Watch the video above or read below.

Stephen Semple:
So we’re going to start a little differently here. I’m going to start this one off because frankly, Matthew would not be able to introduce this very well because he would be all, ah, shucks and all that other stuff.

Matthew Burns:
I still might be.

Stephen Semple:
He still might be, because we’re going to highlight something Matthew created. So there’s this idea called a stick letter, and it’s a concept of it’s something you give a customer after they’ve done a transaction with you that makes them more loyal, more likely to give referrals, things along that lines. And we had a customer come to us. It was one that Matthew and I were working on together, a roofer, and he basically was going, Hey, I want to give away a hundred dollars gift certificate or something to people to get referrals. He was like, I want to get referral reward.

Matthew Burns:
Referral reward, yeah.

Stephen Semple:
I want to do referral reward. And we said, don’t do that. Do something different. It’s not emotional. It’s a bribe. Forget all of that and leave it with us.

Matthew Burns:
Nothing pisses off a client more than you saying “Don’t do that, but we don’t have what you need yet.”

Stephen Semple:
Right? So while Matthew and I were going through ideations on this and going like, well, what can we do? Matthew, what happened?

Matthew Burns:
Well, I went away with my oldest son, played travel baseball when he was 16, 17, 18, late teenage years, trying to get himself into a college in the U.S. Anyway, we were on a ball trip, and when I got back, there was a chocolate bar sitting on my desk at the office. It was called The Best Kind Chocolate Bar. And just for reference, this was a client that was in Ontario, Canada, but he was a transplant.

The guy who owned the business was from Newfoundland, Canada. And Newfoundlanders have a very specific accent, very strong accent. They have a lot of colloquialisms that we don’t have in Ontario or anywhere else in the planet. And they say things weird. And so Dominic would always say to me things like this, I’d say, “Hey Dominic, how’s it going today?” He’d say, oh, “I’m the best coin buddy of the best coined.”

That’s how he answered me. I was like, that’s the coolest, man. And because I would tease him and make fun of that, he left The Best Kind Chocolate Bar at my desk. I saw the chocolate bar, and I instantly remembered a story. He told me about his mom passing away, and that he just had this affinity towards his mom, and his mom is this amazing cook and blah, blah, blah. I said, I’ve got an idea. I ran it by you, Steve. I said, I think I want to give away chocolate bars at the end.

This is a metal roofing company. They did like $30,000, $40,000 metal roofs, and I want to give a silly old chocolate bar as a thank you for doing business with them. And you were like, yeah, what’s the story? You didn’t care what the thing was. You were like, what’s the story? And I got the story. I know what the story is. His mom used to do this baking thing, and now we don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. Sometimes we made up the ingredients, but his mom used to bake cookies for him and his cousins every Sunday after church.

Stephen Semple:
After church, yeah.

Matthew Burns:
So man, I did a lot of running around for this client. I designed a package for him that housed his warranty card. I’m going to show you that here. This is the warranty card that it went out with his name and picture on it. And I wrote a letter.

Stephen Semple:
It’s a pretty long letter, but here’s what it does. It basically tells the story of Dominick being a child going home after church with his cousins, playing with his cousins and his mom, causing havoc, and his mom making these cookies. Here’s the part that we want you to understand about this. Here’s emotionally how this landed with people. Matthew, when this was given to customers, how did they react?

Matthew Burns:
So we made up one rule for the delivery of these things. It was his daughter who used to work for the company. Dominic’s daughter worked for the company. She delivered the chocolate. She would knock on the door, the person would answer the door. She would hand the box to the client. And her job was just to say one thing. My dad asked me to give these to you and then say not one more word, and stare at them. Just wait for the reaction. That was it. And a couple of things happened. One was that they would just take the box and go in. I mean, we don’t win ’em all. And so she’d just turn around and walk away. That was the end of the interaction. But that was about 10% – 15% of the time what we found out.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah, it was rare.

Matthew Burns:
It was very rare. What ended up happening most was either that would be this really long interaction at the door. They would open up the box, they would see the letter, and then they would read it before -I mean, the one thing I didn’t show you is that the inside of the box, I mean, it was nice. We did some work. There’s two chocolate bars in there. They have all these flavors in them, and they never got to that until probably five, 10 minutes in because all of a sudden that they would read the story right in front of her and say, is that a real story, man, your dad, he’s such a nice guy, man. The whole family would get together all the time. It’s a different lifestyle for them, but everybody knows what it’s like to be with family eating a family dinner.

Stephen Semple:
Shared experience.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. And now I said, my father asked me to give this to you. It talks about aunts and uncles and grandparents in the letter. This whole thing has just brought them into the Dominic Power family. So the best story that I was ever told, that the best reaction I ever got was they were invited in. The daughter got invited in, she sat there and had tea. And like I said, if they invite you in, go in if you feel safe, and obviously all that, allow that interaction to happen. Because what that does is that allows this and the entire interaction that they’ve now had with the company and with your dad to now just stick.

I mean, we called this podcast, this YouTube channel, Sticky Sales Stories for a reason. And you are the one that reminded me, like “Matt, we call it sticky sales stories. We haven’t done stick letters. How have we not done stick letters?” and the bond happened. Well, typically, most roofing companies are going to get about a 5% to a 6% referral rate.

Stephen Semple:
If they’ve done a good job.

Matthew Burns:
If they’ve done a good job, even with a referral program, here’s $100 to $200, refer your friend, blah, blah,

Stephen Semple:
And a lot of times they’re like $500 bucks and this thing costs $30 with the box and everything.

Matthew Burns:
$20 bucks with two chocolate bars and all of the work. It was nothing.

Stephen Semple:
And what did the referral rate go to?

Matthew Burns:
32%. Yeah. Now, they didn’t close every other deal, but they were referred 32% of the time.

Stephen Semple:
But this increased referrals 600%.

Matthew Burns:
He said, “we didn’t bribe anybody.” I said, “you didn’t have to.” Oh, and there was no asking for referrals.

Stephen Semple:
No, they didn’t even ask. They just happened.

Matthew Burns:
They were like, oh, man, you got to check out these guys. That’s what they do.

Stephen Semple:
Now, the sad thing is things were great for Dominic. Today, if you went to look up Power Metal Roofing, it’s not around any longer because Dominic’s had illness in the family, returned back to Newfoundland, a couple of things along those lines. And the business wasn’t sort of at that self-sustaining level yet. It was pretty small when we started with him.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right.

Stephen Semple:
That’s unfortunate. I do miss Dominic. He was always a character. Good guy, and a lot of fun. But the point is, it’s not the chocolate bars, it’s the story. It’s the vulnerability. It’s the shared experience of people going, oh my God, I just love you guys. We’re now kindred spirits.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly.

Stephen Semple:
And Dominic wasn’t even there for it. It was his daughter. Anybody could have given that. And the only question that would’ve come, they had to be ready to answer is “Is this a true story?”

Matthew Burns:
Yes, it is.

Stephen Semple:
And I’ll tell you, when people realize it’s a real story, it’s amazing the impact that it has. We have a billboard campaign going on for a plumber. Again, one you and I working on, that’s just hilarious. It’s just outrageous and crazy. And we get people phoning in asking, are those actors or are those actually your plumbers? And we’re like, oh no, those dudes work for us. They’re like, oh my God, that’s incredible.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, I can’t believe it. Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s so weird. But that authenticity is what brings all this together, right? It’s authentic, it’s emotional, and you don’t have to beg for business. Just be awesome.

Stephen Semple:
Just be awesome and let people emotionally bond with you with a little bit of vulnerability and story. And the crazy thing is it had nothing to do with roofing.

Matthew Burns:
Nothing. Zero. It’s about family. Steve, thanks for putting me on the spot and embarrassing me for an episode.

Stephen Semple:
It was such a good piece, right? Just an amazing piece.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. No, and it worked out really well. I hope you guys like this one, a little bit of what we do and how we like to look at the world at marketing. Thank you for forcing me into this uncomfortable situation. And we’ll be back next week with hopefully another video.

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