Heroes in Business - Rober Skrob, CEO Be Unleavable, Author Retention Point, expert in subscription retention service

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Pick something and move forward. Rober Skrob, CEO Be Unleavable, Author Retention Point, expert in subscription retention service is interviewed by David Cogan famous host of the Heroes Show and Founder Eliances entrepreneur community.  

welcome back to alliances heroes where heroes in business align to be part of our super community and find out more about alliances visit www.alliances.com and we're back and again so much activity going on here and i want to thank you all for listeners i want you to thank you thank you i always say the feedback because we continue to get feedback. And again, thanks for the feedback when we head on. And I interviewed the publisher of Forbes magazine. So make sure that you go to alliances.com and click on radio E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com to check out past interviews. All right. Most everything now seem to be going towards this thing called subscription. And I'm not talking about subscription of magazines.

I'm talking about subscription of services, website, those gift boxes that you see online. Even restaurants are entering the business. Automotive, haircut places are. And the list goes on and on. And it's all about subscription services. Here's the thing, though. You may be thinking about starting a subscription service. You may have one. You may have a retail store figuring out, how do I implement this? We have the expert. Not only that, we have the expert of the expert on. So welcome to the show,

Robert Scrobe. He's the expert in subscription membership retention, authored of not one but nine marketing books, and he can be reached at robertscrobe.com. We have it at the bottom for those of you that are listening, and also robertscrobe, which is S-K-R-O-B.com. And, again, you can check it out on our website to get the link. And again, once again, it's RobertSkrobe.com. So Robert, listen, welcome to the show. I want to jump right in though, because I got a million questions. We've got a number of people who

wanted to ask questions, two of you. Why are subscriptions so popular today, now more than ever, and the trend is just skyrocketing. Yeah, I think, David, it's an absolute honor to be on the program. Thank you so much for having me. Subscriptions are becoming more popular because it gives consumers more choice. Rather than buying a product and being an owner, being able to subscribe to Access is much more convenient for a lot of consumers. And also, it gives consumers more choice. One of the subscriptions that I think is new recently is PF Chang's Platinum subscription. And what it does is allow frequent visitors of. Chang's to be able to subscribe for $8.99 a month, get more points for each visit, and most importantly, David, it allows subscribers to

skip the line so that when they come to P.F. Chang's with their family, they don't have to wait in the same queue as people who maybe visit P.F. Chang's once a year or once every several years. So the subscription enables businesses to reward their most frequent customers by giving them an opportunity for a VIP experience, and it enables consumers to get access to products and services for a subscription versus having to pay in order to acquire those services. And like anything, as long as you use it, you end up saving more money than if you didn't. Absolutely. And also just that piece of mind, knowing that you have access to it.

And also that feeling that you're better, that you're going to be treated better. You're going to have exclusive access. Of course, country clubs and private membership clubs have been popular for many decades. And their popularity is actually increasing over the last couple of years. And I really see that trend continuing where a group of individuals have access to a restaurant, access to a club, and reflective glow that makes the members feel a little bit superior to others who don't have access because they're not in the club. And so membership and subscription is as much about the feeling they get as it is about the actual goods and services received. So here's the thing. What about businesses? We've got a lot of listeners and viewers right now that could probably have something like this implemented. If they don't already offer these subscriptions, what type of business should they consider in ways about offering that as an option? an excellent question. And businesses that have low cost products are really great candidates for a subscription. If you're in cosmetic dentistry where a case costs $25,000, you probably could

just go and get more of those cases and not worry as much about having a little subscription program for $9.95 a month. But if you're a retail business, you're a restaurant, you're a professional service, then creating a subscription can be a terrific option. For instance, Circle K came out. They're a retail business, a convenience store brand, and they came out with their drink club, where for about, I think it's $9 a month, you can get a drink every day at Circle K. And that's an important example because most business owners who create a subscription think that you have to give everything as part of your subscription. There has to be kind of an all-you-can-eat option, similar to Netflix. And what Circle K is proving

is that, in fact, you really don't have to put everything in. You can actually only put one product in. And what this does is for their target customer, which are working people who are generally working out of their truck, then they're going by a Circle K, they can get themselves a iced coffee or a Coca-Cola with their lunch or whatever they might enjoy. And then, of course, they're probably going to buy other products. And when it comes time to fill up their truck with gas, it's probably going to be at the Circle K versus somewhere else. And that using this subscription, you are really locking in that customer. So it's not only about putting all your products and services in.

It can be about creating a VIP experience for your customers. And it's not always about reducing costs. Of course, Amazon Prime is a tremendous example of offering an additional cost savings around the shipping. But that was also about having kind of preferred access to Amazon because you didn't have to worry about the cost of shipping just one item. You could go ahead and get everything delivered. So ultimately, there are nine different subscription businesses that we talk about here in this book, Subscription Success. And the VIP model is that Amazon Prime Circle K model. And for most subscription businesses, that's probably the simplest and easiest to think about.

How can we treat our best customers better by giving them exclusive access to skip the queue, better shipping, maybe a free drink each day that gets our best customers back to us more often so that they are making repeat visits. And that's usually kind of the fastest way to get started. And again, we have with us Robert Scrobe, expert in subscription membership retention, author of nine marketing books. Make sure you go and you get his book, robertsgrove.com. You can go and reach him at robertsgrove.com because you're listening, watching me, David Kogan, host of the Eliance's Hero Show. So make sure that you go to E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com to also see this recording and past recordings on our show. So Robert, here's the thing is, is there's, it's, it's, I mean, this is happening everywhere. I mean, think of the subscriptions, right? And we even have, you know, like Netflix.

I mean, there's a gazillion of those things. Netflix, you know, went through the roof, right? With, with COVID just by offering the subscription instead of here's the flat fee, here's what it is and the add-ons and that. What about, what should people consider who may not have one now but are looking at going ahead and doing it? And then the second part is, which probably is the most critical part, is once you've got someone, how do you keep them as long as possible? How do you make them happy? There is a very big difference. Thank you for that question. It's a good one. There's really a very big difference in offering subscriptions versus offering other products. And when you're in business, if you're a typical restaurant or even as Blockbuster preceded Netflix, really the idea for Blockbuster was increasing transaction size.

And the key was getting as much as you could from each customer while they were in the store. And that's really what most retail is all about, is that upsell and increasing transaction size. And what subscriptions really flip that into a subscriber focus. And it really forces you to think about, all right, how do I create and foster strong relationships with individual members and subscribers at scale? And what training does my team need in order to speak with our subscribers and our members in a way that makes those members want to stay and feel engaged? Because while subscription, it does require, you know, you got to have something, you know, in order to kind of induce them into becoming a subscriber or member, the real key is how they feel about it.

And if they feel like they are treated well, they feel like they're part of a movement, they feel like they're an insider, they feel better about themselves because they have this, you know, a strong part of why Netflix grew in the early 2010s to 2015 was because of that whole cut the cord movement and that it made people feel good that they were kind of sticking it to the cable company by canceling cable and subscribing to Netflix. And there was this whole feeling of this that it made them feel superior to the average person because they were able to cut the cord. They didn't need any of that cable TV anymore because they had Netflix. And all subscriptions are a luxury product.

And luxury products are sold based on the feeling. And luxury products are sold based on the feeling. I'm told, I don't know this to be fact, but I am told by a very important individual in my life that Louis Vuitton purses make you feel like you are awesome. And that when you carry one of those Louis Vuittons over your shoulder, you feel like you just can't be touched, that you are head and shoulders above everybody else, all the peasants out there that don't have a Louis Vuitton purse. Is it because Louis Vuitton purses are made out of better materials? They have better thread or craftsmanship? They could have that. But really more important than any of that is the feeling that the person has when they wear the Louis Vuitton that creates that luxury experience, that luxury price. And that's what you're looking to convey with a subscription. So making this

choice to offer a subscription within your business, you must, in order for it to be successful, you must also be focused on the feeling that you're delivering and look to create relationships with your subscribers versus trying to maximize every single transaction. Robert, and again, you can reach Robert by going to robertskrob.com. Again, robertskrob.com. Robert, where do you see the future of this subscription models going to? I mean, eventually, is it going to be where we're going to have, you know, 40 to 50 charges on our account everywhere from, you know, 99 cents to,

you know, whatever that end number may be of just about everything. You know, why not subscribe where you're getting a computer, a new computer every single six months, the latest and greatest? Why not? We have it right with phones. You see the specials come out in the phone service. I mean, it's just pretty much endless. You know, I do think that there is a significant change happening with more and more adoption towards subscriptions. And of course, really, it's almost impossible to buy software anymore, whereas almost all of it is a subscription service. And largely, the new products in that software as a service market, the new software ventures are almost exclusively software-based. And I do see more and more companies accepting and embracing the subscription model where

it used to be you had a website and you had a subscription for an internet service provider. Well, now you've also on top of it, you have a subscription for the spam blocker that's going to prevent spam comments on your, you know, nothing but gambling and everything else, comments on your blog. And then you also have a subscription to the add-in that allows you to broadcast your audio files. Then you have an add-in that pulls in the ads. And then you have an add-in. And each one of those is a subscription on top of the internet service provider. But each one provides a function that you couldn't have without it. And I do see that the subscription model is allowing a lot of innovation of new tools and new functions that couldn't exist without that subscription model.

And so I do believe that it's here to stay. And so it creates new products for consumers and for business owners. It creates recurring revenue so that once you have a customer, you're able to grow on an ongoing basis and continue to add customers. Excellent. Excellent. Again, we've got with us Robert Scrope. In fact, and you're listening, watching me, David Kogan hosted the Alliance's Hero Show. He's the expert with it. What 29 years experience represented more than, I mean, 208 markets, 13 countries in five languages. In fact, too, as Robert, you've attended an Alliance's experience, the private round table and stuff. So share with us maybe what that experience was like for you.

Now, I think it's, Alliance's is an amazing opportunity. And really, you know, what you get to understand is the broad diversity of that room and the opportunity to make connections that you never would have imagined were available. You know, often we get in our own world and we think of who might be our customers or maybe even who might be the vendors or referral sources that could help us grow our business and solve problems that we're facing. is that there are really thousands of connections that you've never been able to see before. But by being in a room and understanding the types of problems that other people solve, and it will often trigger, oh, wait a minute, I've got that problem. And wait a minute, that person probably knows other people that I can help. other people that I can help. And you're able to make connections that exist in alliances that you just wouldn't ever experience in any other way. Now, Robert, too, we've got time for one more question. I think this is important, too.

You clearly found your passion. You're excited about it. You're an expert of the experts about it. You've been doing it longer than most before people even kind of knew what's this thing subscription. I don't know. It's something I'm charged every month. Right. I thought it was just a magazine. Well, I mean, boy, have times changed since then. What kind of advice do you have for, you know, young adults that, you know, want to be able to find their passion like you have and really become a niche and become the authority in it like you are? I think the key thing is that most people I talk to who are considering a niche

and absolutely creating a niche is the single most powerful marketing strategy that you can adopt. That it often feels to new marketers or business owners that by picking a niche, a specific target market, that you're actually restricting yourself. But what happens is that it really emboldens you, it really narrows your focus like a laser, and it attracts individuals of that niche far greater than you ever would have imagined, and also you attract the others that you were hoping to also attract and

not exclude, they still show up. Just because that you are picked a target market and you're speaking to that target market doesn't mean you're excluding anybody. It means that you are making yourself even more attractive to others. And I think the key thing that for me is that, like, you know, even though that I've been with working and focused on subscriptions, at some level for 29 years, I have been targeting as the retention expert within retention for eight years. And, other 21 years were all other types of businesses and other types of subscriptions. And that it has evolved considerably since I began. And so I think the key is that you pick something, not worrying so much if it's right or wrong, but by picking it,

it's right. And that as you learn more, as you get more customers, as you have more experience, give yourself permission to evolve into other niches, either bigger or smaller, or move over to another sub-niche or new direction as you grow and continue to scale your business and get more experience. That big one is the key and it will unlock faster growth than any other source. And don't worry about making a wrong choice because the fastest path is always a zigzag. Wonderful. Well, Robert, you help businesses maximize their potential with subscription, membership, and retention. If you're not doing subscription, you need to contact Robert.

If you are doing it, you know what? Think about your retention rate. How do you get that higher? Contact Robert. That's right. Robert, you're an expert in subscription retention, author of nine marketing books. That's a hero. Reach out to robertscrob.com.

This has been David Kogan with the Alliance's Heroes.