Webinar Replay | 6 Big Opportunities to Increase Sales through Team Building, Groups, and Incentives

6 Big Opportunities to Increase Sales through Team Building, Groups, and Incentives

Brandon Lake:

All right, we're so excited to have this workshop and this webinar here today. We've got individuals joining us from around the globe. As I look at the list here, we have a lot of tour companies, but also several other experience businesses, from ax throwing, to inflatables, bowling, spa, adventure parks, all kinds of great experiences. And I think this topic is incredibly relevant to everybody, so I'm really excited about this.

My name is Brandon Lake. I'm the CEO of Resmark and WaiverSign. We provide a booking and marketing automation platform as well as a digital waiver solution. We're excited to have a lot of our clients joining us today, but we're even more excited to have Josh Oaks joining us today all the way from Ibiza, Spain, and he's the founder of the Sunshine Tribe. And I'm sure a lot of you know Josh as he's done a phenomenal job at educating businesses, and particularly in the tourism industry, sharing what he learned by starting and selling his own tour business in Melbourne, Australia. So we'll be excited to hear a little bit of his background today and his story and how it relates to our topic.

So let me tell you how we got to where we are today with this webinar. I actually co-own a couple of businesses, Western River Expeditions and Moab Adventure Center, and we of course utilize our software, it's part of the reason we built it was for those businesses, and now a lot of others use it around the world. I was talking to Josh about these businesses a couple of months ago and he said something that really resonated with me. He said, things have really changed over the past couple of years. Businesses, and we kind of know this, and I knew this, but I haven't really thought about the opportunity it presented, he said, there's businesses have people working at home all over the place, more so than they ever have. And while a lot of those employees are enjoying that, it presents some new challenges for those businesses. And some of those are A, how do you create a culture and kind of the bonding that can occur only really in person? How do you create that when now you have all these people doing remote work? And number two, how do you incentivize those employees to really want to work hard and to perform for the company?

And so we started talking about that and realized on my part that we have probably a bigger opportunity than we've ever had before to get in front of these people with the types of experiences they offer. Whether you're providing tours or activities or some other service or experience, there is an opportunity to help these businesses with a solution that can allow them to bring their employees together to provide that kind of culture that they're looking for and to incentivize employees.

So I was super excited about this and we talked about Josh putting together some of his experiences in running his business, because he's been very successful in creating this particular channel, this corporate channel, the messaging and everything that can appeal to these people to be able to make this a new business segment. Or in our case, we do some of this already, but I think we're missing a big opportunity here by not taking advantage of this shift that has happened over the last couple of years and changing our messaging to get in front of more of these businesses and provide them with something that I think is going to be invaluable to them.

So with that, that's what we're excited to talk about today, Josh, and I'm really happy to have you here, I'm going to go ahead and turn the time over to you. Before I do that, just a couple of notes for our audience. Here in the platform, you'll see that there is a little chat window. You can utilize that. There's also a questions panel, either one of those. But if you have questions you'd like to ask, some of those, I'll hold until the end, others I may interject here now and then as Josh goes through his presentation, if the timing seems right. But certainly be thinking of some of those things, how you want to apply this to your business, ask questions, we'll have time at the end to go through all of that.

So with that, Josh, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you.

Josh Oaks:

Wonderful. Thanks mate. I'll just share screen, give me one second. Thanks for having me. Thanks for the great intro.

Brandon Lake:

Absolutely.

Josh Oaks:

Where am I? All right, so let me know that... oops, so get back to the start. Okay, you're seeing that nice and clearly?

Brandon Lake:

Yeah, that's coming through really well.

Josh Oaks:

Excellent. So yeah, look, I'm going to echo a lot of the things that Brandon said, and one of the important things is that a lot of the organizations and these businesses that Brandon was talking about, they don't even know they have a problem right now, a lot of them don't. So there is a monumental opportunity for a lot of you to really, really grow your businesses quickly through a new sales channel, a new market segment.

So yeah, as Brandon would've mentioned, the topic of the webinar, six big opportunities to increase sales through team building, groups and incentives and many other things as well. So Brandon, jump in if there's anyone I missed here, but it's definitely for you if you run a tour, if you run an activity, if you run experiences, or even if you run events, you'll find a lot of this really relatable and you're going to apply a lot of these strategies to your business as well. But as I say, if I've missed someone mate, then just jump in and let me know.

So what I'm going to aim to do over the next, well, 30 to 40 minutes really, is show you how you can legitimately accelerate your experience business faster than anything you've potentially tried before. It really has that potential. I'll show you how it worked for me, I'll show you how it can work for you as well. By serving a market segment, ie local businesses, and not necessarily even local businesses, there's obviously meetings and incentives, there's international and domestic opportunities as well. But to start somewhere, local businesses that really, really need something that you're offering right now more than they've ever needed it before.

So I'll just run through this really quickly as a lot of you will know me, some of you won't. But back in 2007, as Brandon mentioned, I started a tour company called Melbourne Private Tours down there in Melbourne, Australia. That was the website a few years back around the time of sale, which I'll tell you about in a second, offering some really high-end premium, exclusive, immersive, private experiences around Melbourne and different regions. When I started, it was a tricky time, I like many of you started with this dream of just showcasing my little corner of the world. I had these visions of this fleet of luxury vehicles, and I had all these wonderful ideas and drive and ambition, and the first couple of years were pretty tricky, pretty awful to be quite honest. And my fleet of luxury vehicles consisted of a secondhand Toyota van with me as a guide and effectively wearing every hat, operations, reservations, customer service, inquiries, vehicle maintenance, as a lot of you would know. Wearing every hat, not wearing a lot of them particularly well and nearly through the towel more times than I can remember.

Probably about three or four years later, we really started to get some traction and I started getting some accolades and the business started to grow fairly quickly. I figured a lot of things out, things started to work. I got some good guidance and support around me, and we started to grow pretty quickly. And by 2014, we were doing well over a million dollars in revenue. We had a nice luxury fleet of touring vehicles. Business was going really, really well. I was living a really great lifestyle and life was good. Had a nice team, a really small but well organized, aligned team in the office, and obviously some really, really great tour guides as well.

And it was at the time we were doing around $2 million a year that I started to see something. And as the immersive nature and we started to up-level our experiences, I started to get a lot of inquiry from local businesses, executive assistants or sales and marketing managers or business owners, along the lines of, hey, I love your Yarra Valley ballooning and barrel tasting experience, or your chef led journey. It sounds like the kind of thing that my team would love to do. So I noticed the trends and I had a really good business at that point, a seven figure business, I had a good team, I had bandwidth, I had resources, so I decided to do it properly and I launched MPT corporate events. So serving the local corporate market, and it was really, really successful. And in the space of it was about nine months, we grew that really quickly to over 300,000 in revenue. So it happened very, very quickly.

And the things that I learned and my team learned, that we could really fill a need with some of these things, and I'm sure you can also do the same. So the needs of the corporate market vary greatly, and there's a lot of them. So company Christmas parties, end of financial year events, we run our financial year in Australia July to June, and even end of quarter events where there's an opportunity there. Team building events of course, reward and recognition programs or experiences, so rewarding high performers in the business. Partner programs. And on that note as well, entertaining delegates or international visitors from the company in destination, client engagement, pre and post conference and company incentives. So a whole bunch of different needs, and we found that we could deliver on many of those.

And when I sold my business and it was 2017, I got a really good price for the business. Why? That's another story. It just felt right for me, 10 years doing one thing. I wanted to do more of what I'm doing right now, but I could go deep on that one. But one of the real motivators, one thing that allowed me to generate a whole bunch of offers at the same time drive that ultimate sale price up was the tantalizing opportunity that the rapid growth we had in their corporate business presented. And we'd only just really got our teeth into it and we've grown it really quickly, and there was just no limit to what the ultimate owners could do with that.

So before I dive into that, why was I exploring a new revenue stream or a new sales channel? For me, my own experience I learned from great advice that I got. When I got the sort of support and the mentoring that I wanted around me was that, and this is really important for you guys, if you are going to grow a really thriving, successful, widely profitable business, then there is a much stronger likelihood that you're going to do that by having a diverse range of sales channels, by driving sales through a number of different channels. Maybe somewhere between, depending on your bandwidth and resources and the size of your business, somewhere between four and eight really strong performing sales channels would be my recommendation.

So this was a bit of a pie chart from around the time I sold the business. So you can see we were doing a lot through travel partners, so travel agents, which was the lion's share of our revenue, but we could break that down into 50 different customers. So that was coming through a whole bunch of different agents, so there was diversity there. Direct business was a good chunk, corporate business was growing quickly, hotels and partnerships and collaborations with other tour operators, and then some other stuff like little bits and pieces. So there was a lot of things and that allowed us to grow the business quickly. And I implore all of you to avoid having any over reliance on one particular sales channel if you really want to grow a really successful, thriving, profitable business.

So as Brandon mentioned, why now? The opportunity right now is something more than I've ever seen. Just to reiterate what Brandon said, the world has changed. Semi-remote or remote work has been with us for a couple of years now, and it ain't going away. My really basic research shows that businesses are around 30% more productive. So the people in those businesses are around 30% more productive working from home than they were working in the office, for obvious reasons, travel time, distractions and all kinds of stuff. And they draw a line through around 30% of their business operating expense is by having people working from home as well. So it's really great for business, but that throws up a whole new set of challenges, obviously fostering company culture, team morale, motivating, incentivizing, having people aligned, and they're real challenges.

And a lot of businesses they haven't actually figured out as I mentioned, that they have a problem. And what I learned by tackling the corporate market, I'll go a little deeper on it, is that sometimes people don't even know they have a problem until you present it to them. And if you do it in the right way, you can have a lot of success. And so a lot of businesses will have now allocated budgets for this kind of stuff, but one of them, it'll be kind of new to them, but once you articulate it to them in the right way, they'll be nodding along saying, yes, I have that problem. That is a problem I have. How can you solve that for me?

Okay, so where would you start? And look, there's a whole bunch of strategies. I am really an advocate of teaching strategies that are very, very affordable, free, that aren't going to mean throwing a lot of budget initially, and just things that you can do with time and human resources. So here's the sort of stuff that I did. Now, everything I did in my business, I always started with research. It was the cornerstone of everything. So I always took a step back to ask a lot of people that I saw as a potential customer, an ideal customer, most represented type of customer, some probing questions. It helped me immensely understand their needs, their problems, their desires they want satiated. So that's where I always started with everything I launched.

I learned the hard way that sometimes what I think are great ideas are irrelevant because I'm not my target market, so I drew a line in the sand. And as I grew, everything I did was research based. Not crazy amounts of time, spending months and months in research phase is enough to your bandwidth to get a real assessment of what people's legitimate desires, problems, and issues were, so that would help you create something that was going to solve those problems and satiate those desires.

So a few things that you could do, this may not be relevant for all of you, but a simple thing that we did was went back five or six years to every historical inquiry, and we'd had inquiries over the journey from corporate clients, and we went back and we analyzed every single one of those. And before, we were really proactive in serving the corporate market, over that three years, we might've had 50, maybe 60 corporate inquiries. So we just got a sense of what type of business, what type of industry, the company size, the role of the decision maker and the nature of the inquiry, what they needed. We always asked some probing questions, what sort of outcomes did you want for the day, and a few other things. So we got a really good feel for what was happening in the corporate market, and we started to see some trends come out of that as well.

Then the next one, I found crazy, crazy effective, just simply people in my networks and in your networks. Now, all of you out there would know hundreds and hundreds of people that have a job that work in companies. Obviously yes, there's a lot of freelancers and things like that, a lot of people working remotely, but ultimately we all know people that work in businesses, that go to offices, that have work colleagues, that have bosses and corporate structures. So I started with a bunch of those and I asked a lot of my team to do the same. So all up, we might've spoken to 100 people that work in a business, in a company. So we asked them, what did your company do by way of company entertainment? And they're like, huh, what are you talking about? Do you do a Christmas party? Do you do an annual conference? Do you do a team building day or do you get rewarded for anything? And is there a conference the company runs once a year? That sort of stuff.

And then a few more probing questions, so what is it specifically? When does it happen? Does it tie into a particular time of the year or end of financial year? What do you feel would be the average spend per person? And if they didn't know, we'd be able to work it out. Okay, we're pretty good at working that stuff out. So what do you do? Where do you go? Do they take you there in a bus? Do you have a three course dinner? We'd be able to get a really clear sense of what they were spending. What's the size of the company? Who is responsible for making these decisions? Is it the human resources manager? Is it the executive assistant? Who actually organizes this stuff? Have you got a dedicated events person? And then what's the general feedback about it, about the event? What's the talk around the office? Do people appreciate it? Is attendance really good? And from an attendee perspective, what's frustrating? What sort of challenges do you see? What would you as an attendee love to do? You know what I mean?

So we got an absolute goldmine of valuable information just from asking those questions, and it didn't take a lot of time. Probably we dedicated maybe a month or two and dedicated time in every day to have these conversations. Then we reported back after, look, I can't remember whether it was at the end of a couple of months, but we dedicated enough time to doing that.

And then we added to that a bit of research of our own. And this is what I would recommend you guys all do right now, industries, who's thriving right now? What's happening in a global environment? Things like cleaning businesses or financial advice or food manufacturing. You could jump on Google in about five minutes and you could come up with 15 lists of all the industries that you want to invest in that are flying, that are going to do really well over the next two to three years. So you would get that, then you would zero in on your local area, what businesses are in your local area that are in those industries? And you might even go a little further and see if you can find a little information on who's actually performing really well. There are ways, there's your Chamber of Commerce for example, or you may be able to find if there's businesses that are listed, but a little information there. And then of course, we could see if any of those fit the demographic of the historical inquiries that we had. So I hope that's all making sense.

And then the last thing we did, which was, and this doesn't necessarily need to be limited to your direct destination, who's your competition? Who runs team building experiences? Who runs company Christmas parties? Google team building experience Melbourne or Los Angeles, it doesn't matter where it is, jump on these sites. You could get up 30 or 40 websites of companies that specialize in these things. I gave you the list of that a few slides back. And find out who's reviewing them, who's actually writing reviews? Who's had their experiences? Is it Tanya the executive assistant from Kraft Foods, or is it someone from a financial institution? So you'll often be able to see the name and the company, because a lot of event or corporate entertainment companies or team building specialists or things like that, they like to have the name of their company from the person who's reviewed them. So that's another really great one. Who's actually doing this stuff? Who's spending the money?

So there's four different strategies to get your starters. And another way is of course, if you've got budget, you could start running ads and you could have some real success. Speak to a digital marketer, that's not me, I've got a base level of experience, but really easy to target corporate business owners. Geographically, within 20 kilometers of your experience or your tour business, targeting that sales and marketing managers, executive assistants, business owners, size and geographic areas, you're going to have some success. It's not a challenging thing to target. But once you actually go through those steps, and this next step I'm going to tell you about now, your marketing is going to be insanely good, because you're going to be right inside your customer's head.

So the next thing you would do, and I alluded to this earlier, time block, set aside some time for outreach. And that could be you as the company owner. You might have someone driving sales, you might have a sales person in your office, but ultimately it could be you. What is a really great investment for anyone, I think, is to get someone who is going to be dedicated to driving sales. But it's really great for you to know, to understand this process and have had some success in this process before you make that decision to bring someone in.

So there's a few strategies you could explore here, and the first one would be to have a conversation with the decision maker. With a lot of my outreach strategies, I generally prefer an initial email with a promise of a follow-up phone call. I think it works well, but this was also a strategy that worked well for me. So once you've got your target list of businesses and you've even got your list of decision makers, you may even have done the requisite research to find out who that executive assistant or who that sales and marketing manager, who that human resource manager is, and you're going to find they're actually not that challenging to get on the phone. So if you're really open, really transparent, you might be able to contact them directly, you might have to come through a switchboard or a secretary. With a secretary, they're very happy to pass it up the chain if they can wipe their hands of you and shuffle you off to the person you want to talk to.

But whether you're talking to the decision maker or someone who you're hoping is going to give you the ear of the decision maker, something along these lines, look, this is who I am, this is what I do. Just want to be clear, I'm not selling anything. What I'm doing at the moment is I'm working on, and you can establish credibility into who I am and what I do. Okay? Don't go too long. Really, really short and sharp. I'm working on an amazing, awesome new range of team building experiences or company Christmas party options, really exclusive, really immersive. And you can get people excited like, oh, this sounds interesting. This sounds something like my company would be interested in. And once you've told me you're not selling anything, then they're going to be even more receptive and lean in.

So you want to ask them a couple of quick questions, just one minute, or even just one minute or two minutes, okay? If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to know, what do you do for your company Christmas party or for your team building days, or for your rewarding of staff and your reward and recognition experiences? How do you reward staff? And if they don't, they're going to be really sheepish and really embarrassed about it, and they're going to want to know a little more. So what do you do? When do you do it? How much? Is there a fixed budget? Generally, how much do you spend for these events? How often do you do them? Generally, what's the feedback? What are your single biggest challenges? Are you the decision maker or are you the organizer? What are your frustrations or any fears or your personal desires for the event? These kind of questions.

And you are often going to get people that are really open and happy to have a chat with you. There's things that you're saying, first of all, you're not trying to sell something. Second is you've planted a seed, and they are completely aware that if they're not rewarding their team, then they should be. So that's what I learned, people are curious to learn more. Well, how can I do this? I want to know how I can do this. Especially when they pass it up the chain to their boss or their manager, things like this make people look good.

So what you want to be doing through this entire process is recording or writing down the exact language that people use. The people, the friends that work in businesses, the decision makers in this target list of organizations, you want to be writing down the things that they're saying, because then you are going to use that exact language back in your marketing and your promotion. And when you do, people are going to read it. They're going to be nodding along and they're going to be leaning in and saying, yes, that is exactly how I feel. It's like he's in my mind, this makes sense. It's going to really resonate.

So I'm going to just tell you about stuff that I learned and maybe even just fast track you and save you a little bit of time. So throughout this process, what I learned, which was interesting, is that you're always surprised. There's no discernible patterns. So you might have two seemingly identical organizations, a legal office on that corner with 10 staff turning over $3 million a year, the same business on the other corner, doing the same staff, same staff, and one could be like, oh, we do a team dinner $100 ahead once a year. The other one, they might have a full corporate entertainment program. They might do quarterly team building, [inaudible 00:27:15] bring people in, they might do a client engagement event, all kinds of stuff. And it looks like, wow, how can they be so different? And so that's one thing I learned. Never make assumptions, every business differs, which is probably not that helpful for you.

So then at the end of that conversation with that decision maker, and this is going to be a really short conversation, it's going to be five minutes, who knows, they might just go, blah and want to talk to you and it might be longer, but at the end, what you're going to say is, well, look, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate your time, and I'm going to get out there and I'm going to develop these things. What you had to tell me is the incredibly valuable.

So when I've fully developed these experiences, this new range of A, B, and C, how would it be to you if I could come back with three or four meaningful, memorable concepts and ideas that are light years ahead of what you've been doing to this point and they come in under budget, would you be interested in seeing those? And ultimately, the answer is going to be 100% yes. And what that does is it gives you permission. They're already almost sold. Okay, great. Well, look, I'll probably have them ready in a few weeks. I'll come back to you then, and then we'll take it the next step further. So that was a really effective strategy.

Now, if you're thinking, but this is such a time consuming, laborious experience, well, yeah, it takes a little bit of time to get some traction, but you are learning so much along the way. Because then when you turn on the flick the ad switch, you just know you are in the mind of your customer so greatly.

I'm just making sure, I'm assuming I'm coming through clear, Brandon, obviously I'm not seeing anything other than my screen running through these slides, and I always get a bit nervous when there's just silence. So just let me know that everything's coming through clearly before I push on?

Brandon Lake:

No, it's all clear. Since we're kind of pausing here for just a second, a couple of questions on this, because this research phase, I love the steps that you put together. One thing I'm wondering, you talk about using your past inquiries, which I think is great, looking at your own network, of course, which I view as your personal network, people you know. What about also utilizing, if you're already an established business and you have an email list, for example, of people who have already experienced your services, maybe as an individual or a family, most of those people either work inside a business, perhaps some of them own a business. What about using that as a potential resource as well?

Josh Oaks:

Exactly right. You've got a list of three or 4,000 leisure travelers or visitors. Every one of them has a job, and there's going to be a big chunk of them that work somewhere, and there's going to be a big chunk that have teams. So absolutely, yes, as long as you can really, really clearly articulate the difference in what they experienced and your new range of corporate experiences and how you've aligned it to the corporate needs. Yes, I'm just thinking about this as we go, 100%.

And what you are then going to be doing is you are probably going to be relying on those people, perhaps have a bit of a thought into that email campaign, but what you would need to do is make it super simple, super easy. Let's say, for example, your message would be for that, they could be company owners, but there could be some kind of incentive or some kind of special offer for people that have experienced what you do, that their company might get a special offer to do something that you've created that is specific to the corporate market, but you need to make it easy. So here's what you need to do, even create a little promo or something, all you need to do is cut and paste that and send it to your boss, you know what I mean? Because if someone says, hey, that's a great idea. I should pass it up to chain to Wendy. But if it's complicated, it's going to mean them sitting down and penning an email and nothing ever happens.

So if you can think of a way to make it super simple so that someone that has had an amazing, you've got a raving fan that could then open up a door for you, how could you make it so simple a three-year-old could do it. Does that make sense?

Brandon Lake:

Oh, totally. I think that's great. And then another question is, you mentioned having these conversations with people where you get them on the phone and you're asking these questions, which I think is wonderful because it allows you to dig a little bit deeper based on the responses, what would you think of the effectiveness of that versus sending out a survey, for example, asking those similar questions and kind of gather them in bulk?

Josh Oaks:

I never tried the strategy, because I think hitting people up cold with a survey, you need to think your way through that. The next one I'm going to show you is an outreach email strategy, which could serve the purpose of that. I guess surveys that work really well for me are things that have, what's your single biggest, your one thing, that number one, meaty desire or problem? So if you're giving someone a survey of can you answer these 10 questions, and it's impersonal, it's informal, it's not going to resonate, it's not going to go down well. Maybe even it could be your second step with the survey, like an initial outreach email. Then once someone opens the door and invites you in, that would be an opportunity.

So on that note, let me know if this answers the question. So an outreach email works really, really well with a promise of a follow up call. So that is a really effective strategy in that cold calling is tricky in the sense that the person who's doing the cold call, they're always a little bit uptight, little tense. They feel like they've got to rush through things, they've only got a few seconds to capture someone's attention. And if you're not a skilled salesperson, which let's be honest, you guys out there run experiences and tours and activities and you're wearing a bunch of different hats, a lot of you suck at sales. That's probably a weak area, and this wouldn't come naturally.

So an outreach email is great when you can actually give someone an opportunity to learn a little bit about you and just let them know that you're going to follow up with a call the next day or the day after that. And when they get that call, then there's going to be a level of comfort on both sides. If you don't get the call, it means they've had a quick look at what you've said in your email, and they're like, yeah, not for me, and they'll probably just fob you off. But if they're going to take the call, then there's going to be a level of comfort and things are going to go a bit better, generally, in my experience. Okay. Does that make sense?

Brandon Lake:

Yep.

Josh Oaks:

So I just want to just quickly, I thought I'd just show you if I could grab it, where we got that. Sorry, am I sharing my? No, that's not what I'm after either. What I did have is something ready to rock. Okay, that's it there. I might just make that a little larger. Can you see that, Brandon?

Brandon Lake:

Yeah, we can see it.

Josh Oaks:

Okay, great. This is actually to an outreach email script to a travel partner. So not to a corporate client, but the spirit is the same. So this is something that in my coaching program I share with people that was really, really effective in growing my agent business. But it starts really short and sharp, this is who I am, this is what I do. You might even pop a link in there. Thought it'd be a great time to reach out as right now. Now this of course, is going to differ, because we know right now it's a great time to reach out with the corporate market. We've already talked about that. There's no better time in history to be reaching out. And they're like, all right, yeah, I get it. I get it. Even if they didn't know it before, they certainly do now.

Then drop something in there that shows you've done a bit of homework about them. Might be speaking to a couple of people and they said, you are amazingly helpful, or your business is clearly going amazingly. You guys are clearly doing something right over there. Something nice that shows you've done a bit of homework. We've been around for, had a lot of success. Keep it short, a lot of success doing this thing or offering this thing or entertaining or whatever it is that you do with a lot of success. And most importantly, but we are different in the sense that... And this is the key, a couple of reasons why you're different to everyone else. And then would you be keen to learn some more? So you're not hitting them up with this A4 page of stuff, it's just what you want in that. Now this is just one type of email strategy, and it worked really effectively for me.

And what you want, oops, I'll just get that back to where I was there. What you want is to get to first base, and first base is an acknowledgement and a yeah, sure, I'd love to hear more. So that's your first step with your outreach. Then you've been given an opportunity to build a relationship. So the next step would be a little bit more of detailed information and then even just a suggestion that you just jump on a quick five minute call, had a couple of questions about your specific needs. So things like that. Everyone will work differently as far as your access to people. Some will be super busy, send me an email. Some will be like, yeah, I've got five or 10 minutes. Or others who are actually dedicated event people, they would love to learn more about a really amazing product or experience that they could use. So that's a couple of different strategies.

What I would say is this, be prepared to be persistent in your follow up. So let's see, if we use travel agents and the corporate market, they're wildly different. So if you are wanting to grow your business through travel agents, which I had a lot of success doing that, then you're going to find it's a lot easier. People get back to you. The travel industry has a thirst for something new. They want to know about new products and experiences and ideas. They want to know about things that are going to set them apart from others. So you've got a much more receptive ear from a travel agent, from a product manager or from a reservations agent in a travel company.

Corporate market, I learned to be very, very different. And ultimately 80% of these types of events, team building days and things like that, are organized by people who just don't want to do it. It's like a pain in the, they've got this actual job over there that they're trying to do. The boss has asked them to do this other thing, and they're like, oh, it's just so painful. This is just an extra job. So what they want is for this job to be taken off their shoulders, but they don't need you until they need you. So you're far more likely to be fobbed off for a while by a executive assistant or a sales and marketing manager or a business owner because at that immediate time, they don't need you. So you need to be persistent in your follow up. And sometimes I might take five, six, seven follow up finally for someone to say, sure, sure, sure, I got it. Okay, yes, now you've got my attention. I've had a look, it looks great. I do have 10 minutes for a quick call. Or you've got me thinking, and I actually think we do need to organize something for the end of financial year. I'd love to hear what you've got in mind.

So with your follow up, the way that it works best for me, and it could be a combination of phone and email. I'll try with another call. Hey, didn't get you, didn't have a lot of luck, but always a couple of things. One is very apologetic. Look, I'm really sorry, clearly you've got a lot on your plate at the moment, but look, I thought I'd just try you again, see if we can shore up that chat that we had planned or something like that. So mindful that you're really busy, apologetic, I'd probably give you a bum steer, not like I'm really sorry, but I'm mindful that you're very, very busy. It seems like that's the case. So look, I'd still love that quick chat. So if you get too annoying in like, hey, I've tried you four times, then people are just going to get a bit like, go away. Hope that makes sense.

So to save you a little bit of time with your research, these are the things over the journey that I learned are the challenges and the frustrations and the desires of decision makers. So first of all, they get really stressed out that it's hard to please everyone. So an event planner, someone who's organizing, a decision maker, they're always stressed out. There's so many people in the office, people complain. Some people are really easy to please, some are hard to please. Some have got a terrible fitness level, some have got a really great fitness level. I get stressed out about it, and that's probably the hardest thing, something that appeals to everyone. So if you can do something that has contingencies, ie that you've recognized that, you are mindful of it. And even in when you are in that first point of contact, look, in my experience in the corporate market, I understand that one of the biggest stresses that people have is that it's hard to please everyone. So here's what we do to combat that.

The next thing, as I mentioned, time to organize, big responsibility, that often quite frankly they don't want. So if you can reassure them that you've got their back, you've got it covered, it's in safe hands. You just get on with your job, let me take control. I'll report back to you every couple of days just to let you know things are in place. They stress over supply quality, ie you. So you need to reassure them you can deliver to promise, that you understand the needs of the corporate market, you understand how it differs to other types of customers, that will alleviate their stress and make them more willing to work with you.

In most events or in many events, one thing that you need to be aware of is that they often want an outcome. They've got budget, they have someone organize an event, but the boss is like, well, how's this going to actually improve our organizations? [inaudible 00:42:25] learn about this, there's a lot of that. Other times it's just a reward or a recognition. I just want them to have fun. But often they want to know what the outcome's going to be, and they often want a bit of a challenge or a team building element to their events.

They also want, from a staff perspective, they want staff to really feel like they appreciate them. They've actually put some thought and some effort into this event or this experience. They want really good attendance, so they worry that people might not want to come or they might just make an excuse to be too busy or stay in the office or whether it's out of hours. So need to really encourage people to come along to the event. They want great ideas, really quality events that don't blow the budget. And flexibility is really, really important. They're very, very often, very time poor. You might do this thing that's five hours, they're like, look, great, I want it, but we can't start till 11 and we've got to finish at 1:30 because we've got a board meeting. So is it malleable? Can you fit it into that timeframe?

So those are the real key things. And if you're talking budgets, this is very loose, but the average event that I did, now, remember I started running private day tours, average event was around 20 people. Average budget was around 4,000 to 5,000. So my experience or my recommendation is you want to start aligning yourself or finding or ideal customers that have a budget of around $200 to $250. Obviously we had a lot that were considerably higher than that, but people will spend that kind of money. So imagine what that could do for your tour business, if you're running $79 small group walking tours, what it could mean to your business to be executing seamless, $4,000 to $5,000 events. It's going to change things dramatically. And that's entirely possible, those budgets do exist and they're very, very common.

Brandon Lake:

A question for you that came in from here, I think is a good question. Others may have the same question here. So she's saying this would be a new thing for her, doing events like this. So let's say she's planning to do a unique sub kayak experience including food, but right now, because she's smaller, perhaps she's limited to the number of people she can host. So you said the average size group might be 20. What about those who are in the boat where they don't have enough resources to maybe host that many people? Did you find where [inaudible 00:45:23] corporate market [inaudible 00:45:25]?

Josh Oaks:

Great question. Just make sure, someone's buzzing me over here. I just didn't know if it was someone trying to get into the webinar. Great question. So let's say you run a kayak experience and you've got a maximum of 10 people, and you are thinking, oh, I can't [inaudible 00:45:46]. So I'm going to say, we do this thing, and they're going to say, can you do our team? So what you need to do is tell them how you can help them.

So best way to describe it? Okay, so you've created a reward and recognition experience that works perfectly for the top 10 performers in your company or for the top five performers in their partner. It works beautifully, every thought and consideration has been covered off, and this is exactly what your company needs to do. You need to reward your top five or your top 10 company performers, and this is an experience that has been specifically created for that need. So they don't know that they want that, they're like, hey, that sounds great. That's a really good idea. Okay, so we do it for five? Yep, you do it for five, or for 10.

So you tell them what you've created, why you've created specifically for them and how they can use it.

Brandon Lake:

Yeah, no, that makes total sense. And she threw out another question here that was, perhaps the group size is getting a little bit bigger, should she collaborate with another operator that has something she doesn't have?

Josh Oaks:

Absolutely. Yeah, we used to do things like that all the time, like set up events. I'll show you a couple in a minute, but we might have a dragon boat regatta going there on the river. And on the riverside, they were doing a picnic with lawn games and just sort of through. Yeah, so you can pitch a whole bunch of, like bringing in suppliers is great. If you've got suppliers that have offered great experiences that you've got a good relationship with, that you align well with, 100%. It is just opening up opportunities. So absolutely. Obviously, there's a whole bunch of considerations, quality control, but fundamentally the answer is yes, I would be doing that.

Brandon Lake:

Okay, great. And then just one last question on timing also. You're starting out, you don't obviously have any referrals yet, and if businesses are asking for those, I mean, how do you handle that?

Josh Oaks:

Yeah, well, I mean, look, you've all got hundreds of, thousands of raving fans that have come through your experiences. So ultimately, you've got a whole bunch of people that have experienced your core products that are willing to rave about it, and to get the wheels turning, that's absolutely fine. So you could just use reviews and testimonials from existing customers that aren't necessarily corporate customers. You don't have to telegraph that, but there's nothing wrong with having a bunch of testimonials from Joe Smith. Does he work for a company? Well, is he happy for you to have his company? You might even ask him, look, I've got this great testimonial, are you okay for me to present it to a client with your business name as well? He's like, yeah, of course you can. That's fine. You could also get a bunch of friends or people that do work in corporations to just come and run off a mill and get them on to sample an element of what you do, and then to give you some reviews and testimonials.

There's a whole bunch of ways you could go about it, but that's not an obstacle at all. The fact that you've just got people that have had a great experience doing what you do, a slightly different sort of style of experience to what you are going to be serving up to the corporate market, to get you going, I think it's fine.

Brandon Lake:

Yeah, those are great thoughts.

Josh Oaks:

Okay? Cool. And I mentioned this earlier, so when you're ready to throw some budget towards your sales and marketing, well imagine if you just launched your corporate business and just started running ads, and you launch your corporate business and six months later after all of this, then you started running ads. I don't even need to articulate to you how effective they would be. Using the exact language, solving the exact problem, satiating the exact desires, and that just goes straight into your marketing and sales initiatives. You use it in your marketing collateral, you use it to run ads, you use it for promos and things, for your email marketing as well.

So then your copy is the last thing. I'll just show you a couple of examples just to illustrate. But ultimately what I just showed you back here, okay, so let's say you're writing copy for your leisure visitors, your international visitors or your local weekenders that are just taking your experience as just like, well, leisure visitors, and then you're writing copy for your corporate clients. So for me, I was running Melbourne Private Tours. So my copy for leisure visitors was stuff that was focusing on the landmarks, the destination, just getting people feeling like they're actually living and breathing those cool climate wines and that beautiful majestic sunsets and all that sort of stuff. They're like, oh, wow, that sounds amazing. But my copy for the corporate market for a seemingly similar experience was very different. It was always about those things, taking the stress off your shoulders, taking that responsibility, making sure you can please everyone, having contingencies for those people so everyone's getting something that they want. Being flexible on time, getting people from A to B, end to end solutions. So that was the stuff that we're really going to find important. So that's how your copy's going to differ.

And I'll just grab a couple of things here. So this, for example, was my corporate menu, let's call it my corporate menu, inspiration for your next corporate event. And this over here were my tour descriptions for my leisure, my high-end inbound international visitors. So as I mentioned, this copy is all about the stuff I was talking about, getting people immersed, they can actually feel it and live it and breathe it and see it. The drinks being poured and the sun going down, the lights coming on, all that sort of stuff. But over here it was more practical, it was about solving problems and understanding those needs. And even the layout, I would say a lot of the actual experiences and products and suppliers I used were the same stuff, but it was just the way that I presented it to them and the copy I used.

So a couple of examples might be, I'm just going to run through, so our Yarra Valley Wine Blending Challenge was not dissimilar to many elements of our...

where am I? Hopefully I can find it. Okay. So yeah, we did a Yarra Valley ballooning and barrel tasting tour, which had an element of wine blending later in the day. So that was a dramatically different sounding experience, but a lot of it, in essence, the suppliers, the experience included, were very, very similar. I'll try and give you another example, I'm hoping this is becoming clear. I'm happy to share these two documents with you as well in the follow up, Brandon. Okay, so this like a Yarra Valley picnic and garden party with lawn games and team challenges and things like that, again, was very similar in many ways to the Yarra Valley experience that we offered to our international visitors.

Okay, got real deep on copy, but that I guess is probably the crux of it. The cornerstone of that is that you need to be writing very, very different copy based on the needs and desires of that particular customer and the problems they want solving, the desires they want satiating. And those two different sets of needs and desires are very, very different from the people that you serve right now to the corporate customers that you will be serving. And I learned that in the way that, when I told you right back at the start, the way that I launched MPT Corporate Events is that I started to get a lot of inquiry from executive assistants saying, hey, that sounds great. That thing you're doing, like your morning to Peninsula chef led tour, your Yarra Valley ballooning and barrel tasting, it seems like it'd be a really great fit for my team.

So we would be saying, oh yeah, great. Well, look, there's some information. That's our tour description, there are the prices, [inaudible 00:55:26] version was terrible, absolutely terrible, because I was trying to sell something to them that I had created and marketed to a very, very different type of customer. It wasn't hitting the mark. I think that it would get passed up the chain, and they're like, yeah, we're sort of looking for something a bit different. We want some sort of team building element, a bit of an outcome. Looks too long, it looks like they've got too much in the itinerary, so it wasn't resonating. So once you understand the needs and you can write your copy to solve those problems, then you'll have a lot more success.

So yeah, just a couple of quick lessons learned before we finish up. One, I touched on this before, you just never know. Every company's different, never make assumptions. You can make general, you can see a lot of patterns that emerge, but there could be... I'm just trying to see if I actually covered that one. Yeah, so you could have an opportunity to serve one customer in 10 or 15 different ways every year. You can get a client that could be a large financial institution and they do a big company Christmas party where they invite all the partners and there's 300 people there. Or they might have small departments, little teams, and those teams might do smaller quarterly, food tours, just like little team bonding experiences. Then you might have a reward program for their company top performers, and then they might do client engagement events, and they've got a $30,000 annual budget to entertain clients. And you could get all these

opportunities if you can pitch it to them in the right way. But just because one company is doing those things, never assume that everyone else is following suit.

What you can do is when you find companies that aren't, you can literally take a case study, stuff you're doing elsewhere, and say, well, look, these guys are doing this stuff with us and they're having outrageous results. It's doing this for their people, it's improving their business in this way. And frankly, if you are not, then don't take this the wrong way, but you really should be, because you're probably getting left behind. There's so much more I could say about it.

And I mentioned this about the follow-up, just be mindful, don't get annoyed. Don't feel like, oh, what am I doing wrong? Why won't they take my calls? Sometimes you're just not a priority until they really need you. So you've just got to be really consistent and respectful and empathetic in your follow-up. Conversion can be lower, so what I'll learn is you often get a lot of corporate decision makers that are looking for a whole bunch of different ideas. Rather than just people looking for tours, they're looking for one tour, or they might be looking at a couple of different, they might be presenting 10 or 15 options to their boss. So ask a good initial set of questions so you can qualify your leads. If you're just on a fishing mission, to just collate a whole bunch of ideas to present to your boss that he may look at in six months and may choose one of the 20 that you've presented to him, look, it's probably not for us. So be specific, what's this particular event for? [inaudible 00:58:40] Have you got an indicative budget? Is the date confirmed? Things like that, so you can know how much time to invest in it.

Get full payment upfront, no reason not to. They've all got the budget, it's sitting there ready to be used. And I would insist if you're running corporate events, just get your money up front. Get it all up front, keep it as long as possible is the motto.

And just getting the first one over the line is always going to be the hardest one. Obviously, you haven't got those reviews or you haven't got that in depth ability to talk about the minute details, because you've just been something. So it's going to be tricky to get over the line, but once you do, you're away. You use that, you take someone along with you, you to get some great video content. You record video testimonials with people on the day, oh, Richard, how much fun was that? Oh, Josh, that was amazing. What did you like best about the day? Oh, that time when we did that thing, and the sun came out at the right time and that sparkling wine, which is perfect. You're like, well, look, I think you just said it all. Thanks, I really enjoyed having you. And boom, there's a testimony. You use that in your marketing, it's going to be crazy, crazy effective. So be creative in the way that you are capturing these moments, video image, and then you've got a product that you can use to market and promote to others.

So I think that about covers it. I could go deeper and deeper and spend hours talking about it. But yeah, I think we'll leave it there and we'll kick over to some questions, Brandon, if that's cool with you?

Brandon Lake:

Yeah, no, that's great Josh, thank you so much. This is fantastic. I love the phases of research, figuring out really how to nail that messaging, how to put that together, some of the examples you shared. Really, really wonderful.

One question is, at the beginning of the presentation you showed a little snapshot of your website. Did you create a separate website for-

Josh Oaks:

Separate website, yep.

Brandon Lake:

Okay. And that's where you housed all your messaging and everything and some of those other slide decks that you showed me, those are really helpful as well.

Josh Oaks:

Exactly.

Brandon Lake:

That's good, okay. So a separate website can be really helpful.

Josh Oaks:

Exactly. I had no template to follow here, I just sort of figured it out on the fly. Some things worked really well, but that's the way we went. But we did link it, I'll just make sure, I don't know if they're still doing that now, bear with me for one second. Bring up the existing website. Hold on one second.

Brandon Lake:

Let me throw out another question. This is from Christie, this is a great one as well. I thought of this as well, Christie, as you were talking about it Josh, what about LinkedIn? That's a great business to business type platform. What about that either for advertising or outreach?

Josh Oaks:

Definitely, yeah. We never used it for advertising, but definitely for outreach and definitely for identifying targets. So if you have a target organization, call it Commonwealth Bank, and you're looking for product managers or you're looking for specific people in those positions, you're not getting obviously email contacts, but you're getting a name and you're getting a position. And then you can use that, you can find that person. So we used that with real success as well. Didn't advertise with them. Outreach, we didn't do a lot actually on the LinkedIn platform. What we did was just help us to create a database of target organizations and industries. But that was me seven years ago, I'm not saying that there's another way. I'm not saying that it couldn't be an incredibly effective way and then that we were doing it in the right way and that there's better ways to use LinkedIn, but that's what worked really well for us.

So just to show you really quickly, we had, oops, where am I? Where did I just put that? Oh yeah, there we go. So that was Melbourne Private Tours. Yeah, in the old days it linked through to the corporate site from there.

Brandon Lake:

I saw your other one up there for a second, the Melbourne Corporate Events, right there.

Josh Oaks:

Yeah, exactly. Well, it was the MPT Corporate Events. I think they just sort of rebranded it slightly Melbourne Corporate Events when they bought the business back in 2017. But for all intents and purposes, it's exactly as it was. Same experiences, a couple of new ones I can see there. So anyway, yeah, two different websites.

Brandon Lake:

Yeah, well, and I like that because all of your imagery, the activities, it's just sort of hard to present, to use your main website that's maybe featuring stuff that appeals to individuals and families and so forth, to use that for the corporate market. So that makes a lot of sense.

Josh Oaks:

Yeah.

Brandon Lake:

Okay. And then Josh, you mentioned your services that you provide. If somebody is kind of interested in some of these templates and different things like that, some of your coaching, maybe just give us a quick synopsis of what that is, if they wanted to learn more about that.

Josh Oaks:

Yeah, okay. Kind of put me on the spot there, I wasn't doing a promo tonight. This is just purely wanted to come along and talk about something I love. So the best way to describe it, look what I do, I run from time to time what I call my tour business breakthrough sessions. They're free sessions, they run about 30 minutes and I offer them to my community. I jump on a call with you and we dive into your business. We zero in, we figure out what's not working for you, why it's not working, what your ambitions are, how are you going to get there, and create a really clear step-by-step action plan as to how you are going to realize your vision. I like to work to a 12 to 24 month vision. So what you need to do [inaudible 01:05:25] marketing perspective, what you need to do with your systems, efficiencies and processes, your recruitment, everything you're going to need to do to achieve that goal that you've got for the next 12 to 24 months.

So that call, I'm very confident in saying is the best 45 minutes that you've possibly ever spent on your business. So that's what I do for my community. At the end of that call, I'll tell you what it looks like to work with me on a deeper, more intimate, ongoing level. If you feel like the fits right and you want to explore that, great. If you don't, you're going to have 45 minutes of goal that you're going to be able to take away and implement. So that's the best way.

I've run a coaching program, I've got about 100, I can see some on the call here that in the program. I've got probably about 100, including Brandon here, tour and activity and experienced business owners from all over the globe. And it's an amazing program, it's allowed me to work with people on a deeper, more intimate level. And collectively over the last 12 months, we're getting results better than I could ever have dreamed of. So it's just been a joy and a blessing to be working with such an amazing group of people.

So that's that. If you want to grab one of my free sessions, there's no obligation. It'll fast track you years, I'm very confident in saying. At the end of that, I'll tell you what it looks like to work with you on a deeper level. If it's right for you, great. If it's not, no sweat. [inaudible 01:06:55].

Brandon Lake:

I think that's great. And we'll send some things out after this to the audience so you can have that link to sign up for one of those if you're curious, but they are available [inaudible 01:07:08].

Josh Oaks:

What I'll just do now, I'll also just drop it in the chat, that link.

Brandon Lake:

Sure. And then before we close, I know we've got a lot of our Resmark clients on here, I'll just show you just a couple of quick resources in the system that you may find helpful for some of the things that Josh has talked about, and then we'll just wrap this up.

So those of you that are using this booking platform, maybe say, okay, if I'm curious about putting together this corporate focus, what does that mean for me from a system perspective? Well, you've got a couple of different options, we've done this, I think there's still a great opportunity for us at Moab Adventure Center to do more of it. But where we've seen some success with this, I'll just show you a couple of different things. One is your product mix. So you may want to consider, and Josh, I think I saw this on your site, some of those products you developed specifically for the corporate groups. Some of them may have been your standard products, but then some of them may have some tweaks to them and they're actually a slightly different experience. So one of those things is to come in and think about the experiences that you're offering. What is the pricing for that corporate market? Maybe you don't need child pricing and so forth. Maybe you do that a little bit differently around those. And then how do you think about your messaging and so forth when you put all of that together for them?

So coming up with the right product mix I think is key. And then when you get into actually creating bookings for them or reservations for whatever experience that you might provide, I'll just pull up one of mine here, you can think about these a couple of different ways. One, we found with some, there may be a situation where, this is just a sample reservation where we did some filming on stuff, but I could come in here and potentially manipulate, customize the price as I'm working through that with them. Or I can provide a discount, have my standard discount set up for perhaps groups or different things like that. I can also automate some of that in the system. So if you're doing that, you can set up an automated discount. We do a lot of that with groups that are just booking our primary experience, because a lot of what we sell, like canyoneering is a wonderful team building experience. We don't have to do a whole lot with that experience to make it an experience that's appropriate for the corporate market, but we may have a book 10 or more get X incentive for them to come and do that as a group. So those are easy things to build there.

The last one is what we talked a little bit about here with resellers and suppliers. We've got several resellers connected that are booking these things. I mean they're all businesses, but some of them may have that focus where they're coming again and again and again, and maybe we've created an agreement with them where we're providing them a certain net rate or there's some financial incentive there for them. I think in a large part, there's incentive enough. You don't necessarily have to get into any kind of other financial incentive, because just sending their employees there, the bonding, the team building, the motivation, the reward, all of that is encompassed in these experiences. But you can get into some of that as well where you can build these off of a net rate or commission or so forth. And then of course, working with other suppliers, as Amelda mentioned, that could be another good idea too, to kind of build out that product mix, and you can set those up in the system as well.

So hopefully that gives you some idea of how you might work with that in the system. If you do decide that you are thinking about this seriously and you want to consider another website, certainly let us know. We have some incredibly affordable website packages as well. We can help you get underway with something that's super, super easy to edit and put together. And you can build out a new website very quickly, very easily, and that's a great resource for you as well.

So hopefully that gives those of you that are using that solution some additional insights. Certainly if you have any questions beyond that, let us know. I see a question about, will the deck be shared? I think we'll put together all the resources we can, Josh, from the deck, some of the templates that you have, different things like that, some of the resources [inaudible 01:11:50]-

Josh Oaks:

Yeah, I'm happy to share the deck.

Brandon Lake:

... and just put all of that in your hands so you guys can take this and really be off and running with really developing this new channel, which I think presents, like you said, a phenomenal, maybe historic opportunity that has never existed to the extent that it does today, and really take this [inaudible 01:12:08] and grow your business because of it.

Josh Oaks:

Yeah, exactly. So what I'll do as well, Brandon, if anyone's got some specific questions, I'll just chuck my email address in the chat as well. I'm happy for people just to reach. So I've popped a link for one of my breakthrough calls in there, and that's pretty self-explanatory. There's my email address, if anyone's got any specific questions, follow up questions, I'm more than happy for you to email me directly as well.

Brandon Lake:

Absolutely. I put mine in there as well, so if you have questions around Resmark website, anything like that, happy to help on that end as well. So Josh, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate.

Josh Oaks:

I really enjoyed it.

Brandon Lake:

I think it's a great opportunity for all of us to really take a closer look at this. So thank you very much, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. We'll catch you next time.

Josh Oaks:

Thanks guys. Bye-bye.