Brad: Thank you Kris. Always look forward to our conversation.

Kris: One of the things that you talk about which is really timely and important concept for right now is how businesses can move forward without spending a lot of money on advertising. Right?

Brad: Yes, that's correct and certainly counterintuitive to how most business owners think about growing. The number one message that most people tend to go to or to implement is advertising but, literally, there could be to different leveragability points already existing inside of the business that they're just not taking advantage of and that could be right under their nose. With a little bit of optimization, you can start seeing retention rates increasing, average transactions increasing, frequent purchases increasing, bills conversion increasing. Our firm concentrates on the only four ways to grow a business and again in this order; the first is to increase the number of new prospects. So, going back earlier, most people feel that the only way to do that is by advertising to complete strangers but, there's other ways to increase prospects. You can increase your referrals; you can joint-venture with another business, non-competing. You can strategic align and there are a couple other items that you can do there. The second is increasing the average transaction, which means, how much money someone spends with you at a given time. So, if the average transaction in the company or firm is about $1000, what are some of the ways that you can get the average transaction to be $1500 or $1600, which essentially leaves you with more margins and more profit? The third way is increasing the frequency of purchases. Sometimes, people would just make a purchase one time with the company and the company feels that they've got no reason to come back, they bought everything they needed that one particular case but, also what we find is people are going elsewhere for those same purchases again with other competitors. So, important that you make sure that you keep those clients in your house. The last is increasing your conversion rate. Companies that have sales people, they may have sales people that sell two out ten appointments or three out of ten appointments but, they also have a sales person filling five out of ten or six out ten or seven out of ten. So, imagine if you only two of those and ten of the other type that's closing % or %. What would happen to the business if you're able to get those two out of ten and three out of ten sales people to catch up with the A-players and were now converting five, six seven out of ten. Now, you've just increased your closed-ratio and also your profits just by making some changes and some tweaks in the sales process to get performance up. So, those are the four ways to grow a business, the only four ways to do are by those four formulas. One of things that Reset Strategies specializes in is taking a look at a business, over and above its advertising strategy. When Reset Strategies comes in, we take a look at the positioning, the branding, the messaging, the sales process, the reception at the door if it's a refill space. How the phones are being answered if its company that people call into? What the follow-up looks like. Are you engineering referrals or are they happening accidentally? Are you innovating new ways to get more prospects to buy more from you while they're at your location? Upselling. What does your web marketing look like? Are you converting people who come on line to give you a call? You already paid for the website. You already paid for the design. You already paid for the marketing of it. Are you really converting as many people as you possibly could from that website into sales? It's a very, very, very heavy intensive intrepid investigation of where your company is performing, how it's performing, where it's under-performing and where it's leaking revenue. So the total gain is how do you stop losing money? You see the focus on many people is, how do I gain more money but the interesting question is, how much could you be losing now? How do you stop leaks? How do you stop the profit erosion from happening? Always, depending on new dollars to grow your business when, the dollars that you've already spent could be optimized to bring in more profit. I'll give you a great case study. This was a very lengthy Reset period. It took a little over months. Normally, our resets are geared to occur within to months but most of our clients have been with us three or four years. It was an in flux from all the regulation, all the reimbursements that have been cut and the ability to offer services at an affordable rate based on reimbursement dollars and the Affordable Care Act. So, we were called in, an ophthalmologist practice that looks at your vision, your eyes and they also sold prescription glasses, sun glasses, everything that had to do with your vision. The two past two or three years, they had been spending quite a bit of money on direct mail. They sent postcards inviting people to come in for an appointment. They did some things around town, some community marketing, if you will. They ran some newspaper ads and the doctor did a very diligent job of trying to quantify where his money was going and how it was being returned in terms of sales and appointments and business and all that good stuff. When he handed us the tracking sheet over the past months, it was very sad because, he had the word referral literally contained thousands of names, meaning that the number was over 1200. The direct marketing section and the newspaper section and the cinema advertising section, they all had big fat goose-eggs on them. Now, I'm not saying that that was accurate because, it can be hard to track advertising unless you have certain protocols into place like, call tracking number or certain offers that people have to mention or certain things that they'll have to bring in, or the timeliness of something. If you run an ad and all of the sudden, there's an influx of calls coming in, then typically, you can equate that to your message that has gone out. What we had found was there were several different areas during the -day Reset that we were able to expose $. million worth of lost revenue and it gets that serious. In the Reset month, we're able to identify and quantify the number of dollars being lost due to their current system, processes, marketing, sales approach and positioning in the market. So, when we put the plan together to recover the lost revenue without spending more money on advertising, the first thing we did was, we obviously omitted the ad budget, the cinema advertising, the direct marketing advertising, post cards, if you will and the newspaper advertising. We basically, we put it to a halt. Most people, when I say, "Reset Strategies help business grown with spending more money on advertising," sometimes that can get a little bit confusing with advertising people and marketing people. They say, "What are you the anti-advertising guy?" It's really not the case. The secret that I'd to share on this interview is we're not against advertising at all. We love advertising and we want everybody to advertise where they think they can advertise to get results. The problem is, Kris, if their advertising does work, they still have so much leakage internally from all their systems, processes, sales approaches and position, that they're squeezing the fullest yield and the fullest profit out of that result. So, the -day Reset is designed to show a client or company how much money they're losing, how we can recover it in a seven-step program and of the seven steps, the very last step is advertising. So we fix all the leaks, we fix all the challenges; we plug all the holes, until we go back out into market to start advertising it again. One of the things that we realized that once we stopped the advertising budget, we necessarily didn't see a drop in appointments. So, that's a perfect example of, "Ok, so there's no drop in appointments, so therefore, it must be verifying that the advertising may not have been effective as one would believe." So, that was the first test of, are people responding to the advertising because we don't want to put advertising in a bad name, we just wanted to make sure if we saw new- patient appointments go down by removing the ads for days, then that would checkpoint of, "Okay great. It looks as if there are other things we can do inside the practice to facilitate better growth and better practice." of their clients and patients, former and then active and present. We actually called patients from each category. So, we called current patients, former patients, which were those patients who hadn't been in for a year and inactive patients who hadn't been in for two years. One of the things that we uncovered during that particular focus was that many of the people, once they left the eye doctor, weren't aware that they had scheduled another appointment. That was to be conducted one year away. That's sort of the industry standard, similar to your vehicle. The auto industry has said, you're supposed to get your oil changed every 3000 miles. That's sort of just burned into our mind-set. The eye practice is no different. You're supposed to come back annually and it looked as if percentage-wise, less than % of his people and their people were coming back when they were supposed to every year. So, we actually watched the process occur, literally in the exam room. What we found was what the person came to the doctor and they checked in, the information for that patient was then put in a box and then grabbed by the doctor once it was time for their appointment. Inside that folder was a prewritten card that shared with him, they're next follow-up appointment and when it was going to be. Out of people that we talked with, less than half of them could ever remember even getting that card or saving that card. So, what we found was, most people when they call back and were sent the automated call reminder that your appointment is Thursday at :, literally had no idea that they had scheduled an appointment. It was almost as if it was thrown upon them and never explained and we called them phantom-appointments.

Kris: You're listening to an exclusive interview found on Michael Senoff's right, because, then they're thinking, "Well, I never made this. Why are they sending me this?" Instead of gaining loyalty...

Brad: I'm glad you picked up on that. So now, you're arguing, right? It’s like, "I never set this appointment." I specifically remember being on the phone, listening to some of the recorded calls go out because, that's another approach that we have and you would hear people say, "I never set that appointment, you did."

Kris: And worse, they're probably going to their friends and saying, "Oh, that doctor, I liked him but, he does these things where he schedules an appointment when you haven't made one."

Brad: So, it's just really strange, right? So, we realized that the propensity there for people to miss their appointment the next year, obviously was very, very, very, very high. So, that was one thing that we found. What we were able to do, now you had to realize, you had to wait about a year before you saw something improve because, those people were scheduled to come back a year. What would happen is the doctor would give the patient the appointment card in the exam room. Instead of having the patient walk back to the checkout desk, the new process was the doctor walked out to the checkout desk with the patient, with the card and while the administration was there putting in the information, the doctor would say, "Now Caroline, I recommend that you come back next year. I've already set up an appointment based on the time and day. Do you think that will work for you?" Now, you're having a conversation about what's going to occur a year later. % of people will say, "Yeah, that's fine." The doctor would then say, "If you have your cell phone on you, could you pick it up and put this in your calendar so you don't forget it. It's very important that we see again." Another % of people would do that. Some of those patients were elderly and didn't have that functionality on their phone. They would have a conversation. The doctor would then walk away and the office staff or the clerical position would say again, "Caroline, we have you down for January 11th at : a.m. I you feel is still going to be a good time?" You'll have some people, and the reason why we engineered this, we had some people who would say, "No, that's not going to work. Actually, March 11th is going to be better." That's exactly what we wanted because then, they would know when their appointments were. It's a long way to get to the short story here but at the end of the day, their pre- appointment rate, which were called pre-appoint for simplicity, they had a % or % pre-appointment show-rate after this process was instituted and put into place. In the year that it ran, they had over a % pre-appointment rate. It was through the roof because, they brought it up and they talked about it. I know that sounds so simple but again, it's another leverage point. They were leaking patients out of the practice who weren't agreeing with when their appointment was or when they were supposed to come back. So, we brought it to the forefront as a check-out policy from the doctor and the clerical position to fix that leaky revenue spot.

Kris: Right. I think, Brad, too, when you're doing something day-to-day, you forget when somebody else comes into your world or your business world, it's different for them and you really have to spell things out for people, right?

Brad: You do and that's a perfect example of not being too assuming of things. Their day-to-day practice in that business isn't about marketing and sales. It's about getting the paperwork in and getting it accurate so there's no funny business they've had from their audits are not leaking patient information because it's so sensitive. Really, people assume that the patients were just taking their word as what they were supposed to do and it was never brought up in the context. So, you have to get the assumption out of your head. I think it was Sam Kennedy because sometimes, we have to spell things out for people. protested against. You can imagine a simple tweak in the system but, Reset Strategies is all about change. Believe it or not, not too many people like change. of the clerical staff because they said, "If we bring it up, people will cancel their "Well, isn't that better, then having them on the books and not being able to fill another spot with someone who does want to pay you money. Because it's on the books for : and she doesn't show, you couldn't anyone else there that was literally going to come in." So, we had to sell the staff on how this was actually going to help matters and eventually, we won and the results speak themselves. The one thing that I really loved about results is once somebody has some, they really get addicted to them. When the clerical staff and the positioning and the other employees come back and they're not doing this process over and over again, the doctor really doesn't let that slide by anymore. Its implement practice that has to occur at all times, just like McDonald's and their system. This is a system now that can reduce the number of no-shows by increasing the amount conversation from the front end about something that's going to happen within the next year. Do you think that one conversation allowed us to receive such a The secondary byproduct of my conditioning someone to make sure they don't appointment, they literally, Kris, when there's a long time, receive one piece of correspondence about that appointment. It was in the form of a letter, basically touting, "Hey, make sure you come in." We're not sure if people received that or read it or how many of them did. So, we instituted a new system that they got six touch points during the year which all had great information and also talked about their upcoming appointment. So we feel that combined with bringing it up on the front end and continuing to be in front of them six times over the course of the year, this wasn't something they were doing, really helped the retention of patients coming back each year. So, it was a two-pronged approach. Bring it up on the front end; make sure you stay in front of them until they come back.

Kris: For more exclusive interviews on business, marketing, advertising and copy were those phone calls, post cards, how did you do that?

Brad: That's a great question. The touch points were a mix. We instituted a new software system that we recommended that the office purchase which was text- messaging software. People could opt in to be reminded via text. So we used appointment. For those who don't know what lumpy mail is, literally, in the sense that it's not a flat envelope or flat postcard. It's literally a lumpy piece of mail. What we would send, it looked like glasses actually. They were made out of plastic material and they mailed out just as if they were glasses. They didn't go in a package. They were very sturdy. It said on the lenses, "We look forward to seeing you." On the back of the lenses, it had the date of the appointment. That was the last touch point.

Kris: That's very creative.

Brad: Yeah, it stands out, of course. Also too, from the surveys we had conducted of the people, I believe Kris, that you can get some pretty good ratios of patterns going forward if you do to calls. I think to calls of a customer base or non-customer base can give some pretty good patterns. So, some people made the comment, "Yeah, they act like they don't even know me there." Everybody remembers pop culture, the TV show Cheers and the jingle. Well, everybody does want to go somewhere where they know their name. We knew it was probably a little impossible to instill a culture of Disney World, if you will into a group of employees who had been working in the same environment together for, the business has been around for years, most of them had been working there for a decade together. They were already habitual in their own mannerisms. It's very hard to turn a Disney World into someone who had never even had that experience. What we did was, and again borrowing this from other successful initiatives, we placed a big floor sign where you first walked into the practice. When you open the door, the first thing you saw, we instituted a new policy and it was done daily, "You put everybody's name on the board who was coming in for an appointment. Not their last, just their first because of HPA. You put everybody's name on the welcome board when they first walk in. It says, "Welcome, John, Gina Stephanie, Henry, Joe," and you do that for the first half of the afternoon. Then, they closed for lunch for to . Between that time, we had that updated for the afternoon session. many time during meetings like, "Oh yeah, people are always making comments about their name being on the board out there." So, it was another tool because, we knew we weren't going to be able to rely on the employees to do it % of the time but we knew if they could write it down, it would always be there. So, certainly can't measure Disney World's treatment of people but, everyone knows it's good. So those are some of the things that we're talking about here. Things that go above and beyond, ads, brochures, social media, fancy graphics, things of that nature. Moving past that, trying to create a culture of embracement really.

Kris: I want to stop you there a minute, Brad, because, that's interesting for me to hear for a long-time traditional radio background. One of the most frustrating things for us has often been, when we were selling traditional advertising, often we would run campaigns for people and we would be involved in their business and see what's happening on the other end and see that they were missing so many steps. There's was nothing the advertising could have done to actually increase their revenues because, they weren't covering the phone or things like that. So, it's interesting to hear you say that you guys go in and you really look at these things and have some brilliantly creative ideas, it sounds like too, fun things.

Brad: You're exactly right, Kris. I came from the traditional advertising background as well. I sold radio, as a matter of fact, one of the largest beer distributors in the United States, one of the largest ice cream companies in the United States were clients of mine. I also sold prints and mobile advertising for one of the largest we try to fix all of that through the first six steps before we get to the final frontier which is advertising again. Once they do advertising again in a different way or an optimized way, they'll be able to yield the fullest productivity. So, it's about putting those systems and processes in place to be able to take advantage when advertising does work.

Kris: So Brad, when you first went into this optician’s office, how much actual revenue were they leaving behind by not having systems in place?

Brad: $. Million is where we pegged it.

Kris: For the year?

Brad: Yeah.

Kris: Wow.

Brad: I'm not kidding. That's the number that we presented. We had it all itemized based on what we felt like we could conservatively retain with percentages and all with different systems and processes. I mean, Kris, here is another great example. No-shows, earlier I'm talking about people who are not coming to their appointment, so that's called a no-show. They would tabulate how many no- shows would occur. There was this process that they were using. Their process was, what they call a confirmation call, which is an automated call that sends out to the phone number of the patient that has an automated voice that says, "Hi, this is Such and Such from Dr. Such and Such at Such and Such, Such and Such Associates. Your appointment scheduled for :, Wednesday, June 2nd. Please call us back if you need to reschedule." Would you know how many people have the best of intentions to not let people think that they're not going to show but then, work happens, a sick child occurs, an emergency phone call happens, "I'm tired, that phone call that I heard the message at : a.m. It's not call back and reschedule and even those people who did call back and confirm, there were still patients that no-showed. Part of the game, he had one of the highest no-show rates in the industry. It was like %. It was outrageous. We thought, "Okay, what if we created a system that, minutes after someone's appointment and they weren't there, what if one of the staff, picked up the phone and called the people." It's like, "Oh, I never thought of that before." Then I said, "Maybe minutes is too long. What if we do it in ? That way we could still people, you can still come in." Then my business partner negotiated us down to minutes. Now it was set. So, minutes after an appointment was missed, a phone call was generated, live by staff members. The way that it opened was when someone answered the phone, "Hi Jenny, this is Sharon over at Such and Such Associates. I'm just wondering is everything ok?" That was the script. "Oh my gosh. I'm supposed to minutes." "Great. Doctor has put on his schedule. I will let him know you will be arriving just a few moments late." Once they started doing that, they ended up getting four and almost five out of ten no-shows that we were happening on a daily basis to come back into the office the same day, simply because they made that live phone call. They'd never done that before. Now, you've got more revenue coming in the door versus leaking out the door. What did we do with the other four or five or six no-shows? We also found out that those people weren't receiving another item from the eye practice after they no-showed an appointment for six months after they no-showed the appointment. By that time, it's out of my life, out of my world, out of my desire. So, we incorporated a quick, if we weren't able to get them on the phone and they didn't call us within hours, part of the new system was within hours, a post card on it. It had a post it note and it went out in a big huge, I think it was 6X9, I mean a big fat post card. The other post cards they were sending out before, were the type that you'd send from a vacation or something. It gets lost in the mail pretty easily. So, this thing stuck out and on the front end it said, "Sorry we missed you," on the post it note and it had a picture of the doctor on the front, whatever doctor they saw or were supposed to see. One of the things, when you turned it over, it says, "Hi John. I was told that you weren't able to come to your appointment at such and such a time on such and such a date and I really missed you. I'd really like to see you again." Like it was a message from the doctor. Originally, they were sending messages from the company. Nobody wants to take to a company. They want to talk to a person. So, we started utilizing new systems to get more no-shows back on the appointment schedule in a quicker amount of the time. So, you can imagine, I'm talking about these things individually but, when you start to compound-effect, just like any interest rate or any interest-bearing money account, once you start compounding the welcome board, the process, the checkout, the conversation, the direct mail, the touch-point, the automated call, the live call, the doctor sending. You get seven or nine of these things working like a V- engine. It's all fueling growth from where you were leaking money. So, we updated the phone appointment reminder script. They also had a process where they were calling out if someone confirmed their appointment, then they were to receive another call three days before their appointment from a live staff happening. What we found out was less than % were. The reason we got was, "We're so busy up here. We can't make these calls. We can't keep track of all this stuff all the time and we've got paperwork that's going on." We thought, "Okay, we need a system that ties again." We found an employee had four hours, of what we observed of her doing, of unimportant tasks. The doctor's still paying her the same amount of money but for four hours a day, she wasn't really doing a whole lot consistently. So, the recommendation to the doctor was, "Hey, what if you allow us pay Jennifer and place her in a row of customer service, client advocate, patient advocate, whatever the title it is, to actually make sure % of these phone calls happen. He agreed. Now, we had a scenario where % of the time, the live phone call reminder was going out. The voice mail that were left for the appointment reminder, because reminder, we're trying to keep these no-shows, originally was, "Hi John this is Sandy calling from Dr. Such and Such office. Calling about your appointment on Monday at :. Call us back if you need to reschedule," or something like that on the voice mail. We found that not very many people called back. Now, this is where you'll have to give a little bit of marketing spin a little credit here. The new message was, "Hi Jennifer, this is Sandy calling from Dr. Such and Such offices. Dr. Such and Such wanted me to call you because he has a question. Please call me at blank, blank, blank, -5555." How many phone calls do you think we got back then?

Kris: Probably a lot. You're listening to an interview on Michael Senoff's

Brad: A ton and the question was, "Are you going to be at your appointment on Monday at : p.m.?" "Yes." It worked beautifully. So, updating that information to come from the doctor, changing the appointment reminder scripting, personalizing the post card...Oh gosh, it was big. This gentleman had been in business for years and he had a record-breaking year to say the least from all of these things being implemented. But the biggest hemorrhaging of money came from people who would call and cancel their appointment. Once we were able to decipher all the analysis from people who did the right thing that called and cancelled their appointment. "Hey, I'm not able to make it in on February whatever," and the staff number would take them out of the system and put cancel. They put them in this, what we call tickler files in the marketing business. It's a system where you put people into when you want to do an automated reminder of something and sort of, you know, the tickler files in plain terms or follow up system. They would put these people in the cancellation system but the cancellation system never had a structure to remind them to follow back up on the people who cancel. We uncover 4971 people who cancelled within six months that had never been called, contacted to come back in two years.

Kris: Wow. That's really throwing money off the table.

Brad: That is a ton of money. Now, the first instinct is, "Oh my gosh. It's too late. We've lost these people. The longer we go, they can get their services from somewhere else or they stop getting their services." We don't know if it's too late but, what we happening. Now, all be it, it was a manual process from the front end, it's now systematized. Once someone can't, obviously there was a different messaging said, "Yes, I can't make my appointments. This is John Jenkins. I can't make my appointment on Wednesday at : p.m." "Okay, great. Well, just give us a call back whenever you can and we'll get you back on the schedule." Talk about a fresh out, right? So, the new scripting came into, "Oh gosh, John. I'm sorry to hear that. Is everything ok." "Oh yeah, everything's fine. It's just my mother-in-law, my father- in-law, my son, my dog," whatever the reason was, "It's ok not a problem at all. I removed you from the schedule. What's the next best available day?" We're picking up %, % rescheduling right there on the spot, that they've never had before because, they never had that system. Then all the others that would cancel, we would within hours, same person, same lady who helped us on the reminder would call and say, "Oh, I understand you weren't able to make your appointment last Thursday at : and Dr. Such and Such wanted me to give you a call and to make sure to get you back on the schedule. While we're the phone, while we're on the phone (I'm going to say it again), while we're on the phone (one of the most powerful phrases you can use), while we're on the phone, what day works best for you?" Now, they were getting additional % of people rescheduling because we engineered the contact point. So, the good news is that this company, this practice, this medical practice had moved from being a corporate-looking juggernaut to personal concierge services, calling out, making sure we didn't miss anybody and we actually called the cancellation policy, the No Patient Left Behind, which was a spin from Bush's era of No Child Left Behind. So, that system works now fluidly in his offices. Every week, he gets a new batch of cancels and there's a handful of doctors there and every week, someone calls them and recruits them back on the appointment schedule. All of that is the money he was already paying the employees to begin with, she's just now doing more productive work to get more output for the dollar for her services. There's no advertising dollars invested. It's just taking advantage of the time that you already have available just by doing something differently that produces more results.

Kris: Brad, how much did their revenues increase.

Brad: They had a record-breaking year. So, they were a little over million, . million. Now remember, that's gross revenue, that's not reimbursement payout, increase in revenue in the first year with an expense of % versus the original expense of something percent on TV, radio, cinema, the whole deal. We virtually cut it in half.

Kris: What had he been spending on advertising?

Brad: He had been spending somewhere around $,.

Kris: Per year?

Brad: Yeah, when it's all said and done. There's paper, cinema advertising was monstrous. He advertised in a lot of cinemas. Are you familiar with that platform? When you go to the movies and before the movies, yeah, he was real big there. I receipts per patient, I think the receipt per patient was roughly $; we'd get receipts of $6910. That is a to return on investment. Brenda and I will post receipts over dinner tonight." That was the first week of the phone call reminder script. So, in the first week, it was a to ROI, which is pretty big.

Kris: And also, you know, we're talking numbers here but certainly, just to have people being happy coming into his practice, I'm sure gave him a lot of satisfaction. I know a lot of doctors really value and appreciate that.

Brad: You know, you have realize too and I had really understand, doctors don't come from a business or marketing school. They come from the doctor school. So, we had to really influence his understanding of marketing and how important he was in the exam for everything that was going on. I think that the mindset shift, that he was causing some of the bottle-neck, by not being proactive and fixing some of the leaks, realized that he really had to up his game while he was in the exam room to give everybody an enjoyable experience. I'll give you another great example about the exam room customization and because I've been to Disney World, I just borrowed this concept. When we're resetting something, Kris, we're working on the specific part of the business. So, anything about the glasses or the dispensary, as they call it or the prescription contacts. Until someone or some result come back from the company, that what we're doing to reset a certain portion of the business hits a certain benchmark or we feel like it's good to go and it's automated enough and it's habitual enough, then we'll on to the other side of the business practice. I'll give you an example. Once we were finished doing all of the front end, confirming, having conversations about appointment, making sure the cancellation came back, making sure the no-shows were reduced, making sure we could get people back in, doing the name board and treating people a different way and there were lots of other things that we implemented there. The technician, as they call them in that business, she would open the door and she would yell out, "Jennifer Hadley." Right, you've been at doctor's office before, right? We stopped that. We actually implemented a process where the technician walked all the way out into the waiting room, as she was looking and smiling at people, and she would say, "Jennifer Hadley." Depending on the gender in the room, she could situate herself between who Jennifer was because, it's a female and over her is four men in a row. She would get closer to the patient instead of yelling across the room and she would say, "The doctor would like to see you now. I'll walk you back." You can't quantify it. You can't measure it. It's just the treatment at Disney World. Again, I'm only sharing a few things but there were so many other variables within that whole system that became like clockwork to them. Once we got the front end working really well, we moved into the prescription glasses and contact area. What we found was a very low number of people who were going to be actual dispensary, which is where they sell the glasses. Once they left their appointment from the doctor, even if the doctor recommended they go get fitted for glasses or contacts, he was walking them out and he was talking about the appointment but, we hadn't instituted to get them over to the dispensary which is on the opposite side of the building. Again, this all observation during these types of resets, you've got to look for every angle to exploit and all the profit forces. like a % close rate. That told us, "Ok, if we can get the people over there, then we stand a better chance of fitting them with glasses, adjusting their glasses for free, talking about glasses, fashion, whatever, sports, hobbies. "What are you doing? Are you biking? Do you need some of these? Do you need a backup pair of sunglasses?" Whatever it was. The problem was, they just weren't even getting over to the dispensary. They just walk out after the checkout. Have you been to Disney World before, Kris? When you get off a ride at Disney World, what happens after you exit the ride? Where do you have to walk through?

Kris: I don't know.

Brad: The gift store.

Kris: Oh, the gift store, of course, yeah. You're listening to an exclusive interview

Brad: So, you walk outside of Space Mountain to try to get back outside and you're walking through the Space Mountain gift shop. You see, Disney World knows that the most vulnerable point of anybody buying anything is when adrenaline is high. Hence, the reason why everybody buys those silly roller coaster pictures and in five months after they're going, "What the heck did I buy this thing for?" So, I thought, "We've got to get these people to walk through the dispensary, at least walk through, at least see. It's on the other side of the building. You don't even have to go that way if you don't want to." New system deployed. Now, the doctor walks the patient out to the checkout station, says the conversation about the appointment, has the conversation about confirming and all that. Then he says, "Shelley," which is the optician, there's a dozen of them over there. Shelley comes up to the patient. Doctor says, "Hi, Ms. Jenkins had a wonderful exam. It looks as if she's going to need some assistance in X. Shelley, why don't you give her a helping hand?" Now, it's very uncomfortable for Ms. Jenkins to say, "Oh no, I'm ok." So, most people went ahead and met with Shelley. What Shelley would do, the first question (new policy, new system), "Are you familiar with what your insurance handles, Ms. Jenkins?" "Oh, I have no idea, none whatsoever." We would literally find a big, big number of people, Kris that didn't even know that their insurance covers glasses, contacts, prescription sunglasses until we actually pulled their insurance and made them aware of it. Literally, money was walking out the door for benefits that somebody had already paid for because, they're paying their monthly insurance premium every month or their company is. So, people would have $, $, $, $ insurance coverage for glasses, contacts, whatever and literally never used them because, they didn't even know. Once we started getting patients coming over and talking with all the opticians, dispensary sales went through the roof. They call it capture-rate in that industry. A capture-rate is referred to as someone who comes in to the dispensary and they capture them as a paying customer for glasses, sunglasses or contact. The capture-rate when we first started, (the industry norm is around %, if you average up, I think the Independent Optometry Association added up something around . million opticians in the US and of those, the average capture-rate was running a little over %, %), this practice's capture rate was %. Not good. After seven months or eight months of implementing the new deployment of the system, their capture-rate is %. All because, we engineered the conversation, not fancy but important.

Kris: So Brad, you obviously, you work for this client, they changed a whole lot of ways that they do business, what do you think were the most important things that they did that provided the best results for them?

Brad: The most important really was going after the orphans, if people know the meaning of that term. The orphans were the people who were overlooked, never contacted again, never recalled. So, in my opinion, the live phone calls, the recapturing of cancellation and increasing the number of people who showed up were the three most important components in this particular company. No question. in Medicare fees will take place %. Thank God we took steps to increase the the Reset program to reduce no-shows, cancellation and reactivate patients has went the extra mile in July, worked extra hours, worked extra hard. July is always the slowest month of the year but, this year, with reactivation, No Patient Left Behind and others, it was the busiest year ever with years in business." So again, one thing we can't take away from systems and processes, Kris, is they never run out. This strategy, and the doctor has always told us that it's the gift that keeps on giving because, it's a system. It can constantly be deployed. Unlike AdWords, which once you stop paying Google, your ad doesn't show When you stop advertising on radio, no one hears it anymore. When you stop advertising in magazines, no one sees it. Strategies and process are the gift that keeps on giving because, you do them no matter what for the rest of your life. There is no stopping live calls from happening. There is no stopping the postcards from going out. That's going to be part of their business structure forever. So, you can't really justify that into words. I think, tactically, I answered your question as far as what were the three things or what were the things you think were the most important but, I want to give you an answer that's more strategic. The number one thing that the doctor did that was most important was business, if he agreed to change. I know that sounds

Kris: That's not an easy thing to do when you have something, especially like said, when it's a -year business with people who have worked there a long time and they're set in their ways. That's a big leap. glasses...part of the reason why people purchase or one of the more comforting confidence-builders in glasses purchases is the warrantee. Right? There's nothing worse than buying a pair glasses and your son riding them over with a bicycle or you dropping them off in the pond or you scratching them up and you've had them for a year. Well, you're SOL because, warrantees run out. So, we realized that we could create a claim and literally deliver on the strongest warrantee in the country. The way we did this was we went to the report and we their warrantee for exchange of the glasses or prescription contacts or prescription sunglasses meaning, the number of people who needed to use their warrantee was very, very, very, very low. So, we thought, "Okay," and this goes back to Michael Senoff's system called Hard to Find Seminars about a unique selling proposition. This practice didn't have a unique selling proposition. It was like, "Me too! We sell glasses. Me too. We do eye exams. Me too." It's "Me Too Marketing" is what we called that, commodity curve. So, we analyzed the numbers and we unveiled the strongest warrantee in the country. It was The Best in Glass, a playoff of Best in Class. Best in Glass Warrantee of years. Walmart has a -year warrantee.

Kris: Yeah, years, that's a long time.

Brad: -year warrantee and we made huge announcement. When you walked into the dispensary, there was a big, fat sign that was right in front of you, very nicely display that said, "Best in Glass -Year Warrantee. Ask your optician for details." We also created a certificate of warrantee much like the authenticated warrantee certificate that you get if you bought something very expensive. You gotten those formal warrantee certificates. Have you ever seen those before?

Kris: Yeah.

Brad: So, we created a warrantee certificate, gold-foiled stamp with their name on it that was handed to them in a black enclosure. We made a big deal about it. If you ever seen baseball cards that are in like a glass-covered, that protects it from getting ripped corners or something. I don't know if you've ever had but I was a big baseball card kid. We would hand that to people, literally and it was heavy. Right, because kinesthetically, you want people to realize how strong this is. So, there's nothing worse that wiping the piece of furniture and then, all of a sudden getting up to it and trying to pick it up and it feels light as a feather. Well, you know the wood's fake, right? There's something different when you run up to a piece of furniture and you grab it and it's so hard and heavy. You can't even lift it. Now, you can justify the price tag. So, the -year warrantee however, was an add-on that you could do as long as you purchased scratch protection and I think it was two other things. So, now what do we do? We're engineering the upsell. They've never had an up sell before. The average transaction that's been through was $ before Reset came in. The average transaction after it's been through Reset was $, - year warrantee. To this day, people can't believe it's that long. Guess how many people have tried to take advantage of it, in the one year since it's been initiated. Any guess?

Kris: One.

Brad: One person. If people can logically get comfortable with what's really going to happen, they can logically make better decisions. Think about Netflix for a minute. I think maybe you and I have spoken about Netflix before and they're business model. This is when they were doing the mailing, not the streaming, but when you would get DVD's in your mail. Guy says, "Yeah, let's do $. as a monthly subscription," I'm not sure what it was when it first came out. Guy says, "Yeah, that's sounds good. What's that get them?" "Oh, well they can order up to movies a month." " movies a month! We'll go bankrupt." Well, the other guy in the room says, "Well, our results actually show or our superficial studies or our early studies show that only . movies will be order by the average person." So, they know that there are going to be some people who push the limit and try to take advantage of really gracious offers but, you've got to get out of the prevention focus. The prevention mindset, you've got to go back into the promotion mindset and you got to go, "But, can I get more sales because I do it. For everyone who wants to take advantage of it or do you want to prevent yourself from making more sales just because one person might take advantage of it.

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Brad: It's non-linear thinking. You can't think linear. You've got to think non-linear. You've got to know the numbers of what really happens. You can open a Snickers bar if you're not satisfied, you can literally send the packet back for a Snickers bar. Now, I've never met anybody who's ever done that but the guarantee is another secret to gross out advertising because, if you have an iron- clad guarantee, you can do a lot because other competitors are too weak and too timid and too worried to guarantee anything. I'll give you a great example. We work with a big supplier of tools and safety that % of what was ordered from them, I think through like 5000 or 6000 cubes were always in stock. Literally, we could say, "Hey, we've got what you need, when you need it, whenever you need it, guaranteed in stock." That's what we could say. So, we made it even better. We had the owner add the inventory. In companies are doing. They're eliminating inventory to control their cost. We got

Kris: I was going say that's the last company on earth that does that, I think.

Brad: Yeah. And so, believe me Kris, when I say, it was not an easy sale. The client was not so fast to move on that one. That one took a while but needless to say, we finally proved it to him. We got him started with things and then we went to things. The way we tested it. I'm going to reveal something here that I don't recommend people doing unless they have the finances and you want to do certain things but Reset Strategies took the risk for the client. We said, "Listen, I or whatever the first phase was. If you don't have it, you'll pay that company that was trying to order it, $ for not having what they needed." "What? You got to be kidding me." "And, Reset is going to pay it." We removed the risk from the client. Sometimes, you have to practice what you preach, right? So we said, "Hey, no worries, we'll pay every $ card that comes back to you. We'll do it. We're that confident this will go over well. We don't think that you'll give out one single card." We were right. Then moved it to . Did the same thing. We upped it to $ if they didn't have what they needed. We went to and we went to 1000 we went to 1500. At the end of the day, to say, our number one message point is "Everything you need, in stock, guaranteed. Everything is now guaranteed to be in stock." We've been able to capture much more business because, now everyone thinks, we have it and if they order it from someone else, they'll have to wait. Profits are being squeezed, construction margins are going down, productivity schedules are increasing. These guys don't have time to wait. We've also done a great job, I say we as the company in terms of our client, being part of them, analyzing exactly, based on what the client does or the company does, what they will need. Don't get me wrong, there was a six-month very heavy intensive investigation of what they were ordering from other people, what kind of jobs they were on, what they would be ordering when they needed. We literally customized a 1500 square-foot warehouse with items that we know are going to get ordered and we know that we're going to have and here's what I love, it's gone over so well, not because Everything's in Stock Guarantee but the client want to test us on it. So, they're ordering more stuff. "I'm going to get that $ gift card," and they never do. "I'm going to wipe you guys out. You're going to have to pay me five of those things." "Alright, bring it on Jerry."

Kris: That's makes a lot of sense too. I mean, people are tired of people not having things because, like you said, so many people are doing that. When they order, we'll send it, if we have it.

Brad: Yeah, if we have it. Who knows if they even have it. So, again, another example of how to create an iron-clad guarantee to steal business away from other competitors without having to spend money on advertising. The way we got the messaging out was, we had the sales people, that have obviously outside sales people, for the first time, actually had something had something they could cold- call somebody about without feeling like a sales person. "Hey, just wanted to share with you. We've got the largest local inventory in town. Everything in stock. Guaranteed. We invite you to test our inventory or we'll pay you if we don't have it. Would you like me to do a test quote?" Literally, that's what's happening. People are going, "Ah, this sounds too good to be true," which is exactly what we want people to say because now we get to get in a conversation with them. Before, sales people, what would they do? They would call, "Yeah, this Chad over at Tools and Things. I know you've never ordered anything from us, Chad. We've got stuff here, why don't you order?" A common sales call versus the proud effect of walking into a business that no one else in your market is saying what you're saying, there's no feeling like it. Talk, about competitive differentiation. Even if a company, let's say does decide to say that, it will When Pepsi came out with the -ounce can, it took Coke something like years before they went for a -ounce can. It sounds like common sense. Would you come out with -ounce can a week after Pepsi did? Well, they didn't. We've already done enough good in the community and of the market of getting people habitually buying us already that they will be second because we're first to market with this messaging which is always the place to be. We know that many people won't go the opposite way of growing inventory. They're only going to shrink it. So, we're planning our strategy on inventory. That strategy comes from AJ Lafley who was the CEO at Procter and Gamble, he wrote a great book called Playing to win, figuring out where to play and how to win. We took that strategy framework and that's what we uncovered and working like gang busters. Again Kris, the prevention mindset of all these strategies could really hold people back. You see, advertising is an easy decision. You write a check, although I use that term in a relative nature but guarantee something? A lot more risk, a lot more responsibility and you forget that % of people are actually out there to do good and there's just a couple of bad apples that want to take advantage of you. The good outweighs the bad and so, let's go for it. You have to be bold. I'm reading a book right now called How to be a Billionaire: Wealth Strategies and Tactics. It's written by Martin Beck, great book. Rockefeller, Walton, Buffet, Gates and the number one strategy in that book that this gentlemen exposes that they all did, not only did they take risk but the word in front of the word risk. They took monumental risk. So, it's a lot for a business owner to say, "Yeah, let's guarantee everything," without feeling like you want to throw up. Or, "Yeah, let's a -Year warrantee," without feeling like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to get clobbered." By giving away all kind of glasses or even an elevator company, where we performed a situation where in the elevator industry, you have contracts. So, we told the clients, "We're going to be the only company in the country not to have contracts." "What are you kidding me? You got to have contracts! People won't live up to their obligations." "Well, we have agreements. We're just not going to call them contracts anymore and we're going to let people out of them after days." "But, the other competitors, they have auto-renewal. They don't even get to get out of the contract unless they call on a certain amount of time or send us the letter in the -day window before the renewal runs out." "That's exactly why we're running the opposite way. Why in the world, should somebody be forced to stay with the service, if they're not satisfied. We're going to get more sales from then, keep them in a binding contract where they've got to race to get Tom to figure out when the five-day window is before the auto-renewal comes up." But those are big risks for people. So, we don't take them lightly. We don't say, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe this isn't something you're willing to green-light." Believe me, these are multiple conversations with lots of data and analysis behind it to share that the risk of succeeding far exceeds the risk of losing. I want to give credit and justification to the process but I also want to give more credit and justification to the owners who takes that stride and takes that leap. Then, so you will be handsomely rewarded. At the end of the day, Reset Strategies puts a guarantee on their marketing plans. If we don't see a to ROI at the end of the year, there's a certain monetary payback. We put our neck out there too.

Kris: It's interesting too, Brad, isn't it, that you know, often it seems like business folks are afraid of these ideas and the very ideas that could bring them a lot of success. Meanwhile, they're not watching all the losses that you mentioned, that Reset Strategies finds in a business that are going by the wayside daily.

Brad: The reason why we went with that particular formula, Kris, it might be giving away too much information here to people but, behavioral studies over decades and decades and decades show that people desire to prevent loss more than they desire to gain gains, actually. People will do more work behaviorally, not to lose something on a behavior scenario than they will work harder to gain something. So, in the market, most marketing firms are talking about making more money, making more sales, making more connections, making more relationships, we said, "Wait, what can we say that's any different?" We come out and we say, "Oh, I know, let's talk about the money they're losing," talk about ears perk up. Like, "Losing? I'm not losing money." "Oh well, in this particular system, you've got customers walking out the door." The whole mindset from gain to loss is actually a monumental shift in someone's paradigm. It doesn't happen overnight. You do realize that the -Reset, I mean, we are with that client upwards of six to ten times in person doing surveys and research and mystery shop and we are really developing that relationship with the client and the whole we're doing that, we're creating the relationship. So, when we come to the table with the plan, they know what the plan's going to look because, they worked with us on it. We show them and expose them to how much money they're losing which, is a lot easier to do because, it's done on cold, hard facts because you can look at an industry average. You can say, "Geez, Doctor, you know the industry average here is %, you're at % and if your transaction is this, if you were at the industry average, you could be getting...this is the amount of money you're losing." Versus, "Yeah you can average probably this amount through publication and you can make $, extra." Well that's not really feasible, there's no facts behind that. So we can certainly show the money that you're losing and then you show them the money that they can cover it without having to advertising. Iron-clad guarantees are really good way to grow without advertising because, you can that they've never heard but it's hard to get companies to do that unless you can prove that your strategy will prevail and we've been doing this a long time and it's certainly not to be taken with a light for sure.

Kris: Brad, that was fantastic. Thank you so much.

Brad: You're welcome.

Kris: Thanks for sharing all your strategies and insight with what you do with Reset Strategies. Great stuff! perspective. The biggest takeaway that I want people to gain, (because I have no gain from it, I'm just giving information) is there are things that are hiding right under your nose in the business that if optimized and leveraged correctly (and I know it sounds like hype sales pitch), you can literally double, triple or quadruple your sales results and profits if you just find out what they are and fix them. Then start going out and advertising to strangers. So, that when they do come through the door or they do call or they come to your website, you're more prepared to get the upsell, to get the average transaction up, to get the referral.