Joe Polish and Dean Jackson: 3-D Thinking: The Formula to Effective Marketing, Attracting New Customers, and Keeping Your Current Clients Coming Back

How can you be an effective marketer? How can you make money and go deep with your clients? How can you create a community and bond with them?

Believe it or not, there’s a formula to it.

It’s something we have used for years. Dean said that the formula, the framework, the modules have brought in at least $150 million in revenue, just in the real estate industry since he’s taught them.

You have to look at your business in three parts: a before unit, a during unit and an after unit.

When you look at your business in those terms, looking at it as three independent units, each with its own sort of measurable monetary goals, its own impact area, that’s the formula.

A lot of people are able to triple their business, just by making it a three-dimensional unit, instead of just thinking of their business as one thing.

The before unit is the unit of your business that is in charge of finding, identifying, education and motivating people to come to your business for the first time.

The during unit is the part of your business that delivers the experience that people have when they’re doing business with you. If you have a retail store, it’s the moment that a customer walks into your store until the moment they walk out of your store.

As a real estate agent, the during unit could be the moment you start looking at houses with someone, until they close on the house and they’ve spent the first 30, 60, 90 days in that house.

The after unit is all about nurturing lifetime relationship and it’s about building a lifetime relationship with all the people who already know you, like you and trust you. You want them to do business with you again and orchestrate referrals.

There are so many different ways to apply this, so many different ways to diagnose where a business has the biggest opportunity.

I find that business owners are usually focused on one of the units only. Sometimes, people only focus on their current clients.

For example, with a lot of medical practices, they just have their patient list and they just want to work with those people. They’re focused on the during. And sometimes they’re even proud about it. They say, “Well, I don’t advertise. I don’t do any marketing.” It’s almost like a badge of honor. They feel like they don’t have to do those things, because they’re not looking at their business as a three-dimensional object.

Every time I hear that, I just think that it’s so sad that these business owners are limiting themselves in so many ways.

You hear a lot of people talk about the lifetime value of a customer or client. Most people speak about it, but do they really do it?

When I first learned the lifetime value of a client, the concept of how much a client is really worth, how much you can afford to spend on a client, I was in the carpet cleaning business.

As a carpet cleaner, I remember back in 1992, when I used to look at getting a “carpet cleaning job,” a cood carpet cleaning job, back then, for me, would have been like $150. And as soon as I realized that, “Wow, if this client cleaned their carpets every year for five years, it would no longer be $150, it would be $750. And if they referred someone just like them to me, that $150 job just became a $1,500 job.

When I started looking at the clients that I was dealing with, it’s not just: get in the house, service them, get $150, go on to the next job. It’s, I’m working with someone who’s going to pay me $1,500.

And if they referred three people, instead of one, that $150 job is now worth $3,000. If they refer 10 people, all of the sudden, it’s getting into the tens of thousands. It totally changed my whole mindset.

It’s important for you start thinking of how much a client is actually worth, not just focusing on chasing new customers. And then after they’ve done business with you, how do you get them to keep coming back? How do you get them to tell other people about you?

Not through manipulation, not through trickery, but through strategic delivery of value and proper communication and education, and simply asking them and directing them to do certain things.

Simply looking at your business as before, during, and after is so powerful.

For example, you’re married. What did you do before you even knew your spouse or partner? Do you behave differently now than you did before you asked for the date or before you gave the person a ring and proposed? If you still continued some of the great dating rituals and behaviors that you did before you got married, you’re probably in a pretty happy relationship right now. And if you only used really good techniques in the beginning, just to get the sale, and then you neglect them later, it’s probably a not so good relationship.

Before, during and after applies to every life situation. If you start thinking about that, the customers and clients, and the business you do business with, will start appreciating you the most. Don’t neglect them in any of those stages, and people will notice and keep doing business with you.