Episode 71: Keeping Your Customers Forever with Matt Champagne – Transcript
Rennie Gabriel 00:09
Hi folks, welcome to Episode 71 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. This is where we talk about money tips, techniques, attitudes, information and provide inspiration. I'm your host, Rennie Gabriel. In past episodes, we spoke about how to build an Income and Expense Report, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, how to track your money in 5 - 10 seconds, what to look for on a net worth statement to see how close you are to Complete Financial Choice®. And last week, we had as our guest, Rob Bedell. Today we have as our guest, Matt Champagne. For 28 years, Dr. Champagne has been a researcher, university professor, and serial entrepreneur. He was named 'Technology Visionary', by Survey Magazine for his pioneering work, measuring psychology and technology to create never before seen customer feedback solutions. When not teaching, Dr. Champagne, or Matt, can be found in the Caribbean - scuba diving, or onstage playing a keyboard with his rock band. Matt, welcome to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast.
Matt Champagne 01:25
Hey, thanks for inviting me here, Rennie.
Rennie Gabriel 01:27
You're welcome. Well, let's get right to some questions. For work, tell us what you do and why you do it.
Matt Champagne 01:35
Oh well - as you have read in my intro - what I've done is changed a lot over the years from a university professor and ran a national lab and an internet-based business. I've done consulting for cruise lines. So I've worked with a lot of different people, a lot of roles. But the 'what', has been similar. If I look back over the years, teaching people how to keep their customers forever, how to keep their students, their members, their list, their clients forever. Yeah, why do I do it? And that's, you know, a little strange, I think. To me, in my perfect world, everyone stays with you. Nobody leaves, you know. You have 100% response rates on your surveys, and you have 100% retention. And it just always bothers me, when you're not treated well as a client, or a customer. Or these organizations are always looking to bring in new folks. You know you've been a member for 10 years and then you see they're giving 50% discounts to new prospects. And you say, 'Hey, can I get that?' 'Oh, no, we already got you.' It just always, you know, has bugged me. So I just always focus on the retention side, how do we keep these people in our orbit forever.
Rennie Gabriel 02:52
And you kind of answered the question pretty closely when you said it really bugs you. Because what I'm getting at is what I found most people teach what they most want to learn about, they support other people and based on the struggles they've had in the past. And I'm going to guess that you haven't felt well-treated as a client somewhere along the line.
Matt Champagne 03:16
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we all have those stories of, you know, or even if we like a business. It's our favorite restaurant, we want them to stick around forever. We want them to get better. But then they they do something different. They bring in new people, they change the procedure. And you tell them, 'Oh, you know, I wish you would do this.' And you want to give them feedback, but they're not listening. And you're like, 'If you only you would listen to me I could make you better. I could keep you here forever.' And we watch them go on the decline, and then finally we just walk away. We say, 'Okay, I've had it'. And so many people just silently walk away. And there's so many companies that don't even know it. We walk away, they don't care, because they're so busy prospecting and finding new clients, they're just not paying attention to their existing ones.
Rennie Gabriel 04:00
And the sad part of that is it is so much more expensive to onboard a new client versus just keep the ones that you've got.
Matt Champagne 04:10
That's exactly right. And and when you explain that to someone, they say, 'Oh, yeah, of course.' But then they don't do it then. And our customers are such a resource. You know, I'm a survey guy. I've reviewed and critiqued about 9000 surveys over the last 30 years, and they're done so poorly. The company will send out a survey to say, 'Hey, we want to hear from you. You know, help us improve our products and services.' But they do it either in a way that like demands our attention like, 'Hey, you owe us. You're our customer. So you owe us to answer your survey.' Or they don't really take advantage of that. I had a friend who is a prolific author. Like there's nobody better out there and Amazon sent him a survey. You know, would you help us. And he felt really good like, oh, and he took like an hour. He filled out this survey. You should do this and that. He submitted it, and it said, like, 'Thank you valued customer for your input.' And he's like, 'Wow, I just . . .' - it just made him sick to his stomach. He's like, 'I could have helped you. Like, I'm the person that could help you with this survey, but you didn't really care. You just kind of threw out this survey, because it was, you know, something on your checklist.' So just so many problems with surveys and how we handle customer feedback.
Rennie Gabriel 05:26
Yeah, one of the things that really intrigued me and why I wanted to have you on the podcast had to do with the document that I read. It had to do with the 15 mistakes people make with surveys. One question that has two possible answers to it, like how in the world can you even answer it? And yeah, the really junky ways that people ask their clients for input, and I thought that was really enjoyable to read all the mistakes. And then see, I've gotten surveys just like that. Well, one of the important questions, because I donate 100% of the profits from the work that I do to charity, is that I like to know that the people on the podcast are charity inclined, that they have some cause that they support. Can you tell me about the one that matters to you?
Matt Champagne 06:22
Well, there are three charitable organizations that provide for those in need in our region here in North Georgia. That's where we volunteer our time . . .
Rennie Gabriel 06:31
The one about the children, that was most intriguing to me.
Matt Champagne 06:35
Yeah, yeah. So for example, one of those is Meals by Grace. They deliver meals to the homebound, those without transportation. They have a hydroponic farm where they grow their own vegetables. They have a client system where you can come in, and feed your family. It's a great organization that that tends to all the people in our, in our county that often go without.
Rennie Gabriel 06:59
Well tell me who your target clients are. I mean, you were mentioning cruise industries - and boy were they suffering in the pandemic - but I don't think I have a lot of listeners who own cruise lines.
Matt Champagne 07:13
That's true. That's true . . . But it's - the cruise lines, like most of my clients, or anyone where this resonates, my motto, my podcast, is keep your customers forever. So if that resonates with you, you're probably an ideal client, a target client. I'm mostly focused on folks that have a product or service to sell live from a webinar, from a stage. And ideally, someone who has already gone through and used all the methods that have been taught on how to sell and how to develop relationships. And as you know, it's all the same. It's been the same tactics now for about 15 years. These formulas, I call them the dark psychology tactics that have come from, you know, 60 years of psychological study. These tactics are meant to bring attention and get somebody to make an immediate action. And that's fine, but that's typically not the clients we want. And that's what I've found over the years is folks that use the dark psychology tactics, make some sales, but they're not the clients they really want. It's more of a transactional relationship or a short-term relationship. So I'm looking for folks that want to build long-term relationships, not just kind of the tactical sales.
Rennie Gabriel 08:33
Okay, well, that answers the question, because, yeah, it's very similar to the clients that I'm looking for are those who want to support a cause, donate to what touches their heart, versus buy another Lamborghini. What would you say was maybe your biggest failure, whether it was personally or in business, and the follow up question will be, what insight did you gain from that?
Matt Champagne 09:01
Gosh, I made a lot of failures. I ran my own business for 15 years. I think the common failure looking back on it has been when I didn't trust my gut.
Rennie Gabriel 09:14
Hmm.
Matt Champagne 09:15
When I, when I just gave all the responsibility for the decisions to other folks that I thought knew, and had more experience. You know, I look back at a big failure in a promotion in my first job, and when I sold my company, I relied on somebody who I thought had some expertise to, you know, partner us up. And you look at the catastrophic failures, and they all seem to be those ones where I gave the decision to somebody else. So that's the insight or I guess what I learned out of that. Hopefully, I've learned that by now I've made that mistake enough times is when it comes down to it, it's your life. It's your decisions. Your gut is telling you to do things, do it. Don't turn over those big decisions to others. You can ask advice - is fine. But when it comes down to the decision, make that yourself.
Rennie Gabriel 10:05
That's perfect. It's taken me a long time to recognize, not only for a lot of people, women mostly, and for myself, is that the gut is a more accurate determination of what's right and wrong, than any intellectualization that I might come up with.
Matt Champagne 10:23
Yeah, so true. Actually, I was turned on to a fellow, this area of research, which looks at gut-sensing, you know, compared to brain-reasoning. It's kind of new to me, but it kind of supports exactly what you said.
Rennie Gabriel 10:36
Oh, perfect. I'd actually like to see that because I'm just going by anecdotal information, but I'd love to see a study on that. Well, let me ask you this, in terms of the goal, objective or outcome, I'm guessing the people who follow your advice end up keeping their clients a whole lot longer than other businesses. But do you have a story to illustrate that impact?
Matt Champagne 11:03
Yeah, it's, I mean, that's the beauty of it, is it's measurable. And it's some obvious results for those that track their retention and their open rates of their emails and numbers of clients and such. They can see the difference when you use some good psychology compared to the tactics. And one is that you just mentioned earlier in the show about the about the cruise lines, because that was, that was a huge deal. When the cruise lines shut down in March of 2020, I got the call from the cruise line association to, you know, to help them out. They had 54,000 travel agents who had nothing to sell, but they were all members, they're paying members. So why would you pay for a membership, when you have no income, and nothing to sell? And, we were successful. We used our process of survey and asking the right questions in the right way, and sharing the results with the travel agents to make them feel like they were a part of something bigger than themselves, and sharing so they can see how they compared to other travel agents. And it kept them all in that orbit and continuing in the membership. So that was a great example of what could have been a catastrophe.
Rennie Gabriel 12:23
Oh, yeah.
Matt Champagne 12:23
It was keeping those members with them beyond, during all through the pandemic and beyond.
Rennie Gabriel 12:29
Well, yeah, I mean, if I were facing the same thing of the cruise lines aren't operating. I'm a travel agent, I now have no income. And I'm expected to pay dues to some association. Without doing what you did, I'd of said, 'That ain't happening. I'm not paying dues.'
Matt Champagne 12:49
But that's the beauty of the good psychology as opposed to the tactics. The good psychology are, you know, sharing information, asking the right questions. So just people want to be part of it, because they're learning something, they can't gather anywhere else. It's helping their business. It's helping them to see if they're still on target. It's helping them help others with my advice and feedback. It's helping other travel agents. And so that's the whole process of this is regardless of what your business is, whether it's cruising or a mom and pop shop, or, you know, some entrepreneurial venture, is being able to let your people, your attendees, your students, your members share efficiently and with each other. So you all kind of get this bigger sense of community to keep them focused on you.
Rennie Gabriel 13:38
Thank you. Thank you, Matt. And let me ask you this, is there some valuable free resource that you can direct people to that could further support their growth?
Matt Champagne 13:48
Absolutely. I put together a page just for your listeners. You can find that at matthewchampagne.com/wealth. And go there, you'll see an immediate download. Again, it's, I'm practicing what I preach. Rather than asking you for something upfront in terms of your name and email, it's just go there, there's a download. And that download is an infographic of the 9 principles. And these are the 9 principles to put into place to help you get more response from your audience to keep them focused on you. And they've just, they've worked. It's been 28 years in the making, about 96 million data points that we've collected to continue to refine this methodology. So check out that download. Give it a read. There's also a link on there if you want an explainer video if you want more details, but just take that infographic and see if that resonates with you. I think it will.
Rennie Gabriel 14:50
That's beautiful. Well, I'll be sure to put that in the show notes so people can just click on it in case they don't know how to spell Champagne.
Matt Champagne 14:59
Exactly.
Rennie Gabriel 15:01
Is there a question that I should have asked you that would provide additional value, and obviously answer that too?
Matt Champagne 15:09
I guess. I mean there's a lot that goes into the methodology. I guess one question would it be like, how? You know, how does this, knowing these principles, you know, work all this magic? And I think it all just funnels down to building trust is... you know, I'm a psychologist. So the psychology behind it is, is building trust. So many people get on their webinars, and in 30 minutes, they're trying to convince total strangers to trust them, and to buy their solution. Incredibly difficult. I mean, I can't do that. But the some of the most charismatic people could probably do that and get sales, but it's a really difficult thing to do. So what we teach with the principles is kind of extending that trust runway. Talking to your audience before the webinar, sharing with them before the webinar, so they know what to expect. So when that camera turns on, you're a familiar face. You've already had some conversations. You're already further along in the, in the trust building process. It just makes it so much easier to sell people things that they really need when you've built that trust before your webinar, before your live event, before your courses have started. And it gives you that that head start that most of us need.
Rennie Gabriel 16:29
Well, Matt, let me thank you for being on the show. I appreciate the value that you brought. And to my listeners, thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast on your favorite platform. So please rate, review, and subscribe. And if you'd like to know how books, movies and society programs you to be poor, and what the cure is, then log on to wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request a free 27-page roadmap to Complete Financial Choice®, and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or your money. Again, that's wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. And until next week, be prosperous. Bye bye for now.
