's as good as they say. And the next thing you know, momentum builds. This is the one thing Robert really specifies is you've got to use these influences for good. Correct. And I think a lot of people, they need to read that part. Yeah. Because it's easy to go down this rabbit hole of taking advantage of people. Well, I know as their dentist, as a dental expert, that if they go, they choose the reactive mindset, which is what they were doing, choosing not to go unless it hurt, they're in pain, whatever.

That was going to cost them more time, money because of that and visits versus if I could just influence them to get that preventative work done, the cleanings or whatever, it would save them more time, money and pain. Yes. So that's one of our rules for ethics. Objectively, like if it's truly a win win for both sides, even those guys can be some cost to both sides. But if it's really in both our best interest to do this, then why should we both lose?

That makes a lot of sense. I mean, I think what I'd be asking, and I've got a really good FP&A, financial planning and analysis team, that actually could build out pivot tables and understand the ROI of what, because I think a lot of people talk to me about service agreements and maintenance agreements and protection plans.

is they don't know how to price it in a way that they're sure that they're not going to lose. Yes. And there's some science behind it. It's really math equations. It is. For me, it was what was my overhead per chair per hour cost in my practice. So in any given time, you've got so many chairs, people are sitting in, those chairs cost you money no matter what. There's a burden cost. There's a burden cost. So what's the burden cost there?

Well, if I – and I know they're going to be in the chair twice. What's times two? So as long as I'm some multiple above that, even though I'm not getting my full price of what I would charge them to be in this chair, I'm not losing money. But for me, the preventative was one thing. We make our money on the dental work. Right. Right. But when you get somebody who has a membership plan with a Costco-style model, there's a reason why Costco shoppers spend on average 247 percent more per trip than Walmart shoppers.

And they pay for the right to do it. Why? Because the more I buy, the more I save. Why would I spend money elsewhere when I save here? And so I realized that was the key. We got more treatment acceptance. So traditionally somebody would come in and I'm going to present $4,000 to them on the work that they need. Two fillings, two crowns, let's say. Most people, if you just present that straight up and they compare that to the wants in their life they prefer to spend, they're going to go, yeah, I can't do that. So let me just start with something. I'll do the smallest thing. Let me do the two fillings.

Maybe they'll get to the other stuff, but more than likely they don't. In this case, when they see this plan is $4,000. Oh, but after your 10% discount as a plan member, you say $400, it's only $36. Wow, $400. Wait, didn't you say this plan was $400? And it includes all my cleanings and other things. Everything else I need is done for the year, taken care of? That's right. Huh. All right, I'll do it.

And now they do it all.

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and exclusive bonuses worth over $5,246. Go to freedomevent.com and lock in your ticket now. That's freedomevent.com. Now back to the episode. Talk to me a little bit about the seven principles. I know we don't have enough time in this podcast to hit all of them in depth. Yeah. But let's just go through liking, scarcity,

reciprocity. So we talked about reciprocity already, right? Somebody gives you a truly significant gift of value. The obligation is there. You feel the need to get back in kind, but it's really about you showing people that you like them. Okay. People tend to reciprocate. If they know you like them, meaning if we like something about them and tell them we like them, or if your customers, when they're done, like this was huge with my patients, ask them to take a picture of me afterwards. Let's take a picture together.

Because who do we normally take pictures with? Enemies? Or friends and family, right? So now that's who you are. So showing them that you like them is key. If you can find connections with them, we like those who are like us, who have connections, commonalities, similarities. That's the kind of stuff people are looking for. Protects you on the back end. You don't lose them. It protects the whole experience for them.

Social proof is a big one right now. It's one of the most powerful influencers in online marketing. And that's just the evidence of the masses. Oftentimes we look to the evidence of what others or many others are doing to show us or tell us what we should do. And that's exactly what reviews are. But the idea is like it's evolutionary, right? There's a reason birds flock together, that animals herd, fish school together. Because they've learned if they step out from the crowd, bad things tend to happen, right?

We're no different. So even though we want to be unique individuals, we're different than everybody else. We still want to be unique individuals that are part of a community. So if a tribe, right, if we see those people moving in another direction, there's a big pull on us to do the same. Unity is the newest principle. It kind of falls in line with that. That's all about the tribe. It's not a you versus me situation. It's a we situation. You're not like me. That's what liking is. You are me.

We are of the same, the same culture, the same religion, the same sports fan. And if the tribe is all about it and you're part of that tribe and the tribe is asking, it's hard to say no. Authority. We look to credible experts, trustworthy experts to tell us what we should do because truthfully, we don't have time to be an expert in everything. So we need true people, true authorities with that expertise and trust to tell us what we should do.

not false authorities, which we see everywhere, that have no credibility, have no real expertise, and aren't really trustworthy. Consistency, we talked about that one. If people commit, they do, okay? Especially when reminded of the commitment. And the last one, of course, is scarcity. This is probably the one that's been abused the most unethically against us in all aspects. But true scarcity is about resources. And if resources are dwindling or about to run out, okay,

It is a powerful motivator for you to get up and go do something about it. You want it more and you'll do more to get it. That's what scarcity does to us. So an example of scarcity, for example, and I don't know if this qualifies, but we can lock in this price for 72 hours. We had 12 price increases in the last year from our manufacturer. One of the things we know is inflation is real. Gas prices are high. Middle East is not exactly dialed in right now. So-

that, you know, if I were you, here's what I say. Here's what needs to be done. Here's what you should do. And if you were my mother, here's what I'd be telling you to do. Yes. And I always give options because if you're not giving options, you're giving ultimatums. Totally. And you choose what's right for you. You tell me what's right for you and we'll do that. Yeah. But what else could we use for scarcity that's morally and ethically correct?

So here's the trap you get into, right? And I've found this out the hard way. So I decided to leverage scarcity and try to do a new patient reward. We called it a gift, but it's really a reward because you had to come into the practice to get it, right? And it was to get, at the time, a Sonicare electric toothbrush. And at the time, you couldn't really buy them online. And if you went to like a Target retail store to buy it, it was $150. So it was a significant gift. But I could get it, buying it in bulk for $40 at the time. Right.

So, yeah, would I pay $40 to get my ideal client in the door who paid my full fees with no insurance and whatnot? Yes. Only on days that ended Y, right? So – but then I tried to limit the number. You use scarcity. I said, all right, new patient special this month, good for the first 15 who respond because I wasn't sure if anybody would respond. So I only bought 15 toothbrushes because I was curious. I don't want to buy too many. So my intent was just to give away 15 toothbrushes.

Well, the 15th one was sold or given away in two weeks. It was that popular. I was like, dang. So my team told me it was the last one. So I made a big deal with this patient that she got the last one. And patient number 16 now comes up and goes, hey, doc, I heard you talking about that toothbrush. That's why I'm here. I saw that in your mail piece. Yeah, I want a toothbrush. And I was like, dude, I'm so sorry. I just gave out the last one. Well, my lead assistant at the front said,

Just happened to be there and heard this. And of course her job is to keep supplies on hand. So guess what she noticed from the supply closet a couple of days ago. She bought more. She goes, oh, doc, I saw we were low. Hey, they just came in. We got a whole bunch in the back. And she said that right in front of this patient after I just said we didn't have any. So now I'm like, oh man, do I give it to him or do I not? Right.

So of course I gave it to him. Because for me in that moment, it was about now I got to protect the experience. Right. Now, if he knows we have a whole bunch and won't give it to him, we're being the meanie, so to speak, and keeping it scarce. Right. Right. He's going to go tell everybody. Those guys can't even give away a toothbrush. So I did. But ethically, I violated one of our rules. Right. It's not the truth.

We don't deal with half-truths. It's got to be the whole truth. So if I say I'm going to give away 15 to leverage scarcity ethically, it's got to be 15. Because let's rewind. If patient 15 didn't leave, if they went to the bathroom, which is at the front desk, and after I just made this big deal about them being the last one to get it, if they come out and see 16 getting the toothbrush, what are they going to think?

I hear that commercial all the time of who's the guy that does it. It's about the sleeping, and it's all natural. And it says, and right now, Huckabee has told us to give away the first 500 bottles. And it's been the same thing for the last three years. There's no way that's real. No. And that does bother me. It does. And I didn't buy it. No. People pick up on that stuff, right? Because scarcity has been abused too much in marketing, okay? Yeah.

But here's how you can leverage it in a good way. So I knew I was going to keep running into this ethical trap. It wasn't going to be true. So I had to get around that. So I realized that when I started asking my customers, was it really the Sonicare that they wanted, the name, the brand, or the category? They just want something, an electric toothbrush. And based on my conversations with them, they had no clue what a Sonicare was, not really. They just wanted the category.

So, okay. So I made it the next month. I only bought 15. Offer good for the first 15 that respond. Same thing. Two weeks gone. Well, once I ran out and the patient came in and said, oh, I'm here for that. Great. We're out of Sonicare's. We gave away those already. But would you like an Oral-B electric toothbrush? Now, how many of those can I give away? As many as you want. As many as you want. So what I recommend, if you're going to do any kind of special or make, don't just limit the time.

Limit the number of the deals. That's how you amplify scarcity. Only four. So instead of saying $500 off for this month only, only four $500 off specials are available. Get yours before somebody else does. And if it's going to be a repeat offer like I did with the Sonicare, I say only giving away 15 each month. Yep. So that way I can still use the special but be true and only give away a certain amount per time. So one of our best campaigns that we're bringing back –

And it's true, but not to the full extent. We said we're buying back because we needed training doors in our training center. You just walked through there. Oh, yes. Yeah. And I want my guys to train. We don't need new doors to take them up and down and damage them. So we got a buyback. We'll buy back your door. Not every one of them fit in our training center. Not every one of them get used. Yeah. But we'll give you a credit as a buyback. And...

We show the video of the training center and say, we need more Doris to train on. And quite frankly, there's a lot of things we can give those to if they're the right size. Wounded warriors, we can give them to elderly. We can actually use those Doris for nonprofits. I don't want to be that company or that guy or that CEO that does things that really aren't above board. Well, eventually the public gets wind of it. Oh, yeah. And with today's social media and how fast word can spread and go viral,

To me, it's anytime you start saying, you know, not checking the box off, is this objectively ethical? Then you start getting into the gray and there's danger in the gray. I call that in my first book, I called it creative justification. And a lot of people can create justification even for theft. And it's a slippery slope because you start avoiding the good voice and the bad voice takes over on everything. Totally. Totally.

Well, again, it puts you on a mindset, right? I mean, they've done studies where you can literally play a video game for 10 minutes as a hero or a villain and then go to a room and you have a choice, and that choice could either reward somebody that's coming after you or punish them. And what do you think the people who played as the hero... Reward and then the bad guys. Yeah, right? So that's what mindset, man. And once you start on that path, that's who you are. What's more important with...

I call them my internal clients, but employees. And I call them coworkers. Is it the reward or is it the one-on-one? Like what I start with is, listen, let's focus on your dreams, your goals, what you want out of this. And, you know, it might not only be money. But what's the best way to get the most out of your team? Obviously, they got to believe in you, the product themselves. Yeah. But what else? What other tips could you give as far as...

your internal team. Well, once you've got them committed as you've done on the front end, that's first, right? So how do you keep it going, so to speak? And it's this idea based on a study where you don't want to say, hey, congratulations on your progress. Focusing them on the progress lets them look to the past. It lets them think, you know what? I can take my foot off the pedal. I'm doing fantastic. So they did this in like a Weight Watcher study kind of thing where a weight loss study, if you will, where they're

They told them that they had had great progress. And then on the end, they said, why don't you get something on the way out for yourself? And to the left was a thing of candy and to the right was a thing of apples. Well, when they were told you've made great progress. They wanted a reward. They wanted the reward. They wanted the candy. They actually set themselves back as a result versus if they just changed that word from progress to congratulating them and reminding them you're doing a great job. Thank you for this commitment. Overwhelmingly, they chose the apples.

Well, you did talk about commitment, but getting people to buy in is, I guess you're absolutely right where I've learned a long time ago. I'm like, I told somebody, one of my mentors, I'm like, I've realized I've lost control because they're my ideas. Unless I could pull them in to help them create the idea.

And sometimes I probably have used unethical influence. I find somebody they're influenced by. Sure. A favorite person, like it could be a mentor, it could be a consultant. And I plant a seed and say, why don't you tell them this? They'll come to me. It's their idea. And I don't know if that's unethical or not, but it's another way of getting what I wanted. Sure. And I used to do this quite a bit with my COO.

But how do you feel is the best way to motivate them to get involved and be part of it? Well, again, they have to voluntarily choose to help and do what they say they're going to do. They have to be involved in shaping it to some capacity. The more they're able to shape it, the more committed they are to it. There has to be accountability, right? Meaning this conversation is going to go away. We're going to keep talking about this. We're going to keep checking up on it.

Ideally, they should make that commitment to more than you. It should be in a group setting. The more people that know you said you were going to do something, the more influence there is on you to do that thing. And then, of course, with that reminder, congratulations on the work you've done towards this commitment. I love this stuff. One of the largest problems we're having in the company right now is time management.

It seems like, like you said, you're firefighting all the time. Another meeting, another this, another that, you know, putting out all the fires. Yeah. What do you find the best way to help your team with time management? The best way I did it was trying to change their mindset from always being reactive to proactive. Meaning we're going to schedule time for you to schedule these things and plan out how you're going to use your time. Schedule time to schedule time. Schedule time to schedule time.

And when they do that, then now they're committed. I'm curious, what is the – have you guys done any studies on the people that actually apply these principles? And they do it well. And they're committed. Yes. What's the ROI? Well, I mean – It depends. There's a lot of different things. It's all over the place, right? So a group of stem cell clinics I consulted with and created influence systems for, right, all across the country.

by implementing these influence systems, their revenue increased 50% across the board at every clinic. So obviously a very good return for what they paid me for that service. In dentistry, for instance, when I work with dental practices, their average increase for those that put these things into practice and use them is anywhere from 15,000 to 50,000 more in revenue a month with no change in overhead. It's almost like

When they start putting it into practice, you've taken them from just feeding them fish to now they've learned how to fish. And they just extrapolate and do better from that point on. So, I mean, for some of these people that have put this stuff into practice, that's why Cialdini calls them small bigs. Small things that can make a huge impact. Popular Cruise Company, for instance, with one email adding a little persuasion to it.

To make the person who opened it more receptive to the scarcity message of a $500 offer that was going to run out at the end of the year, the cruise company made so much money off of the extra people that were on that ship that they said they could buy another boat. This is why it's so exciting. One of the things I walked in, and unfortunately I had another obligation, but I sent three of my guys to your event with Robert. And I'm never going to miss another one. I noticed you were talking a lot about website and reviews.

What's important on a website? What helps conversion rate? What helps people buy now or at least the conversion rate when they do the click through and now they're actually taking the offer? They're doing the action. Yeah. So in this kind of case, you have to start with why do people say no to us? OK, so one reason is there's no relationship. And Dr. Nider, one of our chief trainers, came up and did the research on this. It's called the core motives model.

of why people do what they do. And so if there's no relationship, people don't say yes. If there's uncertainty, any kind of questions or doubt in their mind, they don't move. It's safer for them to do nothing than to choose and lack of motivation, no urgency. So when somebody, especially in marketing, they're looking at your advertisement, if they don't respond from the ad directly, there's some uncertainty automatically present holding it back.

If there's something favorable about it, that's when they go to your website to look for more info. And if that satisfies their search, then they pick up the phone. So uncertainty in advertising is the number one thing you've got to overcome. So to do that on a website, what the research shows is we need three principles to help us. Number one, if they don't like you, they're not going to do business with you.

So all the research now is showing that you need some kind of welcoming message. Picture of the team. Picture of the team, a statement from the team, a video welcoming people. We like those who welcome us and we want to do business with those who welcome us. The next two things, principles we can use to attack uncertainty is social proof and authority. So the social proof, instead of having your leads or your reviews be

somewhere randomly on your website, it needs to be one of the first things people see. So now we show that right above the website address at the top of your website, the first thing they should see as we read top down should be how many reviews do you have and what's the rating. Next thing, welcome message. Next thing you're going to see is the authority triggers like signs of your expertise, your training, your credentials, etc.

any awards that you've won, and then you can have more testimonials because each one speaks to your trustworthiness. Oh, my gosh. Years in service, right? Serving this community. And I like to do that in five-year terms, by the way. Five-plus years serving this community. Ten-plus years. Fifteen-plus years. So that way you don't have to keep doing it. But if you're only five, five and a half years, guess what? Five-plus sounds better. I love this. There's so much I have to learn. I'm a good student, though. Yeah.

Home service companies, give me a few ways that you would use the different steps of influence. Well, you've got to show evidence that this is not your first rodeo, right? They need to know that you've done this, whatever you're recommending, on lots of people, and they've had good results. So automatically just sharing stories. The other thing I would do is if you've got multiple options, make sure people know that, oh, and by the way, this is our most popular. This is what the majority of our customers choose.

So it's great to give your own personal recommendation. That's authority. But when they know that that's what everybody else has done too, most studies show 15% to 24% increase in that thing. That's key. We talked about the scarcity. Hey, $500 off for the first four who respond and then for every other person who responds, well, I'm sorry I ran out of the $500 ones, but I do have a $100 gift card I could give you. Remember, stop using coupons.

People don't like discounts and coupons. Those are entitlements. Repackage it as a gift certificate or a gift card. You're telling me coupons aren't good. I like to repackage them because we feel entitled to discounts and coupons. There's no influence in entitlement. But if we're given a gift as a gift certificate, if it's repackaged, if it's a physical gift card. I had gift cards to my own practice that I gave people for that very reason.

You get a gift card first. Hey, thank you for bringing us. Here's a gift card from us to you. No matter what happens, we just appreciate you for bringing us out. And then, oh, I can use that towards this thing at the end that you said I need? Yeah, of course you can. Oh, wow, thank you so much. So, again, if you were going to give them $500 off anyway, give it to them first as a gift card and then let them choose to use it for your service later. The gift card is actually really interesting. And you think the conversion rate, are you big into A-B testing things? Mm-hmm.

And you study a lot of this stuff. You study case studies and different things. You have to. You know, there's a book by Chet Holmes. He passed away. Where he would do these massive case studies. And one of the companies he worked with was a carpet company. And he said, you know, what's your average carpet sell? They told him it was a lot industrial. And so they did this massive case study. And they figured out that actually carpets actually make your workplace a lot healthier.

They actually absorb the germs. But after six months, they spread germs like crazy. You get sicker. They proved this, and the average time you'd go to get your carpet cleaned, they said, was like 1.8 years. After this study came out and they educated their client, they switched to six months, which was three times the frequency of

which was amazing. Yeah. And I love using this type of thing. You've got a million other things. Is there anything else real quick for the home service people listening? There's a lot of business people listening just in general, but yeah. Well, you were going to ask like, what, how do you know the best gift card or amount or what to give? So one of my favorite things and one of my best promotions ever was to let other people's giveaways be my gift.

Pairing what you're doing and what you could give them with other services that are not competing with you but might have value to that person is important. So for me, like I looked at the maid industry and I realized that they had competed so much on price that they were now trying to use the foot in the door strategy. They're giving away an hour to two hour cleaning of your home, hoping that you'll appreciate this reciprocity and hoping that you'll bring them back and pay them.

So when I saw that with these companies, I just reached out to one of them and said, hey, I see you're giving this away. You're committed to giving this away. Can I give it away for you? Right? And they were like, well, of course. Can I promote you to people and my customers, right, my people? They're like, fantastic. Yeah, and thus was born my clean teeth, clean house promotion. Come in, and as my gift to you, we'll send somebody to clean your home on top of that. So there was nothing out of pocket for you? Zero. Zero.

But I get the benefit of giving them, I call this scratch two things off your list. Wait, so I can use Tommy in A1 and not only do I get my garage door fixed, but somebody's going to clean my home? Somebody's going to do my mobile dry cleaning? Somebody's going to bring me dinner? The only apprehension I have about that, and this is a big commitment issue I have,

is when I do an affiliate deal with somebody at all, like they're your client. Imagine if those cleaning people came in, they did a horrible job, they tried to gouge them. So I make them sign this document saying, if at any time you make my client, you can't really give a refund on $0. So how do you protect that? I vet the heck out of them. Yeah. So not only does the whole team gets the house cleaned, I've surveyed like 10 of my patients I trust to be the beta test.

And I asked them all the same question. So this actually came up with a nail salon place because I wanted to get some gift cards from different, you know, guy services versus women's services versus family things. And I'm like, well, yeah, who doesn't like getting their nails done? Women do. So I sent my team as my reciprocity gift to my team. I said, hey, ladies, I picked a place across the street. I'm buying your nails. Go get them done. And all I want to know is I told my lead assistant is, is this a place you would refer? Whatever your criteria is, I don't know what that is because I don't know anything about nails, but.

would you send somebody here? So after the first place, you know, 14 of my team members, I just paid for their nails to get done. Well, so what do you think? She was like, no, not this place. Sterilization's not good. It's sketchy. We think we're going to get a fungus. The work isn't that good, and the communication was terrible. It's like, okay, so not that place. Next month, I pick another place. How was it? And she was like, no, not this place either. Third month, I pick another place. Now I'm thinking, crap, now I'm paying for nails every month. Yeah.

And this one, my team members like this is the place. Metal sterilization bins. They actually have a sterilizer. They showed us that building trust. This is the place we all recommend.

Social proof, the consensus. All right, if the consensus says this is it, I said, don't leave. Send the other team home. Now I go and I talk to the manager and I'm like, hey, nice to meet you. I'm Dr. Phillips. I'm here to pay for my team. Let me ask you, was that a good day for you? Was that good that I brought all 14 of them here? Is that a normal day for you? And he's like, dude, this is amazing. Thank you so much. Hey, my pleasure. So I'm reminding them that I'm the one that already gave him a gift of the business. Right.

The next thing I'm going to do is use liking and praise and say, oh, and by the way, I just want you to know this is the third place my team has been. This is the only place they would refer people to. They have nothing but high – we're going to give you Google reviews. They have nothing but high things to say, so well done. He's like, wow, thank you so much. Hey, my pleasure. Now I'm going to ask commitment questions. Let me ask you, could you use more new clients? Because if he said no, that's the end of the conversation. But if he says yes, you see I'm already walking him to where I want to go, right?

I want him to give me the gift card for free, but I have to show him that it's not really going to cost him anything either. So now I'm like, yeah, well, are you marketing? Yes. Are you giving away as a coupon? Yes. 10% off or whatever. I was like, well, how much is that in dollars? He says, that's about five bucks. I said, okay, can I give that away for you? And he's like, what? Yeah, I want to promote you to my patients and future and past. Doesn't matter. Can I give this away for you as a gift card? And he's like,

That's amazing. Thank you. So a $10 gift card, a $5 to $10 gift card. In this case, it was a $5 one because that's what he was already giving away. I get the benefit of the gift for the patient and the reciprocity that generates. The business wins because it only costs them when the person shows. And I want, in my mind now, the customer wins because it really is a fantastic experience. This is a place we really believe in people should go.

This is genius. This is genius stuff. If somebody wants to get a hold of you, Chris, what's the best way to do that? Easiest way is just Chris at Cialdini.com. Chris at Cialdini.com. One other question, and then I got a couple closing questions. This is it. This is it. So what have you found the best way to get reviews from your clients? I keep beating the – so here's the best way to get a review. The commitment. The commitment.

It's going to be a commitment, but truly it starts with reciprocity. So when we think of reciprocity and gifts, we think of physical, tangible things you give somebody, like the gift card or cash or whatever. What's actually even more powerful are the intangible gifts you give people. Your time, listening to them, that empathy like your mom did on the phone, that's a gift to people who don't normally receive that.

favor, right? Things you can't quite put your hand on, but these to me are the most powerful gifts. And so when you know you've given somebody something like this, when they genuinely thank you or praise you for what you did, when they didn't have to, even if it meant nothing to you and even if they just paid you for it, what they're trying to tell you is they still feel obligated to do something else.

So a lady comes in my practice. I squeeze her in during lunch. She had broke her front tooth. I had the whole thing fixed, looked phenomenal in 20 minutes. No shots, no pain. I was happy. She paid my full fee. I thought we were done. I'm walking out. She stops me. She goes, no, seriously, you don't know what you did for me today. What do you mean? She goes, I'm in real estate and I make my money off closings. And I was so embarrassed by my front tooth breaking off that I was going to have to cancel my three closings this afternoon until next month.

and I called other dental offices, and they couldn't get me in for two weeks. You got me in today because my headline was call today, get in today. I lived up to it, no pain. She goes, this is the best experience I've ever had. Of course, I'm looking at the front like, she didn't pay, right? That's all I needed. But the act was she still, it wasn't enough. She wanted to do something. So I was like, well, yeah, you're welcome. Would you mind helping me out? Would you mind doing a five-star Google review? Telling that story would really help us out here.

And literally two minutes later, Google alert hits. Boom. New review. Thanks, Cindy. Yep. So listen for these intangible gifts. When you give this service, you're already giving it away. You've already done it. Yep. So strike while the influence iron's hot because especially if they're older, there might be a barrier. They may not know how to do it. Right. But if you're there. Help them do it. Yep. So if you're my mom who's 74, no way in hell is she doing that on her phone. Yep. Unless you help her. Now, if today's not the moment, this is where the commitment comes in.

Two questions you got to ask. Hey, so when you go to do that review later, are you going to do that on your phone or a laptop or desktop computer? This or that, choose. Automatically, by answering the question, they're making more of a voluntary commitment. They're more likely to do it. I'll do it on my phone. Okay, great. What would make this convenient or easier for you? Should I send you a text link to do it or would you prefer an email? Oh, I need a text. I don't check emails or whatever. Oh, great. Then I'll send you a text. Thank you so much. Hey, you're welcome.

And if possible, the last piece of the puzzle is, oh, by the way, here's a little postcard or a Google five-star sticker or something like that. Thank you so much. Like we slip it in their hygiene bag. So when they get home that night because they've been distracted all day and hadn't time to do it and probably forgot about you, when they drop out their toothbrush and toothpaste from that bag, what comes out? Thank you for your five-star review. With a QR code that can take them right there.

when they actually have the time to do it. Make it convenient. Remind them of the commitment that they made is the last piece. Maybe that's a text later. Hey, if I don't see it, can I text you later?

Can I email you later? Whatever. But find some way, get permission to follow up and remind them of that commitment. Yeah, there's software that automates that. One of the things I always ask is I just want to make sure, Chris, did we give you 505 services I promised earlier? We start with that, we end with that. And if there's anything I can do right now to make sure. And then we got a QR code with a picture of our family. Nice. And I say, I want to show you as I'm cleaning up here, Chris, a little bit. This is my daughter. This is my wife. This is my son. This is my dog.

Tell you why I do this, Chris. Give them a life I never had. Thanksgiving comes around, we're going to have a great Thanksgiving turkey. Going to give them a Christmas I never had when I was a kid. When you leave a review, if I did a great job, people call and they ask me by name if they see a picture. Basically, this is me, a way to giving my family the best life that I never had. Would you be willing to do that for me? And if you say that correctly, they do it right then and there. Totally. And you've got to leave a review for the person, not the company. That's what people don't understand. Oh, yeah.

Chris, if you had a book or two to recommend, obviously Cialdini's your book, the complete book on dental marketing. Is there any other books that really you think the listeners should be aware of? Geez, there's so many books. Well, books that have impacted me, anything by Cialdini, my trifecta of mentors, anything by Dan Sullivan is critical. In my mind, nobody understands the mindset of the entrepreneur better than him.

and everything that he preaches is gold. And something most people may not know about, a book from Kathy Colby, another Phoenix resident, K-O-L-B-E. You've heard of personality tests and assessments and IQ tests. Well, Colby measures a completely different part of your mind and who you are. And it's set by the time you're age seven. It doesn't change your entire life. So when it comes to team management, communication,

I haven't found anything objectively better because it actually gives me predictive value. And now I got something I can work with for today and tomorrow. So anything by Kathy Colby, those three, they were instrumental to my business success. I love this. And we've talked about a lot of things. I got a hell of a lot of notes to implement. Maybe we didn't talk about something. I'm going to let you close this out.

Yeah. I mean, obviously, we didn't talk about too much marketing, but all this affects marketing, right? Every bit of it. It's kind of interesting. You know, I did a direct mail piece and I ran it to the same list of people for 10 years. Had a company design it for me and I got a good return. It was great. But after I learned these principles and after I learned how to apply them and amplify these things, I

I went back and finally stopped being lazy and I stripped down that direct mail piece and myself and I rebuilt it and tried to add as many of the influence principles as I could. Authority, social proof, the welcoming, liking, scarcity messaging in there. You're not going to get them all in, but as many as you feasibly could in an advertisement. And I literally sent it out to the same list I've been mailing to for 10 years. Double the new patient count. So no matter what you're doing, if you haven't added any level of influence, you're

All you have to do is add one thing and send it right back out to the same people and you'll get a better response. And the more of those things you can add and find to add, you only got one way to go. I love it. Well, Chris, this has been one of the best podcasts because I should have spent three hours. Like this could have been a three hour podcast.

But looking forward to tonight. Yeah. And thanks for doing this, brother. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. Yeah. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.