TRP 209: Lifetime Value of a Client with Jim Packard

[00:00:01] You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, hosted by high stakes headhunter, author and professional speaker, Scott Love. You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, and my name is Scott Love. Thanks for joining me on the show.

[00:00:29] My guest today is Jim Packard, who's been helping those in business get business for decades. He's a leading expert and an author in the area of client development. He and I talk about the lifetime value of a client. What does that mean to you?

[00:00:44] When you think of lifetime value, are you talking about how much you can get from someone or how deeply can you build that relationship where there's a mutual satisfaction of needs? That's the right sort of perspective, and Jim and I discussed that as well.

[00:00:57] We also give reference to Jay Abraham, who's a leading management consultant in the area of client development and sales, who's the author of Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got. That's a book I'd highly recommend that you listen to. Also check out Jim Packard's books.

[00:01:13] We'll put those links on the show notes as well. As always, this show is sponsored by Leopard Solutions, Legal Intelligence Suite of Products, FirmScape and Leopard BI. Push ahead of the pack with the power of Leopard. And now here's my conversation with my friend, Jim Packard.

[00:01:29] Thanks for listening. Hey, this is Scott Love with The Rainmaking Podcast. Our guest today is Jim Packard, and we're talking about the lifetime value of a client. Jim, thanks for joining me on the show today. Oh, it's my pleasure, Scott.

[00:01:44] I appreciate your background and I want to get into that, but I like this topic title, the lifetime value of a client. Let me ask you this. What do you think that means to most people?

[00:01:55] What do you think that means to you and how can we get more value from our clients? Well, you know, when I started my business, it was just three of us, technician and two salespeople. We go, what do we do with the technician all day?

[00:02:09] We didn't have enough machines for him to service. We started a copier company and we said, well, I'll have Ronnie just go visit the accounts we do have on a regular basis. Found out that the customers loved it. We're really over servicing.

[00:02:24] We work so hard to get a customer. You have so little time to spend in nurturing those customers, and that's what we did. We nurtured our customers to a point where we were visiting 122 hours per week when we sold the company. Wow.

[00:02:40] So what do you think happens if we don't nurture our customers? What do you think the downside is if we just don't take care of them like that? I think they go by the wayside. They'll leave. You don't even know they've left.

[00:02:53] The competitors will gobble them up because they didn't feel appreciated. You literally had forgotten those particular customers. Yep, exactly. Seems like business has become much more competitive lately, right? I'll tell you what, it was competitive back when I started my business too. Right, right.

[00:03:16] And so what was one thing that you learned through the course of your career that really helps you to get closer to your customers and clients and really increase that lifetime value? What's the biggest lesson that you learned out of that? Get to stay in touch with them.

[00:03:31] For every month that goes by where you don't have contact with your client, you lose 10% of your influence, Scott. Oh wow, interesting. Just think about it. Even if you bought a house, if you lost contact with that client, you've lost that client.

[00:03:50] Literally, every month that goes by where you don't have a contact, you lose 10% of your influence. And it's so true. Yeah. So I like that mathematical perspective. How did you come up with that? I've always been a student of personal growth and I've been a great reader and

[00:04:09] studier and taken all kinds of courses. And probably was way back in my Dale Carnegie days, some place back there where I learned that. Yeah, right, right. I like that. So that means after 10 months, you're gone. Yeah. You got nothing. I tested that once.

[00:04:25] I lived in a beautiful area in Scottsdale called DC Ranch and they had a little coffee shop downtown. And I wanted to see if people knew who their realtor was. So I would ask people that came in the coffee shop, when did you buy your house?

[00:04:40] And they would tell me because if you bought your house more than two years ago, right, people don't remember the name of their realtor. And I would ask them that question, do you know who your realtor was?

[00:04:51] And they had to think they didn't know because the realtor never stayed in touch with them. Wow. I mean, that's a big transaction. That's the biggest, well probably one of the biggest purchase, if not the biggest most people ever make. Yeah, right.

[00:05:04] So what was the lesson that you learned from that? I was not going to take one of our clients, I would not take their business for granted. I was not going to allow that to happen to me. And I didn't, I haven't. Yeah.

[00:05:20] That makes a lot of sense. I can tell that you seem very conscientious about that. For people listening today, for them to kind of get their arms around this and they say, you know, that makes sense to me. Where should they spend time focusing with those client relationships?

[00:05:35] What do you think the big rocks in the bucket are, so to speak, about where they should spend time with them? You know, 80% of the time is going out looking for new clients. And only 20% are nurturing the old ones. I would reverse that.

[00:05:50] I would spend time nurturing your clients because your clients, first of all, you have a 70% better chance of selling to your existing clients than going out and looking for a new one, right? Yeah. Forget about referrals. I mean, we all get referrals from satisfied customers.

[00:06:06] And if they just, if they know that you're taking care of it and they can count on you and you're visiting them or whatever you're doing or contacting them every single month, when they find somebody that's looking

[00:06:17] for your type of services, they're apt to give it to you. Yeah, that's great. I love that 80% is looking for new clients, 20% nurturing new ones. Reverse it. Put that on its head. Do different. Well, that's great. We can start with that as we go down this rabbit hole.

[00:06:35] So let's say a professional says, I'm going to do this. I'm going to spend 80% of my business development time nurturing my existing clients and 20% trying to find new ones. How do you think their month would look?

[00:06:52] Where do you think they should focus then in terms of action steps to do that? Well, certainly you can use social. Everybody's using social media today, whether it be LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever you. All right. I would suggest that they use more of a physical touch.

[00:07:10] And it could be as simple as sending a greeting card. Well, that's interesting. That's a unique innovative idea that most people don't think of today. Sending them a greeting card. So what do you mean by that exactly? What should I do?

[00:07:23] Should I go get send Valentine's Day cards? What do you think? Well, first of all, a greeting card is a very special thing when you pick it out and you send it to somebody. But I'll give you a great example.

[00:07:36] In March, I sent all our clients a greeting card. And on the front of it, it says I don't want your business. Now, when they opened it up, it says April Fool's. And they received it. You know, I tried to get them all there on April 1st day.

[00:07:54] I just recently we just had the Fourth of July celebration. I sent out all kinds of, you know, Fourth of July cards. But if you're looking for a reason to send a card, it's all around you. I mean, it could be from birthdays or anniversaries.

[00:08:08] When I owned my copier business, we were looking to stay in touch with our clients. Now, we had our technician that was visiting once a week. They had a customer service rep, they're visiting every single month, taking supply orders, delivering flavored

[00:08:22] popcorn, all right, every month they go in with a different brand of popcorn or different flavor. But I got the idea. I started sending the copiers birthday cards and our clients loved it. Because, I mean, you imagine sitting there all of a sudden,

[00:08:36] you get a birthday card and it's not my birthday. It says happy birthday, your copier is three years old today. That's hilarious. I love it. I love that sense of humor. That's great. That's a great idea, sending cards.

[00:08:50] And I do whenever I send a thank you note to a client, whether it's somebody that hired me to speak at a conference or a placement I'll make, I'll send like a handwritten note on the back of a painting.

[00:09:00] I'm a watercolor artist, so I'll do a small card size watercolor. I do a lot of birds or mountain scenes. And just with the thank you note, like I appreciate your business or thank you for your business.

[00:09:11] But what do you think about something more personal like that, Jim? Well, I first of all, I think that's a great idea. I could take those pictures of birds and put them on a greeting card for you very quickly. Oh, we should talk. OK, I could do that.

[00:09:25] Absolutely. If you put a personal item with it, for example, I had a client here in Phoenix that was sending out Starbucks cards in their in their greeting cards, thanking people for the business during the holidays.

[00:09:41] And I remember visiting with them and saying, I have an idea for you. Let's send a greeting card with a four pack box of brownies. Now, the four pack box of brownies and the greeting card was less money than the 20 dollar Starbucks card.

[00:09:59] And if you think about it, if you sent the Starbucks card, only one person gets to utilize that card, whereas four people got to eat the brownies. I had a it was a big a big bang for our buck. That particular company ended up

[00:10:18] ordering one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of brownies for me in one month. Wow, that's great, Jim. I like the thought that you put into that, too. What are some other things we should do if we want to keep

[00:10:29] connecting with our clients, social media, a physical touch, like with the greeting cards or other small gifts like that? What are some other things that you think help build that relationship? I think an occasional phone call.

[00:10:44] Just to just to pick up the call and say, hey, I was thinking about you. I mean, it doesn't I mean, how many you can even if you don't get them, even to get their voicemail, you can leave a voicemail message. It's just another contact.

[00:10:58] The greeting card is a great idea because only three percent of mail is personal. Ninety seven percent of the mail you get is junk mail or things that you didn't ask for. Yeah, only three percent is personal. It's almost like direct mail now is

[00:11:13] the best way because, you know, they're going to get it and nobody else is sending them anything. Yeah, you know, you know, it stands out. Yeah, it really does. What do you think some of the pitfalls are that most people have

[00:11:25] when it comes to keeping in touch with clients? Well, the biggest challenge that I find with our clients is that they don't have their addresses. All right. And so somehow they have to collect those addresses for our system to work

[00:11:42] with them, and there's only one way to get that address. And that is you have to ask them for it. I would call you and say, Scott, and give me a favor if I want to send something to you, but I don't know where

[00:11:54] to send it. Can you tell me? Can you give me your address? Well, what would be a good address to send this gift I have for you? You can get it. It just takes time. That's yeah, that's good. I like that idea.

[00:12:08] And I know clients do also, I think in the business world today, it's I mean, it is so much easier to keep clients, but there's so much competition out there. I mean, I'm sure there always was. Maybe I'm just more aware of it.

[00:12:22] Maybe I'm more aware of it nowadays. We landed a new client and working with them on a close basis. And I was explaining to my colleague, Janine, during our first reporting call where we're talking about what we do

[00:12:34] that I want to take this so seriously because I appreciate the business. But I know that the day you sign a client is kind of like the day you start to lose them. There's going to be a bigger fish right behind you.

[00:12:44] And you want to continue to show that good service every interaction, every interaction. You want them to say, I'm really glad I hired this person to help me with that. But are there no saying this business goes where it wants to, but stays where it's appreciated.

[00:12:59] Yeah, that's right. Tell me about it. So true. It's like feeling gratitude and not expressing it. It's like wrapping a present and not giving it away. I mean, it's so easy to absolutely. Yeah. And I think when you're in a business like I'm in the recruiting

[00:13:17] business where it is personal, I'm moving professionals, partners and big firms to another firm, and that's very personal with them. And then with the firms, I get to know their leaders. And it's just nice to be kind of I wouldn't say along the ride after you

[00:13:32] make that placement, but just to be the one that made that introduction that continues to earn that trust that hopefully spins off into other things. But let me ask you this. Are there any trends that you've seen

[00:13:45] made it easier or more difficult to stay in touch with people since Covid? What do you think? Since Covid, wow. I read a statistic recently that said before Covid, it was two thousand coaches and consultants since Covid. It's over six and a half million. Yeah, right.

[00:14:04] I mean, so that just so everybody is now a coach. And, you know, I'm amazed by how many people I talk to and they they run businesses and they're looking for ways to retain their clients. But here's something is so simple and

[00:14:18] so easy that they just don't do it. I mean, it's amazing to me. And it's and it's such an easy thing to get started with and just do on a regular basis. We can set up things like campaigns.

[00:14:34] If you get a client, it can be an automatic three card campaign. It can be a 12 card campaign. They can be one at a time. And there's a you know, it doesn't matter. All right. It's just staying in touch with them on a regular basis. That's great.

[00:14:49] Are there any systems or any structure that we should keep in mind when we do this? Like you talked about a three card campaign or a 12 card campaign. What do you think about that? I have been using the same system for over 20 years.

[00:15:04] And I can give you the link if you want me to. But it is a great system. I mean, I literally every single I wrote a book on this. OK, tell me about it. Literally, I wrote a book and it's called the consistency chain for.

[00:15:21] And we wrote another one called the consistency chain for network marketing. But they're on they're both on Amazon. But just to do something on a consistent basis, I send out at least one greeting card every single day now some days I might send out two or three.

[00:15:37] But I send one out every single day. You know, you'll be getting a card from me after this. All right. It's just something that I've, you know, I've trained myself to do. My pipeline is completely full as a result of doing it. People get the cards.

[00:15:54] They love the cards. All right. You feel good when you send it, but they feel great when they receive it also. That's great. I love that one greeting card every single day. But I take Saturdays and Sundays off, you know, but it's you know,

[00:16:09] I do it every workday. And by the way, for everybody else listening, we're going to put the book, the consistency chain. We'll put the link for you to order that on the show notes. So just go to wherever you hear this podcast and you'll be able to order

[00:16:20] that and tell me what have you ever done any research on this? What are the best practices that other people use to stay connected with their clients? Yeah, there's you know, I obviously have competitors as a gentleman that wrote a book called Giftology that is just he's tremendous.

[00:16:38] I mean, he'll send steak knives. I mean, he'll send all kinds of great items. Mine are very small. They're like brownies, cookies, OK, things in that line. But there is competition out there. But I would tell you that the service

[00:16:52] that I use is the post office largest customer for first class stance. They've done over 200 main greeting cards with the post office. Although it's yeah, 200 million. That's right. Yeah, that's insane. No, you mentioned that there was a system that you use.

[00:17:09] There was a link you could share with us. Which which system is that? It's called SendOutCards.com forward slash. You're going to love this rainmaker. So so it's SendOutCards.com forward slash rainmaker. Yeah, we'll put that link in the show notes also.

[00:17:29] So you can go to that link and just try it. I mean, for five dollars, you can send three cards out. So it's not expensive, but it's a great service. That's great. And is that I think I may have used that or received cards from people before.

[00:17:43] Tell me about that system. What what does it do about that that makes it easy for us? Well, you literally go to the website, you find the greeting card that's appropriate to send. You select it, you type your message.

[00:17:57] You can actually type your message in your own handwriting. You hit the button that says send and they print it, stuff it and mail it for you. Oh, wow. That's easy. It's all done for you. Now, some of their programs even come with virtual assistants.

[00:18:12] So you'll have virtual assistant to help when they were creating whatever you want to. Wow. That's that's a that's a really interesting tool. They just introduced that on May 4th and that was that's an invaluable service.

[00:18:26] So do you think then because I'm kind of curious about your thoughts with Covid. Do you think it made it easier for us to be able to keep in touch? Do you think that more people want that now than before? Yeah, I think so.

[00:18:39] I think with Covid it just it gave you a whole different ballpark. I mean, people now work from their homes, right? They don't have the office buildings. My partner and I, we wrote the consistency chain. We were doing venues where we would go to companies and do our,

[00:18:57] you know, our routine. But now there's not as many venues to have. Now they're all Zoom calls. I think with Covid, it's really helped our business tremendously. That's great. Now, what do you think are some things that professionals shouldn't do?

[00:19:12] Like what are the absolute no-nos when it comes to keeping in touch with people? They just don't do it. Yeah, I mean, I mean, literally, I mean, you think about it. You don't touch base with anybody. You don't talk to anybody. You take their business for granted.

[00:19:29] I mean, there's two reasons why you lose business. Either they forget you or they think you took their business for granted. Those are the two major reasons why somebody doesn't do business with you.

[00:19:39] And I was just not going to allow that to happen to the companies that I'm involved with. Have you ever seen any data on what happens when a company does start making that connection a priority? No, that would be interesting.

[00:19:53] I know there's a book out, Never Lose a Customer Again. And they say that that 70 percent of businesses lose their business within the first 100 days of getting the business. Wow. Now think about it. I mean, 70 percent of your business you

[00:20:10] lose within the first 100 days of getting the business. And you don't even know you've lost it. They just gone on. Yeah, that's a waste, right? Yep, absolutely. Now, you mentioned Jay Abraham when we talked earlier. Yeah. Tell me about some of the concepts that you've learned from him.

[00:20:26] I know he's done very well in bringing creative ideas for client development to the business world. What are some of the concepts that you learned from Jay Abraham? Yeah, I really enjoy him. He had a contest a few years ago where he was picking out the 30 most

[00:20:43] unique products to market in the world, that type of business. And the product that I had invented was selected. And I'll show you the product. Yeah, tell me about it. Let's see it. This is the product. Tell me if you have any idea what this is.

[00:21:00] No, I don't. And for those of you that are on audio, we'll put the video where you can see the show notes so you can see that. All right. It's a device that holds a cord of a mouse

[00:21:12] so that when you use the mouse, the cord doesn't get hung up on your desk. Oh, that's great. We sold millions of these on QVC. All right. And all it is, I mean, it's plastic, two springs, ball bearing.

[00:21:27] And it just allows you to move the mouse without the cord getting all hung up. Now, that idea came from Jay Abraham, because if you remember, your mother used to have an iron that looked like this and it had the cord with a little spring to it.

[00:21:46] They kept it out of the way. And some of his feelings and one of his book, he says, look at other industries, see what made them successful, because if you can look at one industry that's been successful and you can apply what's made them

[00:22:01] successful to your industry, what might be as common as Stuart in their industry might have the effect of an atomic bomb going off in your industry. So I looked at that. I mean, even my my greeting cards, here is a great example of a greeting card. Right.

[00:22:19] And when you open it up, there's a little envelope inside and out comes and the punch lines out in a little envelope. That concept came from the cracker jack box. Remember these? He has a little gift inside of his inside. Yeah, that's right.

[00:22:34] Well, you know, that's where we came up with the idea of the little envelope inside the car from the cracker jack box. But from a more practical thing, when we sold our company, we went to a Sandals resort and we treated everybody.

[00:22:48] You know, that's where you go in, you put your wallet in the safe and everything's paid for. Right. Right. Well, I think what a great concept. All right. I wonder if we can apply this to our business. So when I got back, you know,

[00:23:01] in the old days, you used to buy a copier, used to buy the maintenance agreement, used to buy the supplies. All right. And everybody was fighting for that business. We came up with the idea of a cost per copy.

[00:23:13] Well, I'd put a copier in your office, charge you a nickel, a copy at the end of the month. You tell me how many copies you ran. I'll charge you a nickel for every copy that you made. You have no bill for maintenance,

[00:23:26] no bill for the machine and no bill for the supplies. Wow. And that all came from concepts out of his book. That's great. That's great, Jim. I mean, that's really interesting. And I know Jay Abraham because I've read some of his books, too.

[00:23:40] He really does look at ideas that you get from one industry, that success is applicable. And I think I get to spend a whole week with him. Oh, really? Wow. Tell me about that. Oh, that was amazing.

[00:23:53] It was we had to we were in Maine at the time. We flew to California and we sat around with the 29 other people that all had unique products. I brought my product, of course, gave one to everybody in the room. All right. They loved it.

[00:24:07] And I get to spend a whole week just listening to his philosophy. And he's a brilliant guy. He's absolutely amazing. And for those of you listening that don't know who Jay Abraham is, we're going to put links about him

[00:24:20] and some of his resources in the show notes also. I think one of the concepts I learned from him, Jim, it was in his book Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You've Got.

[00:24:30] I don't know if I got the title of the book right, but it was something like And he said, if you want to double your income, do these three things all at the same time. Increase your value by 25 percent, increase the number of customers you

[00:24:44] have by 25 percent and increase the frequency that they buy a product from you by 25 percent. So if they're buying four products from you, sell them one more, increase the value by 25 percent. If you've got four customers, get one more customer.

[00:24:58] If you do those three things, you've doubled it. I use that same concept in the recruiting industry. When I taught recruiters about candidate flow, I said increase the amount of time you spend on the phone by 25 percent. What does that mean?

[00:25:15] Come in 15 minutes early, stay 15 minutes later and reclaim 15 minutes of goof off time in the morning and reclaim 15 minutes of goof off time in the afternoon if you're doing four hours on the phone. That's an extra hour. And you've only come in 15 minutes early and stayed 15 minutes late.

[00:25:30] That's the only change. You're just more aware of how you spend your time to recoup it. I said that's one. I said, second, get more effective at your salesmanship, building trust, earning rapport, making a good pitch, moving people forward, increase your skills. You're effective.

[00:25:46] And the third was this increase the throughput, the number of connects per hour. If you're talking to four people in an hour, squeeze out one more call. And just by and I came up with a tool called the telephone discipline tool

[00:26:00] where people would highlight, they'd highlight, I want to have five boxes. Nowadays, you might only get three calls per hour. But by setting that hourly intention, the odds of hitting that goal are much more likely because now they're just

[00:26:16] aware at how they're spending their time on an hour by hour basis. And that concept came from Jay Abraham. And I use that to this day in my recruiting practice, which came from him. So I think it's interesting that you talked about him today.

[00:26:32] And do you know the concept of geometric expansion from his books? Yeah, that's that's obviously where you got it from. And he talks about there's only three ways to grow a business. You think there's a thousand ways, but there's only three ways. It's get more customers,

[00:26:47] get them to come back more often or get them to purchase larger amounts. And he uses the example of McDonald's where McDonald's wants more customers, they just advertise more. Right. If you want them to to get a larger

[00:27:03] purchase, then ask them if they want fries with that order. That increase their business, their profit by 35 percent. If you want them to come back more often, offer more things like salads and breakfasts and things in that line. And unfortunately, we don't all have the,

[00:27:20] you know, the buying, you know, the marketing and budgets that McDonald's have, you know. So we have to be creative in our thinking. And this is his whole book is there's so much to it. I mean, I love it.

[00:27:32] That's the book I take with me when I go on vacations. Yeah, it's such a good book. I've read it a few times also. And Jim, we're running out of time here. But let me ask you this, that if people could do three things,

[00:27:44] what are three action steps you think they should take to really keep their customers top of mind and really to understand how to increase that lifetime value of the client? I would visit the website, Sendelcards.com forward slash Rainmaker. Yeah, that's the first thing I just go

[00:28:01] visit the site and look at the site and see if it's something you could utilize if it is subscribed to just send out three cards. That program just to try it if you wanted to. Thirdly, contact me because I'd love to talk to them.

[00:28:15] I'd love to find people that that value that, you know, their customer base. That's great. And we're going to put all your contact info on the show notes, including your LinkedIn address and tell us about your services. Jim, what are the offerings that you have?

[00:28:30] What are the things that you do that you'd like our listeners know about you? I am a product of the product. I use it every single day. It's the only thing that I market today. All right. It is the customer retention aspect of it.

[00:28:45] So I walk the walk and talk the talk, I guess you could say. That's great, Jim. We're going to put all of your info on the show notes along with the links for the books that you've written.

[00:28:54] I appreciate you being here and for offering some really good ideas for us today, and I'd love to have you back on the show in the future, Jim. Well, thank you. I'd love to come back. Thank you for listening to the Rainmaking podcast.

[00:29:10] For more information about our recruiting services for international law firms, visit our website at attorney search group dot com to inquire about having Scott speak at your next convention, conference, sales meeting or executive retreat. Visit the Rainmaking podcast dot com.