A guy named John from Manitoba met me at a Ken McCarthy seminar in ’09, came to a 4-Man Intensive and joined Roundtable.

His company made aftermarket parts for trucks. He also supplied parts to specialty manufacturers who put them in their vehicles.

In the wake of the ’08 market crash, his customers’ businesses were melting down. John’s orders were falling precipitously.

He hooked up with me essentially out of desperation. He certainly had a big enough business to qualify for Roundtable, but EVERYTHING was headed in a really bad direction.

We went to work on the consumer side of his business, selling replacement and repair parts online. We built out his ad campaigns, follow up sequences, messages, offers, banner ads and snail mail catalog.

He worked with a copywriter and pounded his online presence into submission.

Even as the manufacturers continued to dry up, he hired a sales guy and boldly built out his online business. He endured some pretty dark hours and a little over a year later, even dropped out of Roundtable.

I didn’t hear a thing from him for two years.

Last week, out of the blue, he re-surfaced. We had breakfast and he told me this story:

“I started advertising that we would custom-machine any bracket assembly that people couldn’t find anywhere else, all they had to do was send us whatever remained of the old one. We would make them a new one, charge regular price and turn it around within 3 weeks.

“So people started sending us their bracket assemblies and every time we made one, we added it to our product line. Eventually we had hundreds of new part numbers. Over the last year and a half, it’s replaced all the business we lost. We are doing really well now.”

I asked, “How much do these brackets sell for?”

“About $500.”

“How much does it cost to tool up a new one?”

“About $3000. So we were losing about $2500 every time we tooled a new one. That’s why I disappeared for so long, we were burning every penny to turn the company in a new direction.”

“How fast did people typically start buying these new part numbers you were adding?”

He says, “Sometimes we’d have orders for 5 or 10 units by the time we finished the first one. Other times it would take much longer. But what we’ve now started to do is sell these through distributors and even to truck manufacturers. For awhile all our business was online, but now we’re adding these larger customers who send us purchase orders every month.

“It takes longer but that’s added a lot of stability to our business.”

He added, “I was just thinking about this the other day. I realized, even though those wholesale customers are super important, it all began with us finding new customers and understanding them online.

He smiled and said, “The time I spent with you guys saved our company. Thank you.”

“Thank you, John,” I said. “What a GREAT story.”

Please notice that while the new online market saved his bacon, if he’d stayed there he would still be dead meat by next year. He did something really smart and in my opinion absolutely necessary:

-He made an offline print catalog
-He has a phone number so customers call and talk about their trucks
-He now sells to Original Equipment Manufacturers
-He also sells through wholesalers, dealers and distributors

…so none of his eggs are in one basket.

A lot of people imagine (for very understandable reasons) that what we talk about at Intensives and Roundtable meetings and whatnot is Google AdWords all day long.

I totally understand why people think that, and I don’t mind being pigeonholed. Hey, it’s better to be known for something that to be known for everything, which is really nothing.

But nothing could be further from the truth. We usually don’t spend more than 10% of the time talking about Pay Per Click. Even Bobsled Run is only 25% about AdWords. The rest is about conversion – because that’s where the money is.

I have always regarded Google AdWords as, first and foremost, a GREAT way to teach people direct marketing. Maybe the best.

Once you master things like keywords, click thru rates and conversions, you now have the opportunity to “grow up.” To truly become a seasoned pro, one who puts his eggs in many baskets and is ready to handle anything.

Mature business people understand that in the real world, you want to build a business that is devilishly difficult to knock off. Not so much because it’s devilishly complex, but because it contains MANY ingredients that reflect the unique gifts of yourself and your team.

John’s business is HARD to knock off. He’s doing all kinds of things his competitors would never think of. We went on to discuss more purpose- and mission-driven directives in his company, things he’s really excited about personally. The kinds of things you start to think about when the bills are paid and everything is healthy.

And on today, Friday, I’m proud and delighted that a small company in Manitoba that cares for its employees and customers is doing well because of the time they spent so far in Planet Perry.

I can’t wait to see what else we can do together – cuz today is the first day of the rest of John’s life – and your life too.

Perry

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.