Strengthen Customer Relationships to Revolutionize Your Business with Mostafa Husseini

Here are a few things that would happen for your business. When you actually follow up properly. One you close more business, you close more deals, two, you get referrals. And three, the average lifetime value of your customers goes up. Why? Because you build, your customer retention rate goes up. And as a result, the average value per customer goes up. For you get referrals, or referrals, or almost closed deals, the average closing rate on referrals are between 50 to 80%, if not 100%, depending on who you're working with. Your customer satisfaction rates go up when you follow up, and you stay in touch with your list. And what happens with happy customers is they stick around and they refer more people to you. So those are just a few examples of simple things that can happen that could revolutionize your business.

Hey, it's Chuck here. And I'm so glad that you're listening to this episode. And I just want to take this quick moment right now to let you know about our free collaborators toolkit. And this episode is all about partnership and collaboration. And our guests share many resources, tools, and things that you can use to make collaboration and partnership easier in your business. So if you're looking for better ways to grow and scale your business, through collaborations, and strategic partnerships, this free collaborators toolkit is going to contain the best resources from our workshops, as well as contributions from our guests. And these tools could be the missing link that you've been looking for. And they're going to help you to solve every day business challenges, and access, highly effective ideas that can help and grow your business exponentially. I know they've helped me and I know they're going to help you as well. And the best part about these tools is that they're completely free. And our gift to you for being a valued member of our community and a subscriber to the show. So you can get access to all of the resources contained inside the collaborators toolkit today by visiting the website at WWW.collaboratorsunite.com/toolkit. That address again is www.collaboratorsunite.com/toolkit. Go ahead and register today get access to all the resources and I'm gonna see you on the inside. Now. Here's the episode.

Hello, everybody. And welcome back to the show Chuck Anderson here. And I'm so excited to have another amazing guest and another amazing topic. And this is not one that we have talked about. However, it is something that is so vital to business and so many of us as entrepreneurs and business owners were working so hard to bring in new leads, so that we can really drive sales. And you know, our guest today is a master at helping you find sales and revenue in what you already have. And so we don't always need to be looking for the new people. We don't always need to be looking for the new leads. In fact, many businesses have a problem with following up the leads they already have. And so this man is an absolute expert on that and we're gonna we're gonna go wherever this conversation goes with that. Please welcome Mostafa Husseini to the show. Welcome, Mostafa.

Thank you, Chuck. Thanks for having me. And I look forward to our conversation.

This is going to be incredible. And I know you and I have had an incredible conversation already prior to this. And I know this is going to be time well spent. And it's already impacted me in terms of how I follow up my leads and approach sales in my business just from our short conversation so so I know that even just the awareness is going to be make a big difference for our audience today. So So I think a great start Mostafa is for you to, you know, tell everybody who who you are and what you do, and we'll go from there.

So, I ran a marketing agency from 2010 to 2018. And we did full service digital marketing for our clients, along with coaching and consulting them with our marketing, and 2017. I read the 8020 principle by Richard Kosh and it kind of changed the way I think and the way I run my business, which led to me dropping the agency and keeping the coaching and consulting aspect of the business. And almost at the same time I started teaching The simple marketing formula, which was the 8020, of marketing, and I started sharing everything that was working for us and helping people create a simple marketing plan. So, the story is that during my agency days, every time I ran out of cash, customers appointments and leaves and whatnot, and I maybe had a bill to pay or payroll to make, I would worry about it for a few days, and I'll pull my hair out, then I would come to my senses and leave realize that I have a list of prospects leads customers, past customers that are just sitting there doing nothing. And I learned this from Dan Kennedy, about the power of retention and follow up and how it's like a low hanging fruit and nobody does it. So then I would just convince myself pick up the phone and have a very frightening conversation. And or I would have one of my team members, give them a very simple, friendly script, say, Hey, Dan, I need you to, you know, call these people use the script and have a conversation and work on booking appointments, see what what happens, then on the day of or very shortly after I would get appointments, referrals, introductions, cash, like literally upselling to an existing customer, and whatnot. And then I would I was sharing the script. In my course, simple marketing formula with people. On the end, the last module was always customer retention, the last strategy, so we went through setting up the whole plan. And last step was retention, how to keep the customers. So I'd be like, people, here's a script, here's the process, and use this and you're gonna start seeing cash and customers today. And nobody would do it. I don't like people, this actually works. This, I was really excited about it. This is really easy. This is really simple. But they wouldn't do it. And so that happened a few times. And later on, we had a guy who was making calls for us. And that he was looking for more work. And what happened was a few times during the workshop, I said, Hey, guys, I have a guy who can make calls for you. He's looking for more work, who wants an introduction? Everybody raised their hand. I'm like, wow, then I'm like, this is interesting. What if we do it for you guys? What if we manage it for you? They're like, yeah, brother, Sign me up. It's a good deal. So that's why we started a call center specializing in follow ups and customer retention.

You know, I love it when those ideas come from just conversations with customers, or just, you know, following the clues. And, and so I love the genesis of this, because it's it's really just really paying attention to what people want to say yes to and and how many of us, as business owners or program creators have put an offer out there that we're super excited about. And we put it out there and we're expecting big things, and it falls flat. Nothing.

Yeah.

Right. And, and it really sucks when that happens. But then you didn't let it stop you and so many people do sometimes if it's your your last try your last chance, or you get a little frustrated, it can take you out. But what you did was, I heard you say that you listened to the conversation that was happening. You provided service, but you're also paying really close attention to what they said they want. And here you are. This is what you're doing.

100%. And I think a big mistake that a lot of business owners make is they don't they don't validate their offer before they start. Right? Going out to people and say, if we offer this, would you be interested? And another probably the best form of validation? If they say yes, I'd be interested, then I would say would you give me your credit card today? The valid offer if they don't give you a credit card or a deposit, you don't have a valid offer.

Yeah, they're just being nice.

Yeah, they're just being nice. Because if they don't put their money on it, you don't have an offer. You don't have a valid offer.

Yeah, that that makes sense. And I would agree that is that that's a big mistake. And we sometimes as creators, we create this amazing thing that we're super excited about. But it's what we're excited about, not necessarily what other people are excited about. And that's the big difference. So, so you know, so that's one of the mistakes. Let's, you know, let's chat a little bit about you know, while we're on the subject of mistakes, what are some of the things that you are noticing that business owners are doing that, you know, what you're doing the follow up could be the solution, but there's, they're they're looking everywhere but what they already have right in front About for sure.

So let's talk about three places that people leave massive money on the table. First places people spend a lot of time and money on social media networking online offline here and there to find leads, they bring leads and don't follow up with them. Maybe they have one interaction, one form of follow up email. Most people notate to pick up the phone and, you know, follow up, but then they just leave that lead and prospect hanging in the air. And the problem is not solved, and they're out there looking for other people. Right? So always, I always ask them, like, why did you spend all that time and money to go find that prospect, the lead? Who raised their hand and said, Yes, I'm interested, yes, I have a problem. Yes, I probably need your help. And you just left them, you just start ignoring them? Right? Why would you go through all that. So that's the first place like New lead generation, then the second place is with existing customers. So they go through all the trouble sign somebody up, they become a customer. And as long as they're paying, and the payment is coming in, these people don't bother picking up the phone, you know, nurturing the relationship, having conversations, see what's what's good, what's bad, what they could improve on. And most importantly, getting referrals from them. Do not do that. So a theme that's been happening to me is some of my vendors, they only call me when my credit card declines. Right? Have you seen that Chuck

All the time.

Other than that, they never call, right. And so that's another place that they'd leave money on the table. And when you do that your customers feel ignored, they perceive that you don't care about them. And the stats show that about 64 to 68% of your customers will leave you because of that, because they perceive that you don't care about them. And quite frankly, if you do care about them, you will pick up the phone and or stay in touch with them through different various formats. And the third place is your past customers. These are people that have come through they purchased from you, you help them fix a problem, you did a training or something and they left. So you have the opportunity to reactivate these people, bring them back and resell them or upsell them, and whatnot. And here's another big piece is getting referrals from them. Because they've gone through they now know trust and like you, hopefully, if you've done a good job, and it's so much easier to get a referral from them. So those are three places that people are leaving 678 figures on the table, depending on the size of the business, and what what they saw.

You know, it's so easy to overlook these things. And I think as solopreneurs and marketers and you know, people who are, because you're wearing all the hats, we're always trying to sell and make revenue in our business. But then there's all then then when we do sell, we're providing the services and doing all of those things, and we get busy. And then And like you said, the revenue, you know, the revenue or the income drops, and we go, oh, I need to sell and then automatically our brain says, oh, I need to go and find new customers. Versus you probably already have the new customers just sitting there waiting because we're missing up on this critical follow up piece. I had a client who had asked me you mentioned, you know, the getting referrals and all of that data as they send them the proposal, they asked for testimonials. And it was that kind of shone a light on something that we were failing to do and failing to follow up with our customers get their feedback. After we had completed the work and had we had been doing that we would have easily easily got that customer right away. We then followed up to do it later. But it was interesting how important that follow up piece is because they send you referrals. They and if you do follow up with your customers, you don't have to go looking like we did. It was all it's just already there.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's so much easier when you follow up and and can you talk about what happens when you do a follow up? Yeah, let's do that. So here are a few things that would happen for your business when you actually follow up properly. One you close more business, you close more deals, two, you get referrals. Three the average lifetime value of your customers goes up. Why because you build your customer retention rate goes up and as a result the average value per customer goes up for you get referrals or referrals are almost closed. As the average closing rate on referrals are between 50 to 80%, if not 100%, depending on who you're working with, your customer satisfaction rates go up when you follow up on your stay in touch with your list, and what happens with happy customers as they stick around and refer more people to you. So those are just a few examples of simple things that can happen that could revolutionize your business.

And I'm sure that sounds amazing to our listeners right now, who are always busy working on their businesses and selling whatever they're selling. And, you know, so let's say they're listening, and they're, they know they're making this mistake, I'm looking for new customers. But I haven't really followed up with what I already have, in my business, my current leads, my customers all of that, what are some of the steps that they should start taking right away to, you know, probably get faster and easier path to income than looking for new customers right now?

For sure. So there are three, three things that you got to do at a minimum level, to stay in touch with your list. Number one, you've got to set send at least one email to your entire list every single month. Right? If you're super busy, you don't have a team and you don't have time, you create an email, for an hour, maybe from a partner, maybe from yourself, maybe you shoot a video for a minute, maybe you're talking about a good book, that you read a good YouTube video that you watched something of value that you send to your list, they see your name, and you stay in touch with them. And it's the beauty of sending that one email at a minimum is that it's leveraged, you spend an hour you stay in touch with your entire list. The second piece that is also leveraged is maybe posting the same content on social media. Now a lot of your followers and your audience on different platforms would see that content. And if it's video, it has a better, bigger impact because people love to watch videos. And a third thing that we do is reaching out to your entire list every three months via phone. So every three or four months, we called entire list. And with a very friendly and nurturing approach, picking up the phone hates me, I'm calling from XYZ company, following up on a conversation that we had our system shows that you have downloaded this item in the past. Just wondering if that's still a problem. Would you like to talk about that? And if they are, they will let you know if they're not they will also let you know. And then you you don't want to do it in a very in a pushy or salesy way. You just do it in a very friendly way. Hey, it's me, I'm just calling say hi. And when you do that, you'd be surprised how often people will thank you for thinking of them and calling them Have you ever seen that? Chuck?

Absolutely.

They're like, this is the phrase, I hear this repeatedly, thank you for thinking of me all the time. And then very friendly conversation, work on qualifying them, and then working on booking an appointment. And here's what we do on every single call almost depending on a conversation. And that is asking for a referral. Even if the person in front of us or the person that I'm talking to is not qualified, or they say, I'm not ready right now, we always say Who do you know, that is having problems with their follow ups or with their marketing or with x? And then we work on getting referrals? Right. And so a, an objection that I hear all the time is people say, I don't want to bother them. Have you heard that? I'm sure you've heard it.

I do. And you know, in some of them, I work with email coaching people to do their email marketing, they're there. They're shy about emailing too much and bothering them and, and you know, coming across as a pain. So yeah, very common.

So if you're, if you're bothering them, they would just unsubscribe. So not a big deal. And if if they are bothered by hearing you, or seeing your message, they should not be on your list anyway. Right? Because you're reaching out, you're trying to provide value fix a problem. And the rest of it. If someone says, I don't want to hear from this person, great, perfect. We want this person out. Because they don't want us right. So you're like helping them self eliminate, eliminate, right? And so the fact of the matter is, when you follow up with your prospects and your customers, you're not bothering them, you're actually serving and supporting them. Here's the other side of the coin. You're actually bothering them by not following up because they still have the problem. Right? It's like you showed up and you said Mustapha, My shoulder hurts. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to bother Chuck. I don't want to be salesy and you're like, Dude, my shoulder hurts. You ever see, doctors don't do that, right? When you show up to the doctor and you're like, Doctor, my shoulder hurts, he doesn't say, I don't want to be salesy. They show up and they fix the problem most of the time, right. And so but you see a lot of business owners that come up with these self limiting beliefs, and stopping themselves from helping customers providing value and, you know, helping themselves. So that's one of the objections that I hear all the time.

Yeah, it's a common one. And I love what you said there. Because you know, to take that a step further, if we are letting our need to be liked or or not to bother the people who shouldn't be on our list anyways. And their shoulder hurts, we're actually ripping them off by not following up and not repeating that, that communication. And we're failing to serve the people who need us to serve them. And so we're looking at the wrong side of it. We're trying not to bother the people who shouldn't be on our list anyways. And we're failing to serve the people who really need us.

Can I share another tip?

Yes.

So I learned I learned this from Chris Voss, the guy, the FBI negotiator, amazing guy. Yeah, amazing guy, we use his techniques every day. So let's say you call a customer and on the phone, they're actually angry and mad at you. In a lot of cases, it is not because they don't need you, or because they're mad at you, or is because you're bothering them. It is because of the fact that there's something going on in their life. And then they're mad or sad about it. And so if I see if I call you chuck and say, Hey, it's me, I'm a staff I'm calling from personally, I'm following up because you downloaded my checklist. And you give me a hard time. Here's what I would say. I would say, Chuck, seems like you're having a bad day. And watch them open up and talk about what's going on in their life. So you become their trusted adviser, and you listen to them, and you use and do what he calls mirroring and labeling of what's going on. And then you establish and strengthen the relationship. Am I making sense?

It makes perfect sense to me because I've read Chris's book. And and so I know his whole story about about that. And so, to me, I That makes perfect sense. Because how many times on calls, have we or either done this or been on the receiving end of this where someone's having a bad day, but we continue to push our agenda of I'm going to make a sale, I'm going to present this offer. And what I heard you say is let's put that agenda aside. Let's just be human here for a moment. Yeah. And let's connect. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, another great book that reminds me of is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And he was a great listener, people thought he was a great communicator, and just all around great guy. But if you take away what he was talking about in that book, it was about listening, was all about listening and asking great questions. So

For sure, for sure. Makes a huge difference when someone is having a bad day and say, You just say, seems like you're having a bad day. And you just stay quiet. And see what happens. It's very likely that they're going to open up and talk about their bad day. And you're actually a lot more likely to make a sale after listening to them, or do something productive than to just push your for your agenda and work on selling all day long.

So I know that our audit, there's going to be two types of people in this audience right now, there are going to be ones that are listening to this. And they are going to take what you're saying, and they're going to make changes. And they're going to go and try something differently when they're doing their follow up. There's going to be another group that hears us intellectually, and they want to do it, but they're really not going to do it on their own and really should get some help. And you know, this is a good segue into the theme of our show, which is collaboration and partnership. Because what I do in my business anytime there's something that I want to be doing but I'm really not likely to do I find someone to work with that can help me to get that done. And that's, that's really what collaboration and partnerships are all about. And you would obviously be a very good person to collaborate and partner with if they are experiencing that. But I also want to just kind of touch on that. Because I know we've talked about this before, you know, how has collaboration and partnership played a role in your business and and your journey?

Oh, we basically build our business based on collaboration and Jay being and doing affiliate work with our network and the people that I know you and I are both part of an affiliate network, where basically, anytime I want to promote anything, I reach out to my partners and to my friends and say, Hey, I'm promoting this, who can help me and the people that can help me, help me would show up. And there's always mostly it's a two way street, I help them, they help me they have a list, I have a list. And that's how we promote our business. And it's probably the easiest, fastest way to promote your business is through partnerships.

Absolutely. With the promotion side, then there's also like, sometimes we have missing pieces in our business and what we saw looking beyond promotion, sometimes we look as like, oh, well, I really, you know, need to be good at this. That's not really my thing. Is there someone to partner with and collaborate with? And, you know, I actually see you as someone who's really that vital piece for anyone who were the follow up in their marketing, and their lead generation or their sales? Is that missing piece? And so what would you say to them right now, because, you know, again, the curse of the entrepreneur, right? Like, sometimes we get a great idea. And instead of looking for a partner, or looking for where we can delegate that those of us who are chronic do it yourselfers we just launch into, you know, I'm going to do all of this. But in reality, we can't do it all. So what would you say, to anyone who's maybe struggling with this very thing in their business right now.

So if you can, I mean, we this is what we specialize in, this is what we do. If you want to delegate and outsource this to us. That's one thing that we can take care of them that, that that's our specialty. If you want to do it yourself, do maybe allocate an hour, half an hour every single day to follow up, or maybe just one day, during the week to make sure your follow ups are all done. And then, or hire a person to take care of it for you. Because like you said, we get busy and as entrepreneurs as chief everything officers, we there is a ton to be done in a business. And there's no way we can do it all. There's just simply no way. So either you delegate or you outsource or you've got to get it done. Or get a partner to do it for you. Right.

Absolutely. And you know, and I taking that a step further. I think that one of us, you know, one of the things as entrepreneurs we need to do is not just grow our businesses, but grow ourselves, especially if we are those chronic do it yourselfers, or we're doing too much. And we're not skilled at all of these things. And it's something that, you know, my mentors and teachers have really helped me with over the past three decades. And so I'm always curious to ask all of my guests and I would love to hear from you, you know, who's been the, the most impactful, you know, leaders or mentors that have that you've learned the most from in your journey.

I've learned quite a quite a bit from Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn. These two have probably have have had the most impact on me. Just learning from them. I've listened to both there are tapes and seminars and books, God knows how many times and it's just, it's just a matter of when you work with a mentor or you work with a coach or a consultant who can give you feedback and they can they have that outside perspective to see what you're going through. It saves you a lot of time, money, headache, anxiety, frustration and the rest of it. So you would actually it would cost you more to do it on your own and try to figure everything out on your own versus working with a mentor or a coaching and track you know, getting feedback from them.

And you know, sometimes some what we're searching for the most can be found in books and you know, in my early part of my journey, I bought a lot of books, I didn't read a lot of books, I was a terrible reader. Thanks to audiobooks, I now have consumed all of the information I always want to do so it's been a game changer. You've probably listened to 100 books in the last three years. So I'm just really you know, soaking up all that information but, but so much of the great information is found 100 bucks. And I'm curious to ask you, like, if you were to recommend one book to our listeners that you would consider to be a must read, what would you recommend?

So recently, a book that has been pretty life changing for me has been the game of life and how to play it with Florence Scovel Shinn, and I listened to the audio version on YouTube. And it's been life changing, and it has helped me to relax a little bit. And it has helped me with some changing perspectives. And, you know, and the rest of it. So it's been an amazing book. It's a book that I've gifted the most.

And I love that it's a book that was written so long ago that it's now sort of part of the public domain, and it's easy to get a hold of. And what I love about the older books is that, you know, a, they, they're not all of this derivative work, but you get as close to the original message in the original intent as possible. And that's what I love about that one. And I remember when, when you and I were having our conversation a couple of weeks ago, and you recommended this one. And since that time, I've listened to this book five times. And it's amazing how easy some things that were proving difficult some of the problems, some of the challenges, some of the frustrations that I was experiencing at the time. Now, two weeks later, speaking to you again, on a podcast interview, and those those issues are gone. Amazing, amazing book. I love audiobooks for one. Second of all, super helpful advice. I would listen to that five more times this month, just based on what I've learned in in that book. And I'm curious to hear Mustapha, what is your number one takeaway from that book.

There's a chapter that she talks about, blessing people that you have something against. So instead of going against them, and we before we started, we talked about someone that say owes you money, and they're not paying, and I've had that happening. And so instead of bashing them and just working on really hard to get that money, she talks about like, blessing that person, maybe they're going through a tough time. I don't know what's going on. But then once you bless them, and you send that positive vibe, the money comes in a lot easier and faster. And that has been a game changer. For me. Another thing that I'm going to be real quick about is like she talks about casting the burden. And I love it, I was like, this is a problem that I don't know what to do, I'm gonna let God help me to fix this and, or universe or whatever you call it. And as soon as you if you let go of that problem, instead of being frustrated about it, things become a lot easier. So that's what I got the most out of the book. So far,

I and I would echo both of those things. Because though those are the I would say the top two things I've got from that as well. Listening to it, there was I had a client who was not paying their invoice, listen to this next thing, and we were getting very frustrated, I let go of it. Next thing, you know, boom, money shows up in my inbox, I didn't have to think about it. I didn't have to spend all of that energy worrying about something I didn't need to worry about. So that that's the letting go part as well. So amazing book recommendation. You're the first person that we've interviewed who's recommended that one so so there you go, you've you've earned that as well. So I really appreciate that recommendation. And so overall must offer this has been an amazing experience and amazing interview. And I'm really excited to put this out there and have this help others in our audience who are, you know, again, so focused on I need, I need to bring in more money, I need more customers, I need more leads. And what you do is amazing, because you actually help people get more from what they already have. They don't need more lead generation. They don't need more networking events. They don't need to necessarily implement that new tactic or that new marketing strategy. There's probably stuff that they have right now that they're not taking advantage of such as and here's the test for everyone. If you have not emailed your list, your full list this month or Even last month, you should probably reach out from the staff because you're not doing, you're not doing the bare minimum. And if you're not doing the bare minimum, then you're probably not doing the other things, either. So Mostafa, for anyone who's listening in and wants some more information or wants to kind of take the next steps in connecting with you and learning about this, what, how do they do that? What are we and I know you've got a gift as well, that we're, we're going to link to so tell everyone about that,

For sure. So I'm sharing the blueprint, two simple retention formula. That's the step by step process to improve your follow up process and your customer retention process to increase profitability, get more appointments, and more referrals for your business. And to get that you could go to persyo.com. That's p e r s yo.com/VQ. And then I'm, I guess you guys could probably put the link in your in the show notes, so people can download it. And you can also search for me on LinkedIn Mostafa Husseini, I'm on every platform that you could think of mostly active on LinkedIn, send me a message, telling me that you heard about me on Chuck's podcast, and let's have a conversation and see what we could do.

Amazing. And we've Yes, we'll definitely put the links in the show notes. Or if you're watching the video version of that link is right beneath this video. And I highly encourage you to click that, go and download that free gift. And again, thank you for your generosity with this. And just with everything that we've talked about here today. And you know, as we bring this episode into its conclusion, if you were to give our audience just one final tip, or piece of advice, or words of wisdom, what would you say to them,

I would say pick up the phone, and have a very friendly conversation with your list of customers. Begin with that list. That's the most receptive list. Just follow up, say hi, and you don't have to call to sell, have a very friendly conversation. And with that friendly conversation, you'd be surprised how often they'd be, they'd be saying, Oh, I also need you to do this for me. Right? Like business ships comes out of it naturally. However, that's not the intention, the intention is to build a rebuilt or reactivate that relationship, see what you could do for them. And reach out to help maybe to make an introduction to give them a referral, and whatnot, and see the magic that that will do for you and your business.

Excellent words to end this by. And I highly recommend and challenge everyone listening right now to do exactly that. It will make a huge difference in your business. So Mustapha, thank you for being an amazing guest today. And to my audience, thank you for being here as well. And all of this is for nothing if you don't take action, we've given you some great actionable steps here today. Take the next step, download Mostafa's free gift, and then start to implement this follow up in your business in a new way. And, and one other thing, phone, a customer today, phone a customer today and just have a great conversation and see how some of this frustration that you might be feeling in your business goes away so quickly, when you just get yourself back into service. You know, never give up on your big dream never give up on your business. There's always a there's always a solution to every problem. And, you know, we have so many amazing friends and colleagues and partners who, like Mustapha who can who can help to solve problems. So reach out if you need help. And in the meantime, keep being awesome. Keep moving forward in the pursuit of your big vision and making your business dreams a reality. And we'll see you here for the next one. Thank you everyone.

Thank you.