Episode #129 – Bryan Kreuzberger on Becoming a Superman Sales Person Overnight with “Breakthrough Emails”

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:37 — 41.9MB)

John McIntrye: It’s John McIntyre here, The Autoresponder Guy, I’m here with Bryan Kreuzberger of Breakthrough Email. Now Breakthrough Email is probably the best rated cold email system I’ve ever found online or even heard of. And the great thing about it and why I thought this – today’s you know today’s episode would make a great – I think it would be really good is that you can – a lot of them come to me and they ask you how do you get clients? When you’re starting out how do you go and get clients? Or even when you’ve been doing this for like… How do you go and get clients? If you don’t have an email list, if you don’t have a website, or if you don’t any sort of normal way to go and do it and so, you know that’s where cold emailing comes in, but the problem is most people go and do cold email and the response rates are you now less than 10% sometimes down to like 1% or 2%. So you’re sending 100 emails and maybe getting 1 or 2 to reply to you. And usually it’s with companies that don’t even have that much money. They’re at the lower end and if you’re emailing people at the higher end you know 10, 20, 30 million dollar revenues and above you probably not even getting a replies period.

And so what’s great about this system, and what I like about, it is that it allows you to go after any one at any level. And you can go in and you can get these amazing response rates at companies where most people would never ever, ever, ever be able to get an appointment. And so I thought we’d get Bryan on, have a chat about how to do it, the nitty-gritty, and so you can walk away and apply it in your own business. So yeah Bryan, how you’re doing?

Bryan Kreuzberger: I’m doing great, excited to be here.

John McIntyre: Cool good to have you. Before we get into sort of like the nitty-gritty of what this strategy is and how it works, can you give the listener a bit more of a background on who you are and what you do?

Bryan Kreuzberger: Sure so who I am and what I do. So we certainly help companies generate leads you know and find new business and also you know increase conversion for sales.

Who I am as a person you know I grew up in Northern California, graduated college after 9/11, and was trying to get a job and just couldn’t find a job anywhere and you know that’s really kind of the origination of where I started realizing just the value of connections and contacts because you know I wanted to get into consulting, wanted to get a job and you know I just – I had no contacts.

So I ended up getting a job in sales and I was such a cold calling every day looking for an Oracle Consulting Firm down in southern California and I just hated it. You know we had great products, great service, but you know no one had ever heard of us, and it’s my job to go out and sell and you know typically like our – my sales manager would just say like, “Listen you got to pound the phone, it’s a numbers game.” And from what I found it’s actually not a numbers game. And if you’re cold calling you’re just – you’re wasting a lot of your own time, but just because people aren’t there. The pickup rate’s not there.

And you know fast forward years later I was in New York city still you know in charge of you know my own book of business selling advertising to Best Buy, McDonalds, those types of companies and that’s when I discovered cold emailing. And you know really my life changed within about 18 months of learning how to use the email to get meetings because I was able to find the actual decision makers who could buy our products and services.

At that time we were selling to advertising space, but you know it really it changed everything for me and I did not tell a soul once I learned you know this secret because this was my super power, but now we you know we help companies and we help primarily enterprise companies you know get their foot in the door with Fortune 1000 type decision makers.

John McIntyre: Awesome, awesome okay. I like it too. I like how it sort of come together coz a lot of people put together systems – never really based in reality. They sort of sit down and come up, “Ah what can I sell.” I like how this is developed from just the trenches, you’ve been in there doing it so, yes so all right so, what we chatted about before we just hit record then is instead of just going through – running through sort of a conceptual list of you know tips and tricks and sort of how to do it would make it – make it more of a case study.

And it would be based on the idea of right now, in my own business, I’ve realised that if you’ve been listening to this podcast it’s been going for over 2 years now and some of the mistakes I’ve made in the last few years is one thing was never doing recurring revenue which is a sort of a long story, maybe time for another episode, another thing was never defining the target I was going out – so the target prospect and what I mean by that is with this podcast, if you ask me what the audience says I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’d say that anyone who listens is interested email marketing, but that’s not saying much because anyone who’s in business and wants to get clients or customers is probably going to be interested in email marketing to some capacity. So it doesn’t give – doesn’t get me much information on how to go and find those people and so, what I realise is business gets a lot easier when you can clearly define who you’re going out to, what problem you’re  solving for them. And there’ll always be much more scalable because if you have a customer who’s the same as very clear target you can go after – you know there’s thousands of them out there in the world. If you can figure out how to reach them you could sell them the same thing over and over again to all the different ones.

It’s easy to systemize, easy to scale, and it’s easy to find them. So with all that I decided to go in the first direction I’m testing, going in, is ecommerce email marketing. Coz they all use the same software, they all have relatively the same thing, they sell physical products, and as far as the email marketing’s concerned they are – they all have fairly similar niche for the most part.

So it’s a very clear type of prospect and it’s a very clear offer that I’m giving them, it’s a no brainer because in some cases it can increase their revenue by up to 50% so, for a $10 million company that’s $5 million from email. So it’s great up site.

So with all of that to get back to the cold emailing aspect is now I’m faced with this challenge of how do I go after these people? And how do I go and find them? And so with all – instead of, like you said, doing the conceptual list of tips and tricks and stuff that we go through Bryan’s Breakthrough Email system and how would you apply that – how would you apply that to say going after these ecommerce clients so, I’m all used to this. I’m actually really interested to see where this goes. So what’s – where do we start with this Bryan?

Bryan Kreuzberger: Let’s see so where – like how did you decide ecommerce for you?

John McIntyre: Well, I mean, part of it was realizing that – I think one of the you know big mistake I mentioned was not doing recurring revenue.

The whole reason why I was transferred here – and I think that’s a long story, but basically I started to think you know how can I restructure things? Now how can I go and find a client where I can offer some sort of recurring revenue service? And ecommerce seemed like – ecommerce is something I thought about for a long time and started sort of pursued it, but they have – I mean there’s like a set up thing that they need to do. They need to start up a whole bunch of automated campaigns, but they also need to do ongoing – there’s, I mean, there’s ongoing newsletters and promotions and ongoing development of all the different funnels that they you know may have. And so yeah…

Bryan Kreuzberger: So have you done ecommerce? Have you helped some clients out for – with ecommerce?

John McIntyre: I – yeah I got 1 client right now, we’re just running a promotion for this week.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay.

John McIntyre: And I got a few more as well that we’re just – we’ve just started working with.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So my approach to like for any business, and this works for anybody listening, is first just identify like who your top customers are, right? By revenue, by profitability, last year – couple of years, like who were the outliers? You know who’s number 1,2,3 like to 10 and just write them out, right?

So okay who, based on everything that I’m doing, is paying me the most amount of money? And what’s the profile of those people? So hopefully ecommerce – because strategies like your strategy is the first thing, right? Are we contacting the people that are going to respond and you know you already have a lot of like expertise and credibility in that space. Does that match up for you?

John McIntyre: Yeah I think so.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Or would…

John McIntryre: Well I – there’s things well like it’s like the thing about my business and probably a lot of no opposition to business is you could go out and sell say a sales letter for you know some sort of sales file for $10,000 $20,000 or $50,000 depending on the client. So it’s good money in that sense, but then what ends up happening is you have a good month and then the next month on day 1 you start at 0 dollars again and you got to start getting on calls and emailing people in marketing. And so I think partly it’s about goals. It’s like what I want to have is a business that on day 1 I’m already starting at say at least $10,000 or $20,000 revenue. That’s important to me for some probably some of the long term vision of the long term things I’m trying to achieve.

And so I would prefer that over having an amazing month and then having a bad month or 2. And so that was the aspect of going after looking at – I need to find people who can afford to pay it – can afford to pay for decently high you know so they’d be able to pay $5,000, $10,000 for a setup. Maybe $20,000 for a setup fee and then a monthly retainer for just like managed services.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah. So they have an on and going need.

John McIntyre: They have an ongoing need, right. Whereas if I go and sell a sales model to someone – in some cases I might able to get a percentage you know percentage of the cut of the revenue of that funnel, but some – I mean those deals depend – they’re not that common and they’re not always reliable. So yeah talking about more ways basically to find like it’s a bit like an abundance source of customers that need or clients that need that ongoing service…

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right.

John McIntyre: … and to ecommerce it seemed like the natural thing coz you can go and find companies that you can – they’re easy to find based on revenue as well coz you can just go look at their Elixir ranking which gives you a decent indication. Sometimes their revenue’s published online anyway so, it’s – it seems like as far as how much you charge it’s just a relation to what’s their revenue? And then what sort of impact can you make for them so, yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So right now – if we had like look at the 3 steps or how I think about cold emailing there’s you know who you send to, right? Who you send your email to, there’s what you send and then there’s how you send it like what systems do you use? Are you using TAD app or BuzzBuilder or using Outlook or Gmail, you know, whatever it may be.

The who you send to is actually the most important because you could have a bad email and still get a response if you, you know, identify somebody who has like a real pain or real issue. And, you know, there are ways to find out like the trigger events, there’s 4 like who you know, based on your products or service, all ready has a need for that and like the metaphor I use is like if you’re going fishing you know imagine there’s 3 lakes your gonna choose from and the first lake has lots of fish in it, right? And the second lake you go to has lots of fish that are big and these – and these are like just these giant fish. And the third lake you go to has all these you know big fish and they have a lot of them, but they’re also really hungry and they’re actually hungry for what you have.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So the first step is identify the right lake for you. You know where are the fish that are big, that are hungry that you can identify that will actually bite at what you have because really it’s kinda like casting a line. You’re – you know you’re sending the email, do you have these issues, do you have these like problems? Here’s an opportunity for you, what do you think? you know if it makes sense let me know how your calendar looks.

So for the people that don’t respond we can assume, since we’re doing a bunch of work up front to identify like what we’re gonna send them and actually create an opportunity, most people when they send an email it’s like, “Hey let me tell you  about me, right?” Like “My name is Bryan Kreuzberger, I’m the founder of Breakthrough Email, I really think we should talk, you know? We’ve been in business for 25 years and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right like in all – because I – people that go to our website, Breakthrough Email, will send me their emails and I see what people are sending and it’s just like man people aren’t responding this is just talking about yourself. It’s like when you went on a date with somebody and all you did is talk about yourself. And you haven’t even met them, right? They’re not gonna be interested so, you – you know you want to engage them and you want to make the opportunity about them versus let me tell you about you know me. And that’s kinda first mistake – let me tell you about me.

How people normally think about it it’s like, “What subject line do I use?” You know it’s the subject line just need to get them opened and then they’ll respond, but if you send them crap, which most people are, I mean if you’re getting 1% to 2% response rate you know 3% to 5% there’s something wrong, right? 97% of people are saying, silently, they’re saying no thank you.

So within your strategy you know identify your top 10 customers and then I would just go after the competitors of those customers, if you can, you know if you don’t have customers yet there’s like another process to that and we can you know like identify that. The great thing about emailing is you can connect with anybody. Now pretty much anybody in the world checks their own email because – and especially in any business or any organization they don’t outsource it to their assistants because you know they’re boss, they’re shareholders, they’re board members, they’re you know everybody is emailing them and that’s like the – it’s the number 1 form of communication. Everyone’s going back and forth you know how many phone calls do we jump on a day? How many emails do we you know send or respond to?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Does that make sense?

John McIntyre: Yeah I’m reminded of something someone said recently which you know triggered a I guess an insight for me with that.

It was this idea of like so like we’re talking of sales on the phone actually. This was like closing deals on the phone. And I remember we were chatting about this idea of you know I was thinking like how to sell, what am I selling? Like that was putting a lot of attention and energy into focusing on that. I wasn’t really making that much progress and then 1 day we were chatting and he mentioned something, that was basically what you said, like 80% of this game is who you’re selling this to.

How do you sell it – well I think it’s about 70% say who you’re selling it to. Maybe 10, 20 – maybe 20% of it is how you sell it or – yeah and then maybe 10% is what you sell. So what you sell is relatively easy to figure out, the how’s you need to learn that, but the ultimate – but the highest value here, the most important thing is who you’re actually trying to talk to. So…

Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah you’re trying to find a product customer match.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? And so the more skilled you are at identifying you know who it is – now most entrepreneurs, sales people, business owners that first year they’re kinda throwing spaghetti against the wall, right? Like they just kinda don’t know what’s gonna stick. I mean for us like I was really committed and excited about you know working with entrepreneurs and you know I was always in sales and I didn’t think like okay you know I’m not gonna focus on sales, I really want to work with entrepreneurs. Absolutely I want to because they’re gonna go out, take a risk, create something, change something in the world and make the world better. If they can just learn how to connect with those people because they don’t necessarily have all the sales skills you know I’ll give them that and what I found is that you know a lot of the entrepreneurs they were just in love with their product, right?

They’re in love with designing it and getting in the middle of it and working on their website and you know doing everything that they do and they didn’t really have a sales issue yet. In a couple years they’re gonna say, “How am I gonna grow my business, how do I get more customers, I just want more customers,” right?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: But like if – there’s always that lag time before like you realise what business you’re in.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: And the sales people like, “Man I hate cold calling, what am I gonna do today? I can’t pick up the phone another time,” you know another day. Like, “I just refuse to do it.” So they just like jumped on everything. And that you know what I realised is that you know pretty much I know I was the customer and when I originally went out to entrepreneurs I didn’t get much attraction and I said to myself, “Listen I know this needs to be – like I can’t die without like sharing this with people.” Just because the whole process is so brutal and it’s so easy once you know all the steps. And so that’s why I shifted the focus to you know predominately most of you know most of our customers are sales people or business owners who have a sales team.

John Mcintyre: Yeah okay, okay. So that once you’ve done that – once you’ve – coz I think – I feel that you know that’s probably what’s happening. I’ve been doing this for 3 years – about 3 years.

I was in the Philippines when I started in 2012 I think was the first invoice I sent so, just over 3 years ago. Coz I’ve been travelling around and for – in and having a lot of fun and you know it’s been good. So I’ve been doing projects work so, it’s a you know a one – once a you know job’s finished I can then take some time off and relax that sort of thing, but now it’s like, “Oh I want to build a business that’s gonna keep like a system that makes money even when I’m not there, even when I’m not selling and marketing and getting on the phone and –” that sort of thing. And so part of that is realising to the – to the decision to try and do that was probably sometime in the last 6 to 12 months, but then it’s only sort in the last year that’s it’s like, “Oh I never actually defined who I was trying to reach for the last two and a half years. “And that was probably one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made because that then changes – that then makes every other step that comes after that what you – you know what I was selling and how I was selling it. It makes all those steps infinitely harder so…

Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah your customers are dictating your business versus you dictating your customers.

John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right and you know and you’ll get busy and all of a sudden like, “Hey I don’t wanna work with these kind of customers,” and you kinda – and you know you keep graduating up, but you know from what I found you know selling to GE, Absolut, Bank of America, MasterCard, you know all these just giant organizations you know they would spend 10 times more money with us and you know the – what they asked for from us was you know a quarter – like our 20% of what the small businesses ask for us you know for the same…

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: … amount of money.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Or for you know 10% of the money.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: And when I was really you know when things were really going well I identified the like, “Man these 5 customers are bringing in tons of revenue,” and I needed just double down on them and all their competitors because there’s certain nuances about what it is that we do and how the customers respond.

Now I don’t know everybody’s business, but you know we have 25,000 people in our email newsletter list and you know I could go out and interview everybody to figure out what to put in their email or they could go out and interview their own customers.

And if you interview your customers so, if you have ecommerce customers you need to identify – like the email really is just a – you’re creating an opportunity for the other person. “How can I create an opportunity for somebody else?” So if you email me and say, “Hey do you want to be on my podcast?” that is a built in opportunity for cold email, right? So like the opportunity is do you want to market your shit, you know?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Do you want to market your company or your product? Do you have a reason to get it there – out there in the world? I have an audience and they’re in alignment with you, right? Do you want to talk?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So you know but it’s only one opportunity. I – typically an email will go through 5 different opportunities, I call it the deep sea fishing technique and so, have you ever been like deep sea fishing?

John McIntyre: Never, no. I’ve been fishing.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay so, do you know the difference between deep sea fishing and…

John McIntyre: I really have no idea.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So you know say you’re in a river you have your line, you throw it in the water, right? You know maybe you catch a fish, maybe you don’t? Deep sea fishing you know you have 5, 10 lines in the water. And you’re trolling so, you’re trying to catch you know multiple fish. So if you go to the ecommerce company I don’t necessarily know what specifically their issue is. I could show you probably how to find out you know a bunch of issues that they have kinda like reverse hack based on you know what’s on their website, what you know what they’re posting online, but your customers do.

So we wanna match your current ecommerce customers to your prospective prospects because your current customers are gonna think exactly like your current prospects or very similar at least. And they’re gonna have similar issues. So if you have you know 5, 10 ecommerce companies it sounds like you – you’ve got a couple so, at least we have a starting point.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: But when you’re in – when you’re out there talking to customers you’re going to be essentially interviewing them. Like what’s your pain? What’s your issue? Here’s you know here’s what we can do to present – potentially solve it. You want to – I’m a big Tony Robbins fan, but he says, “You want to influence people based on what they’re already you know what – you want to influence people based on what already influences them.”

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So you know when you go in – into your meeting or you’re talking to you know your current customer, “Hey before we started working together what were your issues? What was your fear, what was your frustration, what was your desire?” Most people, what I found, they – they’ll say that they want certain things, but they only want or you know they only desire that or want that because it’s something that they’re frustrated by, right? Like I want to do email marketing because why?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Coz you want more customers. You know I want to do cold emailing because I hate to cold call, you know? And I hate to cold call because I you know I fear the rejection on the other line, it feels like a waste of time you know I wanna find a better way and you know and as you kinda unfold the emotions behind it. And so our job in the email is to first – so we’re kinda moving from who to what, right? So to determine what to send talk to your current customers and just ask ’em, “Before we were working together –” and when people normally interview people they’ll interview them from the prospective of you know how is life now?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? Like a testimonial or something, but like what was your life like before we met, right? You go to the doctor’s office, you’re you know your shoulder hurts you know tell me about how you felt, you know, when you came to the office or before you came to the office.

Why did you come to the office that day, right? “You know I was like well my shoulder was hurting, but like I woke up one day and my arm was numb and it was 3 or 4 minutes before I got circulation back and it just scared the shit out of me, you know? And I was like I gotta call the doctor.” You know it’s been 2 months, but like that moment something changed.

And so we won’t know like we wanna identify within the ecommerce company what is it that you know what is it that they’re frustrated by? What do they fear? You know what do they desire? Now can you answer that from like say from the perspective of – in your clients?

John McIntyre: There’s a few things. I think some clients – well some people – I’ve heard of one company. Now they’re not a client, they won’t …

Bryan Kreuzberger: Let’s just – I want to deal with certainty.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? So like who is the client that you have that actually talked to or somebody that you haven’t worked with, but you have talked to them?

John McIntyre: Okay.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Can you think of it – anybody like that?

John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah of course.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So like I don’t want to go off a websites, I don’t want to go off of like – I want to go off of like real human you know the phrases that they say because we actually take the phrases that they say and then we put those into the email.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Now if for everybody who like wants like a cold email template we’ll like include it you know a template that you guys can use, but I want to get into like what’s more important about this so, like think of that client. Can you share their first name? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.

John McIntyre: Yeah well let’s skip the name.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay. So you can think of the person, right?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So before you were working with them what were they frustrated by?

John McIntyre: They were frustrated because they had tens of thousands of email addresses in their database and they heard that you know marketing could be used to generate a large amount of revenue from that, but they haven’t done – they hadn’t done anything on it and they didn’t have these skills or the expertise to do anything about it.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So why were they frustrated?

John McIntyre: Missed opportune – it was a huge missed opportunity.

Bryan Kreuzberger: And how’d they feel about it?

John McIntyre: That fear of missing out or that fear of you know when you have a business and you know, as an entrepreneur, you go in the business to…

Bryan Kreuzberger: Wait I’m gonna stop you.

John McIntyre: Yeah?

Bryan Kreuzberger: I want you to just be that person, right? So I’m you and I’m interviewing you.

John McIntyre: Okay, okay.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So – because at one point you started going into like I could tell it was like that fear of missing out. It’s like…

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: … I don’t know the answer, but I kinda maybe it sounds like this.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So you’re that person. Okay so, you have to – how many email addresses do you have?

John McIntyre: Got 50,000.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay you’ve 50,000 email addresses and you’re not doing – and so how do you – like how do you feel about you know not generating any revenue with your email addresses?

John McIntyre: It feels like a complete waste. We’ve got all this – so you know it’s all like an untapped resource. Yeah it feels like we have this – we’ve built up a you know a substantial business and we’re always looking for ways to grow and we invest all this money in advertising and marketing on the side and designing and all that, but here we have this database that we’ve never really touched. And …

Bryan Kreuzberger: Now why is that? Why haven’t you touched it?

John McIntyre: For a long time I just didn’t think that you know email was – I just thought that – I never even thought to email and you know if anyone ever mentioned it I just was like, “Well no one even does that. No one opens those emails, no one buys from that sort of stuff,” so I didn’t even think it was worthwhile. But then obviously over time started different – I’ve been in Masterminds or conferences things like that I started to hear more about this you know this email marketing thing that it was actually – it wasn’t just this sort of spare me idea that no one actually bought from, but it was actually a viable way to generate revenue for my company.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So why would you do it now?

John McIntyre: Coz certainly now I’m curious. Now I’m like I got this database and I want to see if it works. Coz if it does work I mean that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars or maybe millions of dollars to the company and that’s like that we don’t have right now so…

Bryan Kreuzberger: Well why not? Why haven’t you done that before, right? You kinda known about it for a while, sounds like you you know you have some other expertise like why haven’t sent emails to the list?

John McIntyre: I think the hard part, and this is actually from the mouth of someone I spoke to last week,  you as a store is you know it’s easy to find a designer or it’s easy to find someone to edit the website or it’s easy to find a lot of those sort of straight forward things, but emails are very specialized skill especially yeah it’s a very specialized thing so I can have a guy…

Bryan Kreuzberger: Wait can I have you go back?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Go back to the other guy. What would he have said?

John McIntyre: What would he have said – what was the question?

Bryan Kreuzberger: The question was why haven’t you done it? You’ve known it – you’ve known about it a couple of years, but why haven’t you done anything about it?

John McIntyre: Probably it’s probably laziness. Probably just being busy running you know busy with the day to day operations of the business.

And just haven’t had time to sort of invest in this area and it’s been a little – it’s one of those things you know it’s – every time – we all know we all put stuff on the list and it just sits there for a long, long, long time till we you know make time for it coz whenever I actually just happen to have time.

So there was that and there was just the idea that I didn’t have anyone on the team that I could really trust to take care of it because, I mean, yeah it’s no one – like you said no one’s special like I don’t have somebody specialized in this and you know if I do it I wanna do it properly.

Bryan Kreuzberger: What was the real reason he finally pulled the trigger? Like what was the event that led him to like actually saying, “Yes I want to work with you, let’s do this.”

John McIntyre: Like as in what prompted him to call me in the first place or what prompted him…

Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah like what happened right before? And you may not know the answer.

John McIntyre: What happened been right before? I don’t remember specifically though I do remember it – something – he’d been to a Mastermind or he’d heard about it before…

Bryan Kreuzberger: Let me take a step back so, I keep asking you why…

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: … and qualifying things because why tells me your motivation.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? So if I’m gonna write an email to somebody and I wanna – influence them based on what are the influences – influences them. I don’t want to convince them. Like one thing I’ve learned, taking over a thousand sales meetings, especially with guys who are like in their 50s and 60s and they have you know a thousand sales reps, who are really good, all calling on them. Like I’m not gonna outsmart these guys.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? I’m not gonna like do some sort of presentation and like you know wow them and they’ll say, “Yes Bryan you know your guarantee is so amazing like we’re in.” They’re like you know… Let me like because I don’t care about you.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So we have to identify through questions like what is it that motivates them and really like what’s their pain, right? So what’s their fear, their frustration, or what’s their desire and you need to be in a real pain you know because there’s an opportunity cost of like why am I going to take your meeting? Because that’s really in a cold email what somebody’s trying to decide to do. Like, “Is it worth my time to meet with you? Out of the million things that I have and you’re making a request, like why do I care?”

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So you know asking your clients why, why, why, why? And you know which gets you to – so like a – an idea to think about this.

Imagine like an onion and you’re peeling back the layer of the onion. You know that’s kinda the common metaphor, but imagine a Tootsie roll in the middle of that. So you got to get to the Tootsie roll and like and then you gotta like lick the outside of it and get to the like the you know the crunchy part.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So when you’re asking your clients like there’s gold in there, but a lot of times we just – you don’t even know, right? Or you know the kinda first level or second level of the onion, but we want to get to like you know like really like what was going on you know with this email list and how did it – what was your fear, right?

Like the fear might be, “Well I don’t want to send an email to 50,000 people and pissed them off or send them something that’s incongruent with what we’re doing or hurt our chances somewhere else or –” you know all that – so there’s a – you said you know somebody to do it properly or trust to take care of it, right? Trust is – that’s fear.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? I’m afraid something that might happen. Plus I don’t have the time. The frustration – the frustration we probably have to dig into like the revenue and what you’re frustrated by and how the other things working that you’re doing, perhaps? I’m not sure because we haven’t got to it yet, but there’s something underline the iceberg that like is motivating this person to do it.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: And so, our job when you interview is you want – so you know what is your fear, what is your frustration, what is your desire? And we want probably 4 or 5 that you’ve heard a couple different times from different clients, right?

So like I’ll go out and interview 5 or 10 clients and then you know you find that like man these 6 or 7 I’ve heard multiple times, right?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Or these 3 I’ve heard 3 times each you know these 2 I’ve heard twice and these like a bunch of different people like you know said it at different times. So you want to identify and in your email – in your paragraph like, “Hey here are the 5 ways I might be able to help you.”

And I don’t know which of those 5 are gonna hit that person you know and say, “Oh man he’s speaking to me,” but in you know copy writing advertising the seg – you know connect with them where they’re already at or connect with them you know based on what they’re already thinking about.

So we wanna reference something that’s already going on. So that’s like – in coaching 1 of the things I’ve learned in coaching you know use metaphors. Give somebody an example like when I describe the 3 lakes and the fish and the big fish and the biting fish and you know that – I gave you a picture in your mind and you know in writing people think in pictures. And you know we wanna like to speak as we talk and then like create a picture in their mind and connect with them based on what is already going on in their world.

And the great thing – and there’s 2 other reasons that you – that why picking a niche is really good that you didn’t mention. 1 is you’re an expert in it, right? So if you go and have 5 clients that are all in ecommerce all of a sudden you’re taking a 1– and my best idea’s is just taking a 1 idea from 1 client, which was frankly their idea of what they’re trying to do, and then I was going into another meeting a week later and saying, “Hey have you ever thought about this or tried to do this? Is that something you could be interested in?” “And then you know what? Gosh you know we were just talking about that, you know?” Or like, “Oh that’s a really good idea, how would that work?” or, “You know what? I haven’t really thought – what is that?” or, “No that’s not really like something we care about,” right?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: And what you’re doing is you’re becoming an expert in that category and the deeper and deeper and deeper  you get into it, the you know the kinda of the bigger moat you have because you become that much better and that much more of an expert.

And then the other is the credibility, right? So in an email they may not know you. And I think you do this in your email like, “Hey,” you know, “I have this list. I think you know this many people listen to it, these are the other people I’m interviewed.” Right?

So you do want to namedrop a couple of your clients because you haven’t heard about Breakthrough Email, but you know just the fact that I’m on this podcast it gives me a certain level of credibility, but if I’ve used the system for McDonalds and GE and Best Buy and Absolut Vodka and Home Depot and you know all these different you know organizations there’s implied credibility there so, when you you know include in the email template just on breakthroughemail.com. That last sentence of the second paragraph? Some clients include that that’s the peak end hypothesis. So that at the end of the paragraph the last thing they’re gonna remember is the last thing you wrote.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So we want to emphasize that. So we want to tell them like, “Hey you’re Burger King – I’ve also worked with you know Taco Bell and McDonalds and you know Cluck-U Chicken,” you know or whatever.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: They’re gonna take your meeting and I’ve seen the responses from people. It’s like, “Hey they’ve met with these guys so, we should at least – at least take a look at it.”

John McIntyre: Yeah okay. And then so a question with that is if you – coz sometimes you worked with McDonalds, everyone’s gonna know who McDonalds is. What if you just worked with clients in an industry where they’re unlikely to know who they are, but they’re still clients in the industry?

Bryan Kreuzberger: If it doesn’t help you then don’t include it. And you can find like other forms of credibility, right? So like how many people have you like influenced or have heard your thoughts on email marketing?

John McIntyre: Yeah probably hundreds of thousands I guess.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Like pick a number.

John McIntyre: 150,000.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay and how much increased revenue do you think, if you estimate, like per person have you helped them increase?

John McIntyre: Per person I’ve no idea.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Just guess. Just pick a number. Something conservative that like you’re like comfortable with.

John McIntyre: It might be $10,000 per person.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay. Let’s use 5.

John McIntyre: 5? Okay, okay.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Like let’s be super conservative.

John McIntyre: Okay yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So if we take 150,000 times 5,000 that’s 750 million.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So in your email like maybe they’ll have something you know a client that they know, right? But you know I’ve helped over 150,000 you know email marketers and copywriters generate over $750 million in new sales.

John McIntyre: Right. It’s $750,000 in sales.

Bryan Kreuzberger: No $750 million.

John McIntyre: Coz but then you say – you said $5,000 per person. I thought you meant $5.00, okay.

Bryan Kreuzberger: You said 10,000 I said 5,000.

John McIntyre: Okay yeah, yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Is that right?

John McIntyre: Exactly yeah. I thought you meant $5.00 not $5,000, but yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Oh I didn’t know.

John McIntyre: If you do $5,000 its $750 million correct.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah it’s a big number.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So their fear, right, the person that you’re writing to has a fear. Will this waste my time?

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: And in most emails and when you look at it you know, like you read it and you’re like, “This person obviously hasn’t spent the time to really figure out like what the opportunity for me is. They don’t get it. I’m not gonna take the meeting, no thanks. I’m not even respond. Coz if I respond you know it’s like I’ll have to send a cease and desist letter for them to like give up.”

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Because people are like, “Hey it’s a numbers game just be persistent.” It takes 12 contacts. It doesn’t take 12 contacts you know you can write 4 emails and get 80% of the companies to respond, but you have to know what to say and we actually prepare a lot more to determine what exactly to say to create the opportunity for the other person.

John McIntyre: Right.

Bryan Kreuzberger: We need to like get in their mind like be in their shoes and think how they feel. So if we can have empathy for them and really understand like, “Man this is what’s going on with this person or what I imagine is going on with this person and here’s how I could help them in their life.”

You give that email and you’re like, “Man you know I don’t know what it was about your email, but there was something about it like I’ll take your meeting.”

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: You know or you use the waterfall technique where you, you know, we get into – it’s like when you’re thinking like them we can do like really amazing things so like the waterfall technique is you know get to the decision maker by going above everyone who they report in to and have them delegate it down, right?

So the CEO may not have to meet with you of you know Best Buy, but the VP of Marketing is your point of contact or your target. You know write to the CEO, write to the CMO, write to the like VP of Advertising, and tell them all you wrote to each other and use like the inherent social leverage already in any organization to your advantage and then do you know do what’s – get the CEO to do what he already does really well which is delegate. Right?

So like I came up with that idea you know based on I mean reading mostly about psychology, but thinking in terms of the customer. Like what is – what is already going on in their world? I’m in some 25 year old sales rep in New York City trying to get a meeting with somebody who I know – everyone’s telling me, “No that’s not how it’s done. You can’t get a meeting with this person,” but I just feel like okay what’s going on in their world?

You know what is this person think about? And you know part of their job in any business whether in Thailand or Columbia or New York or Germany is to do a good job in the eyes of the person that you report in to.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: You know and a lot of jobs that’s like half your job is you know they may think you’re amazing at it, but if you don’t play the game, especially at larger organizations, you know they’re not gonna keep you around.

John McIntyre: Right okay, okay. This is solid man. This is really good stuff.

Bryan Kreuzberger: What do you like about it?

John McIntyre: What – I think I liked the focus on the strategy over what to say in the email. I thought we were gonna spend the podcast talking about what the actual email says, but this is, I think, this is much better.

And I hope the listener thinks so too. One thing I wanted to ask you about though which is sort of a side note on all of this stuff. You mentioned sort of back towards the beginning – you mentioned that you’re going after these big clients you know like Absolut, McDonalds, GE these sort of clients.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Sure.

John McIntyre: And they’ll pay 10 times more for the same thing you’ll be offering to a small business or basically like they’ll come in and they’ll pay 10 times more, but they won’t – they’ll – like they’re demands – they won’t be anywhere as near as demanding as some of the small business clients who pay way less.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Sure.

John McIntyre: And so that’s interesting you say that coz then other people – another take on this is that if you go after enterprise you go after people you know companies over certain point of revenue. The sale site would get too long and it becomes a whole lot of bureaucracy and just managing the whole thing becomes a nightmare. And you know they you know the I in it goes, but therefore you should work with small businesses coz then you’re you know it’s just all easier, it’s faster, it’s you know blah, blah, blah. But it sounds like your strategy is being to go out to after some of the biggest companies that like you know the biggest companies out there that could use your systems.

That’ll be like the equivalent of me going after – I mean I doubt Amazon meets up with their email marketing, but Amazon’s probably the biggest ecommerce company to start up there.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Plus it’s – and there’s somebody at Amazon who’s saying they may be better at it than you or I, right? But there’s somebody there that says, “Man how can we increase this 2%?”

John McIntyre: Right coz 2% means you know $2 billion or something.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah like there’s somebody there that’s wracking their brain to try and figure out a way, right?

John McIntyre: Right.

Bryan Kreuzberger: They may be a thought leader, but – you know I was a swimmer you know Michael Phelps is still trying to figure out like, “Okay you know I know,” you know, “I won 8 gold medals, but I’m trying to make next year’s Olympics what do I do? I need to like make the team.”

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So there’s always – no – but they may not have pain. They may not have an issue. Now a long sales cycle – so, within our system or our training getting the meeting is the first step, right? I break down – sales down like a 2 step process. This is by Gary Bencivenga, a copywriter.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Opening the sale and closing the sale. So opening the sale – you could do email marketing, you could do advertising, you could do like content marketing, you could do cold email, cold calling, like whatever.

Direct mail, trade shows, whatever gets you there. I liked email – I liked cold emailing because I got to choose who I was writing to and what I found in sales, especially with a lot of large organizations – there could be 3 people, there could be 500 people at the company that could hypothetically take a meeting with me, but there was typically only 1 person who is going to say yes.

There’s lots of people that could say no to me so, like imagine a 16 year old who wants to buy a car and he goes on a car lot and tells the sales person like, “Hey my parents said I can buy any car that I want. I really want the red Mustang.” So they do the test drive, he’s like, “Yeah it’s my birthday they said I could get –” you know the kid’s rich, family’s rich, so that the sales person’s like done deal. Like you know mom and dad come the next week to you know go to the car lot, all of a sudden mom has a totally different opinion of what kind of car her son should have. You know and the dad has a totally different feel for you know what kind of car his son should have, like they don’t want to buy him a sports car.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? Like they have – they’re gonna buy him something totally different so, and in sales on that second process when you say, “Hey I have a long sale cycle, people aren’t converting.” You have to look at like why that is. It’s because you never actually were even talking to the person who can make the decision, you know?

And people say, “Well we’re in talks with these people,” you know like when I hear somebody say we’re in talks with it’s like they don’t know what they’re doing to influence the person. And no offence because I was there too, right? Like when my first sales calls I was like inside and I finally got to outside sales as my second job.

I was meeting this lawyer and I shook his hand and like my hands would always get like really sweaty before like a meeting. And like I have a napkin in my pocket and he like turned to me and my CEO and he’s like, “Are you nervous?” and thankfully he was looking at my CEO. He’s like, “No why?” he was like, “Oh because I just shook your hand and like – or one of your hands and like it was all sweaty.” And I like my stomach dropped. I was like dying inside.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Because I didn’t know what do to you know and I thought like you do presentations and you follow up not – not the case. Not what I recommend so, when it comes to larger sales cycles you need to identify what to do.

At the very least have the opportunity to get in – your foot at the door because if you ask a lot of questions, if you ask the right question you can start I you know understanding like what is their frustration, what are they trying to do, what do they want, why do they want to do it, you know why now, and then you could potentially present what you do as the solution. But it’s all about asking questions and then you’ll continue to adapt.

Like people who get funding you know, they’ll say, “Oh 122 VCs said no to him and it was the 123^rd that said yes.” And they’re typically highlighting like persistence, but do you think the 122^nd meeting looked like the 7^th meeting?

John McIntyre: No, no.

Bryan Kreuzberger: No it’s totally different, right? Because it’s like you’ve been doing it for like 2 years or 3 years.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: And you start to get a little bit smarter as far as what to do. And now if you never get the meeting you have no chance, but when you realize that like you can just use an email – and I had no resources. Like I couldn’t – I was a sales person I couldn’t influence marketing, marketing wasn’t generating leads for us. You know I hated to cold call so, I figured – and the customer hated it. Like I hate when I get telemarketing calls so, why should I do what I already know people hate?

And I hear their voice like, “Oh I thought you were somebody else.” You know that’s the only like 4% is people pick up the phone when you call them so, I lost my train of thought, but like the idea is you can do it – sorry the second half of the sale.

You just need to identify like what are – what’s really going wrong. And most of the time you just don’t know what’s going wrong because you haven’t taken formalized sales training.

John McIntyre: Yeah okay, okay. I mean so basically – so the end of all that then is basically you can go after – well like enterprise doesn’t have to have a long sales cycle. The trick is talking to the right person and the sale can happen very quickly. And then as far as the actual work and that’s just how you structure the deal and how you – and that’s probably a different issue.

Bryan Kreuzberger: The work yeah the work is I mean the – you just wanna like map your solution to whatever it is that ails them.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? So like if you’re an acupuncturist or you’re like a – like a you know a normal doctor or you’re a say neurologist? If somebody comes in with like migraines and pounding headaches like they’re each going to give them a different solution to the same problem.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Bryan Kreuzberger: So like whatever your solution is just map it to the problem of the headache. You know whatever their issue is. Don’t say, “Hey I can really fix your shoulder and your posture and something else,” so they don’t care about.

John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. Okay,okay. Well I want to keep… you know what’s funny is I actually – I want to keep going is besides it’s been so good so far.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Well listen I’m here to – I’m here to provide value so, if you’ve – if you wanna go a little bit longer we can.

John McIntyre: I’ve actually go – I would, but I’ve actually got to go. I’ve got another call in about 5 minutes to get to. But this has been great I think this is really helpful and you’ve got, as far as the actual template goes, let’s talk about that. Let’s spend the last minute talking about what do you actually offer? You’ve got Breakthrough Email and you’ve got a paper lead style approach that you also do. So can you tell – tell me a bit about that.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah so let’s see. Where to start? So I’ll start at the cheapest which is free. So you go to breakthroughemail.com just download our template, try it out you know I kind of – I walk through like one of our templates. You know we have dozens in our training.

The second is – we have a course and essentially I’ve identified everything you need to do in the front end to get the meeting and everything you need to do to convert the sale faster or convert the sales that are already in your pipeline.

So there’s like 2 modules. I think its breakthroughemail.com/crow, but if you go – if you go into the subscriber you’ll you know you can do a webinar or learn more about it. And then what – also for organizations who have products or services that are over $20,000 and we will go out and do the emailing for them. So we – I write the emails, we send the emails, we generate the leads, and we do it on a per appointment basis. So I’m only charging for the appointments that we send or that we send you on and that’s how we structure that.

So that’s to – you know it has to be the right type of company or organization, but a lot of technology companies, lot of media companies like all kinds of different types of products and services and you know that’s only – and it’s only for people that are established and like they just need to kinda need to pour some gasoline on the business because they already have a proven process, the clothes, they just need more leads. But to apply its breakthroughemail.com/leads. L_E_A_D_S, but you know and if anybody has any questions you can just – you can actually set up a time to talk with me. Just to email megan@breakthroughemail and then we can talk. It’s M_E_G_A_N.

John McIntyre: Awesome, awesome. I’ll have links to all of that in the show notes at themcmethod.com and the for being with us [?] it’s breakthroughemail.com for the template and to join the list and then breakthroughemail.com/leads for the paper lead system so, Bryan this has been epic. This has been really cool. I’ve learned a ton so, thank you so much for coming on and talking about it.

Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah thank you. Thanks for having me and just connect with people. You know? Just spend a little bit more time learning whether it’s for me or somebody else. Figuring you know really proofing your email, double checking it, and send a couple of emails that you’ve been thinking about to people because a lot of times you’re surprised that people will actually respond.