Opening the Lead Spigot

Tom Nixon (00:01.69)
Well, believe it or not, Curtis and ladies and gentlemen, we are nearing the end of another season of Bullhorns and Bullseyes. Can you believe we’re already here? End of the year type thing.

Curtis Hays (00:11.674)
Season two. We chugged along this year, not quite as many episodes as last year, but we put together, I think, a great season. A lot of your heroes we got on the show, which was, I felt like season one was a lot of my network, and then we really tapped into your network this season two, which has been great.

Tom Nixon (00:23.75)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (00:27.206)
Yes. Yep.

Tom Nixon (00:35.696)
Yeah. Yeah, we did. And I love the emphasis was on storytelling in large part, which was fun for me, the storyteller. And so we’ll have to see what season three holds. Maybe we’ll bring a former guest back and have him be like the permanent guest in the permanent guest seat, which may seem like is the case for some people who, they’ve just kind of come in and out, they’re like, Mario’s back again.

Well, yes, my heart is back again because he makes for a great guest. Please welcome back everyone. why don’t you say the last name, Curtis? You have more practice at it.

Curtis Hays (01:11.822)
DeQuilla, Mario DeQuilla.

Tom Nixon (01:14.882)
of Assisted Living Services. Welcome back, Mario. How you been?

Mario (01:19.246)
Great, great, thanks for having me guys. I looked back and I’m like, how’s your first guest? Ever. That was the coolest thing ever. I checked that out.

Tom Nixon (01:26.149)
You were.

Curtis Hays (01:29.114)
first three episodes and then the semi-finale, I guess you might call it, of season one and now you’re back for a fifth time in about 75 episodes. So you’ve been five of 75, Mario. It’s pretty cool. And now I hear you might want to do a podcast of your own. You’re you’re…

Tom Nixon (01:51.516)
And speaking of

Mario (01:52.44)
Thanks for-

Mario (01:58.479)
You guys have inspired me. I think this thought leadership stuff really works. think there’s some, found a niche and you guys just ran with it. It’s great. I actually hear a lot of folks. They’re like, Oh my God, you work with Curtis? You work with Tom Nixon. I’m like, you guys know, wow. All right. Yeah. We’ll see their podcast. So I thought that was really cool. It’s humbling for me, you know, being even a guest on the podcast. And I said, there’s something to this podcasting, you know.

Tom Nixon (01:59.964)
You

Mario (02:28.256)
So everybody can learn something, I guess, right?

Tom Nixon (02:32.485)
Well, you seem to be getting the hang of it. So pretty good. I mean by their fifth try, you’re way ahead of where Curtis and I even are today. So good luck with that. of storytelling when you came on initially season one, we did a three-part story arc sort of like before I would say before you got really sophisticated with marketing during the know the changes you need to make and then what some of the results have been since then and so then we revisited with you in season two, right?

Now, what has changed, if anything, from where we left off that third episode? And I know you’ve been back since, but has you have you and Curtis? You can answer this to have you taken the marketing down to another level yet?

Mario (03:20.11)
Absolutely, I think that, you since we last spoke, we were really working on the implementation of, well, we already implemented CallRail, but really starting to improve our conversion rates, you know, because marketing is one thing, but once somebody calls in or inquires, you really have to sell on the other end. And I know we’re gonna talk a little bit more about that and how disk kinda, the disk profile leads to that.

But what we’ve been working on recently, kind of highly complex stuff, which is the Performance Max campaigns and sort of how isolating your target audience could be really good for the efficiency ratio. Maybe some, if you’re trying to track every dollar spent.

but it can also be a negative thing if you’re not getting enough information into the system that I’m really excited to talk about our experience, which has been interesting for me and I think interesting for Curtis too.

Curtis Hays (04:27.438)
Yeah, Tom, know, one of these things and a big reason I’ve shared why I got into marketing was seeing the disconnection between the marketing metrics and the sales metrics, right? We’ve talked a lot about aligning sales and marketing and bringing those two together. And so when the platforms came around to actually getting these offline conversions, we call them where you can take…

Tom Nixon (04:39.728)
Yep.

Curtis Hays (04:51.642)
the sales data, the qualified leads and the converted leads, and you can send them to the platforms to inform the algorithms. I was like, this is finally an opportunity to take the data that I’ve been trying to track, send it, but also get my clients on board with tracking the full funnel. And then being able to see with a client like Mario and Assisted Living, them coming on board and the impact it made. However, this year,

through sort of experimentation with Mario and the team, as well as some of our own learning, I’ve now come to the conclusion that there still sort of is a separation. And what I mean by that is saying that marketing’s ability to generate a lead is a measurement point that is sort of solely there for marketing.

And to be able to take that of, let’s say, we identify an ideal customer profile. So who is that person that we’re trying to get our marketing messaging in front of that we want to interact with the brand? If we’re able to successfully do that, whether or not that person actually goes through the sales process, just the ability to get that person to enter the sales process is a win. And what we weren’t doing was calculating that as a win.

Tom Nixon (06:08.998)
for sure.

Curtis Hays (06:12.804)
What we were doing was we were waiting for sales to then pick up that lead. And I think in our case with you, Mario, was sales, if we want to call it sales or whoever’s managing the phones at the front end, whether they answer the phone and then schedule a call back or it comes in on a form and they want to schedule a call, we were waiting for that second touch point to qualify it in sales before we send that data to Google or to Facebook.

Tom Nixon (06:17.275)
Mm.

Curtis Hays (06:37.986)
And we realize is that’s actually incorrect. Like marketing did its job. It got the lead. Now what sales is able to do and what that prospect decides to do afterwards is a totally different activity. And it sometimes is a much smaller number than what we had in that first interaction, that first win. And now we have less data to send to the platforms. So it has less to learn off of. It also

has less ability to learn in real time. It might take five days. It might take 10 days. It might take 30 days to finally get to that second stage with that leader prospect to qualify it for sales. And that means we have this gap where Google’s like, well, was that a good lead? Nobody’s telling me. Nobody’s giving me any feedback. Maybe it wasn’t a good lead. So maybe I should go look for audiences over here, when in reality, it was a good lead. And we just needed to tell the platform that.

Tom Nixon (07:28.826)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (07:36.218)
so we could go and find us more leads. So hopefully that sort of story and that narrative makes sense with kind of what we’re doing with the data and how we’re trying to be accurate about it, but at the same time get real time and complete information and as comprehensive as we can, I suppose, to the platforms.

Tom Nixon (07:39.087)
in

Tom Nixon (07:57.649)
Yeah, I guess that’s brilliant in that my takeaway is you’re telling that story is if you’re not taking the wins and counting the wins where they come, you might not be recognizing where in this full loop circle, there might be something broken or something to optimize. So that’s say that sales wasn’t doing their job, but that’s almost immaterial if you have the right lead in the funnel, right? I mean,

So let’s count that as a win, report it back to Google. Then let’s address what’s happening over here. And I’m sure there’s other things that are happening over here really well that maybe marketing is not doing a good job over here or an optimum job. So what did you discover in this process? And did that fine tuning have any impact, measurable impact?

Curtis Hays (08:41.806)
Yeah, I’ll start with that Mario and then I’ll let you jump in on the more the business side. But from a marketing perspective, what we found is, so what we did earlier this year is we got tighter with what we were considering a qualified lead. we had then we had less data we were sending to Google with the hypothesis that we’re sending more accurate data. We’re sending people who are further down the funnel thinking that, Hey, we’d get more qualified leads that way.

What ended up happening actually was yes, we continue to get more qualified leads, but now we started spending less. And so our volume dropped. So it’s like the quality still stayed good, but we lost volume. And, you know, so that made us sort of realize, okay, if we want to keep volume there, we, we sort of need to open the pipeline a bit and we need to tell Google, well, well, actually we still want these leads here.

We just haven’t had the chance to qualify them yet. So there’s an earlier stage of sort of getting that data to the platform and quicker. So now it understands it’s seen success earlier on and it’s not sort of suppressing some of the advertising, which is I think what it’s doing. What’s your take Mario?

Mario (10:01.26)
Yeah, it’s exactly that. I you know, I chunk it into sort of layman’s terms, you know, it was, we made our performance max campaigns picky, right? So it was, we were getting the clients, like actual, our conversion rate went up, like from a client gaining perspective, starting more clients. But the fact of the matter is it wasn’t giving us folks that we may

even convert, it was just finding folks that, you know, these guys are solid conversion prospects as opposed to just give me more. Right. And I think initially I’ll say, you know, when we did this podcast, you know, a while back, it was just bringing the leads, right. Good, bad, or indifferent. And we were able to get that very efficient, you know, through kind of fine tuning, but we got it so efficient.

at this point, that it’s bringing in only very, very convertible leads and not giving us the opportunity to even convince some folks that they need what we do. And it was sort of a cyclical issue where it’s not bringing in not just highly qualified leads, but it’s not bringing in people that were lukewarm either.

So it didn’t even feed that information back to Google to say, Hey, go find this type of audience. So what we did was we just essentially made it a little less picky, right, Curtis, and reporting the information back to Google quicker by making some tweaks in Salesforce, right, which is our CRM to essentially say, go look for people that at least we know that they’re inquiring about home care. They might not be like,

emergently needing it tomorrow, but at least they were speaking about it with our rep, right? So it takes a little while to undo, right? Cause Google learns, but we implemented some of these things. And I can say that we started to see a 10 % drop in our web conversions, right? Month over month. And we’re like, man, you know what I thought it was?

Mario (12:20.6)
Mike Curtis, this is because of AI. People are searching using Jack GPT and different things. And although some folks probably are, the real issue was how we made our performance max campaigns too picky, right? Look for only these folks, right? That convert way down in the sales process, as opposed to now where it’s bring a broader audience, give our sales reps the chance to convert. Just give them the chance.

Tom Nixon (12:50.276)
Yeah, I mean to break it down into further layman’s terms. It’s like Google got so good. You guys got so good optimizing that Google’s now only serving up sure things because it wants the highest hit rate possible. Here’s your 10 sure things. When Maria you’re saying give me the 10 sure things and give me 10 maybe because we could convert a maybe to right. So that’s really a student and that shows to even though Curtis performance max campaigns.

are designed so that it’s almost like set it and forget it and let the algorithm learn. need human oversight to come in here and decode what’s really happening. Otherwise you would have gone on forever saying, Hey, our hit rates 90%. Why change any?

Curtis Hays (13:31.705)
Yeah, it’s funny. There’s a lot of different metrics that Mario and I look at together. And the ones that we were focused on that we had the bullseye on, which was our cost per acquisition number. How much does it cost to acquire a client? Like best it’s ever been, right? Because we created this model of pure efficiency. But the secondary metric, maybe it’s secondary Mario, I don’t know. But from a growth perspective,

There’s a KPI inside the organization that says, well, we still want to hit volume. So while we’re efficient with our marketing, and we’re doing the best we’ve ever done with our marketing dollars, that marketing efficiency ratio I’ve talked about, that improved by like 15%. But we’re behind on our volume numbers. So it’s balanced, right? You got to understand the business goals, and the business goals need to match how you’re fine tuning the algorithm. And you need to look at this comprehensively.

And that allows you to pull these levers and make these micro adjustments and then see what response you sort of get from the channels. And then you can, you know, I didn’t turn around and say like, we’re not getting leads, let’s double the budget. Or let’s go from a $200 cost per acquisition to a $500 cost per acquisition, right? We’re gonna make micro changes to get it back to where we wanna get it to.

Mario (14:56.684)
Yeah, absolutely. And I thought what I thought was cool about this though, Curtis, was that we were noticing that our budget was actually not being utilized to its extent. So from a business owners perspective, I look at and a little bit of a finance guy myself, I look at it and I go, my goodness, we’re spending less. This is great. Look at how efficient.

Tom Nixon (15:23.612)
you

Mario (15:24.96)
everything is operating. But then from that growth perspective, growth is challenged, right? When you look at that increase in efficiency and when you’re not growing, you’re dying, right? That’s what I always say. It’s like, you’re going in reverse, right? And so when we notice this small decline,

Tom Nixon (15:41.69)
Mm-hmm.

Mario (15:49.806)
thinking quickly, mean, immediately, like I said before, I’m like, AI, it’s because of AI. But, you and that might be some of it, Curtis, but at the end of it, it’s this micro change about being less picky with our campaigns, you know? So we’re hoping to see that make some geometric improvements over the next few months.

Curtis Hays (16:11.651)
Yep. Yeah, and just thinking of diversification as you’re talking about AI, diversification is definitely on our mind and not having all our eggs in one basket. Performance Max, which we started back in 2002 when it first came out. We’ve been riding that wave for the last three years, but it may not be there forever. So we need to diversify and look at other channels.

I know you’ve got your eye on some other channels as far as growth goes as well. we, is there any news that we can share Mario on this, on this podcast with other internal changes you guys are doing to grow?

Mario (16:54.03)
Well, I can tell you in our industry and probably a lot of service industries, one particular way to grow obviously is organically. Another is through acquisitions and actually geographic expansion of the services that you provide. And that’s something that we’ve been focusing on this year, primarily is acquiring agencies like ours.

looking for synergies, whether they’re marketing synergies, whether they’re operational synergies, financial synergies, and then also cultural synergies with acquisitions. think that’s something that is often overlooked, particularly in private equity investing. lot of private equity buyers come in and the numbers look good and from a sort of a

they call it a confidential information memorandum. From that perspective, you look at it and you go, oh, the numbers are great. They have a good payer mix. have, you know, these metrics that, you know, I’ll call them, maybe some of them are just fiscal metrics, but you don’t really know what’s going on with that company until you go and meet the owners and actually meet the folks that are working, right? And oftentimes an acquisition can look great on paper.

Tom Nixon (18:21.169)
Thank

Mario (18:22.44)
and you go in to start blending company cultures or even before you do that, right? When you just start meeting with folks that work at that company, just to go in for your initial meeting, you’ll know whether or not that company is a good kind of bolt on to your company culture. Because oftentimes company cultures clash and that takes years to undo and sometimes it never gets undone.

Frankly. So from that perspective, know, acquisition that might look great can just be a dud at the end of the day. When, you know, maybe, maybe they’re not embracing change. Maybe your company is on the forefront of technology and things. Maybe their company has not embraced technology. That’s very difficult to change in a company culture.

Tom Nixon (19:15.236)
Yeah. Well, I think that provides a useful segue from one set of acronyms to another. So we talked the first couple of seasons in the first part of this episode about KPI. But when you’re doing something like change management or bringing organizations together, there’s another tool that’s popular out there that I know you’ve employed Mario in that acronym is DISC, the disc profiler. So explain what that is briefly and how you’ve applied it to your organization, because there is going to be the

turn around the twist ending where it’s going to all come back to sales. But first let’s talk about operational management disc. What is it?

Mario (19:52.494)
So disc was introduced to me back in 2019. You guys know that I follow Tony Robbins, a lot of his work. And we went through business mastery, which is fantastic program. And one of the things in that was to take a disc assessment. And first of all, was like, is a disc assessment?

Is it like Myers-Briggs? Is it something similar to it? It’s actually a lot more simple than that. Everybody has a personality type. Some folks have blends of personality types. Everybody really does have a blend. They’re not stuck in one particular silo, but everyone has a more dominant…

features in one or another of those characteristics. we learned it. I took a disc assessment. I thought it was really neat. And one of those kind of eye-opening moments is when you kind of learn about yourself. And sometimes you’re like, man, didn’t, I don’t like that that much. You you read the profiles and I don’t, I didn’t know I was, I don’t really like it. There isn’t really a way to inherently change it.

Tom Nixon (20:58.288)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (21:03.626)
You

Mario (21:12.62)
I mean, I know you can try to change it or mask it or act differently, but inherently you’ll always be a little stressed if you do try to go outside your disc profile. And I actually think that folks should try that, right? They take a disc assessment. They maybe learn some of their faults, some of the strengths, and they try to mold themselves to adapt to different disc communication styles.

Tom Nixon (21:24.411)
Yeah.

Mario (21:42.062)
I can pop right into it too and what we do at our company.

Tom Nixon (21:46.149)
Yeah, well, just real quick, let’s we’ll explain this was oversimplification, but disc stands for the four sort of behavioral types or dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness that is oversimplifying. And so if you’re interested in learning about it, go. We will talk through what some of that stuff means. And usually you’re dominant in one of those quadrants or one or two. Right. So a high D, for example, is somebody that we all think of as type A. Right. Just give me the facts. I don’t need don’t bore me.

Just tell me what I need to know. I’m going to make a quick decision. I don’t even care what’s the right decision. We’re going right. That’s that type of person. So all the way to the complete other end of the spectrum is somebody like me who’s a high C who wants to know all the facts. I’ve got to do all of the study. I need to build a system to fix this. I’m not ready to decide yet. Hold on. Right. So you can see two people, their partners, and they’re operating from that dynamic. There’s going to be some friction, right? So that’s just two people. Now imagine you’ve got 50 people.

Mario (22:43.054)
That’s it.

Tom Nixon (22:44.688)
and you’re bolting on twenty more and now you’re have aspirations to be five hundred. So that’s where it becomes complex and a tool like this helps to simplify or at least make sense of that. So how have you employed internally, Mario?

Mario (22:56.558)
So what we’ve done is when somebody’s hired, we kind of let them work here for a few months before we give them one of these tests to take. Some companies, by the way, would just upon application, they’ll send you one of these tests as well. We don’t do that. Maybe we should. But after you’re working here a few months, we actually will give you a disc assessment.

The reason why we do that is A, you can learn more about yourself and B, so that we can actually let everyone know who you are. It’s not just something, here’s your disc profile. We actually have a matrix that we create, everybody’s disc profile on it. And we highly encourage that folks actually learn about one another so that the next time they go to approach them with a task, an assignment, anything, they are able to adapt a bit more

to that communication style. And I’ll give you an example of when you don’t do that, you can see lots of dissension. You can see people that…

maybe they’re just having a bad day or maybe the way that you asked them to do a project was incomplete and they’re a high C. High C has to know eight step one, two, three, and four. And I just went to you Tom and I said, hey, I need you to grow our leads by 15 % by next week. Here, Tom’s kind of started sweating, right? He’s like, well, where do I start? know, what tools do I have?

Tom Nixon (24:26.842)
Right. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (24:34.214)
Mm-hmm.

Mario (24:35.17)
where high D is like, got it. And they’ll just, they might go after it and they might totally blow it by the way, because they might be too cocky, right? In their, the way that they do things or high I might go for it. And it turns into maybe something else, right? And so in order to interact with folks, it’s at least in my company,

Tom Nixon (24:44.848)
Mm-hmm.

Mario (25:04.8)
I have a conscious effort every time that I even sent a Teams message, by the way, you can have a sort of a negative or positive reaction to how you communicate with somebody based on their this profile. And really based on, know, I always say how they’re doing that day, but you know, don’t that.

That actually has something to do with it as well. It’s like, if a high D is having a bad day and you give them, you go and you start talking about how the weekend was and how their kids are and they’re just trying to drill down on emails and they have to like, I have a task to do today. They will come across as crabby. I can guarantee you that.

Tom Nixon (25:49.905)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I was thinking the inverse of what you said. If I the high C go into a high D office, my boss office. Hey, do you have about an hour? I want to walk you through the observations I’ve made in my first 90 days here. And I have this 12 point systematic plan to get us from A to B. And it should only take 60 minutes. That person’s ears are going to start steaming. And Curtis, you and I have actually started to employ.

concepts behind this with some of our clients, because we will do these long research projects to get to a point where we could give some actionable recommendations, right? And there was the realization that we had that while some people just want the recommendations, other people like don’t care what the recommendations are unless you can show me that you’ve proven it. So we did the stupid thing and we just started asking people, how do you want this presented to you? Because we don’t have their disc profile.

Curtis Hays (26:44.408)
Right, right. Yes. Do you want to see how the sausage is made? You know, and or do you need a do you need a pretty presentation here? Can we just, you know, pull up the documents and show you our findings, right? And we’re we’re pleasantly surprised at some of the responses and thoughtfulness, I think I think most of those clients appreciated us asking and then said, Yeah, I don’t need to see the presentation. Don’t waste your time on that. Let’s spend our time on

Tom Nixon (26:48.698)
That’s the question we keep asking.

Tom Nixon (27:07.505)
You did.

Curtis Hays (27:13.432)
you how you came up with what you came up with, right? So, it’s been really refreshing and, know, everybody’s what I’ve learned about this is everybody’s, has different drives or motivations, right? It’s been a big thing with me and understanding disc and some of the other, profiling out there, I suppose, is that, you know, when you’re in a team environment, you do have to understand, right? Mario, that like,

Tom Nixon (27:28.22)
Hmm.

Curtis Hays (27:40.601)
What motivates this team member here is going to be completely different than this person here. And as a manager or leader, you need to understand that those people are unique and different and you need to approach those conversations, the communication part of it, you know, potentially differently. And, and it’s actually sort of a beautiful thing. Sometimes you want a team that is a mixture of the various profiles because dynamically together, they can make a better team. I’ve always liked the like, nineties.

Chicago bulls example, right? If like you had a Dennis Rodman, you had Michael Jordan, you had, you know, Horace Grant, Scottie Pippen, Steve curd, you had all these people had different gifts and different drivers and, different things, but together they made like the ultimate team. And, know, I think that’s what you want in a workplace environment too. You don’t want all the same personalities.

Tom Nixon (28:28.156)
Mm-hmm.

Mario (28:34.958)
And it all depends on what department too. So it’s not just a team. Yes. You know, we, we often find that, um, you know, in accounting and fiscal high C’s and S’s are excellent, right? They do well, you know, typically a high eye in accounting, um, maybe a little distracted, right? High eye in sales, the best.

Curtis Hays (28:36.952)
Yeah, HR is going to be different than sales.

Curtis Hays (28:58.276)
Right.

Tom Nixon (28:58.78)
Yeah.

Mario (29:01.964)
Right, the best, DNI and sales are just fantastic.

Tom Nixon (29:02.244)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want the high eyes to be chasing every bright light and squirrel that runs past right. You like go get them as opposed to that. This is why I’m horrible at sales. I’d be like, well, hold on. Let’s find out what they’re looking for. Let’s go back and make a plan and then present them with some options, right? I’m the worst sales person in the world. What? Which go ahead.

Mario (29:12.501)
Exactly.

Mario (29:25.036)
Well, can tell you from that aspect, mean, the sales aspect, is, know, our marketing can bring folks in, look at our website, check us out, you know, see our bulletins everywhere. They see our social media. But at end of the day, sales is actually, they need to be artists at knowing disc.

because every time that phone rings and every interaction that you have with a customer, they have a disc profile also. So maybe if you’re a high eye in sales and you get somebody that’s a high D on the phone to ask about the services that you’re promoting, that high D wants to know how much it is. And they want to know when you can start. And you go off to kind of talking about.

different things that maybe are going on in their life or whatever, trying to get chummy with who that person is. Heidi may be anxious about that. They may get not just anxious, but maybe angry. Like, like just give me how much is, how much is this? And when can you start? Right. So I think it’s really important from a sales aspect. And I love what you guys do. You just ask, like, how do you want your report done? You want us to tell you how it is?

Tom Nixon (30:30.14)
put off,

Mario (30:43.79)
You know, do you want us to get into the calculus of it or, do you just want to know what the target is we’re going to hit and how much it’s going to cost? And I think that’s really important.

Tom Nixon (30:51.962)
Well, that’s a challenge though. And like would that every prospect show up your doorstep with their desk profile and hand it to you, right? Because that would be great. You just look at it. Okay. Hi, B. Right. Again, the inverse of what you said is if if somebody tells me the price of something in the first 30 seconds that comes across as pushy. All they wanted was the sale. They didn’t want to educate me. They didn’t want to, you know, they didn’t hear me all that stuff. So how does a good sales team then because

A, they’re not handed a disc profile. B, it’s a weird thing to ask. We’re asking this of our existing clients, right? So we’ve already had this rapport relationship. I mean, you’re not going to ask a prospect, hold on before I answer your questions, are you a high D or a high C, right? So how did we get, how did we, cause I think this is a useful tool very much in sales, but how do we weave it in? Is it training? Is it just experience? Is it innate? What are you doing, Mario?

Mario (31:33.902)
this.

Mario (31:45.56)
Yeah, it is experience. I mean, and it is training and you have to listen to the customer at the end of the day. know, so when they’re calling in or you’re meeting with them, you’ll get a sense almost right away what style they are. If you do enough studying in this, right? If you really start asking, again, we’re in home care, so I’m to use this example. But when we start asking, well, how’s mom doing? You know, how is she? When you go over,

you know, does she interact well with, you know, friends, family? And when that person starts answering those questions, they’re either going to extend that explanation or they’re going to cut it short. Okay. So right off the bat, you know, and you’re just listening, know, mom does great with friends. You know, we go over, she does fine. How much is this? Whoa.

I’m dealing with a high D here, right? Or even a C, by the way, I can say. A C might get into it. They might say, well, I really need to know how much this is, but what time are you going to come over? What happens if this happens with mom? Do you call this number or do you call this number? They’re going to ask specific questions about the, really the description, high description of what type of care.

or service that you’re providing as opposed to a D, it’s like, how much is it? Or an I will really get into maybe even family history, right? And you’re gonna learn about that as a salesperson and you will know right away who that person is. And I failed to mention S, cause I feel like they get the short end of the stick a lot, they, high S is in a sales context, they,

They’re friendly. They always want everything to get along. They’re not gonna show disinterest in the product or service generally. They’ll say, okay, we’ll get back to you. They’re the, we’ll get back to yous. They’re not gonna say no right up front. They may not give a definitive answer in any kind of way. They’re the maybes. And the challenge in sales is to really get over that hump and to try to learn who they are. And the followup is key.

Tom Nixon (33:52.88)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mario (34:09.902)
Right. But knowing their disc profile is very important and you’ll get that from listening though, you know, and not over dominating the conversation.

Tom Nixon (34:17.041)
Right.

Curtis, light bulb for me now is sales is a one to one communications opportunity. Marketing, which often sits in front of sales is one to many and the many includes every disc profile, which is why I think coming back full circle to why how what which is everyone who comes to the site is seeking the service for this compelling why if you connect with them on why the D’s are going to want to go right to the pricing page, right?

Curtis Hays (34:32.41)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (34:49.53)
The C’s are going to go to the about page, right? And then the, the, maybe the high eyes will go to the, they won’t just poke all around, right? So we need to present marketing content in copy and messaging, knowing that you need to appeal to every single one of those disc profiles. You can’t just have your pricing on your homepage and you can’t just have the about us long story on the homepage. And that’s why we’re nurturing these users.

Curtis Hays (35:00.984)
Right.

Tom Nixon (35:16.55)
whether it’s an ad, it’s a website or whatever it is through a funnel that holds their hand along the journey we want them to, but knowing that there’s all these other pathways to go to as well. So there’s my aha moment from the season.

Curtis Hays (35:28.248)
Right. Yeah. And it’s, not this linear path that we try to create it, right? It’s like, we’re going to create a landing page and then we’re going to funnel and we’re going to tell this story in a specific way that everybody’s going to get sort of pulled into because not everybody’s going to respond to it in the same way. mean, it takes me back to one of my aha moments this season was with, was with will and marketing to mindset, mind states, right? That, that, you know, they’re the mind states of that ideal customer profile.

need to be defined, which is what are their goals? What are their motivations? What problems do they have? And those types of things. you’re creating that ICP, that ideal customer profile, understanding those things, but even inside of that. So again, it’s not just an avatar. Well, this person’s, this is a person who’s of this age and of this gender, and they have this income. It goes beyond that to say, no, they actually have problem.

pain or aspirations and at this specific time, they’re motivated by these specific things. But then even once you get inside of that, now there’s a specific way to communicate to that person, to sort of uncover or get at whatever those motivations and goals actually are and being able to identify those once they come into the sales process and be able to communicate appropriately is just gonna…

increase your win rate, which has been really the goal on the sales side for you guys, right? Mario has been like, okay, we’re bringing in leads. It’s costing us this to get to acquire the leads. If we just get a little bit more efficient, closing a few more leads, man, that revenue and that efficiency goes way up, doesn’t it?

Mario (37:15.222)
It does. And again, this is only something that at this point a human can do. I was thinking about this a little bit, you know, as you were speaking, Curtis, and I know AI is just taking off to new levels. And I wonder if AI is ever going to be able to kind of know and predict somebody’s communication style when they’re talking to them, right? You’re going to get some of these voice…

Curtis Hays (37:19.48)
Right.

Tom Nixon (37:19.74)
you

Thank

Mario (37:41.102)
sort of voice activated AI when you call in. I know a lot of companies are looking into that, but are they gonna be able to sell in a way in which I described? Are they gonna be able to adapt to that person’s characteristics and profiles when they call in? mean, my best guess is yes, but right now that’s, yeah, that’s high tech, that’s sci-fi.

Tom Nixon (38:04.56)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (38:04.58)
Well, and the key in your industry is empathy. And I think AI is trying to adapt some level of empathy right now. And it will to some degree. to a, I mean, I know you have amazing staff there who I’ve interacted with, who have long careers and working in this industry, you know, they understand what that person’s going through when they call.

Mom was just diagnosed with dementia. There’s a lot on our minds and our hearts right now. You’re going through a lot. So your staff can empathize with that. They can relate to it in a real way. And so now it is like they don’t necessarily talk. What would be the Sandler rule, Tom? There’s a reason why we have two ears and one mouth. So they start asking questions and they start listening to build that rapport.

And now it sounds like, you know, hey, we could identify what are the motivations behind this person, this individual, and then take them down that path for good reasons, not just to close the deal. Ultimately, you want to provide the best care to families in the state of Connecticut and now going beyond. So, you know, there are virtuous goals in this and it’s how can we better train our teams to serve the communities that we serve.

Mario (39:33.326)
Sure. And provide insight. I think that’s one thing that what a lot of folks are calling in any type of service business is, is the person on the other end of the phone will call them a salesperson. Does that person know the product or service inside and out? Right. Because people see right through that. Right. know way back I used to work at Best Buy and

Maybe they have better training now, but back then they didn’t have great training on the products. So I can remember to this day, you know, kind of getting thrown into the mobile audio sections who were selling like car audio, you know, some subwoofers and amps and stuff like that, you know, and I just remember, you know, somebody asked a customer came in asking me about, do you guys remember that Tom Tom, that GPS, right?

Tom Nixon (40:28.764)
Yeah.

Mario (40:30.894)
You know, that was kind of part of the car experience. Like I had to manage those and no one taught me anything about those. Like literally nothing. So all I would do is read the box and read the little tag. And I remember this guy, he’s like, Hey, I need some help over here. We kind of go over and he’s like, what’s the difference between this one and this one? And I start reading off the box and right away the guy was like,

Tom Nixon (40:42.236)
You

Mario (41:00.928)
I can do that. Like I can just read off the box. Like, do you know the difference to these two? And I remember that to this day. And I don’t know, even though I don’t think he bought the product actually at the end of the day, because the salesperson didn’t know the product. Right. So by knowing the product, you know, and knowing inside and out, I mean, every single thing that that person asks about your service or product, you should be able to answer as a salesperson or if not get back to them really quickly.

Tom Nixon (41:03.867)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (41:14.839)
Mm-hmm.

Mario (41:30.478)
because customers see right through it, right? So not just knowing your customer, but knowing your product or service inside and out. So you don’t end up like me, back at Best Buy, back in, I don’t even know how long ago that was, early 2000s or something like that.

But that story always resonates to me. feel like I’d share it today because I thought it was pertinent to a sales conversation. Knowing your product, knowing who your customer is and being able to provide insight. Something that they don’t already know about that industry, that service, some little nugget that you can share with them. Even though they don’t need your product or service at the end of the day, they took something away. Right.

And that’s sort of why, you know, you guys inspired me on the podcast idea. It’s like teaching people some, just some insight that they could take away at the end of the day is just so valuable, not just for your brand, but for the community in general. So I thought that was pretty cool.

Tom Nixon (42:31.75)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (42:31.844)
You got the topic there for your opening episode.

Tom Nixon (42:34.906)
There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Just man, we’re doing the podcast making business today. Well, real quick, Mario, because we’re getting to the end of our time, believe it or not already. Have you noticed either anecdotally or do you have data that suggests that applying disk to a sales environment has generated success, increased close, anything like that?

Mario (42:36.108)
Yeah, I like it.

Mario (43:01.272)
So I’m actually studying that right now. And I think the next podcast, I’ll have some more information on it. Did we improve our close rate and so forth? And did we keep some profiles and maybe some avatars of certain clients and how to speak to them if they have certain disc profiles? It may be a new kind of training mechanism for our sales team. all that.

I will have for you. don’t have it today, but I’m excited to kind of keep that tallied up and maybe share it with you next time.

Tom Nixon (43:35.889)
season three. Yeah, he’s trying to get it back on season three now, Curtis. I see what’s happening here. All right. Well, we love cliffhangers in this business. I will just give you my final takeaway is that this disk phenomenon exists, whether you like it or not. This has been studied for decades and decades. So apply it to your sales. Definitely apply it to your operations, but apply it to your marketing as well. Just keep in mind that you have all these different people who are interacting with your brand for

Curtis Hays (43:39.33)
Hehehehehe

Tom Nixon (44:04.758)
in, they all have different sort of behavioral styles and ways that they want to be communicated with. And if you understand desk, I think you can apply it to your marketing and your sales. So Curtis, final thoughts.

Curtis Hays (44:14.894)
Yeah, I think it reminds me of just the art and science combination of what we do, both on the marketing side as well as the sales side. That there’s an element of structure and foundations and processes and those types of things. But then there’s the creativity that goes into, you know, one person having that understanding and using their own unique skill set.

and their own unique personality to sort of play into that and, and allow that to come out. And I think, you know, again, if you can uncover that in an organization and allow your team members to thrive and they can, they can figure out where it is that they’re motivated and they, they best succeed. they can play to their strengths. If you’re familiar with strength finders, they can play to their strengths. You know, you can create a pretty powerful organization.

with a lot of happy people, mind you, right? I think they were pretty happy on that Bulls team when that team was playing to their strengths, right? And they were pretty successful.

Tom Nixon (45:24.24)
You had to pick the Chicago Bulls. I mean, I’m a diehard 90s bad boys fan and you’re going there with this Michael Jordan business. All right. Yeah, I know. I’ll allow it because it is actually a great example. Bill Cartwright. didn’t mention him. Anyways. Yeah, exactly. Mario, I think I know your final thought. Can I guess it?

Curtis Hays (45:31.096)
I’m from Chicago. I grew up with that team.

Curtis Hays (45:38.518)
it’s free throw. Cause his head this whole, yeah.

Mario (45:47.054)
you know go ahead.

Tom Nixon (45:49.241)
I think you’ve been watching this podcast for two full seasons now, and you’re thinking, why should Curtis have all the fun wearing the hats? Like, why don’t I bring a hat? Right? We’re filming this on Halloween Day. I’m sure you have a hat right there at the ready, right?

Mario (46:00.526)
You know what?

Mario (46:04.598)
You I do have a hat for you.

Tom Nixon (46:07.228)
This is like Lee Corso on College Game Day. I love it. Yep. Pure imagination. Alright. Thank you, Mario. Well, we’ll see what kind of tricks you could pull out of that hat for season three and season one of your next podcast. be watching it. Where do people go? If they want to learn more specifically about your services, give us the website and we’ll link to that in the show notes as well.

Mario (46:11.118)
That’s my final thought from Willy Wonka.

Happy Halloween.

Mario (46:36.376)
Definitely, yeah. So for more about our services and actually products from assisted living technologies too. So our home care company is Assisted Living Home Care Services. You can go to us on the web, assistedlivingct.com or assistedlivingtechnologies.com, our sister company where we offer all kinds of neat home care devices to help seniors age in place.

Tom Nixon (47:04.124)
Perfect.

Curtis Hays (47:04.194)
My mom’s got one of the watches. Yep, she sure does. Yep.

Mario (47:06.402)
Yes, yes she does.

Tom Nixon (47:07.42)
There you go. Cool. Nice little plug there. All right. Awesome. Well, Curtis, we’re almost to the wrapping of a season two. We have one more episode until then. Well, thank you everyone for being here and we’ll see you next season, Mario. But everyone hang on for one more week and we will see you next week on Bullhorn’s and Bull’s Eyes.