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239: How to Measure Customer Experience ROI and Reduce Marketing Costs by 50% · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

• 0:45
  I don't think it matters.
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  Okay, except that it's the name of the podcast.
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  Hey, Revolutionaries, welcome back to another episode of the Customer Service Revolution podcast.
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  I'm your co-host, Denise Thompson, and I am here with John DiJulius Today, we're diving into a topic that's redefining how companies measure success, earned sales growth, or ESG.
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  In a world where customer acquisition costs are skyrocketing and marketing budgets are under pressure, ESG asks a simple but powerful question, how much of your company's growth
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  comes from customers you've earned, not bought.
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  It's one of the most underutilized, yet most revealing metrics in business.
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  And John, I know you love talking about ESG.
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  So John's going to answer our questions today about how to track and improve ESG and why it may be the single most important indicator of a healthy, scalable customer experience
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  strategy.
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  How you doing today, John?
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  I am fantastic, how are you?
• 1:43
  Wonderful.
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  Thanks.
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  It's a crisp day here in Cleveland.
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  I know this is going to probably the timing not fall in because we record ahead of time, but I do want to say we have a lot of clients in the Caribbean.
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  And one of our biggest clients that we work with is Sandals Resorts that's headquartered in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
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  And they just are recovering from Hurricane Melissa and everyone seems to be safe.
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  their properties have taken some damage, but we just want to wish everyone there the very best because they do such a great job in trying to give people escapes.
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  now they're, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're trying to get back to hold, but I believe they're, they're still open.
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  They just have some rooms that they can't have take out an inventory while they redo, but it was scary.
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  It was one of the worst hurricanes they've ever had.
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  As you know, I was supposed to be there last week and this week.
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  so, you know, happy, happy that it seems to not be as bad as it could have been.
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  Yeah, amen for that.
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  I um saw a reel from somebody who was staying at, I'm not sure which sandals property it was, but they were not able to get a flight out.
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  I don't know the reasoning for that, but they were not able to get a flight out.
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  And they, along with approximately 100 other people, I think, were
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  being housed by sandals.
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  And they said they were asked to stay in their rooms, but they were given food, beverages.
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  They were asked any, you know, if there was anything specific they needed, they had someone on staff that would be there for them for any emergencies that came up.
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  They had medical staff available in case of emergencies also.
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  So they were really prepared, not just for hurricane protocol.
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  but to serve people that were stuck there was amazing.
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  yeah, unfortunately, this isn't the first time they it's kind of a, you know, normal occurrence now that they have experience in doing, unfortunately, but they do a very good
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  job of taking care of their guests during when they're in convenience with this.
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  You know who else has done an amazing job with that kind of thing too?
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  A client of ours, past client of ours, Domino's, RPM specifically, who is located in Louisiana and Mississippi.
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  Yeah.
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  Golfport.
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  Yeah, they were amazing during Katrina and the other storms.
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  What would they call it?
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  First to open, last to close.
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  And that was something they were really proud of because obviously when everything, when a Katrina hits or Melissa, there's not food and electricity and
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  all those things.
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  So, and they do a lot.
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  They've always been so generous.
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  It's not them taking advantage of a catastrophe.
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  It's them, you know, being there for, uh and Chick-fil-A does that really well too.
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  When they have snow storms, like at least in Atlanta, which, you know, Atlanta's not prepared for that weather and people, a couple of years ago were literally stuck on the
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  freeway for
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  hours, maybe a day, because they couldn't move.
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  Chick-fil-A sent people out to the freeways with chicken sandwiches or food, giving them away.
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  It was really cool when companies step up like that.
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  Yeah, it really is when you're contributing to your community.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Good.
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  Tough times, tough times doesn't build character, it reveals it.
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  And you really see what you and other people are made of and who's there for you when it gets tough.
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  Yeah, yeah, talk about delivering an experience.
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  So today, John, with earned sales growth, a lot of the questions, I have some different ones lined up for you.
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  But I want to hear too about the return on experience dashboard that you've created, how to measure earned sales growth in an organization, how to actually improve ESG through
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  world class service,
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  And because when you focus on earning growth through loyalty and referrals, not buying it through discounts and advertising, it allows an organization to build a business that
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  compounds in equity, not effort.
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  So let's jump in.
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  First, I want to talk about why are traditional surveys broken?
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  Well, I mean, I think the answer is almost obvious, like literally right now.
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  And between my email inbox and my text message, I know I have a dozen surveys from different companies, from a dozen different companies about my experiences just this week.
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  And we're recording this on a Wednesday, you know, and it's just, so we have survey fatigue.
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  And what's happening is it used to be when you, you invest in
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  know, NPS Net Promoter Score or customer satisfaction or whatever, you know, vehicle you want to use or call it, you'd hope to get 25, you know, to 35 % response rates.
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  Well, now it's being reported that it's in the single digits, just because we have so many surveys.
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  Everyone's figured out how to do it, maybe do it cost effectively.
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  It's what we've talked about in the past.
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  It's not a differentiating more.
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  It's just, you know, table stakes.
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  But what's happening is, and I'm reading about it, but it's also true in my life.
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  I know about yours.
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  The only time I'm ever going to take the time to fill out a survey is if I'm really, really pissed off or you just shocked and odd me and did something.
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  But everything else I just don't have time for.
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  I just, it's a lot, I got so many emails to return and so many texts to return.
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  It's when I finally get there, I just don't fill them out.
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  So you're not really getting a true response.
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  Those are outliers, hopefully, outliers on the negative.
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  So that's where it's broken.
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  And then the other thing with NPS, which has been popular for years,
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  Net promoter score.
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  My challenge with it has always been, I don't want to know your intent.
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  I want to know if you're actually doing it.
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  And so the net promoter score, one question, how likely are you to recommend us?
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  And you might give a 10 to a company, but it doesn't mean you actually will.
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  So if you have a business model that tracks customers' history,
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  gets their names, there's some retail brick and mortar that struggle with this.
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  If you go to Starbucks, you don't have an appointment, you may or may not use that.
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  So any retail type of business might be the ones that struggle with this.
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  But the rest of businesses, especially B2B, B2C, that you do take appointments, you do have a client database,
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  you can track this.
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  so, you know, net promoter score, I don't care about your intent.
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  That doesn't mean you actually will.
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  I want to know if you are.
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  And so that's what the earned sales growth tracks.
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  It's easy.
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  It's not, you don't need new software if you have a CRM system.
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  And it was originated by Fred Reichelt, who actually is the founder and father of NPS.
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  And he's kind of anti-NPS now, because the way people have been gaming it and he's on this.
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  And I don't know what he called it.
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  uh Do you have it there?
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  Because I think I've tweaked the name a little bit.
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  It might be just earned growth rate.
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  um
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  rate versus earned sales.
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  growth, they're the same, they're the same.
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  I know I've tweaked a little bit of the terminology, but the concept is Fred Reicheltz.
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  So why is he saying that NPS is he anti just because it's being gamed?
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  that what?
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  That's a big thing.
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  He wrote a great book, Winning on Purpose.
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  We also have a podcast where I interviewed him about it that maybe we can put in the show notes.
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  But yeah, he's kind of angry about how companies have taken it to places that he never wanted it to be taken.
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  Like, this definitely happens at the car dealership, but it happens other places where I always thought someone
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  They should get fired if you allow people to do this, but hey, you know, the car dealership, when they sell you a car, you're gonna be getting a survey.
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  I need a five.
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  I gotta have anything less than a five.
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  you know, and I just hate that.
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  You know, I'll never give someone a five if they ask me for it.
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  Your experience, your delivery, and should earn you a five, but you shouldn't be asking me and telling me to give you a five.
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  But also how...
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  leader companies have taken it as an incentive and bonus on it, and he just doesn't think that's right.
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  I don't know, but I love earned sales growth.
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  I just can't believe it's not on everyone's forefront.
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  is the best KPI to measure how your customer experiences.
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  And we've talked about this and we've had questions from listeners about
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  How do I get my CFO, CEO, CEO bought in on this?
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  Well, this is how.
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  This gives you a KPI, key performance indicator that tracks how good your experience is by location, department, employee, consultant, account executive, lawyer, hairdresser,
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  whatever it is.
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  Okay, so it's the best way, the best KPI to measure customer experience.
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  How do you actually?
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  supports that tracking.
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  Again, if you go back to the retail and walk up in kiosks, you can't use earned growth.
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  So what am I actually tracking for earned sales growth?
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  All right, first, let's talk about you did, your company did a million dollars last period, whatever that is, week, month, quarter, year.
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  Okay, you brought in a million dollars in revenue in sales.
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  Well, that million dollars came from two places, bought and earned.
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  Bought is, how'd you hear of us?
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  And that's the number one quote.
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  You gotta ask new clients how they heard of you.
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  If you don't do this and track it and put it in to your CRM system, you can't run the report.
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  It's easy to do, but the one thing you might need, someone from IT or you got to call your CRM system, you know, or your software system is I think your software should, if you're a
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  new client, Denise, how did you hear of us?
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  Google's you, saw your billboard.
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  I don't know if anybody still does Yellow Pages, the, know, saw an ad on LinkedIn or, you know, a guy I know, Ken, heard I was looking for something in your area and said they're
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  the best, right?
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  You have to track that in your CRM system, your software system, and it should be to the point where like when you're on Amazon and you don't put in your zip code or you don't put
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  in your,
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  credit card three or four digit code on the back, it doesn't let you proceed.
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  You have to have it that good.
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  And or run reports of new clients this week that didn't get it, which would be too high maintenance.
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  And then go to everyone and say, know, Joyce, why didn't you put, know, but that's too hard maintenance.
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  But anyway, so you have a million dollars last period in sales.
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  uh They either came from bought advertising or earned which comes from two places repeats retained or referred and So then your earned sales growth rate is you divide Earned
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  everyone that is repeats and Referred you divide that by the million dollars your total revenue
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  So if you 300,000 came from repeat and earn, uh, referred, have a 30%, uh, you know, uh, ESG earned sales growth and you got to become obsessed with that.
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  And, and, and then not only hold the company, departments, locations, individual service providers, know, hairdressers, consultants, lawyers, accountants.
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  Whoever touches that, you know, that's responsible for getting, you know, giving an experience that gets people to do want to do business with us again.
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  And then everyone should lose sleep at night over their earned sales growth.
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  In my businesses, everyone knows it and we can pay better on it, you know, because if I have to, if I have a consultant with, you know, low 20 % earned sales growth.
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  That means we have to be advertising like hell to keep that consultant busy or make that consultant busy.
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  Dave Murray has earned sales growth in the 80s.
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  We can pay him better on it.
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  We can reward him on that because he's taking the initial clients and turning them into re-signs and referrals.
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  So everyone should know their earned growth.
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  Then in a little bit after we talk about the, know, the.
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  How earned growth rate is is track is how do you increase earned sales growth?
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  So is this something that can be tracked for any industry?
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  As long as you have, what I said, you have to have a CRM system, a software that tracks where your customers come from.
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  And so then you can run a report of, all right, the million dollars we did last period, you run a report, where did that come from?
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  Retained, have they been here before?
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  If they're new, that's the big one, is where did they come from?
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  Bought is any type of advertising, billboard.
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  And then earned is repeat or referrals, word of mouth.
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  So can you talk a little bit about tracking earned sales growth and the ROX dashboard?
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  Yeah, so you run a report however often, let's say every month, and that report as a company.
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  we've talked about a Carter Mario, an attorney, we use their earned growth as an example.
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  They show a seven year record.
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  Now this is injury attorney, so they don't get a lot of repeats.
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  Hopefully people aren't getting into car accidents, you know, multiple times in their life.
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  So they live off of, they're like car dealerships, you know, we've all seen the, have you been injured today, billboards, TV commercials.
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  That's expensive.
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  I've always blown my mind how much car dealerships and um yeah, injury attorneys spend on advertising.
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  That's expensive versus the earned growth.
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  So if you want to include this graphic of Carter Mario, in year one, two, and three, we started working with them around year two, end of year two of this case study.
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  And their earned growth was about 30%.
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  So 70 % of their
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  sales were coming from advertising, expensive TV ads, billboards ads.
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  Now we start working, they adopt all our stuff, they crush it.
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  And by year six and seven, it flipped.
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  Their earned growth was at 68 % and their bought growth was at like 32%.
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  I mean, think of the money they saved in advertising.
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  Now you take that to each attorney.
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  you take and you coach them and obviously they must not be given the experience if they're not at their average of 68%, if they're in the 20s, 30s versus 70s, 80s, there's something
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  wrong there.
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  But that's tangible money.
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  Now let's also talk about something else.
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  If I remember this correctly, we have three types, I believe you have three types of elites.
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  potential customers.
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  Hot, warm, and cold.
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  Or cold, warm, and hot.
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  Let's go the opposite way.
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  Cold lead is we're calling you.
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  Hey, do you need your roof done?
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  Do you need, have you been injured?
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  Do you need a customer service consultant?
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  Do you need your haircut?
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  Right?
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  That's a cold.
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  A warm is you're calling us, but from an ad.
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  You you Googled us.
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  And then a hot lead is you're calling us because you've done business with us in the past or someone told you or you've heard it several times that we're the company you need to
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  use.
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  So let's go back to coal.
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  The price sensitivity is, they don't even think, they didn't even know they needed you.
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  You're calling them.
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  So.
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  If you fall upon the one out of 30 that says well in fact I do need my roof repaired.
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  Yeah, you better be a you know the best deal warm That's they're calling you based on the advertising itself.
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  So let's say it's google ads Well, they've they're also calling the four other companies that came up in the google ads You better be the best deal because they're making four
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  other phone calls or they've made four other phone calls before they called you um And then the hot is you're the only one they're calling
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  Everyone says you're the best or I've used you in the past and I love working with you.
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  So you don't have to be the best deal.
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  You don't have to worry about competing with other proposals out there.
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  And then you also think about the close rate on those.
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  And everyone has a different close rate on their sales, but it's gonna be a lot longer for the cold.
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  a lot longer for the warm because they are checking with the other four leads and the hot is they're ready right now.
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  mean, you know, they've already decided.
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  Yeah, everybody wants hot leads.
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  Everyone wants hot leads, but no one, know, it's easier and lazier just to throw money at advertising and it's a hole in the boat.
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  Why do you want to advertise a average to poor experience?
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  And a lot of times that advertising has incentives of discounting, right?
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  Switch and save and you get your first month free and all that.
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  Yeah, I don't want to attract people
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  based on discounts.
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  Discount is the tax you pay for having an average experience.
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  And that just means they're gonna leave you for the next good incentive.
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  Are you a coupon away from losing your customers?
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  If you are, you got nothing.
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  I love earned sales.
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  I don't understand why everyone isn't crazy about this KPI.
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  I'm going to start calling it the John DiJulius KPI.
• 20:16
  Yeah.
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  Well, I mean, it solves the warm and fuzzy that senior leadership have over customer experience.
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  It's not measurable.
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  It definitely is measurable.
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  But it also drives behavior.
• 20:29
  If you know, if we're making you aware as an account executive, salesperson, consultant, lawyer, whatever, doctor, whatever it is.
• 20:40
  If we're making you aware of what your ESG is this week, this month, this year, what's going to move that needle?
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  Number one is the experience you deliver.
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  That's number one.
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  So if you have a lower ESG than the company's average is, then that's acceptable.
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  We know that we have to work with you.
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  coach you, look at what it is.
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  And I'm not saying customer satisfaction isn't important.
• 21:09
  It is, it's just broken.
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  It's just broken.
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  So I don't trust the data anymore.
• 21:14
  But you can look and now hold people accountable to the experience they're giving.
• 21:20
  So I don't know if you want to go into it yet, or if you have more questions about the experience and how you increase referrals and that, if we're not there yet.
• 21:32
  Do you need me here?
• 21:33
  Yeah, what are you doing here?
• 21:35
  excited about ESG!
• 21:37
  I love that you're excited about it.
• 21:38
  Hey, listeners, if you're excited about this also, and this conversation is hitting home for you, if you're realizing your company needs better ways to measure and grow through
• 21:49
  experience, one, keep listening.
• 21:51
  But two, we have a place for you to start, the Customer Experience Executive Academy, or CXEA, as we affectionately call it.
• 21:59
  CXEA is a 12-month.
• 22:01
  Part-time certification program designed for leaders who want to master systems and strategies that world-class brands use to drive earned growth.
• 22:12
  You're going to learn how to build a return on experience dashboard that links customer experience directly to revenue.
• 22:19
  Create signature experiences that increase referrals and retention.
• 22:23
  Implement a zero-risk service recovery system.
• 22:26
  Align your culture so that world-class becomes the standard.
• 22:29
  Graduates of this program become certified customer experience executives equipped to lead transformation and deliver measurable results.
• 22:39
  Enrollment is open for the next class, You can learn more or apply online at cxea.org.
• 22:47
  We recommend getting a hold of Claudia, who will answer any of the questions you have about CXEA.
• 22:53
  And the best way to schedule a call is go to tdg.click forward slash Claudia.
• 22:59
  Okay, John, let's get back to the conversation and more questions.
• 23:03
  might have asked me about our ROX dashboard that maybe I didn't fully answer there.
• 23:10
  OK, so yeah, when we work with companies, we help them create an ROX dashboard, which stands for Return On Experience, AKA KPI.
• 23:21
  A lot of acronyms there.
• 23:23
  ROX, AKA KPI.
• 23:25
  Every company tracks certain KPIs, key performance indicators, but it's always been difficult to find key performance indicators that can be directly related to the customer
• 23:37
  experience your team delivers.
• 23:39
  know, customer loyalty, referrals, retention, those are.
• 23:42
  Sales isn't, you know, because there's so many things that, you know, it could be, you know, a bad economy, it could be a pandemic, it could be, you know,
• 23:52
  the housing market, you could be new and when you're new or newer versus a mature brand, you're gonna have double digit, triple digit sales increase versus a mature brand that's
• 24:05
  not gonna be able to keep that pace up.
• 24:08
  So you wanna be able to track certain things, call resolution, all those are very good.
• 24:14
  So um we help uh companies and you can do it on your own.
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  But you have to know what is directly related to the experience you're giving.
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  And we always recommend no more than three or four.
• 24:29
  So New Day had, we talk about New Day USA, a mortgage company we've worked with for about 12 or 13 years.
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  And there's referrals, earned growth.
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  And NPS has been in different ROX dashboards.
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  Again, with it being broken in surveys, I don't know if I trust that number as much as I used to, but I'm trying to think I'm missing a couple in there that it's not just earned
• 24:57
  growth, but you should be able to take and figure out or will help you figure out what a 1 % increase or decrease means in customer retention.
• 25:08
  average customer spend, referrals, all those things have a dollar amount when you move them one way or another.
• 25:17
  not to mention the dollars that you're saving on marketing.
• 25:20
  I mean, that's everything.
• 25:21
  Yeah.
• 25:23
  So here's a big question.
• 25:25
  I'm sure this is something everybody wants to know.
• 25:27
  ESG is important.
• 25:28
  Great.
• 25:28
  How do you improve it?
• 25:29
  Yeah, number one is the experience you deliver.
• 25:33
  That's number one.
• 25:35
  mean, don't expect referrals or repeat customers if you have employee roulette where the experience your clients are getting is depending on which employee they're dealing with.
• 25:47
  So you have to have such an amazing experience that makes them think they are...
• 25:53
  what they're paying for is incredible value that they can't believe that's all they're paying.
• 25:58
  And then, and then, and there's so much just to that.
• 26:03
  What's your experience creating your signature experience at every touch point, all those things.
• 26:08
  And you could be giving a great experience, Denise, as the consultant, lawyer, accountant, hairdresser, whatever, but there's other people that are affecting your experience.
• 26:19
  the support people, maybe I have to call and to get to you and I don't like, you your receptionist, you know, maybe you're having some, you know, support people, you know,
• 26:30
  giving me information on your behalf and you know, they're not responsive.
• 26:35
  So there's, you know, multiple layers depending on your business model that's just not dependent on one person.
• 26:42
  And so once you've created, and this is, you know, uh
• 26:47
  much harder to do than to simply say, an unbelievable signature experience, then you want to make your team members and your customers aware of how important referrals are.
• 27:00
  And maybe incentivize both, right?
• 27:04
  Maybe incentivize team members, maybe incentivize customers with some type of reward.
• 27:09
  for their referral, but if nothing else, just should be talking about it.
• 27:13
  And the highest compliment I can get is a referral, Denise, if you know someone that would enjoy the experience that you're getting from me, please recommend me.
• 27:24
  And people love to help people that they like.
• 27:28
  But I've also worked with brands that have built in the referral ask at different
• 27:35
  touch points.
• 27:37
  And that can be dangerous because, you know, at this third touch point we're having, you're angry because I haven't returned your call or, you know, something, you know, I
• 27:49
  didn't make you aware of something that is now, you you're not getting your shipment or we're out of stock or whatever and you're angry.
• 27:57
  Well, just because it says on the third touch point to ask if they know anybody,
• 28:03
  you gotta be reading the room.
• 28:05
  And if the client's upset with you, that's not the time to, know, really sorry I haven't called you back in a week, Denise, but you know anybody that would enjoy the experience
• 28:14
  I'm giving you, right?
• 28:15
  And then the flip side, hopefully, there, you know, you have clients saying, my God, you're a lifesaver, John, or Denise, thank you so much.
• 28:24
  I can't tell you how great it is to work with you and your organization.
• 28:27
  Well, that is the perfect opportunity.
• 28:30
  So just by calling it out in a certain stage isn't always the right way.
• 28:35
  I like that.
• 28:36
  How else can people improve their earned sales growth?
• 28:39
  That's it.
• 28:40
  know, staying in front.
• 28:41
  If you're a B2B business, you partner, you you want to be a partner they can't live without.
• 28:46
  It's staying in front of them in a non soliciting way, being a resource for them, knowing what their top three goals are.
• 28:54
  And so I guess it's six, you know, top three goals as it relates to what you do for them.
• 28:59
  So let's use the Julius group.
• 29:01
  want to obviously we better know what our
• 29:04
  our consulting clients top three goals are as it has to do with customer experience in 2026.
• 29:11
  But I also want to know my CEO, know, senior leadership clients, top three goals, just in their business in general, unrelated to customer experience.
• 29:23
  And so I can be a resource and make introductions and send them great articles and YouTube videos and
• 29:30
  books on that topic.
• 29:32
  And when you're demonstrating that you're just about their success and not how it could only come back to benefit you, that really shocks people.
• 29:42
  Yeah, you talked about this some on, I think it was episode number 227 with Ricky Areola.
• 29:48
  from Intel.
• 29:50
  Yeah, an outsourcing call center, contact center that does a fantastic job.
• 29:55
  This is really great.
• 29:56
  think it's a really important shift in how leaders think about growth.
• 30:00
  Yeah, I've always said the companies that don't invest in customer experience have leaders that don't understand the financial implications.
• 30:11
  And for the longest time, and I think this is a strong smoking gun, but for the longest time, some of the only evidence was the top customer satisfaction companies.
• 30:24
  outperforms in sales growth and profit and their stock.
• 30:30
  And I think we've talked about this before.
• 30:32
  I've been reading about this for almost three decades that the top performing customer experience companies according to American customer satisfaction index or NPS or whatever
• 30:46
  the metric is,
• 30:48
  always outperform their competitors, if they're public, in stock performance.
• 30:55
  So a couple of years ago, and I wrote an article about this, a couple of years ago, I created my own fun, my world-class customer experience, my personal investment.
• 31:06
  And I look it up right here on my phone.
• 31:09
  so Airbnb, Apple,
• 31:12
  KeyBank, Warby Parker, Starbucks, Disney, Lululemon, Chewies, Amazon Progressive, Capital One, American Express, the Charles Schwab Company, companies like that.
• 31:25
  it outperforms the S &P and the Dow.
• 31:29
  Now, everyone's doing well right now, but it's doing better consistently.
• 31:34
  And I'm not giving stock advice.
• 31:35
  I am not a financial advisor, but I was, you know, that's all I've ever heard.
• 31:40
  So for the longest time, that was the only KPI or irrefutable evidence, which I think is significant, but you don't see it immediately.
• 31:49
  And so that's the hard part.
• 31:51
  Earned sales growth, now you see it.
• 31:54
  Now you can hold, you have something you can lock your teeth into.
• 31:57
  We need a DiJulius Group hedge fund with all of our publicly traded clients on it.
• 32:04
  You're right.
• 32:05
  You're right.
• 32:05
  So I go ahead.
• 32:07
  No, no, I was just like, looked this up every day.
• 32:09
  It's easier when the stock market's doing good, but I compare it to the, you know, S &P.
• 32:18
  so I'll tell you, and I don't know this is, this might be just today's and I'm sure there's ways.
• 32:24
  but yeah, they're basically even for today.
• 32:29
  I don't know how to change it.
• 32:30
  in a quick turnaround to show the last six months.
• 32:33
  But I did in a recent blog, I showed the last two to three years of the S &P.
• 32:40
  And I wanna guess it was something like 18%, which is crazy good.
• 32:45
  But my index that I chose handpicked that kind of companies was in the 20s.
• 32:53
  But there is in our, in my books and stuff, it does talk about even during 2008 to 2010, the S and P was like negative.
• 33:02
  I don't know, 14 to 20%.
• 33:06
  And the, uh, CX leaders were a positive six.
• 33:11
  That's huge when everyone else is losing.
• 33:15
  Yeah.
• 33:18
  Well, the reality of it is the strongest brands don't grow because of how much they're spending on advertising.
• 33:24
  They grow because of the experiences that keep their customers coming back and referring their friends.
• 33:30
  Yeah, mean, some businesses spend, you know, six percent, seven percent of their revenues on advertising.
• 33:40
  What if you can grow and only have to spend three and a half percent?
• 33:44
  A, what's that mean to the bottom line?
• 33:46
  But you can pay people more and, you know, you can do other things, you know, make great investments.
• 33:50
  And so it's always shocked me why.
• 33:52
  So, and I also, when we work with companies that like an injury attorney, like a funeral home, like we've worked with some companies that, you
• 34:03
  waterproof your house.
• 34:04
  Okay.
• 34:04
  Brands like that, they don't have repeat customers traditionally.
• 34:09
  You're going to die once, right?
• 34:11
  Hopefully your business, your basement isn't leaking more than once.
• 34:20
  And so they tend to spend more on advertising, but you have an alumni base.
• 34:27
  that can produce that to you.
• 34:30
  Or it could be a slow return, like cars, people buy cars maybe once every five years, I don't know what the average is, or paint your house or construction.
• 34:42
  That's not something you're probably doing several times a year.
• 34:45
  And those are the industries that tend to spend more on advertising.
• 34:49
  And I don't think they have to if they take really, really good care.
• 34:53
  and provide such an exceptional experience.
• 34:57
  Yeah, the basement has to be repaired flawlessly, but they can also bring in your garbage cans when they're there and park on the streets and do some other things while you're
• 35:09
  there that surprise and delights you.
• 35:11
  You know, sometimes it doesn't take much.
• 35:14
  Like you brought up auto dealers and I think of the last time I purchased a car, I never heard from the salesperson again.
• 35:23
  I will get emails from the, not even the dealership, but the manufacturer, you know, about if you're ready to trade your car in.
• 35:34
  Yeah, and sometimes I will hear from the dealership when it's, you know, it's, you know, the three, four, five year end of the term.
• 35:43
  But I usually don't wait till then.
• 35:46
  You know, I get too antsy and want, you know, a new car sooner and they're missing that opportunity.
• 35:52
  So, you know, I
• 35:54
  purchased and don't hear.
• 35:56
  Yeah.
• 35:57
  It's
• 35:58
  you know, certain buyers, you know, I would suspect the higher end buyers wanted to be in a new car quicker, right?
• 36:05
  Versus if you lease, you're now married to that three, four, five year or even six year term.
• 36:13
  But I just heard it might have been Will Godero or someone saying, you know, a car dealership could throw a
• 36:20
  $25 Starbucks card in your glove case.
• 36:24
  So when you open it, you know, in a month, you're surprised or, little surprise and delights that come from, it could be mailed at thank you, Denise, and, know, from the
• 36:33
  salesman, but you're right.
• 36:34
  There's, there's, they're very bad at follow-up.
• 36:38
  Yeah, yeah, and I mean, it's a large purchase, you know?
• 36:43
  Yeah, so it's always amazed me why companies default to advertising versus investing in the experience and what the return on experience will get them.
• 36:55
  Earned sales growth.
• 36:57
  the ultimate measure of if your customer experience is truly working.
• 37:01
  Everyone in your company should be losing sleep at night over their earned sales growth.
• 37:05
  The CEOs, CFOs, and the individual people that are touching your customers.
• 37:11
  So if you're listening and you're ready to start tracking ESG, start by asking how much of our new revenue is earned through loyalty and referrals, and then build your return on
• 37:22
  Experience Dashboard to measure it.
• 37:24
  Hold your teams accountable to what drives success.
• 37:27
  If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a colleague.
• 37:30
  Subscribe so you never miss a new discussion.
• 37:32
  And let us know.
• 37:33
  We love reading your reviews.
• 37:36
  If you're ready to master this work and become a certified customer experience leader, visit customer experience executive academy on the DiJulius group website or tdg.click
• 37:49
  forward slash Claudia to learn more about the academy.
• 37:52
  Thanks for joining us and remember the revolution isn't coming.
• 37:56
  It's here until next time.
• 37:58
  Keep changing the world by creating your own world-class experience.
• 38:02
  Thanks, John.
• 38:02
  Thank you.