Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Vance Morris Founder of Deliver Service Now

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Vance helps business owners get, serve and keep clients for life through creating experiences and response required marketing. He is a Former Birth Control Factory Security Guard turned Disney Leader, turned Bankrupt Out of Work Executive, turned Carpet Cleaner, turned Successful Entrepreneur.Learn More: https://deliverservicenow.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-vance-morris-founder-of-deliver-service-now

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Influential Entrepreneurs is sponsored by Marketing Huddle, where we build an authority positioning portfolio for entrepreneurs that sells for. you so that you don't have to. This unique approach gives credibility and trust and easily attracts and converts high net worth prospects by using podcast and TV interviews and guaranteed press coverage on ABC NBC and Fox News affiliates to learn more. Visit Mike Saunders 360.com. Today we

have with us, Vance Morris, who is the founder of Deliver Service Now. Vance, welcome to the program. Thank you so much, Mike. I look forward to it. This will be fun. Yes, I always love learning new tips from people that have had decades of experience in industry. And I know that you can tell a lot from someone's the name of the company. So deliver service now. What an action verb that is.

It's like, when are we going to do it now? And what do we need to do? Deliver service. So I'm excited to talk with you. But before we dive in, go ahead and give us a little bit of your story and your background and how you got into the industry. Sure. So I was lucky enough that my first real job out of college was with the Disney company. So I worked for the mouse for about 10 years down in Orlando, moved up through the management ranks as things moved along. I was on the opening team of a number of their

resorts. I was on a design team of one of their attractions and restaurants. And it was really just an amazing experience. And, you know, one of the things that I learned, early on. And one of the first things I learned was, and it wasn't what people think, you know, oh, you learn customer service. Oh, you learned how to make people happy. That wasn't it. First thing I learned was that Disney is run by processes and systems. And that is how they are able to deliver consistently that incredible level of service and that level of experience. And I've just literally, I've carried that thought with me, that lesson with. me through the next 30 years of my career. I do get the question, oh, my God, you left Disney. Why'd you

leave? And, you know, I had spent 10 years there, and I'm like, there's got to be something else in the world. So I went out. I was a restaurant consultant with legal seafoods, which is a seafood restaurant on the East Coast, rainforest cafe, I worked with for a little bit. And then I had a couple of corporate food service jobs. And throughout these jobs, I realized I make a lousy employee. Just don't like to be told what to do. So I started my own business. I wanted to start at a restaurant, but all the restaurant concepts I was looking at required a million dollars at least liquid cash, which I just didn't have that laying around. So I did what every small boy dreams of doing when they're growing up, and I started a carpet

cleaning business. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, right? Exactly. Oh, we all dream of that. But what I did was I set out to make it into a premium service. I took all my Disney knowledge from the service and experience and marketing and really set out to create a premium business. And we did. We were premium service, premium pricing. through the years we added to that. We added Oriental rug washing. We added a mold remediation company. People started seeking me out saying, you know, you don't look like you're working very hard, but you seem to be doing okay for yourself.

And so I started coaching and consulting with other businesses, which birthed the Deliver Service Now Institute, which started back in 2013. I can't believe it's been 11 years. So now I work with small businesses, both blue and white collar, but primarily in services. So financial planners, HVAC companies, everything in between, primarily focused on one, delivering the customer experience. So I don't dabble in customer attraction or anything like that. So I'm not an SEO guy or flakebook ads or anything. It's just not my wheelhouse.

And then I believe that that customer experience that you're delivering is setting the stage for probably the most important part of the customer journey and or the business's journey, which is customer retention. And how do you keep customers around for life? Because, I mean, I'm sure you know this, but, you know, the most expensive thing you can do in your business is acquire a new customer. And one of the more less costly things is to keep one. Not to mention the ones that have already bought from you are more likely to buy from you again. They're less price sensitive, et cetera, et cetera. So that brings us to today. You know, there's a lot to unpack there.

And one thing that I want to, you know, that's an excellent intro. One thing that jumped out at me is it made me think about a franchising appraisal. approach without franchising. So that was one of the successes you noticed where it's like Disney lived by and you worked in that environment with SOPs and processes and follow the proven process. And then they also are good at. And this is a common thing, but the experience because people will, you know, like the old Maya Angelou, people will forget, you know, what you said about them, but they'll never forget how you make

them feel. And if you can bolster that experience. and if you can have your business set up like a franchise, but not worrying about franchising, but follow the process. Success leaves clues. So I think that that's a really huge thing that you brought up there. Do you find that a lot of businesses are almost flying by the seat of their pants and not taking that standardized, let's follow this process because it's proven in this industry,

not being a franchise, but the franchises out there do have a wonderful, deliverable, which is, we've done this, we're successful, do this, and you will be too. Yeah, you know, I think if going, I call franchising kind of the extreme because you are definitely locked in to whatever the franchise says, you have to do, you have to do. But systems and processes give you freedom. And if you, so like right now, I don't spend, I spend maybe 90 minutes a week in those home service businesses. Because I have implemented. systems. I have a general manager in those businesses that run those systems. I tell them, don't screw with the systems either. Just manage them, make sure they're up and running.

If you have an idea on how to make things better, great. We've got our Friday morning meeting. We'll sit down. We'll talk it through. If you got a great idea, fine. We'll go ahead and try it. But systems allows the business owner freedom. And it allows the employees freedom. So like at Disney, you know, if you followed the system for carrying a tray or working in a restaurant, it allowed the cast members to be free with their personality. And this is how they were able to wow the guests because they followed the system of operating the ride or working in the restaurant. And it gave them that freedom to really embrace the guests that were around them and make their vacations special. And we do the same thing in our businesses as we've got, here's how you do it. Okay, you can't deviate from it.

And once you have it, now it's almost rote. I mean, it's just programmed into you. And it gives you freedom to do all the fun little things you can for your customer that's either going to make it memorable. It's going to make it a wow experience. You know, you might even get a tip out of it. You know, so yeah, you can't fly. You can't grow if you're always flying by the seat of your pants.

Yeah. Yeah. You never then or a, then it gives the connotation that you're not even documenting the processes that you're flying by the seed of your pants about so that you can look back a week or a quarter or a year and assess. Because even if you are just kind of running in a few directions, at least if you document that, you can look back quarterly and go, what did we do last quarter? Did this work? Not if it's working. Let's do more of it.

If it's not, let's fix it. So I think that's huge. Now, you bring up customer retention. Why is that so important? And what's the biggest mistakes that people, business owners, are making when it comes to focusing or not focusing on their customer retention? Yeah. You know, I think, you know, a lot of media companies, you know, are doing a disservice because they, they, they dangle that shiny object in front of entrepreneurs and business owners of, oh, this is the next thing. You need more leads.

You need more leads. You need more customers. and, you know, that's sexy, you know, it gets the attention of the business. They think that's how to grow is we always need more, more, more. Now, I get it. I'll admit, yes, you do need more customers in order to grow. But if you want to grow profitably, you need to retain and sell to your existing customers. So I'll give you a quick example.

So in my carpet cleaning business, I just got the report for December. Our customer acquisition cost, it costs me to get a new customer in the front door is about $100. And our minimum charge is $199. So that leaves me $99, right, to put gas in the van, pay the technician, insurance, rent, everything else. I might have a couple of shekels left over, you know, to put in my pocket at the end of the day. But it only costs me $21.

a year to keep a customer. So if we have that same scenario, and they only do our minimum, which is $199, I subtract $21 from that. I'm now at, what, $178. I've got an extra $100 in my pocket, pure profit,

just by selling somebody who already knows likes and trust me. Let's throw in the other aspect, which is when you do such a good job and create such a valuable service, and experience, you should be receiving introductions to some of their friends. So then that introduction that turns into the 199 is that's a pure 199. You didn't pay 100.

That was word of mouth. And so that customer retention focus, yes, retains. But then the other R word, those referrals, those are gold. Yeah. And what a lot of business owners fail to realize is that doing a good job, is just entry into the space, right? I mean, you got to do a good job. I mean, otherwise, you're dead.

But that's just the entry. You have to actively create connections. You have to actively stay top of mind. And what I tell all of my clients and any podcast I'm on, I beat this to death is it is not the customer's job to remember you. It is your job as the business owner to remind customers why you exist. And if you don't do that, you can't blame the customer for not calling you back when they need your service again. You know, I want to talk about some really specific tactical things that people can do to improve customer retention.

But what you just said there reminded me something that came up for me literally last week. our, I live in the Denver, Colorado area, and it's been really cold. And we opened our garage door, and it popped off track, probably because the weather's been so cold. And we're like, uh-oh, I don't, I don't fix that kind of stuff. So let's call a garage guy. Well, who do we call? We went over to the button on the wall where we pushed to open the garage door, open

and shut. And the garage guy was smart enough to a stapled his card right there. I took a picture of it. I walked into the office, and I called him. and he was out the next day, fixed it done. So what are some tactical thing that you recommend people to do to improve that customer retention so that they're top of mind? Sure.

Well, you know, one of the things that we're doing, it's not just top of mind, it's also creating what I call an emotional connection with your customers. I mean, so many businesses are just afraid to let some of their personality out. but a hard tactic is I am a firm believer in going offline and in staying in touch with your customers. By that, I mean, yes, there is a place for email, but the last time I checked, the Postal Service has a better deliverability rate than any email service on the planet. They're still at 99% despite everything you've heard about them. And so I firmly believe that.

One of the tactics that I use, I've been using this for about 14 years now in my home service business, is a monthly newsletter, actual print with ink on paper, a four-page full-color newsletter that goes out into the mail to my customers. The thing with a newsletter is that it is not a sales tool, because there's nothing worse than the only time you hear from a company is when they want to sell you something, right? I mean, you know, your accountant. Oh, it's time to do your taxes. Here's your invoice. This doesn't leave you with a good feeling. And so the newsletter is designed to, one, it's designed to entertain. It's kind of like readers digest light. It's designed to entertain, but it's also designed to start creating connections with your customers. So I will fully admit,

I shamelessly use my children in my marketing. My customers have watched my kids grow, up. So I used to use my daughter. She's 17 now, but she did ballet. And I took a picture of her when she was five and her tutu at the ballet recital, put it in the newsletter. And I did that every year for, you know, until she was like 12 or 13. We were in the grocery store one day when she was probably 10 or 11. And this lady runs up to her and says, oh my God, Emma, how was your recital? And I looked at each other and we're like, we're ready to go run and hide somewhere. And I had to think about it. you know what? She's one of my customers. That lady is never leaving me. Never. I mean, I would have to royally screw up for that lady to leave me. So you don't know the power of creating

those connections. And this is one lady. I mean, I got thousands of customers. That's just one lady. And so you don't always have to be selling. And then you supplement that with a reminder system. So if you're in a business where you need to remind people that it's time for your Heath Cleaning, it's time for your HVAC tune up, or it's time for your carpet cleaning, you need to have a reminder system in place. At minimum, send them a postcard once a month. And then use the postcard as your sales vehicle or your promotion. So I like to send two things a month. newsletter, entertain, create the connection, postcard, a little bit of entertaining, but it's got

the promotion of the month in it. So if you could take anything and everything of my marketing arsenal, take everything away except the newsletter. I would fight you tooth and nail to take that thing away from me. And you know, what's interesting is what's easy to do is easy not to do. And in that case, doing a newsletter is easy, but it takes some effort to go, okay, well, I need to actually have a database with my customer's name and address in there, an email, and whatever else. But I do talk to people even today in 2025 that tell me I don't have even a database with my customer's name, phone number, email. That's huge.

And then, yeah, then you got to create a newsletter and then mail it out. but today there's their services out there that can make that really, really easy. There's chat GPT that can help you get content and then you put a little letter from the heart and pictures. So I really feel like what's easy to do is easy not to do. And that's why when you do it, you can rest assured that probably your competition's not. Oh, yeah. I mean, the mailboxes these days are empty. I mean, you know, last quarter, they might have been a little full with political ads and maybe a couple of Christmas catalogs.

But mailboxes are empty these days. email boxes are full. I mean, think about it. You know, you can filter out emails. They go to spam. They maybe never get delivered or you see it's from your cousin Bob and you automatically delete it. With real mail, you've got to literally hold it in your hands, look at it and make a conscious decision as to whether you're going to open it or throw it away. And if the outside of the envelope is enough to get your interest, you've got a fighting chance that that sucker's going to. going to get red. And also to bank off of what you said a few minutes ago with, you know, your carpet cleaning, then you added, you know, or in a rug, then you added, then you added. Well, any kind of business and any kind of industry, if you are staying in touch with your

customers, let's say twice a month, and you do twice a month, you know, mail, let's say that someone does once a month mail, once a month email, whatever the frequency or medium is, if you are reminding them, oh, by the way, when, make sure you remember when you have the needs. of boom boom, boom, whatever your industry is cross-sell and upsell. You know, sometimes people would go, oh, my word, I don't even know you guys did, whatever that is. So that's a huge opportunity that is missed, I feel like, too. Oh, yeah.

I mean, any opportunity you get. And we're looking at other options right now. We're looking at, you know, can we add window washing? Can we add, you know, mosquito control? Anything we can add that, you know, we can do in the home, that we can leverage our customer list. We've even looked at renting our customer list to like a housekeeping company. I don't want to get into housekeeping, but can I leverage my list by renting it to them or doing an endorsed mailing? So, yeah, your list is extremely valuable.

Well, I tell you, there are so many things that people don't put into action, even though if they hear them, they logically agree with it. So all the things we're talking about treat your customer's right. Oh, create a great experience. Oh, retain your customer so that you get repeat business, referral business. All of that makes sense, but I think that if you can package it up into a nice little system to learn from, which is what you do in your business, I feel like that is so, so powerful with your institute. And if someone is interested in learning more, what's the best way that they can do that, Vance? Yeah, websites are the easiest, deliver service now.com. I got a whole bunch of tools and downloads and stuff on there to get people started.

So yeah, deliver-serviceNow.com would be the best. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you today. I appreciate you having me on, Mike. Hopefully I delivered for your audience. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, Visit www.

www. influential entrepreneurs radio.com.