****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

Jay Baer 0:00

Hi, I'm Jay Baer and you're listening to A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:19

Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I'm Kenneth Kinney, but friends call me Shark. I am a keynote speaker, a strategist, a shark diver, host of this show, and your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:32

Speed has always been important to customers and a competitive advantage for some businesses. Speed is today's guest points out has been important ever since the first Olympic race in 776 BC, which was a contest of speed, but we constantly see how many companies are just too slow, while others are often way too fast. But speed isn't just about how fast you are. It is a big part of the trust that's built into relationships with your customers. So how do you exceed customer's need for speed?

Kenneth Kinney 1:03

As a speaker one of my favorite events is the National Speakers Association's yearly Influence conference. I had the pleasure of meeting up with a friend who appeared all the way back on episode 99. That seems so long ago because the podcast was in black and white then believe that or not, but I was lucky enough to meet and discuss his great new mini book and yes, it's tiny, different makes great points and a super quick read.

Kenneth Kinney 1:25

Jay Baer is the author of the time to win how to exceed customer's need for speed and six other best selling books, the founder of six multimillion dollar companies, an inductee into the professional speakers Hall of Fame, a business growth researcher, an advisor, and even a tequila influencer.

Kenneth Kinney 1:40

And on this episode, we will discuss a super quick read speed the relationship between responsiveness and revenue, getting enchiladas to fast measuring the speed that works for your audience, got it audits, figuring out the right now, speed to lead, my emergency plumbing issues and how that factors into solving problems quickly, a fast pass, the fastest shark, Flash versus Superman, fast car movies, the number one popcorn state, a controversial fried food, and a lot lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 2:07

So let's tune into a time to win author with a time to swim shark on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 2:17

Jay Baer, thank you for coming back, but 300 episodes later to A Shark's Perspective. I wanted to talk in the last time we talked about a couple of alpacas Yeah. And this big massive, sold a couple 100 million. Yeah, it did. Okay. We'll talk triggers. But we've we've spoken for, and I'm a big fan of your work. But you're talking about you're talking about a time to win with with really, we've talked on another show about this. But you made a point in one of your social posts about if you're going to write a book about speed, it shouldn't be a quick read.

Jay Baer 2:51

Yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 2:52

And this is this is the massive book. This is the actual so

Jay Baer 2:56

People say, Jay, how come it looks so small? What are you compensating for? (laugh) and I say nothing, it's, you know, I just felt like the whole point of this book is to explain to businesses the relationship between responsiveness and revenue, and that you have to increase the priority of speed in your organization. Because your customers already have, they have already said it's even more important than ever before. In fact, in the research I did for the book, we found that two thirds of customers say that speed is as important as price. And so it seemed really ironic sharp to say let me make you read a seven hour business book about speed, it just didn't make didn't make any sense to me at all. Right, let's just give you the core parts of the book. You made it in an hour or so. But several people have gotten early copies of it. And they said it as much value in it as a full length business book. And that's exactly what I was when I was shooting for right like so it's Kindle version will be out in a couple of days. And then we're going to solve this soft cover on Amazon in such a threat. So there's three books in a little suitcase you get three bucks or 20 bucks the idea is that you keep one give one to one of your friends in the business community and you keep one hold one back for when somebody you know your pool guy your air conditioning guy you know the restaurant isn't fast enough you just kind of slowly your with your with your credit card, you slip the book in there. So you keep the third one for it.

Kenneth Kinney 4:18

Well, we have a lot with several of your books. I think we have utility and I know we talked triggers, I bought them. And then I got what you'd autograph one and got a different one. And yeah, I've passed the full collection. So I've done this and I can't wait for this. One of the one of the great comments you talked about though is getting sometimes your enchilada is too fast. Yeah, yeah. Have you given this to any Mexican restaurant?

Jay Baer 4:40

Oh, that's a great question. Not yet. But yeah, it is one of the stories that we talked about in this book and in the in the presentation version.

Kenneth Kinney 4:45

Yes. Tell that story I jumped in knowing that story.

Jay Baer 4:47

No, it's fine. It's, you know, I live in Indiana, which is not home of Mexican food anyway. But I went to a Mexican restaurant anyway ordered in July that's and they brought me the enchiladas and like 90 seconds And initially, I was like, Wow, that's incredible. Now that wait a second, how did they make a lot of that fast? Did they had like an enchilada machine? Or is there some kind of trickery going on here? It was so fast that I began to distrust the veracity of the enchilada. And that's true in all businesses, largely the advice in this book, and it's all based on comprehensive research. Largely, the advice is that you should be faster than you want today. But there is a scenario where you can be too fast. If you are too fast, it actually reduces stress. I'll give you another example. Many folks out there have either used or have on their websites and to have a chat bot, chat technology, drift, which is one of the biggest providers of that kind of software in the world, intentionally plugs in like a three second delay into the system. Because if you as a consumer ask a question to me, if it comes back instantaneously, which of course it can, it can literally answer you in a nanosecond. But if it does that, if it answers you like that, you're like, wait a second, that's got to be a robot, that's got to be AI. And literally, your trust in the answer goes down. So they artificially create a cause a little bit slower. So they're like, oh, okay, this this is a thought out robot answer, which is kind of hilarious. But it's all just brain science, right? So speed at all costs actually costs your business, what you want is the perfect amount of elapsed time, not too fast, not too slow. And in the book, we call that the right now, the perfect amount of time.

Kenneth Kinney 6:24

So what do you think it it causes most when it is too fast? The so wonderful example of a chatbot? Because I saw him in the hall last night. David Horshager. Your mastermind group it is it eliminates a lot of trust.

Jay Baer 6:42

Yeah, that's it.

Kenneth Kinney 6:43

Very quickly. But what are the things do you think that too fast is scaling, which is weird, because we're talking about the need for speed?

Jay Baer 6:50

Yeah, it's interesting right, there's like a bell curve.

Speaker 1 6:55

Too slow is bad, too fast as bad crust is the biggest problem when you're too fast. In some scenarios, it also can be interpreted by consumers as sort of pushy and aggressive, especially in larger ticket purchases, when consumers would prefer to have a little more time to kind of mull it over if the process is set up. So it's like, you know, and today, you get an email reminder. And tomorrow, you get another email reminder. And where's your contract? And how about that first payment? Right? It feels like you're being railroaded a little bit. And that can also cause some, some negative customer attitudes.

Kenneth Kinney 7:30

So how does a customer in any line of business figure out the speed that works for their customers, their audience?

Jay Baer 7:38

so you really have to measure this is the first piece of the time to win framework is all in the book, the first piece of the framework is to perform what we call a GOT IT audit. You got it audit means how long does it take your customers to get it to get whatever they need to get information to get a price to get delivery to pay a bill to get help to get an answer? How long does it take them to get it? And that sounds super obvious, isn't it? But the problem is, and I talk to businesses about this, as well, how long does it take your customers to get their deliver? What they tell me is, well, they usually it takes three days, and sometimes it's for it's over a week, and it can be five, but if everything goes perfectly, it could be to wait a second, this is not. This is not math. This is a collection of stories. And so you first of all have to figure those things out in your business, which again, sounds obvious, but it is astonishing how few businesses actually know that kind of number, right? Like they know the median, they know the mean, they know the average little thing for all these different key inflection points, they just don't know. Normally the rest of the floor and you can't figure out the right now you can't dial in the optimal amount of speed until you know what you're doing today. And most businesses simply don't they really don't they think they do. But they don't actually.

Kenneth Kinney 8:48

Well, I really got excited about this book. I was at a conference a few weeks ago. And a lot of what I focus on is lead generate Yeah, so we talked a lot about speed to lead in. If somebody fills out a form or makes a call, you gotta meet Johnny on the spot in answer right now, because that's what they want.

Jay Baer 9:02

Half of all customers will hire whomever contacts them first, regardless of price. Half.

Kenneth Kinney 9:07

Such a big....This is like the speech for call center.

Jay Baer 9:10

Yeah, all the time.

Kenneth Kinney 9:12

But what's what's interesting, though, is I sometimes worry with this. And that's why I love example, that the chat bot is, you know, we think about it with content marketing, where we know each other originally from there is it would be scary if everybody just thought if I set the clock and the the bad advice is you got to respond to everything fast. Yeah. And everybody goes to replicate that they don't measure it.

Jay Baer 9:36

It's an arms race.

Kenneth Kinney 9:37

Exactly, right.

Jay Baer 9:38

I mean, if you've done a lead form, and this has happened to me a number of times, especially for b2b software, you play the lead form. I'm interested in the demo for whatever, and then somebody calls your phone 10 seconds later. You're like, Okay, this is a little too aggressive. And that's where this idea of the right now really comes into play. It's not instantaneous, but you don't want to wait too long because then Maybe they're like, oh, they don't care about my business or early bird gets the worm. And so that's why you really do have to test this and so can dial in, like, Okay, is it five minutes? Is it 45 minutes? Is it two hours? I don't know the answer, right? People ask me all the time. What's the right now for my business? I don't know. But I know how you can find out. And that's what's in the book.

Kenneth Kinney 10:16

Well, there's, there's so much around search intent that I love about this, because I was just telling you a story. What happened to me with a plumbing problem, while we're here, 1000 miles away from home, and a week ago had a garage issue. And I ended up going to work with the one who answered the phone for a course. And I had that problem. And I probably overpaid, of course. So if you're in like, if customers want to fix something, or need to fix something, they need it done.

Jay Baer 10:43

We interpret speed as caring. We interpret speed as caring. When people are faster, not too fast. We talked about seconds, when they're when they are sufficiently fast. What we believe that means is they care about us our business and our well being more. Is that true? I don't know. It doesn't matter if it's true. That's how we interpret it as human beings in terms of brain science. And that's why as an organization, it's better to set up your system so that you can consistently be first. I'm not saying that's easy. I know that it can be difficult with labor challenges and new people on the staff and you know, all these things. I'm not saying it's easy, but I am saying it's worth it. The data is very, very clear in this book, that if you are faster, you will gain more customers. And if you are faster, you will keep more customers, there's literally a double dip. So I'm telling you, this is worth the investment necessary.

Kenneth Kinney 11:33

Did the data take into account how services evolve good or bad post pandemic?

Jay Baer 11:41

Not how service has involved, but how customer satisfaction has evolved. And here's the thing that's it's kind of disheartening as somebody who spent a lot of his career doing customer service and customer experience work. The the ACSI, the American Customer Service index, measures customer satisfaction of the totality of the US economy. So every industry, financial services, cable companies, car companies, restaurants, all of it right? The ACSI is the lowest it's been right now in like 20 years. So despite the literally billions of dollars we spent on customer experience initiatives, customers are less happy than ever. And I will tell you, one of the reasons that's true is that customer expectations around speed have gone up and business's actual responsiveness has stayed the same. There's a growing gap between what customers think you should be doing and the speed and what you are doing. And that's the gap that we're trying to close with this book.

Kenneth Kinney 12:41

Well, I know you speak to all kinds of industries, but you've done a lot in particular with a client, but I used to work everywhere in financial services of fortune 50. When you think about it, from a financial services perspective, at least from the leaders you meet with and speak to your on a big city, young 20 Somethings city tour, what's their response back? With behemoths it's so hard to close the gap.

Jay Baer 13:04

So I'm working with this financial services company on this national tour. And every every week, we have a different city, and they invite hundreds of their clients, small, medium sized business clients to the room. And so Noah's Ark of industry, it's like every kind of businesses in the room, and they're all sort of really like, well, we get fazed by it. We gotta get serious about speed. But then every single time the people from the financial services company, come up to me afterwards, whoever the local representatives, I was like, you know, some of the things that you mentioned, we should maybe think about doing some of those ourselves, right? Because somebody calls in they need a loan, they need a quote, they need that. They got a question, right? I mean, like banking, any really Financial Services is not really easy to differentiate it product or price, right? So all you're really differentiating on is branded service. Yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 13:55

Double Tree cookie doesn't work.

Jay Baer 13:56

That doesn't mean....like if we interpret speed as caring, you would want your financial services provider to care about you and your money. So yeah, every every single time. People from the company like, Yeah, is there a chance we could get a book for all the people that are? Like that kind of thing.

Kenneth Kinney 14:13

So they certainly need a gotit audit. Talk about what a Fastpass is.

Jay Baer 14:16

This is probably my favorite one in terms of making revenue quickly.

Kenneth Kinney 14:20

They got to read all the way to the end.

Jay Baer 14:24

They get at least at least one takeaway. Fastpass is the idea that if you give customers the opportunity to not wait, you can charge them more. The data show that one in four customers will pay as much as 50% more to not wait. So not all your customers are gonna want this. But those who do want it will want it desperately. Maybe they just are they're late. They forgot they're behind the curve, whatever. But you say okay, would you like to spend a little bit extra to do this right now to jump the line essentially. And there's a lot of Fastpasses in our world now. More and more all the time extra TSA Pre is a fast path clear is a fast pass. ATMs are a fast pass here. We're in Orlando right now. Disney has one it was used to be called Fast Pass. I think it's called lightning lane. And now they changed the name to my dad, like you pay more. You don't have to wait. Every business can do this. One of the people came one of the early events for this owns a fancy pen store in New Jersey, right? So like really expensive. So most of our customers are getting business gifts for their boss or whatever. Or maybe for their husband. And the guy who runs the store told me like invariably people like leave in the last minute, right? Forgot my boss's birthday, a pen, a pen, the great gift will give them a pen. And so he's constantly having a Fed X people. Pens. Sure. And I said, Hey, man, are you charging extra for this? Like immediate pen selection? And shipping service is like no, it's just kind of what we do. We charge them the FedEx fee, but we don't actually up charge them for the service and like that fast pass, right? Because if you're like business gift, forgot my boss's birthday, you could charge them 20% more and almost nobody would say anything about it. And it's free money. It's just free money.

Kenneth Kinney 16:07

So I love the Disney example. And I'll tell you this starts to worry me this thing should catch fire because it's fantastic points. And again, if everybody reads this it goes and tries to implement this what worries me well know that everybody will try to charge more yes to make their crappy slow surface faster. Yeah. And although we know a few examples on it, yeah, we we pay for it with prime but there's a lot baked into Amazon for doing that. It's not just a this excitedly everybody took Yes. On.

Jay Baer 16:41

But you think about. You've got a plug in issue right now at home. Emergency Plumbers, charging more will come by now. I mean, that's a that's a business that's been around for since one remind me. So. So there is there's precedent for it. And I think partially, the issue is that business owners haven't thought that unless they read like an emergency plumber situation was like, Well, of course they'll pay more. It's an emergency, that that's not really something that their customers want. And the data is very clear on this. 25% of customers, no matter what business you're in, or like, yeah, I don't want to wait because we interpret speed is giving people care about time more than ever, and if they're willing to pay for that you should let them.

Kenneth Kinney 17:19

Sure. How long did it take you to write this? Not? John Gordon talked about the energy bus. Yeah, yesterday. I think he said it was I think he told me it was 36,000 words. took him three weeks. Yeah, Seth Godin has written a couple of more like a week and a half.

Jay Baer 17:33

Yeah, most of my books take six months because they're meticulously researched as this one but just a different format. This one, because I was started in the keynotes, I had the speech done. So I said the speech done it was easier to write the book is basically the speech but with more examples and expanded right, so a couple of weeks.

Kenneth Kinney 17:52

Alright, so it's that time we get to the show is your favorite shark last time, but I'm gonna ask you a trivia question. You know what the fastest shark is?

Jay Baer 18:00

The fastest shark?

Kenneth Kinney 18:02

You can weave this into your presentations and credit me for it.

Jay Baer 18:05

Well there's a lot I don't know the answer to this. There's a lot of ways to think about

Kenneth Kinney 18:08

Four letters starts with an M...

Jay Baer 18:10

mako shark?

Kenneth Kinney 18:11

There you go. Very fast. I've only seen a few in the ocean. And you know, you're looking quickly it's also

Jay Baer 18:17

A medium size. It's not the biggest. It's the most athletic.

Kenneth Kinney 18:21

Alright, so we get that especially on the show we're asking the most ridiculous or important questions.

Jay Baer 18:27

I'm ready.

Kenneth Kinney 18:29

Who wins in speed contest? Flash or Superman? was a question I'm answering the end of the mediocre Justice League.

Jay Baer 18:38

As I feel like I feel like in that kind of competition Superman is gonna win because can do more stuff right can can tilt the playing field take Earth off its axis can like do things that flash flash or just fast, too much faster. much other stuff. I'm gonna say Superman.

Kenneth Kinney 18:54

Alright, number two. That's the Furious movies are Gone in 60 seconds? Do you remember that one?

Jay Baer 18:59

Yeah, I think gone in 60 seconds is actually a more interesting action movie, but the characters in Fast and Furious are better.

Kenneth Kinney 19:08

Be glad I didn't bring up like Steve McQueen movies.

Jay Baer 19:11

Right, like Bullet.

Kenneth Kinney 19:12

I brought up a Terminator, really to somebody who was born in the 80s. And they looked like it was crazy. Number three, we're talking about Mexican restaurant. tacos or enchiladas.

Jay Baer 19:24

Tacos.

Kenneth Kinney 19:25

Why so?

Jay Baer 19:27

This is similar to the answer I gave you a few years ago. There's no such thing as a bad taco. A good taco or great taco. I'd have lots of bad enchiladas.

Kenneth Kinney 19:36

Very good. All right, number four. It's a popcorn question because you come from Indiana and there's a lot of corn there.

Jay Baer 19:42

That's one of our things. And popcorn in particular is the number one popcorn state..

Kenneth Kinney 19:45

I wouldn't doubt it. So popcorn. Would you rather make your own fresh or do it in a microwave faster? Well, we have a lot of movie nights back home so.

Jay Baer 19:56

And so I'm going to tell you, Okay, this is there is there's a hybrid I answer that I really support can be called op op, op, op op op. And it's really high quality popcorn, great flavors and they send you a special fold down, kind of rubber bowl. So it goes in a microwave. But it tastes like you did it yourself. And the flavors are great and it's direct to consumer ecommerce. Huge, huge fan of that brand. I'd get it all the time. OpoPop. Yeah, check it out you'll like it.

Kenneth Kinney 20:27

Because the fresher air puffs that takes like a half hour.

Jay Baer 20:31

I can't do that

Kenneth Kinney 20:31

With a hairdryer that's spins around

Jay Baer 20:34

When I was a kid Jiffy Pop? Yeah, exactly.

Kenneth Kinney 20:37

Alright, right, number five. And again, I credit you with with the, if not the greatest answer. I don't know what it is on biscuits or cornbread, but changes a little bit. Fried catfish or fried chicken?

Jay Baer 20:50

Fried Catfish, for sure. In fact, had house on a lake in Indiana till recently sold out last fall. But there's the lakeside restaurant is known for their famous catfish. So I've also probably eaten more fried catfish and fried chicken in my overall life. I think catfish is probably a controversial answer, but that's okay. I think catfish is the most underrated of the fishes. Eating it. A lot of people can have a cat fish bottom feed or whatever. It's delicious if you do it right. I'm gonna go Fried Catfish.

Kenneth Kinney 21:21

I grew up in Arkansas. It's you know the catfish capital of the world so....

Jay Baer 21:25

Fried chicken can also be a little overrated.

Kenneth Kinney 21:28

Absolutely. I just wish there was one or two fried catfish restaurants. You got KFC and Bojangles and Popeye's And we need one

Unknown Speaker 21:36

Long John Silver, do they even have catfish?

Kenneth Kinney 21:38

It's horrible. Alright, so where people get a copy of this book?

Unknown Speaker 21:42

Okay, Amazon, the Kindle version releases any day. And then the hardcover will be on Amazon in the three packs for sale. 20 bucks or so. Amazon Prime included first week of August.

Kenneth Kinney 21:56

They gotta get it now because it's going fast.

Speaker 1 21:58

Well, we actually didn't print that many so it's gonna sell out. So if you're gonna if you want one, I hope you do. You're gonna love it. I would get one. I would preorder soon because it's going to (pop sound).

Kenneth Kinney 22:07

Awesome, Jay, it's an honor. Thank you again for joining us on A Shark's Perspective.

Unknown Speaker 22:10

Appreciate it. Always a pleasure.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 22:16

So there was my conversation with Jay they are the author of the time to win how to exceed customers need for speed, and six other best selling business books. The founder of six multimillion dollar companies an inductee into the professional speakers Hall of Fame, a business growth researcher and advisor and even a tequila influencer. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Kenneth Kinney 22:38

First, when you think of speed, you should be faster, but not too fast. I love this example of those pesky chat bots being too fast on a website or how the enchiladas think gets served so quickly, you just know something's not right. Speed at all costs cost your business. And you must find the perfect amount of time that fits your audience. Because time can often be measured not just by seconds and minutes, but by trust. And to that end, even a speedy read like Jay's 60-something page mini book can pack a speedy punch. If you can read a book this short learning get your business moving more quickly than speed of knowledge is now in your favor.

Kenneth Kinney 23:16

Second, speed is so crucial in lead generation. Smart lead gen folks know that call centers and sales reps have to respond quickly to a potential customer filling out a form. What happens too often though, is either they're too slow or the business goes into fast attack mode with texts and emails and calls and then you never want to have anything to do with them again, be first but don't run over your customers in the process.

Kenneth Kinney 23:39

Third, love it when he said that we interpret speed as caring that's so true. His research showed that if you give customers the opportunity to not wait, you often can charge them more when for customers will pay as much as 50% to receive a product or service faster. I had a plumbing issue recently when I was on the road. I paid more for the plumber who got there quickly when I needed it. Another example is if you're ordering something from one retailer versus another, it often comes down to who can get it to you more quickly. Amazon versus everyone else who takes 10 business days to ship the hair beats the tourists in any of those situations.

Kenneth Kinney 24:14

Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 24:18

Thank you again for the privilege of your time, and I'm so thankful to everyone who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 24:23

Now you've got more time after this short show to do things a little faster. It's your time to win now. So please join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)