Why Men Must Liberate Themselves Like Feminism Did for Women with Rich D’Ambrosio

[00:00:00] Ralph: We do do this on, um, I'm hitting record now, so, uh, which doesn't mean that we're recording, recording. We'll actually do the, the actual intro. So we do this over on YouTube too. So if you need to like show any like cool choreo graphics, you could do that too. You've got Corey's,

[00:00:20] Lauren: We can

[00:00:21] Ralph: choreograph some choreo graphics.

[00:00:24] Corey: That is correct.

[00:00:25] Ralph: feel free to do that if you want to. I'm sure you've used. Riverside in the past.

[00:00:34] Corey: Yep, absolutely.

[00:00:36] Ralph: well I pretty much know your intro by heart at this point. So

[00:00:40] Corey: Okay.

[00:00:41] Ralph: I always say like you took Scorpion from less than 10 million. Like what was the revenue when you got there? Was it around 10 million? It

[00:00:53] Corey: Around

[00:00:54] Ralph: was between 10

[00:00:54] Corey: 10 and 20.

[00:00:55] Ralph: Okay. And you guys.

[00:00:59] Lauren: From double digits to triple, from low double digits to

[00:01:03] Corey: The, the, the back of the envelope is we 10 x we 10 x revenue. We went from 20 million to 200 million.

[00:01:09] Ralph: And what is it now? Is it more.

[00:01:14] Corey: Well, I, a couple months ago I was with my counterpart over there at Scorpion, but uh, in Ohio we were speaking together at a conference and he said that they're closer to 300 million now, uh, which is amazing. And their margins are better than ever.

[00:01:33] Ralph: Still using the same stuff that you were using as CMO or different or what?

[00:01:41] Corey: I mean, I don't know exactly. I have to be honest. I'm on the outside now, so they don't consult with me anymore. As far as what they're doing, uh, I do know that they have gone back to doing GBO gift based outbound because it works. They did leave that behind for a minute. Uh, but then they came back to it.

[00:02:02] Ralph: Okay. Very cool. Alright, well let's get right into it, shall we? We'll just go until we, uh, feel like we need to stop. I do have a hard stop at the top of the hour, so it'll be at least 45 minutes. I think we can touch base on everything here, so we're good.

[00:02:24] Corey: Awesome.

[00:02:25] Ralph: Fortunately, my voice still hasn't recovered from getting COVID about a month and a half ago, which is insane. All right. Test, test. There we go. Just double check my levels here. Look good.

[00:02:49] Lauren: I too much sugar.

[00:02:51] Corey: Yeah. Gotcha.

[00:02:53] Lauren: Look how much.

[00:02:54] Corey: It's all the, i's all the, uh, the private jetting around.

[00:02:56] Ralph: Living the high life. Alright, here we go.

[00:03:04] Lauren: Jet setting, cliff jumping.

[00:03:06] Ralph: the cliff jumping. I didn't know about jet setting. I think I did.

[00:03:09] Lauren: I jumped off a cliff

[00:03:11] Corey: How high.

[00:03:13] Lauren: oh my God. It took me five minutes and 49 seconds to do the damn thing, so hi.

[00:03:17] Corey: To hit the, to hit the bottom.

[00:03:19] Lauren: Oh God. Clever.

[00:03:21] Ralph: did you go? Like underwater? It must have been

[00:03:27] Lauren: I blacked out. I have a video. I have a video.

[00:03:32] Ralph: I did,

[00:03:33] Lauren: Took me a second to recover.

[00:03:35] Ralph: in a Tough Mudder about 10 years ago, but you had to jump off you,

[00:03:39] Lauren: You jumped a hundred feet.

[00:03:41] Ralph: off this plank and then hit a trap like the trapeze, and then propel yourself out and hit a bell, and then you went, you fell down a hundred feet into the water. And I, and I missed the bell by this

[00:03:59] Corey: That sounds dangerous.

[00:04:00] Ralph: That was only 10 years ago.

[00:04:04] Corey: I

[00:04:04] Ralph: My wife was like, what the fuck are you doing?

[00:04:09] Corey: Yeah.

[00:04:09] Lauren: 10 stories.

[00:04:10] Ralph: freaking high. And there was some, like, they had scuba drivers. No. A hundred feet.

[00:04:18] Lauren: That's 10 flights

[00:04:20] Ralph: Shit. I'm so afraid of heights. It was the scariest thing I've ever done. And I was pissed because I missed the bell. Like I could feel, I felt it razed, it didn't like ring.

[00:04:30] Ralph: Yeah. So nobody did it. But all the other three guys that I did it with, like they all like belly flopped and like practically died. So it was, anyway.

[00:04:44] Lauren: Okay, well, whatever. I jumped off a cliff for me. Okay.

[00:04:46] Ralph: Good. I'm not trying to one up you or anything here. I'm just telling you like, like

[00:04:50] Lauren: Well, you, you just 100 up

[00:04:52] Ralph: Oh, I'll tell you about the Tough Mudder someday. I did three of them anyway.

[00:04:58] Lauren: back.

[00:04:59] Ralph: All right. Here we go. Corey Quinn. All right, so we might talk about you a little bit. You're in the virtual green room to start, and then we sort of bring you in. There might be some sort of stupid banter that we do to start the show. You kind of, you've listened to a couple of shows so you sort of know what,

[00:05:16] Corey: I love it.

[00:05:17] Ralph: All right, here we go. Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11 beside my amazing cliff jumping co-host, Lauren e Petillo. Oh.

[00:05:35] Lauren: The

[00:05:35] Ralph: right. You were supposed to say your own name anyway. I'm still in shock that you just went cliff dive. Why were you cliff diving?

[00:05:42] Ralph: You were cliff diving one day and then you were in a Learjet or like a private jet the next day, or do I get that incorrect? Is that vice versa? Flip it around. Yeah.

[00:05:53] Lauren: Versa. Yesterday I flew in a jet Today, this morning we went for a run and our friend was like, let's go jump, and then I did. So I flew. Then I jumped off a cliff.

[00:06:03] Ralph: So you flew twice. You flew, really flew twice. One. One without the, you know, not in a comfortable seat, but just so as you go, like,

[00:06:14] Lauren: One I flew backwards. The other I flew

[00:06:17] Ralph: So when you landed feet, like, I assume this is like a feet first landing, right? You go like belly

[00:06:23] Lauren: Yes, yes.

[00:06:25] Ralph: No, I, I don't know. I don't dunno. Like I don't know what your style is 'cause you know, I've done it once, which I told you about, but like all my buddies did it like belly flop style and they almost died.

[00:06:36] Ralph: So anyway, I did it feed first. I wasn't screwing around. Um, well anyway, we're taking a deep dive today into, how about that for a transition? Um.

[00:06:51] Lauren: I'll, I'll give you like a

[00:06:53] Ralph: That's terrible. It's like a dad joke, transition right there anyway.

[00:06:58] Lauren: I would've been like instead of feet first, I went fear first 'cause I was shaking and sweating in places I didn't even know. Sweat could like escape my body, but to go dive deeper, for those listeners that wanna understand the importance of DS and GBO and a whole bunch of other acronyms that will make sense as we progress.

[00:07:16] Ralph: we're teasing it. We're teasing it right here. 'cause we have. Corey Quinn, who is, I will say this, I'm gonna be a bit of a shill on the show today because I believe in what he's doing, and I met this guy literally like six months ago, and I've like given him like tens of thousands of dollars since then.

[00:07:37] Ralph: So, but the results have been there, which hence the reason why he's on this show. 'cause I know about, you know, 30, 40, 50% of the people that listen to this show are either you, you're either a. Agency. You're a larger agency, you work in an agency, or maybe you are, you know, an independent contractor, just sort of doing this for somebody else and you've got like a, a VA and you're doing it on your own.

[00:08:02] Ralph: Uh, there's a lot of people that can benefit from what Corey has done here. Corey, just to give you, before we formally introduced him, uh, he was the CMO of Scorpion. Scorpion is a huge performance marketing agency, digital marketing agency. And became the CEO. They were sort of stuck at this 10 to 15, 10 to 20 million level, which a lot of agencies aspire to, and he 10 x their revenue single-handedly.

[00:08:29] Ralph: No one else was involved. It was just him. No. I'm sure he had an entire team to do this. But the things that we're gonna be talking about here today, if you're an agency or a consultant, this directly relates to you, and I've seen the light. We have made the same mistakes too many times and hired Corey, and now he's rectified a lot of those mistakes.

[00:08:50] Ralph: We're on a tremendous growth trajectory at Tier 11. So without further ado, Corey Quinn, welcome to Perpetual Traffic.

[00:09:01] Corey: Thank you Ralph Lauren. I'm super excited to be here with you both.

[00:09:04] Ralph: uh, if you haven't gotten this book, see, here's Shield number one. Look at this. Nobody does this. Like, look at that. Get anyone. Not everyone. It's one of the best books that's out there for agency owners. I'm serious because, uh. I read it and I immediately said, well, geez, I gotta hire this guy, which is pretty much what I did.

[00:09:21] Ralph: Uh, my team was like, who's he? So tell us a little bit about why we're talking so enthusiastically about you. It's not just because you're a handsome dude with great hair. Uh, like what is it about what you do that agency owners should sort of stand up and notice what's, what's the big concepts?

[00:09:44] Corey: Yeah. So again, thank you Ralph for having me and Lauren. Uh, it's a great honor to be here. It's an amazing podcast. It's, uh, it's, it's, it's a big honor to be here, so,

[00:09:53] Lauren: Right back.

[00:09:54] Corey: yeah.

[00:09:54] Ralph: shill after shill baby.

[00:09:59] Corey: off. All of us are just be feeling glow after this. So, uh, I'll, I'll give you, I'll give you a little bit of context in my background, uh, to help the listeners understand sort of why, why the, the growth at Scorpion was so transformational, not just for Scorpion or even for my career, but there were so many powerful lessons that came out of that, that agencies everywhere could really benefit.

[00:10:22] Corey: So my background is, I've been in the agency space about 20 years now. When I graduated from business school, I took a job as a business development representative at a digital agency that sold PPC and SEO to large retail brands, and I was lucky enough to sell deals into Lululemon re Max Hyundai, the men's warehouse.

[00:10:45] Corey: These are big six, figure five, six figure, SEO deals. And PPC deals and I fell in love with the art and science of selling, and I was pretty good at the time. I was the top salesperson for the agency for the for 19 consecutive quarters. I led, uh, I led the team that was eventually recruited to take a sales manager role, and then most recently, as you mentioned, Ralph, the chief marketing role at, uh, marketing officer role, I should say, at Scorpion and the thing that was happening at Scorpion at the time.

[00:11:21] Corey: Was that it was largely founder led when it came to sales and marketing and across the entire board. Uh, and they had about a six person sales team. They had subsisted primarily on inbounds and referrals. The founder brought me into his agency because he had an insatiable appetite to grow. He really wanted to help more businesses.

[00:11:44] Corey: This wasn't out of a self-serving need or ego. This was more about, Hey, I think we have something pretty special. We've got some great clients and amazing results. Let's go see how many more people we can serve. The challenge was, is that. They had a six person sales team, who by the way, were extremely well compensated.

[00:12:03] Corey: They made great money. Uh, their commission structures were ridiculously good. And, uh, they drove great cars and quit, uh, quit the day about noon and they had a really great life, uh, which is awesome. And they're all great guys. However, the challenge was that we had, I. Sales team and, and, and stepped into this sale, this sales and marketing role to not just nurture or farm what was already in existence, but to get it really to the next level, we can really expand growth.

[00:12:37] Corey: And so that was the environment that I stepped into. We did a bunch of things to grow the agency. Obviously we figured a few of those things out, uh, over the years.

[00:12:47] Ralph: You doing for set, like the, the, you got these fat, happy salespeople, which you and I have a very similar opinion of, of salespeople just in general. Uh, that's a, that's a hard culture to break. You're coming in there, they're like, they're doing their job, they're making good money, but the, the founder is like, listen, like we're not getting the growth.

[00:13:07] Ralph: We're sort of stuck at this level. And this could be any level. It doesn't matter what it is, whether you're the million dollar level, the couple hundred thousand dollar level of 5, 6, 7, 10 million, you guys were at that level. You just sort of reached this growth. What were they doing up until that point to get clients in?

[00:13:23] Ralph: Because you know, a 10 to $20 million agency is like, that's, that's no slow agency right there. They were doing a lot of things right.

[00:13:32] Corey: is. It is. They were doing a lot of things right. What they were doing absolutely well is that they were early. Now, not everyone who's starting an agency has this benefit, but in case of Scorpion. They started developing website. It was initially a website design company and then came SEO and then PPC.

[00:13:50] Corey: And one of the things that they figured out was, uh, when they were trying to grow the business, it was the founder and a couple of his best friends. They literally went through the yellow pages, remember those? The uh, the yellow book where they were like, we wanna sell some websites. And they, they wanted, they, they wanted to sell some websites, so they started going from the front of the book to the back and they got to attorneys, which is of course at the front of the book, and they started selling a lot of websites to attorneys. And this was about the time when SEO started becoming a thing. And as a result of that, it turns out how attorneys shop, and you may, may be familiar with this. Our attorneys shop for a website design company in, in later a marketing company, was that they would search for other attorneys in their area and see who's doing well.

[00:14:40] Corey: Well, because we were early in the game, we had a lot of attorneys in a lot of cities that were ranking really well top of Google. This is before the maps even, and so they would find a Scorpion client and they'd go to the Scorpion client's website. The bottom of the Scorpion client website is a Scorpion logo.

[00:14:59] Lauren: Scorpion.

[00:15:00] Corey: And that would go to a sales page on the Scorpion website, which would lead to a phone call, which would then lead to a one call close. The salesperson would do the one call

[00:15:10] Ralph: Yeah.

[00:15:11] Corey: Yes, you have beautiful backlink. Beautiful backlight. It was, it was all kind of this beautiful ecosystem reinforced itself.

[00:15:18] Corey: That that one call close would, uh, result in the salesperson standing up, walking over to the big metallic gong and, and striking the gong. And everyone would open up a beer and have a good time. It was a great sales culture. I mean, it's like I wanted to, I wish I was one of these early sales guys.

[00:15:33] Corey: Challenge is that you can't scale that. You can't scale, you can't get more people to search on Google for personal injury attorney in my area or whatever that is. And so we had to figure out how do we take what's working and also layer in more opportunities in the market.

[00:15:49] Ralph: So this is in and around, I'm guessing 2009, 2010. Is that or before that?

[00:15:56] Corey: This is 2015. This is 2015 I, I joined in 2015. The company started in 2001.

[00:16:04] Ralph: So that growth happened in those 14 or 15 years, thereabouts. Okay. So you come in 2015, you got all these salespeople that are ringing the gong, like things are good, they're making good money. Or at that point had things, things started to kind of flatten and that's the reason why you were brought in.

[00:16:23] Ralph: Like how did that introduction sort of happen?

[00:16:26] Corey: Yeah, so, so the, the context was that they were subsisting on the inbounds, which was form fills phone calls primarily. You had the one call closes, you had a six person sales team who were fairly, you know, good guys, but they were conditioned to let the phone ring. They weren't doing any outbound. They weren't doing any prospecting.

[00:16:45] Corey: And so what the founder would do every once in a while is that he would hire a brochure company to create a brochure and he'd buy a list from Dun and Bradstreet and send out like. 3000 brochures to, to law firms to try and make the phone ring. Of course, that would never really work at all. Uh, and so that's why I was an outside hire.

[00:17:03] Corey: I was an expensive hire, uh, had, you know, the MBA and all this experience and, you know, they, they, he really wanted to invest in figuring this out. And so one of the things that really made a difference at this time when I showed up, they were already fairly vertically focused. So I didn't actually help drive that change.

[00:17:21] Corey: It was something that I inherited. I remember when I was interviewing for this role, I wasn't actually very serious about taking the job. Because it was a website design company. It was out in Valencia, which is about an hour north of ca of Los Angeles. And if you've ever been to LA you know that the traffic here is really bad.

[00:17:38] Corey: And so I was, I said to myself, uh, I was, I was being recruited. I said to the recruiter, you know, I, I, I, I'm sure they, I'm sure they're a great company, but you know, they, they're so far away. And it's a web design company. You have websites like Wix and all these things coming out. So I, I don't think I want to take the interview.

[00:17:55] Corey: The recruiter was, you know, hounding me to, to take this, this role. And I eventually took the, uh, took the interview and I learned something interesting in the interview, which was that the client retention rate for a scorpion client was about 93% annually, which is amazing for any agency, but certainly serving local service businesses that can go in and outta business.

[00:18:17] Corey: Right. And it turns out that's what. Kind of turned my mind around as far as this job opportunity, uh, at Scorpion, was the fact that they were, they had something inherently special about the company, about the, the culture that they were, they were doing something different. And one of those things that turns out I learned after taking the job was the fact that they were vertically specialized.

[00:18:39] Corey: In other words, they had a deep, what I call today, a deep specialization in personal injury attorneys.

[00:18:45] Lauren: The first acronym has been

[00:18:46] Corey: Hey, we hit it. Thank you, Lauren.

[00:18:48] Ralph: go.

[00:18:50] Corey: go. So deep specialization, that is that you talk to a sales person who only worked with personal injury attorneys when you bought from Scorpion. You went to an account team that only worked with personal injury attorneys, and it's subtle.

[00:19:03] Corey: But the impact of that, as we all know through specialization, is that we were able to work with. Personal injury attorneys of all types, including the best in the country. And so we learned what it took to build and run a successful person injury, personal injury firm, that we would take that learning and we would extend it to our. Young personal injury attorney clients, the ones who were just starting out, who had no idea how to run a practice. And so it allowed us to be not only a provider of leads and websites and landing pages and all those great things, but we also serve the role as sort of an unspoken need in the market of a business coach.

[00:19:40] Corey: Because a lot of these attorneys they go to, they go to, they don't go to business school. They don't, they don't understand marketing. They understand how to argue a case in the courtroom. That's why they went to school. That's their training. Yet they live in a world where they have to find a way to market themselves online and you know, like it or not. They're, they're not, they can, they don't necessarily have the right skills to choose a good partner. And so we stepped in as a, and even in the sales process as a business coach, we would ask them questions that would go beyond the scope of marketing, uh, and into the growth of their business. Things like we talked about, intake and, uh, average co cost of, you know, case values, things like that.

[00:20:21] Corey: In any event, all of that led to, uh, a very deep specialization and, and. Expertise in serving that market. And that ultimately led to a flywheel of referrals and, and credibility allowed us to raise our prices. The other thing that made Scorpion really special was that we were very much a client first culture.

[00:20:43] Corey: Uh, we wanted our clients to feel like they were the only client. So that was something that was institutionalized before I got there. Uh, as well as the vertical specialization. What my job was to take that and to crank up the volume of new revenue.

[00:20:57] Ralph: So the generalist trap, we have hundreds of agencies that are listening right now. It's like, I'll just take anything because hey, I need to pay payroll. I've got maybe rent. I've got all these overhead costs. I'm not gonna turn away business. It's a tough sell sometimes. So what would you say to those individuals and they're like, you know, we're doing okay.

[00:21:21] Ralph: Maybe we're at the million dollar mark, or maybe we're approaching that wherever it happens to be. Like, I've got lead gen, I've got digital, I've got services, I've got here, there everywhere. I'm doing services all over the place. Like our last co-host here had eight services and he would just like sell them all to like whoever and whoever came in the door.

[00:21:41] Ralph: Like you can get to a certain level doing that, but why is that a trap?

[00:21:49] Corey: It is a trap because it feeds upon itself. When you are serving too many different types of people, you end up creating. A lot of context switching in the business, right? Which leads to operational efficiencies. Sure, you may build out the SOPs, but when every client that you sell is a different type of industry, a different type of client, those SOPs that you've created are worthless.

[00:22:11] Corey: They're useless to you. And so as a result of that, you have, you end up with a business that's full of bottlenecks and guess who is the number one bottleneck in the agency with with a generalist firm?

[00:22:21] Ralph: Founder. Yeah.

[00:22:22] Corey: Founder. The founder is because they're the only ones that knew know that what was sold. It was some special combination of things that was sold to this client, which is completely different.

[00:22:32] Corey: That was sold to the last client. Right. And as a result of that, your team just receives these jobs, this work. They don't really understand the whole context. They won't, you know, it's new to them. They don't understand the industry. And so unfortunately, at scale this becomes a, a challenge to produce amazing work.

[00:22:51] Corey: Company work ultimately becomes, uh, you know, mediocre. And when you have a mediocre product in a very competitive world of agencies, you begin to be perceived as a commodity. And then commodities, of course, get traded up. Clients who think you're a commodity, they think they can find the better or the same somewhere else for cheaper or maybe work with a specialist.

[00:23:13] Corey: And when you're a commodity, you, you lose clients, clients churn. And of course when clients churn, you have to chase revenue. And when you chase revenue, you have to say yes to everyone, right? You got a mortgage to pay, you have employees to pay, you have, trying to get your kids through college. Like all of those things, you're, you, you have no choice but to say yes.

[00:23:28] Corey: And so that repeats this, this process where you're saying yes to just mediocre fit. Clients instead of amazing fit clients. And it is, it is so common, uh, in the world we, we operate in because I think in a way it's hard for us to turn away good revenue,

[00:23:46] Ralph: Oh, abso absolutely. And it's, uh, you know, it's like it's a dr. It's a drug to a certain degree. You're like, well, I know I should specialize, but you know, all these leads over here. The beauty of all this is that. What I found and you, it's interesting 'cause I didn't realize that you sort of inherited the specialization site.

[00:24:08] Ralph: Like I'm not saying like you didn't have anything to do with it, but it's like they already had a PI law or an attorney sort of subspecialization or a deep specialization. You just sort of tightened the focus a bit. Obviously with some of the strategies we'll talk about here, but what I found when I pitched this idea to our team, and we did in an area that we've talked about many, many times here on the show, beauty and Wellness, we kick ass with beauty and wellness.

[00:24:36] Ralph: We just do like it's. It is our deep specialization, but it's not the only area. That doesn't mean that we do great work with PI Law. We do work with digital, uh, and lead gen and all these other sorts of things. However, what I found is that when I actually brought it to the attention of like our group, everyone was like, this is great because salespeople sell, but operations. And operations was thrilled. And you remember our first calls Andrew's like, oh my God, this is a godsend. Yeah. Oh, she couldn't wait. She's like, what does Cory want us to do this week? I'm not even gonna try and do her accent. It's like she did like all the work. She, I was like, okay, Ange, uh, don't you want any help?

[00:25:22] Ralph: She's like, no, no, no. I, I got it. Because she was so excited about it, because she's like, as soon as you operationalize the operations side with consistency, and we knew that we had this. This gargantuan advantage over so many other agencies. It's like, just leverage it. But it means operational efficiency, which is, you know, people doing similar tasks, not necessarily the same tasks, but you know, you can then. Have more efficient headcount numbers. You don't have to hire a creative team for lead gen. And then another one for this and that another thing. And like everyone was very much in alignment. So I looked at this as not just necessarily a growth mechanism, but I'm always sort of thinking culture wise, how can I build the culture and get everybody really aligned with the vision and the direction of the organization?

[00:26:12] Ralph: And it did precisely that, which I'd never really thought that was going to be it. I just thought about like, how do we grow?

[00:26:21] Corey: And the, the, the beauty of this, I think, in that context is that as a result of that internal alignment and enthusiasm and focus and just, you know, mojo on the inside, you're gonna create better results for your clients. You have a better, they're gonna have a better experience. And that, of course, leads to. Turning you as a provider in this vertical market as a true authority, like you're gonna create consistent great results for this industry. People are gonna notice within that industry, which of course leads to something really great, which is allows you to become more of a premium offering. You're become a hard to find solution in the market.

[00:26:57] Corey: Not everyone has this level of expertise, or as much as is as credible as you are. And so as a result of that, you're able to increase your prices, which increases your margin. And the last step we're talking about here is the, the deep specialization flywheel, which is what makes it a flywheel, is that you take this extra margin that's created by the systems and the results, the predictable results for your clients, which produces the authority, which produces premium pricing.

[00:27:25] Corey: That creates margin, which allows you to reinvest in the vertical. where it actually becomes a, a flywheel is that all of a sudden you're taking that margin, you're going in and you're creating better systems. Maybe you're training your people even better, maybe you're doing better sales and marketing, which is what I got to do at Scorpion.

[00:27:45] Corey: We got to give away, we got to do really amazing marketing, uh, that well. Let me give you, let me give you some numbers to, to kind of quantify this.

[00:27:53] Lauren: Yes, please.

[00:27:54] Corey: We, so we sold into personal injury attorneys. They would hire us for 10, 20, $30,000 a month and they would stay with us for 30 months. Our generalist competitors would sell those same attorneys for two KA month and they would churn out after 12 months.

[00:28:11] Corey: And so if you take a step back and you look at the revenue opportunity, each client, each personal injury attorney client would, would generate at least $300,000 of revenue for Scorpion $24,000 for our competitors. That produced a tr a com, a tremendous amount of margin that we were able to go back and remarket in the mar in the market to personal injury attorneys.

[00:28:35] Corey: Uh, that we, we ran circles around our competitors. What I mean by that is we had a bigger booth. We threw better parties. We sent out amazing cookies. We gave away cars. Uh, we, you know, we did all these amazing things. We way out marketed our competitors. That would further allow us to continue that flywheel.

[00:28:54] Corey: We'd be able to deepen our expertise, improve our systems, um, you know, create even more leverage internally, create even more authority, and so on and so forth. And that's how we dominated the market.

[00:29:04] Ralph: Well talk to us about, uh, the thing that you referred to there is, is gifts and Yeah, the talk that I. Saw, I actually, I didn't actually see it. I heard about it later on 'cause everybody was buzzing about it, but they were talking about cookies. Tell us, tell us about cookies and the thing we now know as GBO acronym, alert or second one outbound.

[00:29:30] Corey: Based outbound. Okay, so going back to the gong and the six person sales floor, uh, we had this specialization, we had all this, these great case studies and happy clients. We just needed to get in front of more people. And so what do we do? Of course, we bought a list from Dun and Bradstreet and we started cold calling. We had to go into that sales floor and it was actually a separate room in the agency and we had to knock on the door and say, Hey guys. Love that you're closing. Yeah. Good. Love that you are closing these inbounds and ringing the, ringing the bell.

[00:30:00] Lauren: It's time to start hunting. Stop. Just gather.

[00:30:03] Corey: yes, we want, we need you to actually start picking up the phone and start calling these attorneys.

[00:30:08] Ralph: hear it right now,

[00:30:09] Corey: you've ever heard of the term?

[00:30:10] Ralph: like the needle going across the record, everyone's.

[00:30:14] Corey: Yes. Yeah, we moved, we moved the, uh, the goalpost and we actually gave them, uh, a quota, which was hard, right? And there's, there's things we did tactically to help ease that. But one of the best things we did is that we figured out that if you send a gift ahead of a cold call, you change the whole dynamic of a, uh, of an outreach.

[00:30:38] Corey: Lemme tell you what happens. When you cold call an attorney, maybe some of the folks who are listening are familiar with this. You have, you typically get what's called a gatekeeper. Gatekeeper is the office manager. It is the receptionist. It's someone who answers the phone, and their job is to prevent scorpion and other vendors from accessing the attorney.

[00:30:59] Corey: So we would get shut down all the time. Uh, it wasn't until we started sending gifts, and what we did is first off, we found the most amazing gourmet cookies. You could find like you have to hold the wall just not to fall down. That's like, that's how amazed. So we tried a number of things. Cookies ended up being the most popular because what happened was they ended up getting shared in the break room.

[00:31:25] Corey: And people and the staff of the, of the law firm would be standing around drinking coffee, eating these amazing cookies and saying, oh, who brought the amazing cookies? And someone would say, I don't know, some company called Scorpion. And then someone else would say, well, who's Scorpion? And someone else would say, I don't know.

[00:31:42] Corey: Some company, the name Scorpion was like bouncing off all the walls before. Before you know it. Right. And so by the time we called. The, instead of getting the, the typical, uh, arms crossed, you know, sorry, they're not available. We got a much different reception. We, we got the, ah, oh my God. You're the ones who sent those amazing cookies.

[00:32:05] Corey: Ah, those were so good. Ah, we, we, like, we ate, we ate all of them. Like those were so good. Like, uh, lemme put you through. The impact was, was transformational. We were able to to set meetings with people that were otherwise very difficult to get.

[00:32:21] Ralph: So the objection that I had when we first started talking about this, it's like, that's great. Attorneys have a physical office in many cases, like we're in the beauty and wellness niche, for example. A lot of these offices are far flung, like they're virtual. And so you have to figure like, so how does that change that dynamic?

[00:32:40] Ralph: I mean, I can turn, I used to work in an office, so we'd go into the break room and there'd be coffee and there there'd be donuts or whatever. You know, I was in pharma and medical, like we did the same thing like with the doctors and the surgical suite, all that sort of stuff. Point is, is like in a virtual environment where people are far flung, how does the strategy change, if at all?

[00:33:03] Corey: So with COVID, with remote work, it definitely has changed the environment. The one of the most important steps that you can take in the early stages of this process, it's a four step process that I teach, is that you actually have to call the office to make sure that they can receive a gift there. If you can't find a phone number, if you can't confirm an address, don't send a gift.

[00:33:30] Lauren: Makes sense. That's like a really good technique because I, I'm just thinking of the amount of times that you guys probably sent cookies to an outdated address. Because not everyone updates their thing. I think of how people changes their emails. People could have been changing offices, or the person who was responsible ISN then at that office, and it's just a PO box.

[00:33:48] Lauren: So that's a huge tip where I'm just like, oh man. Always just confirm. It's like your RSVP for a wedding invitation.

[00:33:57] Corey: That's right. And so the way I teach it today at Scorpion, we were able to scale it up. We had 60 salespeople. We closed 60 deals a quarter, sorry, 600 deals a quarter, uh, across the 60 salespeople, all doing gifts. Each person, each salesperson got 250 gifts sent per quarter to a list of, of businesses, which by the way, made the cold calling much easier.

[00:34:18] Corey: Uh, and so, but when I, when I teach it, it is much more of a quantity, sorry, a quality over quantity strategy. So instead of sending out 600 gifts, you wanna send out 10 to 20 and you wanna send it out to the VIP prospects In your industry, not just any, any business, but the best of the best businesses, the ones you really want to get in front of, the ones that would be your dream client.

[00:34:43] Lauren: not your shotgun approach.

[00:34:45] Corey: Exactly. I, I call it spearfishing.

[00:34:47] Lauren: I think every, uh, cookie baker that does this in mask Quantit is like, just send it to all 600

[00:34:55] Corey: Or else you end up getting a lot of cookies returned, so.

[00:34:58] Lauren: people returned the cookies.

[00:35:00] Corey: Well, I'm just saying if they, if, if you don't get the address, if you don't have the right address, that's going, going back to that, but, um, no, people wouldn't return that. We did get an iPad return though once. They thought it was, it was too, too expensive of a gift.

[00:35:15] Corey: They said, thank you, but no

[00:35:16] Ralph: Really, they returned it like a bribe. Like this is too much.

[00:35:21] Corey: They're like, yeah, this makes me feel uncomfortable. I, I, I can't take this.

[00:35:24] Ralph: see that there was doctors that I used to call on that just wouldn't allow, like anything, you know, like it, it feels like a bribe. My staff can't touch it, my staff can't eat it, all of that, so, mm-hmm.

[00:35:36] Corey: And, and, and there's a, that, that brings up a good point, excuse me for interrupting, but the, the medical industry is very sensitive about receiving gifts, right? They have compliance and rules about that. So there's also a sort of different industries that are more sensitive to receiving gifts than others.

[00:35:53] Ralph: So the key is pre-screen, call ahead, make sure there's a physical address, make sure that. And, uh, I have to double check with our team on our latest, uh, send out on that. The point is, is like that's the key to everything. It's not just, oh, these are our best clients. Let's just send them out blindly.

[00:36:13] Ralph: There's a whole process of making sure the information is accurate and getting to ultimately to the decision maker, which may or may not be. The president and founder of the law firm, it could be somebody sort of internally. So there's lots of nuances to this. Like, and I know at the height you guys were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on this.

[00:36:38] Corey: $3 million a year.

[00:36:39] Ralph: a year.

[00:36:40] Lauren: How much

[00:36:41] Corey: $3 million a year.

[00:36:42] Ralph: Yeah.

[00:36:43] Lauren: just on the gifts, or is that the whole sales outbound.

[00:36:46] Corey: That was the cold that was sending gifts to cold prospects.

[00:36:49] Lauren: But again, so it wasn't So sorry. There was a double call though. 'cause you were saying there were one thing, so one was to call to verify the address, then you sent the cookies, then there was the actual call after. So you had cold call, not as scorpion, but as just a regular, Hey, I'm just calling.

[00:37:03] Lauren: Is this your address? Cool. Hang up, send the cookies. Wait a few days to confirm the cookies were there and say like, Hey, this is a sweet offer for you. I definitely want you to nibble on this. Like let's go Chipsa ho ahead.

[00:37:19] Ralph: Oh my God. So

[00:37:20] Corey: So, so the, the methodology that I

[00:37:22] Lauren: I know.

[00:37:23] Ralph: in that one. But anyway, go ahead. Yeah,

[00:37:25] Lauren: over it already?

[00:37:29] Corey: the methodology I teach is the gift needs to be unique striking, and it has to leave an impression, and I'll give you a quick story of something, someone on our team who did this really well. Scott, a sales guy, his name is Justin. He's selling into franchise multi-location businesses, more of an enterprise level sale three year deal.

[00:37:46] Corey: You know, we would make him over a million dollars for a sale and we, Justin had his list of 50 prospects that he was focusing on for the year, let's call it, and more like an A BM approach. And so he

[00:38:04] Lauren: of the day.

[00:38:05] Corey: third, there we go.

[00:38:07] Ralph: We're acronym

[00:38:07] Corey: More to come. Uh, and so there was one CEO on this list that he didn't have a relationship with, couldn't get an introduction to, would email then.

[00:38:17] Corey: Then the CEO didn't respond. And so Justin was researching her and, and, and, uh, couldn't, couldn't get, couldn't get any track with her. So he was researching her and he found out that she was interviewed in an article. And in the article she was asked, what is your all time favorite quote? She said, well, my all, all time favorite quote, this is the CEO's, uh, was something my dad used to tell me growing up and it's something that stuck with me and it's be authentic and tell great stories. So Justin went straight to Etsy, found an amazing artist, and had that quote embroidered on a pillow, sent that sent that pillow. Overnight, FedEx to the CEO. That led to a phone call, which led to a relationship, which led to a $1.6 million deal for Scorpion.

[00:39:05] Ralph: That's fantastic.

[00:39:09] Lauren: You can't sleep on those numbers.

[00:39:11] Corey: Ah, ding, ding, ding.

[00:39:13] Lauren: could only dream about

[00:39:14] Ralph: Or take a nap on them. Uh, so I, I, this is

[00:39:17] Lauren: is no pillow

[00:39:18] Ralph: my God. Like, just, you know, once she's on a roll, Corey, she just can't stop.

[00:39:24] Corey: I love it. I please don't

[00:39:26] Ralph: no, please

[00:39:27] Corey: it. Let's go.

[00:39:27] Ralph: Lauren. Just please stop. Uh, S'S on the beach this weekend and I was telling somebody about this and they're like, oh yeah, we used to do that all the time.

[00:39:35] Ralph: I'm like, really? What'd you send? He's like, oh, we just sent you know mugs. And I was like, oh, with your logo on it, right? He's like, yeah, does it does really doesn't work. So like there's a lot of people that think that gift based outbound is in a lumpy mail and you know, the, like, I know you actually advocate this too, like the, the personalized video in the box kind of thing.

[00:39:57] Ralph: Like how wide can you go with this? 'cause you obviously you wanna match it with, you know, the individual industry to a certain degree. What, what would you say about those people? Like, yeah, we're already doing it. Well, it's not unique striking or gives a positive impression like with a, you know, coffee mug with a Tier 11 logo on it.

[00:40:14] Ralph: It's actually a really cool mug, by the way, but you know, I don't know if that's gonna knock down any doors and get past any gatekeepers. So what would you say to

[00:40:21] Corey: Yeah. I would say that one of the, in addition to the USI uniquely striking impression is the, the emotion you want the person to have when they're opening this up is, wow, this person went out of their way to do something special for me. This person, I don't know who they are, but they thought about me or they, they, they're going out, they're, they're, they're going outta their way.

[00:40:43] Corey: Like, who is this person? And then when they call, when this, when you as call to follow up, I don't wanna say that they're obligated or that there's like inherent reciprocity, but you've left an impression. The problem with sending, uh, a logoed mug or one of your cheap pens that you send to a conference is that that's not going to cause them to. Pause in their day when they receive that. Like, oh, they'll just dismiss it as another piece of swag. You know, that's

[00:41:12] Lauren: And it's like you just gave me trash. I have to throw away another coffee mug that I have to wash and I can't already fit in the. This like 7,000

[00:41:20] Corey: thank you.

[00:41:21] Lauren: mugs. Oh

[00:41:21] Corey: And so, yeah, absolutely. So the impact you want is someone to go, oh, okay. This person, Lauren, they're, they're interesting.

[00:41:29] Corey: They have, they, they, I need to talk to this person. 'cause obviously they, they're, they're different than the rest.

[00:41:34] Ralph: And the cookies, like the, let's not get ourselves here. The cookies are not cheap. To have this whole thing work. This is not a strategy for the faint of heart, especially like if you're doing it at scale, like they're a hundred, $150, like the best vendors. And obviously there's, you know, there's some personalization that goes along with it and everything else.

[00:41:53] Ralph: So it's gotta be something that does make an impact and it's sent to the right place below tier 11 team. We're making sure that is the case. Um, the point is, is that's just the beginning. So tell us about the, the few minutes that we have left here.

[00:42:09] Lauren: That's

[00:42:09] Ralph: all. You're getting attention,

[00:42:11] Corey: That's exactly, exactly. And the area where people will drop the ball or fail on this is when they don't follow up. This is not a strategy where you send amazing pillows or gifts or anything like that and they're gonna come calling you or wanting to give you writing a

[00:42:27] Lauren: now. Closing, and then

[00:42:28] Ralph: on the card you do have a URL that's specific to them. And that did happen actually on Monday, by the way, our latest round. But,

[00:42:38] Corey: Fantastic. And if

[00:42:39] Ralph: no, but that's the exception rather than the rule. 'cause it's everything is the follow-up. So like, give us an example.

[00:42:47] Lauren: Well, that's where you said that's why you go laser targeted versus full, broad stroke, so you can focus heavily on a

[00:42:54] Corey: And so the follow up is a blitz. It's not, you follow up forever. It's six times in 14 days. You do call, email, uh, voicemail and LinkedIn day, day after day. So you skip a day, so day, every other day for, for six attempts. And the purpose of the gift is to get the phone call, is to get them on the line. That's when the, the purpose of the gift ends.

[00:43:17] Corey: The next step is. Have a sales conversation, or at least to have a relationship driven conversation that may lead to a sale.

[00:43:28] Lauren: So you were. Uh, what do you call them? Fat sales, happy individuals that were driving the Lamborghini. You're like, all right, I'm going to give you an AlleyOOP, no longer receive a slam dunk on a silver platter, but you would provide them with these AlleyOOP

[00:43:45] Corey: Well said Lauren. Yes.

[00:43:47] Lauren: Well, we got out of the

[00:43:48] Ralph: Into the basketball apparently.

[00:43:50] Lauren: game,

[00:43:51] Ralph: Yeah. Just mixing our.

[00:43:53] Corey: Yes. These were AlleyOOP, right? We were, we were, we were handing the ball to them right next to the net.

[00:43:58] Ralph: And I'm sure they love that, that, you know, and some of them probably,

[00:44:03] Corey: Well, they became a little

[00:44:04] Ralph: they were spoiled. So I would imagine that initial group, like if you have a sales team or a salesperson, they may not like this to begin with.

[00:44:13] Corey: well, yeah. Well, the, it's, it beats.

[00:44:16] Lauren: Yellow booking you said going down the line of just

[00:44:20] Ralph: She doesn't even know Corey. Isn't this these Gen Zrs? Oh my God. Like

[00:44:27] Lauren: You know, there's things that be, I think like, I'm sure I've seen those yellow pages. Were they, were they white? Were they

[00:44:34] Ralph: there was the

[00:44:35] Corey: They had, and the yellow pages.

[00:44:36] Lauren: They were thick. I, I, I think I sat on them to sit at the table.

[00:44:42] Ralph: When she was a toddler. Right.

[00:44:45] Corey: Yeah.

[00:44:45] Ralph: That's great.

[00:44:47] Corey: Well, the, the Yellow Pages were the, the local businesses, the White pages. Were all the residents in the

[00:44:52] Lauren: I didn't know there was a difference. There's, okay, great. I, again, I sat on textbooks.

[00:44:59] Ralph: Then the, then the

[00:44:59] Lauren: my encounter of them.

[00:45:02] Ralph: that's right. Right.

[00:45:03] Lauren: Yeah. But that was an expense that no one had delivered cookies to, to convince my mom and dad to buy a booster seat, so that salesperson went

[00:45:10] Ralph: It went horribly wrong. So the key.

[00:45:14] Lauren: Also, I was expected to be tall. That's let's blame genetics. Okay. I was supposed to be tall enough that I didn't need a booster

[00:45:19] Ralph: you actually

[00:45:19] Lauren: to drop out of

[00:45:20] Ralph: you're like, you're like six foot two, uh, a anyway on heels. Well, even higher on heels. I mean, uh, um, so anyway, so that's the key. And then the next step of that is a whole other thing, which we're not even gonna get into, but it's like, let's just recap here for a second, just so people, if you are trying to close like a sale a month and you're an agency.

[00:45:43] Ralph: You guys were closing 46 deals a week at 600 a quarter.

[00:45:50] Corey: were closing.

[00:45:51] Ralph: doing my math

[00:45:52] Corey: That's right. Yes.

[00:45:53] Ralph: that's literally one an hour. If you're working a 40 or 50 hour a week, that's an insane amount. Like this really works. I think that was the stat that I was like, you serious? Didn't it actually work this way?

[00:46:06] Lauren: What? That's more, I'm just, you go back to you breaking down to more than one an hour. That's like a, that's more than most of these people. That's more to bite off than they can chew. Hence why that was a soft, delicious cookie, but like that's. How much of that came from the GBO strategy?

[00:46:21] Corey: so half of it came from GBO, half came from inbound and events

[00:46:25] Ralph: guys had a very,

[00:46:26] Lauren: Half, though. Half was controlled and predictable.

[00:46:31] Corey: From outbound gift based outbound, correct? Yes. That's well said. That's well said. We didn't wait for the phone to ring. We actually did the targeting, we sent the gifts, we did the follow up, and then yeah, closed the deals.

[00:46:42] Ralph: you are thinking about doing this and obviously get the book, first off, we've got a special giveaway for perpetual traffic listeners here is like. If you have a sales team, they may not adapt to this well, especially if most of your leads are coming in and they just have to, you know, fill, like it's all form fills and there's really no outbound at all.

[00:47:04] Ralph: Like it didn't sit well with our team. And we had to hire a new team as a result of this shift. Now, they're also very adept on the inbound side, but the outbound was just like a, for, it was like a foreign language, and so we had to make some very hard choices as a result of this. But we realized that this was one leg of the stool that we had just never really done a whole lot with and could never really make it work, which is outbound, just in general.

[00:47:29] Ralph: And it makes complete sense to me. And like the specialization obviously has started to bear fruit on our side. So like this is a legit strategy. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, so Cory, it's been incredible to have you on here. We could keep talking about, there's so many other things, like this is

[00:47:47] Corey: I know.

[00:47:48] Ralph: the tip of iceberg, but I know you've got a special offer for.

[00:47:54] Corey: Yeah. Oh yeah. So for your listeners guys, we, I've made this book available to your listeners. It's the audible version, so it's the same version that you're gonna get. You go to Amazon and buy the audible version, the full audio book narrated by me. So you'll be, uh, you get your little bit of, a little bit more of my time and your ear.

[00:48:14] Corey: Uh, you can go to anyone, not everyone, dot com, that's anyone, not everyone.com. And that's where we'll be able to access the audiobook as well as there is a digital. Workbook that includes worksheets, templates, videos, all these amazing resources. You can go through the five steps when we talked about a couple of them today, you go through the full five steps, uh, following the, the, the

[00:48:36] Ralph: And no like code we have to enter or anything like that. Just go to anyone, not everyone, dot com.

[00:48:41] Corey: No, not everyone do

[00:48:43] Ralph: Put that on your favorites, perpetual traffic listeners, especially you agencies. Uh, this has been amazing, dude. Like, this is, it's kind of a mind blowing, like logically it makes so much sense.

[00:48:56] Ralph: It's like I, I have had, we have hired five or six different agencies to try and crack the code on outbound and have never been able to do it until now. And it, and it's, we're finally serving the audiences that we do our best work with, which is incredibly gratifying and it trickles all down throughout the entire organization.

[00:49:15] Ralph: So yes, I'm a shill for Corey Quinn, of course, but you screw it, you know, I think this is one of the best strategies that's out there. So, uh, where can people connect with you personally? Is there any place, uh, you want to connect there?

[00:49:31] Corey: Um, yeah, I'm very, I'm very active on LinkedIn, so if you, uh, if you're active on LinkedIn, reach out to me there. I would love to connect with you.

[00:49:39] Ralph: All right. And make sure that wherever you listen to podcasts, leave a rating and review. We love to read those on air here. And obviously, yes, that's the best part. We got a, uh, you know, we, we require it for all our guests, by the way, Corey. So I expect a five, I expect a six star.

[00:49:54] Ralph: Review, uh, anyway, little give and take here. Uh, so make sure that you do leave that at Lead, gets us to a wider audience here and learn how to do all this stuff the right way. This is specifically for you agencies as well, which I know you've been listening all this time, and I've been looking for ways to grow your business.

[00:50:08] Ralph: This is the way to do it, and of course, all the resources that we mentioned here, including anyone, not everyone. Dot com is over at perpetual traffic com. So on behalf of my amazing co-host, Lauren e Petrillo. Till next show. See you. I'm three minutes late. I am super late. I didn't really give you like an outro.

[00:50:33] Ralph: Outro, but anyway, they get it. I did it for you. Thanks buddy. Thanks

[00:50:38] Corey: was awesome. Thank you

[00:50:39] Ralph: talk to you Thursday. See you.