Connect Social Networks Site

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:01): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Hey, I want to give a shout out to another member of the HubSpot network, the success story podcast, hosted by Scott, the Clair. It’s one of the most useful podcasts in the world. Success story features Q and a sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, conversations on sales marketing. Hey, and if you’re a freelancer, his episode on how to make seven figures freelancing on Fiverr is a must listen to the success story podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:47): Hello, welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and I am continuing on my series about referrals. If you didn’t catch the last episode on this, you might check it out. Referrals, generation episode one. This is episode two, we’ll have them all posted once we’ve got them all recorded the so that you can listen to them all one time. But if you have a list of that one, I, I, I, in the first one, I talked a little bit about the rationale, why we do referrals, why we need to focus on this idea of referrals. So for today, I’m going to focus on two of the seven. What I call grades of referral fuel. In the first episode, I introduced to all seven of those. And in subsequent episodes, I will continue to go into more depth on each.

John Jantsch (01:41): So for today, I’m going to do number one. And number two, number one is referral offers for every client. Anybody who has done business with you should at least know that you want a referrals that you’re open to referrals that you love referrals. So the real key there is to just find a way to simply stay top of mind, to remind them that, that there are ways to give you referrals dependent upon your business, what industry you’re in. They may have the opportunity to refer somebody to you every day, or they may just, it may just happen once or twice in a year. For example, if, if somebody is buying a house or, uh, trying to find a remodeling contractor or something, it’s not going to be something that’s an everyday thing. So one of the real keys is that you stay top of mind by having some things that come into the home or come into the business on a regular basis.

John Jantsch (02:38): I like to talk about, uh, referral offers that you are going to put out there to your attire, customer basis, three types of referrals. So there are what I call direct offers. And essentially a direct offer is if you do X, you will get X pretty straightforward, some sort of reason to act some sort of maybe it’s monetary. Maybe it’s not. The second type is what I call implied offers. And this is just a way for you to show up in your client’s life in, uh, in a way that they might share something. So they’re not necessarily say you should, you should hire these people. You should buy from this company. And, you know, and I get X in many cases, there may be no actual motivation or, or compensation for the referral. It’s just, you’ve made it very easy for them to, to showcase your work.

John Jantsch (03:33): I’ll give a couple examples of each of these. The third one is, uh, what I call tangible offers and the idea behind this is that you send or give your customer something that they can turn around that has value that they can turn around something like a gift certificate or a coupon and tangibly hand to someone so that you are not only making it easy. You are actually giving them maybe something of great value that they can share so that, that in some cases could be a true motivation. So let me give you example of each of these. So a direct offer. Everybody’s pretty much seen that. I mean, if you think about affiliate deals, they’re kind of, Hey, you know, send somebody our way, use this referral link and you get 20 bucks. So it’s essentially that. But I like to think in terms of, unless you have an affiliate program where it makes sense for you to have some sort of recurring revenue, a affiliate program, then I really like to get creative with these.

John Jantsch (04:30): And I think it’s an, I think it’s important that you tie it back to what it is that you do, but particularly if you’re going to reward somebody in, in some cases, monetary rewards are appreciated. In other cases they’re seen as well, gosh, you’re only referring this person because you get money or you get paid and that’s not, again, that’s not everybody’s motivation. So in some cases, they actually may be uncomfortable with that years ago, I was working with a remodeling contractor that essentially did very high-end upscale, remodels. And so when somebody referred somebody to them, that was worth a lot of money. So they basically had a standing referral fee of a thousand dollars. Some of their people would take it. Some of them would say, oh, just donate it to charity. I mean, obviously in some cases they, you know, they just said, no, I don’t, I don’t need that.

John Jantsch (05:20): That’s not why I told my friend that they should hire you. I told them because you’re awesome. So we tried to think of w you know, we still wanted to stay top of mind to give referrals. So we tried to think of something more creative. And so we came up with that offer that we called carpenter for a day. So they employed carpenters that did work. And so what would happen was when somebody would refer a customer, a new customer, they would earn the use of a carpenter for that entire, for entire day. So they’d create kind of a punch list of little, you know, tacky, little things that we all have around our homes that they just, it wasn’t really worth calling somebody or the hassle of getting somebody to come out and bid it, whatnot. It was just like, no, here we’ll, we’ll take off the list under these parameters.

John Jantsch (06:04): And the thing about that was that, that they’re, they’re more upscale homeowners, you know, actually found that harder to get at a thousand dollars. It actually costs the company less than a thousand dollars to do that, to send somebody over for a day. So they found that it, it became a motivation because people thought it was fun. Oh, I finally got these things done. I mean, they would talk to their friends about, Hey, if you, you know, if you hire them, I get a carpenter for a day know, and, and it just sounded so much better than I get, you know, I get paid for it. So the lots of ways that you can make this worked for you. And in fact, in some cases, people have been very successful at, you know, refer someone and we’ll donate X to a charity of your choice.

John Jantsch (06:51): That could be a motivation. That is if you do X, you know, you Y happens. So it doesn’t always have to be a monetary reward to the individual. Some people feel very good about supporting a charity and that could be motivation enough. All right, the applied offer is a little more subtle and it probably doesn’t work for every business. But the idea behind this is that that there’s some sort of reminder. So again, let’s go back to my remodeling contractor. They actually created when, so when they would do a project of a certain size, they would actually photograph the, before the, during and the after pictures, and then create one of those kind of nice coffee table, hardbound, full color books, that, that are pretty easy, uh, to, to, to get their number of companies that do those now. And you just produce one at a time.

John Jantsch (07:39): They were going to photograph the projects anyway for their own portfolio and further their own website. So it really wasn’t much of a cost to go to the extent of creating this coffee table book. Now, the nice thing about it was last page had just a little bit of subtle information about, about the particular contractor. So if somebody was reading that book, they might think, oh, I’m going to call that. And the thing is this, you know, when somebody redoes their kitchen, they have people over to see it and why not go through? Here’s what it looked like before. Here’s how they had to navigate tearing out this wall and that wall, and here’s the finished product. And so they were, it was something that the people appreciated getting, cause it chronicled their project, but it was also something that made it very easy for them to share their project.

John Jantsch (08:28): So consequently, it implied referral. Now there’s lots of ways that you can do this as well. I, I had a, a real estate agent that would send out gift baskets to, you know, typical things. Somebody closed on a house, uh, but they had a subtle message on them that had a little hang tag that, that, that said, I’ll go the extra mile for, you know, referrals. So just keeping, you know, top of mind keeping it so that when people saw that tag or saw, you know, who the gift was from. So lots of things you can do under that umbrella. All right. The third one, the tangible offer. I really like this one because you’re not only making it easy for somebody you’re, you’re also giving them something of value that that’s going to help incentivize. So it could be a gift certificate. It could be, you know, a product or a service be bonuses.

John Jantsch (09:22): So that, that kind of working in terms of referral. So once a quarter send all your customers a gift certificate for a hundred dollars and tell them, feel free to give this to any of your friends, neighbors, and colleagues, as you know, our appreciation is our, thank you. Now, one of the things, of course that makes that particular one work is also that they not only have the coupon or the gift certificate to give away that has a tangible value somehow a worded or, or structured. So that, that when they do, when this gift certificate comes back used with a new customer, that, that your customer receives something forward as well. In fact, those are kind of some of the keys, I think, to, to making these programs work. I think some of the best referral programs are ones where both parties win. So the person that they refer get something for it and the person who does the referral get something for it.

John Jantsch (10:22): And in way I think it, I think it adds a level of motivation because the person who’s referring gets something, but it doesn’t make it. So like the only reason you’re vegan is referrals because you get paid the, the recipient or the person who they are going to refer also wins, or also get something in, in the exchange as well, some discount or some kind of new customer park of some sort. So I think that’s a real key when you’re thinking about designing these. Now, the second one is I love it. When you can creatively tie back to the brand, the carpenter for a day, it was certainly a great way to tie back to what the brand did, what the company did. And then of course, consistency. Just if you get something that’s working at all, just think about this as a quarterly type of program, for example,

John Jantsch (11:11): And now a word from our sponsor with Q4 closing employee holiday travel and forecasting for 2022 underway, staying connected has never been more important. And HubSpot is consistently releasing new features to make your CRM platform more connected than ever with improved forecasting tools and custom report builders. See how your quarter is going, inspect new deals and use customizable data-driven reports to improve team performance. As you grow with custom behavioral events, you can track site behavior and understand your customer’s buying habits all within the platform. And if you’re looking for cleaner data with a centralized system, the all new operations hub enterprise gives your ops leads. The ability to curate data sets for all users, meaning even faster and more consistent reporting, learn more about how a HubSpot CRM platform can help connect the dots of your business @ HubSpot.com. It’s a couple of tools that you might also consider. A lot of times the thing that stops people in some ways from making referrals is, is just a bit of work. So make it as easy as possible, you know, create a landing page that can send people to pre-write an email.

John Jantsch (12:26): So if you want somebody to introduce you to their friends, neighbors, customers, whatever it is, rewrite that remail obviously they can make it their own and they could change it, but it’s going to give them a head start. And it’s going to make sure that maybe the way you talk about your business is the way you want to talk to that. You might even consider building a funnel just for referrals. So if somebody refers people to you or somebody gives you introductions or makes introductions that you actually have some sort of nurture campaign. And then the last one, when people make referrals, find a way to publicly thank them. I mean, in social media, in your newsletter thought that kind of thing, because what it does is first off, the person who made the referral might think, oh, look, you know, I’ve been recognized, but it also sends a message that you want referrals and that you appreciate referrals and that you get referrals.

John Jantsch (13:19): All of those are actually, you know, really good things in terms of somebody else referring a couple other, uh, points. There, there are some tools out there getting people to share your content is, you know, don’t under estimate the value of that in terms of a referral tools like spark loop, smart loop app spark loop app, make it really easy for you to, uh, have a little button so that somebody could share your, a piece of content, share your newsletter. And then, you know, maybe they win or they get some sort of awards for doing that. There’s also all kinds of tools these days for affiliate referrals, you know, things like referral candy, referral rock, those might be tools that you might employ. Really what I would call kind of community referrals. Somebody doesn’t have to be a customer. They, they may just be on your newsletter list, but that this, you know, a tool like spark loop can actually turn them into a referral source for you.

John Jantsch (14:14): All right. The second one I want to work on today is something I call your referral champions program. So the first programs that I was talking about it was really something you should be, you should be communicating to everyone, just, you know, even, even people that are on your newsletter list. But the second program is, is the people that are really champions. I mean, they, they evangelize your business already. They send you referrals already. They would do anything that you ask them to do. Certainly those, that group is a group that you should be understanding a lot about, actually think in terms of thinking church, treating them like a club almost so that you give them special appreciation, special perks, special events, special content of some short for that group. You also, I mean, that group actually might come to you. There may be somebody in that say, Hey, I want to refer you.

John Jantsch (15:06): What’s the best way to do it. So, so create content for them. Testimonials reviews of find ways to get customers, those customers, to generate content, doing videos, testimonials, and things, doing case studies on some of your best customers is a great way to get that even more engaged. You know, they know, they know they go to your website and see a case study of the success you’ve had with them that just gets them more engaged. But there are some other things that I think you could do. You might just bring them together for lunch, believe it or not, especially in, in certain settings. Um, that’s a networking event, uh, you know, for other business owners, for example, or even just individuals that live in, in a community that might be customers of yours, bring them together, just kind of creates a closer connection. Having them actually do some teaching on your behalf.

John Jantsch (15:54): So if you’ve gotten a result for somebody or a product of yours has got result for somebody having them talk to say a group of five or six people in a round table, kind of setting, talking about how they address the problem they were, they, they were trying to solve in their industry. You know, that’s a great, it’s a great way to get them engaged. It’s very valuable to anybody that would attend and effectively is referral selling on your behalf. Don’t forget exclusive events, exclusive offers. I mean, how many people put out that special offer only for new customers? Well, what about your best customer is about having a special offer just for them exclusive content, you know, maybe put, maybe build a, a, an advisory board for your business. You know, a marketing advisory board, uh, they’re, they’re not going to have any official duties necessarily, but they’re going to be closed.

John Jantsch (16:46): You’re going to be able to bounce things off of them. They’re going to give you feedback. They’re close, they’re closer and closer to your business. All right. So those are one and two. So, uh, next, in the next episode, I will cover a couple more. And then in a fourth episode, we’ll, we’ll wrap up this series. So put all together, this is going to be effectively a workshop in referral generation dependent upon your business model or the type of clients that you’re after. You will certainly be able to find something that appeals to your business and works for you. So keep listening, keep digging in and we’ll catch you on the next show. All right. So that wraps up another episode. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and, you know, we love those reviews and comments. And just generally tell me what you think also did you know that you could offer the duct tape marketing system, our system to your clients, and build a complete marketing consulting coaching business, or maybe level up an agency with some additional services. That’s right. Check out the duct tape marketing consultant network. You can find it at duct tape, marketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that offer our system to your clients tab.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email updates

Enter your name and email address below and I’ll send you periodic updates about the podcast.

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:01): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Hey, I want to give a shout out to another member of the HubSpot network, the success story podcast, hosted by Scott de Clair. It’s one of the most useful podcasts in the world. Success story features Q and A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, conversations on sales marketing. Hey, and if you’re a freelancer, his episode on how to make seven figures freelancing on Fiverr is a must listen to the success story podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:47): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jeffrey Davis. He’s an author team culture consultant, educator, and CEO of tracking wonder consultancy for over 25 years. He’s inspired thousands of Changemakers leaders and creatives to unlock their best ideas through the pursuit of curiosity, innovation and wonder today, he’s got a new book coming out. We’re going to talk about it. It’s called tracking wonder reclaiming a life of meaning and possibility in a world, obsessed with productivity. So Jeffrey, welcome to the show.

Jeffrey Davis (01:24): Thanks. It’s always a pleasure to

John Jantsch (01:25): Hang out. Yeah. So, so I don’t know. I’ll ask a really direct question. Define wonder.

Jeffrey Davis (01:33): Yeah, that’s a good starting place, right? We think we know what it is, but then we’re like, oh, let’s wonder about wonder. Yeah. So through my research, I’ve come to a more clear understanding myself of what wonder is it is a heightened state of awareness that’s brought on by something unexpected that typically either delights us, disorients us or both. And I would say what the most remarkable things, qualities of wonder that it’s fleeting. Sometimes it happens just for a few seconds. I cite it, you know, a deer in the woods or, you know, a sunset sometimes, you know, you hear something that just catches you by surprise from a coworker, but it has long lasting effects. And the, um, the science of wonder is kind of caught up. I’ve been on this trail for over 15 years when there was very little science of wonder and it’s catching up really to show us the remarkable effects that has on our resilience, our thinking, and our capacity to connect with one another.

John Jantsch (02:31): So, and, and, and I’m sure you’ve talked about this before, and I’m certainly not the first one to bring this up, but you know, you go somewhere like, I don’t know, four or five-year-old child, I’ve got, one of my grandkids is about, is four and it’s so funny. We’ll go somewhere and I’m not paying much attention. I’ll hear go. Wow. And you look around, it’s like, what? Wow. Yeah. So we’re the point is we’re born with this in like large amounts. So how do we lose it?

Jeffrey Davis (03:04): I’m so glad you said that I have a seven year old daughter and a 12 year old daughter. And they’re great wonder trackers, but there are instances I have to say, John, when I’m a bit more in wonder than they are. And so wonder is not just kid stuff. It’s pretty, pretty remarkable grownup stuff. So yeah. Wonder does Wayne and it wanes in part neurologically. So when we’re about my older daughter’s age, 12, 13 years old, our Synopsys start to prune in the brain and we don’t have all of those, you know, great connections going on in our brain culturally, without a doubt, particularly in United States culture and even the Scottish Irish, which is part of my heritage, but the hard work ethic, we have a cultural bias against wonder and it’s, it doesn’t seem productive. And yet the irony of wonders that it, it can help us become remarkably productive without burning out or, or burning bridges.

John Jantsch (03:58): You know, one of the things, since you mentioned productivity, and obviously it’s, it’s in the title or subtitle of the book as well is one of the ways we are more productive or at least I find myself more is, is through habits, through rituals, through things that I do every day. And, and, you know, I wonder while, while on one hand that makes us very productive or can make us feel productive. It certainly numbs us a bit, I suppose, to, to change or to surprise doesn’t it. Okay.

Jeffrey Davis (04:28): Oh, this is such a great question. Nobody’s really touched on this. So rituals, which I have them in the morning to make me very intentional, I have some specific to wonder, but the irony is just what you said is that the ritual can become routine. And then it just becomes this sort of default expectation. And we’re wired the neuroscientists call this, uh, re network of the brain, the default mode network we’re wired. And so to sort of categorize things, get in routine so we can move on with our life. But the challenge for us in these times is to disrupt our default routines. Our default ways of thinking are, are even our default rituals, right, is to kind of make your ritual spicy, so to speak every once in a while.

John Jantsch (05:18): So you ride a lot, you work with it’s an in, as I read your bio, you work with a lot of creatives and have for a long time. And I think certainly, uh, you know, a true creative has no problem with this idea of, of wonder that I have to get in my state where I can be creative and not just be in my kind of rat race state. So how do you first off, I know you’re not saying that that’s who needs this, that’s your that’s who it’s for, but, so how do you get people past that idea of saying, oh, well, that’s fine for those people that we don’t know what they’re doing over there anyway, you know, and bring it into the workplace

Jeffrey Davis (05:56): At such a great, because that is also a lot of my work with professionals and executives and teams and organizations. So I will say I was heartened to see that the Harvard business review recently published an article from a couple of researchers that seem to get at the premise of our body of work about why managers and leaders need to protect their sense of wonder and our times. So, one way to think about what wonder does and how it benefits us in this world of work that has just shifted for everybody, is that experiences of one. So what the science of wonder is showing us that is that if we can habitually recall share, and foster experiences of wonder that by doing that, even in the workplace, right, even with team leaders, recalling sharing and fostering experiences of wonder these experiences actually boost our capacity to focus in these times of rampant distraction, they actually build our resilience.

Jeffrey Davis (07:01): And I won’t go into all of the science of how it’s now demonstrated to do so, but it’s as good for us as good rest and good, good diet. It gives us resilience to keep working for the marathon, not just the sprint and wonder is remarkably pro social. So this is the beautiful part. I think of my research in our times is it’s not just for the solo creative, you know, getting inspired with their ideas and some studio it’s pro-social, it actually can make us more generous with one another. It can also let me see if I can put it in this context too. It helps us see each other again, in a new way. So you were talking about, you know, how rituals can become a habit. We can become habituated with one another. Can’t wait, right. People, you know, attend any team meeting. And you’re like, ah, there goes so-and-so again. Oh yeah. We’ve sort of box each other in wonder, has this remarkable ability to disrupt our biased ways of thinking about a problem of seeing each other and even if seeing ourselves.

John Jantsch (08:11): Yeah, it’s funny. I live on the edge of a national forest and, you know, a deer walks by and I’m like, oh, whatever, another deer. And so, so, so how, you know, how do we, so I’m sure there are a lot of people that say, okay, yeah, this is a nice concept, Jeffery. I don’t disagree with the concept. We need more wonder in our life, but, but I’m sure that there are a lot of pragmatic people that are saying, give me the example of, you know, how I bring, wonder as an experience or, you know, how, how do I, how am I intentional about this? Because I think that it’s probably one of those things that is going to take some work or some practice for people.

Jeffrey Davis (08:47): It will. Exactly. So tracking wonder is a skillset and a set of practices that we all can learn and, and sorta reclaim that birthright as you alluded to earlier, right? We’re all born wide-eyed with wonder, and we can actually practice, right. Just this, you know, leaders want to practice becoming compassionate. We can practice, uh, fostering and tracking wonder. So yeah, in the book, I lay out what I call six facets of wonder six sides of wonder. So we can really start to identify, identify them in our lives and, and figure out how to foster more of them. So there’s openness and curiosity are two really important facets that we can develop the skill set for more actively and regularly to approach any challenges, more creatively instead of reactively, say for instance, a challenge comes up for you. The natural response might be fight or flight, right?

Jeffrey Davis (09:47): Very reactive is this part of how we’re wired, but instead if we can practice pausing that reactivity and get curious and ask really intentionally curious questions like what’s going on here and this challenge, this problem, how could we think about this differently? That’s just one activity, right? The next pair of facets are bewilderment and hope. These are really important facets of wonder that demonstrably build our resilience and our fortitude to navigate adversity and challenge, which I think the whole globe needs right now. So sometimes just to when, when we’re feeling down or like in a dark place, whether as a team or as an individual, we can catch that natural darkness. We don’t need to bypass it, but we can do things like stepping outdoors, taking a five minute walk, taking a breather, looking up at the sky. So to speak wherever you live, there is sky.

Jeffrey Davis (10:51): And you’re probably going to come away with a slightly different perspective than, than you did five minutes before the second, the third pair of facets are connection and admiration. And these are really central. And at the heart of your brilliance, which is marketing connection and admiration are the facets of wonder that are very pro-social and allow us really to see one another in a new way. So when we come in conflict, which is very common, whether we’re remote working remotely or in the workplace, we, when we come in conflict, there are a number of things you could do. Just pause in the moment of conflict, detach yourself from the situation and actually practice seeing the person in front of you or the person you’re in conflict with differently, new, like recognizing this person should probably not intentionally harming you or trying to make your life miserable.

Jeffrey Davis (11:45): So let me just pause here for a moment to John DOE and say for the teams that I work with, we just start first, we start with wonder at work assessment, just to kind of see where each team member is and those different facets and other areas. And then sometimes we’ll start with just a few wonder interventions that we figure out together. So what w what can we do at the beginning of the day or the beginning of a meeting differently? So for instance, team managers now simply sometimes start off a meeting with, okay, everyone share, just share a small highlight from the past week, or share something with us that kind of blew your mind, that forces you to actually not just focus on the negative or the problems, but actually see these beautiful moments that were actually quite meaningful and can really bond us.

Jeffrey Davis (12:37): The next set of interventions would be in the middle of the day. This is really, really important that all the research bears out is how to break better in order to work well. So sometimes it requires timing. Sometimes it requires a team agreeing at a certain time of day to break together, better step out doors, step away from the screen. I know remote teams, you’re like, okay, we all have to go outdoors and prove it to get away from the screen. And then finally, at the end of the day, or the end of the week, a certain, I guess you could call them rituals. We call them wonder interventions, where you come together and reflect what was the most meaningful for you in this past week. And so those beginning, middle and end wonder interventions are usually just a starting place for starting, you know, for really shaking up the default ways of working and working together. This

John Jantsch (13:33): So did the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by Sendinblue and all in one digital marketing platform, empowering small businesses to build stronger customer relationships through end to end digital marketing campaigns. They support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships, send him blue allows you to create captivating and personalized email campaigns, custom landing pages, sign up forms, automated workflows, transactional messaging, CRM, and more, and best of all, duct tape marketing listeners can click on sendinblue.com/ducttapemarketing to sign up for a free trial. And if you use the promo code on that page, duct tape, you’ll get 50% off for your first three months, either on a light or premium account.

John Jantsch (14:25): All right. So as I hear you talk about this, I want to break it into two ways that I think that I think most people will, will logically jump as a, just listening to you to describe that this is culture. This is stuff we’re going to work on in our organization. And I think a lot of people are open to that idea. I mean, I think everybody realizes the value that how would you apply this? Or how would you encourage somebody to apply this in a say, customer service or even sales role? So not to an internal team, but, but to actually bring this level of empathy out into the external world,

Jeffrey Davis (15:00): I love that you asked that in, in marketing and, and in sales. So let’s just start with openness and curiosity because you and I both know that we all can get into our default habits of sales and marketing. Like we learn best practices and, and we have certain biases, right. That are laid out in psychology. That if it worked one time, well, it should work a second, the third time. Right? So by just practicing some openness and curiosity, getting really curious and saying, Hmm, how could I approach the sales call just a little differently? And then let’s jump to connection. How could I actually attune to this person, ask some curious questions, genuine, curious questions, right? Because you know, the heart of marketing quite often is listening. Yeah. And really getting some resonance with what’s happening with the person on the other side of your sales call and then establishing some genuine, some genuine connection. It has to be, it has to be genuine really for it, for it to work.

John Jantsch (16:10): Right. And I think that’s sometimes one of the dangers when people, people are out there expressing this idea of, we have to bring more curiosity and we have to listen. I mean, these, these are concepts that people in some cases get shoved down their throat. That that’s what we need to be doing here. But I mean, how do you, how do you, how do you handle a situation where somebody is basically faking wonder for a while?

Jeffrey Davis (16:36): Um, that requires, that requires some self knowledge. So there is, there is a sort of untapped or in the book, that’s at the heart of this body of work. And it can start to sound like a little woo. But I grounded in classical philosophy from the Greek thinkers, the Greek thinker said that suggested that I’m talking Aristotle Plato, Socrates, not to get too wonky on your audience, but that we’re each born with this sort of force of character. That’s unique to each of us, that’s distinct to each of us. And they called it your on your, your genius as it, as it were. And it’s unique to each of us, but we were born forgetting it. But if we remember it at certain times and bring it to our word, bring it to our sales calls, it will guide us toward our best work in the world at whatever stage in our life.

Jeffrey Davis (17:31): So we do a lot of work with that. So one thing that the salesperson has to do their own self work and just like really acknowledge who they are at heart and what makes them come alive in sales. My father was a brilliant salesperson in the Dallas media world. And I asked him one time, like first ad, what do you do? And he said, well, I sell air because it was radio advertising. And then I said, why are you so good at what you do? And I always deliver what I promise and I really care about people. And so I’ve always remembered that. So, you know, the sales person who’s trying to fake, it has to really do the self knowledge to say, okay, really? What is the genius part of me that makes me come alive in sales? Why do I care about sales in the first place? And can I see the genius in the person on the other side of the sales call? That’s a really, now that can sound a little woo, but it’s a really important practice that probably any leader or manager who’s successful knows they have to do. They have to practice seeing the person on the other side differently.

John Jantsch (18:37): You talk about this, this idea of admiration, and there’s a line, uh, to quote, is the experience a surprising love for someone else’s excellence? I think that’s probably one of the, we, I think anyone who has done that has experienced the value of doing that, but it’s also seems to be in our, in our obsession to climb whatever it is. We’re climbing seems to be one of the hardest things to do.

Jeffrey Davis (19:01): Wow. I’m so glad you, that is the admiration chapter I have to say is my favorite chapter in the book. And I feel like it’s one of the most important, and I agree. I, and that’s why it’s the sixth. I think it is the hardest in our culture. We seem to admire big celebrities and heroes from afar, but we seem hard pressed to admire the person we work with to see them differently for the leaders to see the employees differently and admire their grit and their, you know, their character, but right. It is admiration is a surprising love for someone else’s excellence and character or craft. And so again, that this is that practice of really actively practicing, seeing the other person differently. This is a big game changer in culture, but also even for the small business owner who gets irritated with their customers. So I’ve worked with small businesses before and I’ve listened to how they described their customers. And I’m like, okay, we need to do just a little subtle admiration work.

John Jantsch (20:07): You’ve been working on this idea tracking, wonder for quite some time, you know, obviously you’ve, you’ve brought it together through, you’ve referred to it as body of work, your body of work of research and experience in doing this work. So if, and this answer, I assume, will change in a year from now, but right now, right, this is a book is coming out. What’s the impact that you want to have on, on the, on the reader or the people that, that take even a, just a kernel of this.

Jeffrey Davis (20:35): Yeah, thanks for that question. I really want this book to be the antidote to quitting. And we’re in this season of quitting nationally in the United States, but I also mean quitting the antidote to quitting on our dreams and the antidote to quitting on our ideals. We have some big challenges ahead individually and collectively, and I really want this book to serve, to catalyze us, to keep reaching for possibilities.

John Jantsch (21:01): Yeah. I th I feel like there’s a, you know, we went through a 10, I want to rehash the pandemic on every show, but I seem to get, get there one way or another. We, uh, went through the spirit where everybody was like, I almost felt like there was an energy around, how do we have to change? How do we have to shift? How do we have to help each other? And now we’re 18 months in and the slog has just kind of become, you know, something nobody’s talking about anymore, but we’re all still experiencing that, that, you know, that is, you know, you talk about this great resignation, you know, that people talk about. I think that, I think that’s why we’re coming to a head in that

Jeffrey Davis (21:34): I do too. I appreciate your saying that too. I remember that that spring of 2020 and my girls were home and I was actually quite ecstatic that they were, we were camping in the backyard and, you know, I don’t want to make light of the situation because there was real suffering on our part and on so many people’s parts, but there was this sort of awakening, so to speak. And that facet of wonder called bewilderment. I think the whole globe was experiencing it, but you’re right. All of a sudden then we have to sustain hope, right? That we are going to continue to learn. What’s been really exposed, right? That’s been broken in so many ways in our institutions and our, our old habits personally, and collectively that I really do want this book and what ripples out of this book to serve for us to really stay open and keep questioning the status quo, whether that’s the status quo in our own lives or the status quo in our workplaces, really questioning our own assumptions.

Jeffrey Davis (22:32): I’ll just say I had, I was talking with a client, who’s a president of a company and he was in bewilderment. Betty said, you know, what is our new metrics for productivity? We never had a good metric. And so how am I going to measure like the 250 employees coming back where I have to, you know, say, give him credit. When the pandemic came blocked down and so forth, he was like, okay, we need to take care of home first for our people. And then we’ll take care of work. But now that people are coming back into the workplace, I just love that question because he’s staying open. John, he’s staying open to the questions as opposed to go into the default answers and, and immediate closure.

John Jantsch (23:19): So Jennifer tell people where they can connect with you and obviously find out more about the book itself and the work that you’re doing around wonder.

Jeffrey Davis (23:26): Yeah. Thanks. This has been a real pleasure. They can go to tracking wonder.com. They can also go to tracking wonder dot.com/podcast bonus. And we’ll let, we’ll have a wonder at work assessment they can take and maybe a couple of other bonuses for your listeners.

John Jantsch (23:40): Awesome. Well, I appreciate it is obviously a great having to stop by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we can run into each other one of these days soon out there on the road. I hope so too. John take care.

John Jantsch (23:52): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I want to thank you so much for tuning in, feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you’ve got employees, if you’ve got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It’s called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at duct tape, marketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email updates

Enter your name and email address below and I’ll send you periodic updates about the podcast.