Resources in this Episode

Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hey Gorgeous. This is episode number 109. We have the titans of direct marketing, Brian Kurtz, back at Heart Sells! Podcast.

Brian Kurtz [0:13]
Hi, this is Brian Kurtz, you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski.

Christine Schlonski [0:19]
I’m so super excited to have Brian back today because, from everything we already learned in the last episode, marketing is not evil, we are going to dive in how to market from your heart. That’s all what Heart Sells! marketing is about, that you can be authentic and true to your values, were making a huge impact and serving so many more people than if you would just shy away and would not master the art of sales and marketing. Brian has been a serial direct marketer for over 40 years. He has a huge mission today because he wants to be the bridge between the eternal truth of direct response marketing and all that is considered the state of the art in direct response marketing today. His wonderful book, Overdeliver, has just come out this year, I highly recommend, it’s a must-read. It comes with amazing, amazing bonuses. So have a look at this. Let’s dive into the next episode with Brian Kurtz. Don’t forget to subscribe to Heart Sells! Podcast, and to leave a rating and review. For all the transcripts, show notes, resources, hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/ and find the podcast tab. Let’s dive in. Hi, Brian, I’m so happy you’re back on the show. Welcome to Heart Sells!

Brian Kurtz [1:48]
Oh, I love this show. It’s like a whole — it’s very congruent with how I market even though there are people that think I’m just a sales guy or a marketing guy and to know that I can talk about, different aspects of marketing that is not hard sell and aggressive. I could talk about that. But I like not talking about that. So it’s nice.

Christine Schlonski [2:17]
I yeah, totally, I think while being authentic, by being you, by showing up as a person that you are, you connect on a much deeper level, you can probably like trick somebody wants to buy from you. But then when they don’t have a good experience, and they don’t get, somebody is not over-delivering.

Brian Kurtz [2:41]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [2:42]
You will never go back. I mean, the human is not that stupid, if they don’t need it to live like water in the desert. There’s no reason to go back and establishing these deep connections and relationships. One connection can happen with unlimited potential. I want people to see that, that they have gifts and talents and when they start giving it and we had this conversation a little bit earlier on, right? If they just give to a handful of people, or if they can give to hundreds of thousands or even hundred thousand, like what a difference can that make in the world?

Brian Kurtz [3:21]
Right, and the fact that you don’t have to, you don’t have to fake it, you don’t have to act like something else. I find the word authenticity. I struggle with it. Because when someone, especially at a live event, and they speak and they come off the stage, and someone says, “Wow, you were so authentic”, and I’m like, “All right”, but that’s a given. If you’re going to be a spokesperson or represent something, why wouldn’t you be authentic? It’s like, to me, what you see is what you get there and, and I do see a lot of people who are personality-driven, they go up on stage, it’s not an act, but it’s definitely a show, and they come off the stage, and it’s a different person. I’m not criticizing it, I think it’s fine if that’s what you want to portray, but to me, the authenticity should be built-in. What I noticed is, a good example, I remember, there was a video sales letter, a video promotional in line for a, I don’t know, it was an investment product. It was supposedly one of the most important and best selling, it was selling the newsletter in the finance area. The voiceover was definitely the guy — who was the guy, and he was monotone and he just was who he was. I said to myself, “You couldn’t have gotten a professional reader of this video sales letter and done better.” He just got there, he was himself, he was approachable. It was the supposedly one of the best selling video sales letters ever. That taught me a good lesson in, you don’t necessarily need a spokesperson. And even when you have a spokesperson, when a lot of the newsletters in the health field, would have a doctor, for example, representing the newsletter, and then they would sell supplements and sell all sorts of stuff. Most of these guys were not salesmen, they were doctors, and they were very unskilled at selling. And yet they were very successful at it. Why? Because they were just being a doctor contributing and being who they were. That to me is nothing better than that. I don’t know how I feel about, I know how I feel about authenticity, but I don’t know how I feel about telling somebody, “Oh, you gotta be authentic”, because I don’t know that it shouldn’t come naturally, I guess.

Christine Schlonski [6:26]
Yeah, I totally agree. It’s so interesting when you mentioned that example of a person coming off of the stage and the other person saying, “Oh, you were so authentic.” For me, that represents that the person saying you were so authentic, struggles was showing themselves fully.

Brian Kurtz [6:44]
That might be true.

Christine Schlonski [6:46]
They were admiring the fact that somebody else could just be.

Brian Kurtz [6:51]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [6:52]
Careless what this person thought, they just showed up. And were prepared that maybe they like me, maybe they don’t. Of course, we all want to be loved and liked. But if you twist yourself and you try to be everybody’s darling, you’re nobody’s darling, we all know that. For me, I found especially, starting in high ticket sales over the phone, I had this perception that I needed to be this professional person. Since I asked for a lot of money in the first phone call, I did not even laugh on the phone for 3, 4, 5, 6 months. My colleagues were having fun, and they had good conversations. I thought like, “How can you be like this?”, I mean, this is serious stuff.

Brian Kurtz [7:40]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [7:41]
Once I allow myself to be authentic, and to not really care if it was resonating with this person or not, because you don’t have any influence on that. My life was so much easier.

Brian Kurtz [7:54]
Yes. I think letting it go and not feeling like you have to be something that you’re not. I mean, it sounds so simple. But it’s really the key. That’s why when we talked about people who are uncomfortable selling, well then don’t sell, just be who you are and hopefully the selling — You eventually might have to ask for an order, you might have to ask for somebody to send you money. But that’s not the first thing you’re asking. Just deliver, deliver of yourself first, and then see what happens. You’ll come up with a way to do it. That’s why some people get a spokesperson, but that spokesperson has to be representative of you. You want that also, you don’t want somebody who’s not congruent with you selling for you, that’s important too.

Christine Schlonski [8:54]
Definitely, and I think the selling piece, I totally believe everybody can learn it. Once they understand that sales is not evil, that marketing –

Brian Kurtz [9:06]
Marketing is not evil.

Christine Schlonski [9:08]
Yes. They can learn it. I even go where I say that sales are love. Because if you’re not giving your gifts, then what’s the point?

Brian Kurtz [9:18]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [9:19]
You can support a handful of people and that’s great, it’s a great contribution. But you would have the potential to reach so many more people by allowing yourself to show up and to get out of your comfort zone to be a little bit more or grow into a better version of yourself. That growing piece can be kind of daunting at times.

Brian Kurtz [9:44]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [9:44]
We don’t know what to expect, that uncertainty piece. Like, what happens if I say that? What happens if I disagree here? What happens if I don’t go to the party that I don’t want to go to?

Brian Kurtz [9:58]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [10:00]
I love our first conversation and I love all the things you are delivering, with your book, like over-delivering. So and the title. Can we talk a little bit and give people maybe another practical step, once they want to start to grow their list? Let’s say they have a freebie, but then you have to feed that list. You mentioned in the other episode that you have to also have different messages if your list is segmented. But if I’m a company or a solopreneur or coach, my list might not even be segmented. I just have a bunch of people on my list. I want to write from my heart, I just want to share what’s going on. How can I have a better influence so I can deliver it even more by hitting the right points?

Brian Kurtz [10:56]
Yeah, I think that if you do the segment, and it’s a small list, and you want to just share, I think you have to have consistent communication with the list. Like you can’t have sent out something on Wednesday, and then wait two weeks and send it out on Saturday. I think consistent messaging is good. I don’t do as I say, not as I do. But if I send very long emails once a week, and I think it works for me, but it might not work for you. I think a short email once a week is a good place to start. But make sure it’s at the same time every week because now it took a while but my list is trained to know that at 6 am, Eastern Time, Sunday morning, I’m in their inbox. So that’s a really important thing. I also think that you want to share really of your experience. The idea is to tell stories because I don’t think I invented anything. But I think that I can deliver on a concept, something that they never heard of. If I can put a story around that, that they can relate to, that they haven’t heard about it before. And now they’re going to get the concept because I gave them that story. That’s a big thing. Because when people feel like they learned something, and can it can use it, that’s even better than just sharing. So I think that you want to think about concepts that are not yours necessarily, but concepts that you want them to understand but through a story. So I think that is a big, big element as well. If your list gets larger, and you want to segment, you certainly want to segment at least by people who have bought from you and people who haven’t bought from you. Not to say that they could still get the same messages sometimes, but the ones who bought from you, they’re sort of like VIPs now. You want to treat them a little different than the prospects. Not to say you don’t love the prospects too but you want to talk to them a little bit differently. You want to try to interest the prospect in something that the buyers have already bought. And you have to do that with finesse. And you can’t do that with one email to everybody. Then, in addition, and I have this in my book, that the concept of RFM is so important, which is not necessarily a direct marketing rule of thumb. But it’s a human behavior rule of thumb, which is recency, frequency, and monetary and so, a more recent buyer, as opposed to a less recent buyer is worth more to you and you want to treat them differently. A more frequent buyer is worth more to you. And someone who spends more money is worth more to you. If you could put all three of those things, and be able to, and this can be a guide, I did with millions and millions of names at boardroom when I was working at boardroom and it was done by a Ph.D. in statistics. He would rank the name so — but always the most recent frequent and people who spent the most were always at the top of what we call the games chart, which was the basically putting the names in priority order that you would mail. Then you would decide at what level you’d stop mailing. Even if you have a list of 100, 200, 300 you could do this sort of RFM selection that can kind of pinpoint someone who, I mean, I believe that someone who bought in the last three months for the second time is worth more than someone who bought in the last three months for the first time and might be treated differently and hopefully you have multiple products that you could sell them. But now we’re in a, you’ve already done all the hard work in terms of all the finessing, all the content where you want and selling them, they finally bought and then how you’re going to treat them. Now the other, the subtle thing, which I think is really important, on the internet, especially is that RFM has become RFT and the ‘T’ is time. Not everybody will spend money with you. But people will spend time with you. The more time they spend with you, the more they’re worth to you because they’re more interested. You have to watch this because people want to have people who have talked, they want to talk to you because they have no one else to talk to. That’s a different thing. But if you have people that really want to ask you questions, and that’s why you always ask questions in your email and see what comes back. Sometimes, it gets to be a bit burdensome, but you learn a lot about your list, what their needs are, what they want. Recency, frequency, and then time is also important if they’re not spending money in and all of these things. I mean, you can’t do it all. But you really want to start taking a look at your list and saying, “Who are the people that I want to spend more time with? And then figure out how to sell them in my own way without being aggressive, necessarily, but they’re clearly are happy with the contribution that I’ve made to them. Now I can maybe sell them, but it’s not everybody yet.” What I think, going back to the original question, I think consistent communication, getting on podcast, getting on doing articles, so you build the list. But then also when you get a new name on your list, have a welcome series, have a welcome series of a few, three or four pieces of content in the first couple of weeks and you let them know, “I’m going to add you to my welcome series, you can unsubscribe anytime. But here’s some of my best blogs or my best emails, and I want to share them with you because you missed out on them”, and then they get into the flow after they get the welcome series. That’s a couple of ways to kind of finesse the list as people are coming on. But every night — and you can — all of this takes so much time. Just like you can build a relationship over time, you can ruin that relationship in a heartbeat by giving them an offer that’s not congruent. If you are doing affiliate deals, and you offer them an offer that is just like, “Why would they offer me that? Why would he offer me that? Why would she offer me that?” You could lose and I’ve heard of horror stories of people spend years cultivating this list. They make one mistake and all of a sudden they get half the people to unsubscribe. You got to be really careful with that. I think that’s some of the things on lists and on what you can do to kind of, as we said in the first episode, ‘Shine the light on the water, and have the fish jump in the boat rather than going out there with bait all the time.’

Christine Schlonski [18:43]
Yeah. How did you find out what is the best day for you to actually send your email?

Brian Kurtz [18:52]
I watched a lot of people what they were doing. I think there’s, yeah, I know, some people who may have every day. You can’t pick a date that way. But I thought Sunday was a good time. Sunday morning and I’m not saying it’s the best, I think some people say it’s Wednesday and some people, there’s a lot of different theories. I like Sunday, early morning. But I think there’s a lot of different ways that you can. I really can’t say, I think that the key is a consistent time every week that they’re expecting it from you. The expectation and continuity are very, very important. I don’t want to commit to a date. But I’ve heard Sundays are good. I’ve heard Saturdays are good. I’ve heard Wednesday’s are good, but I don’t want to commit.

Christine Schlonski [19:57]
Yeah, I thought you might have had some strategies, but you just picked and then you

Brian Kurtz [20:01]
I watched a lot of people who were emailing and a couple of people who I really admire when Sunday morning and I said, “All right, that’s good enough for me.” Now that I’ve been doing it for years, my people are expecting me on Sunday morning.

Christine Schlonski [20:16]
Yeah, for breakfast.

Brian Kurtz [20:19]
Yes. Some of them may chokes. I love your emails, but it’s at least two cups of coffee. They make jokes about how long it is, but you know, whatever.

Christine Schlonski [20:28]
Yeah, well, I catch myself as well. Like, once I start writing sometimes it, all of a sudden, you have quite a word.

Brian Kurtz [20:36]
Yeah, all of a sudden, I’m at 2,500 words. And I like, I wanted this to be 500 words.

Christine Schlonski [20:41]
Yeah, exactly. Awesome. So do you remember the very first thing you ever sold in your life?

Brian Kurtz [20:47]
Hmmm. I mean, you know, I’m trying to think of there’s something before, you know, by getting into the business world, but I don’t think that’s that relevant. Or maybe it is, I don’t know.

Christine Schlonski [21:07]
Yeah, it is. Like something as like —

Brian Kurtz [21:09]
Like lemonade stand thing.

Christine Schlonski [21:11]
But yeah, your very first memory of actually having a money exchange into.

Brian Kurtz [21:20]
God. I don’t recall because I wasn’t really a sales guy. Even though I was an extrovert and I. I wasn’t like one of those kids that would run around and have the lemonade stand and do all of that kind of stuff. I guess it would be, I mean, my paper route and the idea that they were giving me this money for the paper, and then I get to keep some of it, that was probably the first time that I did that. When I umpire a baseball, and in my early days when I was in high school, I would go to the field, and I would do four games for $5 a game. I remember that $20 was felt really good because it was, I love what I did. Maybe that was my entry into getting paid for something that you love. I mean, that was a good example of that. All the way to the present. When I left Boardroom five years ago, and I started selling my mastermind groups, every one of my sales was on a one on one phone call, with a video call. Because I want to make sure they were right for the group. I wanted to make sure that even if they wanted in, I wanted to make sure that I wanted the men, and the idea of really vetting people to give me $20,000 or, in some cases $11,500 was also as rewarding, because it wasn’t — they were happy to give me the money, but it was after a process and not just someone — and other people do it differently. But some people even for a high price coaching group, they have someone call to make the appointment, I would make the appointments and then get on the phone. It was very, very personal. I felt that to sell somebody on something so expensive, deserve my time and that’s me. That’s been a really good way to not ever feel guilty about taking someone’s money when I know that I’m over-delivering value and that’s a very important concept.

Christine Schlonski [23:57]
You also want to make sure that the people are at fit, especially when you spend so much time together. I have a concept, especially for one on one coaching. I only work with so soulmate-clients. Obviously, there is a phone call, it is with me. If I see like one red flag. I don’t take them on board.

Brian Kurtz [24:20]
Yeah, being able to fire clients is one of the great. I don’t want to say I don’t want to fire clients, I don’t want to —

Christine Schlonski [24:31]
I don’t want to be there. I want to avoid meeting fire client because I learned, once I allow myself to ask for help, to have mentors, to have coaches. One thing I felt over and over again, is that when people start out with their business, they take whoever they can get.

Brian Kurtz [24:51]
And sometimes it’s a cash flow thing. Yeah, I understand it. But I don’t think I could have a business that ran like that.

Christine Schlonski [25:00]
So I totally got that concept. But then they all said, and then there was a day where they made the decision. And they only took these clients on that were amazing, and especially for one on one, you can decide that because you have that communication. And I thought, “Why should I take that concept right away and skip that part? I need to work with you for six months or something because you paid me.” It’s not that much fun. Wonderful. Time just flies talking to you, thank you. Now, I just want to make sure we send people over to your book gig again, which is at https://overdeliverbook.com/ You have a ton of bonuses. I mean, I see that sometimes that people have a book and they give some bonuses. But when you go through that page, it’s full of bonuses. It’s amazing.

Brian Kurtz [25:57]
Yeah.

Christine Schlonski [25:57]
I definitely will put that in the show notes, for sure. So, people, it’s just one click away. And I love the title. And I can’t wait to get my hands on it myself. So I’m really, really excited. And I just want to invite people to go to https://overdeliverbook.com/ and just get it when it resonates. And I’m quite sure when you see all the bonuses, your chair is going to drop, make sure you hop on over to https://overdeliverbook.com/ and Brian, thank you so so much for all the value you shared, because I know that especially when people are starting out, or maybe they’re in their first five years, the list building is so important. And having now a concept or they can get so many golden nuggets, they can just choose whatever they want to do.

Brian Kurtz [26:47]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [26:48]
Be consistent, show up for your tribe, if you can, try to segment as soon as you can. People that spend money with you or time that have bought recently or that have bought at all, pamper them a little bit more.

Brian Kurtz [27:07]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [27:07]
And make sure they have this wonderful client experience because you can develop them. Somebody might start out with a tiny product with a low-end product if you have that. Then they will learn and grow so that at someday they are able to buy your mastermind or your one on one coaching or whatever. But you need to help them when they need your help.

Brian Kurtz [27:32]
Right. I guess the messages is, ‘I’m here when you need me’, and it’s not, I don’t have to bribe you. I don’t have to, I mean, I want to bribe people to buy my book, because I want to give them all that stuff from my mentors. There’s a genuine reason why I want them to buy the book. But I’m not indifferent, but I’m not trying to get everybody in the boat. But when you’re ready, I could be here for you. If you think I could be the person that could help you, by all means, and if not, keep reading my stuff and get what you can out of it. And that’s a great way to base so that you’re not feeling that you’re desperate for cash and you’re desperate for new business. And that’s a great way to live if you can live that way.

Christine Schlonski [28:30]
Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so, so much. I so enjoyed our episodes together. Yeah, thank you for all the wisdom you brought to the audience. Thank you so much.

Brian Kurtz [28:42]
Thanks, Christine.

Christine Schlonski [28:43]
I just have to say I just love the conversation with Brian. And I hope you love it too and you got a lot of great ideas out of it, inspiration and motivation. So hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/. Find the podcast tab and Brian’s episode where you have all the social media links to him with just one click, and also a link to his amazing book, Overdeliver, where he totally over-delivers. If you hop on over to get that book and go on to his bonus page. It’s amazing guys. So check that out. Make sure you implement, you feel really, really good about your marketing because your marketing is true. It’s authentic, it’s fun. It is an alignment with your values, and it serves your potential clients and clients greatly. So have a wonderful day wherever you are in this beautiful world. If you have not subscribed to hard sales podcast, please do. And also share the love with a couple of your friends. Just tell them, “Hey, if you want to sell more and you want to be authentic and true to your values, Heart Sells! Podcast is the place to go.” Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day wherever you are in this beautiful world. And I’m saying bye for now.