Your Iconic Image : Creating Superfans

L. Frederick Dudek

Prosperous Ventures, LLC

When Frederick Dudek is not turning ideas into millions of dollars in global sales, the award-winning author, speaker, and top sales executive spends his time inspiring others to achieve their highest business goals. Now you can receive the benefit of Frederick’s mentorship and experience through his book, Business $uperfans. 

Born in rural France, Frederick spent summers on his grandfather’s vineyard in France, where he developed a love for French wine. As a youth, he showed a strong aptitude for engineering and competed in drafting and design competitions. After winning numerous engineering awards, he became a draftsman working on numerous automotive projects.  He was selected to design the spot weld guns for the 1982 Ford Escort car. That led to Frederick joining the emerging computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) industry, in which he quickly climbed the ranks. 

While working for a CAD/CAM company as an application engineer, an opportunity presented itself that enabled Frederick to transition into sales. It was the right decision, and he never looked back. In the thirty-plus years Frederick has been selling, he has earned a reputation as the go-to guy for small companies that want to expand their business domestically or internationally. This role has allowed him to travel to over thirty countries and counting. When abroad, Frederick’s favorite pastime is to go exploring for hours, not to mention enjoying some of the local cuisine and fine wines.

Frederick is a former runner and athlete. Today, you can find him hiking various trails with his significant other, Kiley Kaplan. When not writing, selling, speaking, or exploring, he is cooking or building things. The next thing on Frederick’s bucket list is learning to sail and to continue the exploration of countries and their unique cultures.

https://FrederickDudek.com

https://BusinessSuperfans.com

www.marlanasemenza.com

Audio : Ariza Music Productions

Transcript : Vision In Word

Marlana  

Frederick Dudek is not turning ideas into millions of dollars in global sales. The award-winning author, speaker and top sales executive spends his time inspiring others to achieve their highest business goals. Now you can receive the benefit of Frederick's mentorship and experience through his book Business Superfans. Welcome, Frederick. 

Frederick  

Good morning! 

Marlana  

So first, explain to us what exactly is a superfan? How would you define that?

Frederick  

Let's think of a sports team. So, the best way I can explain that is, we've all watched football or European soccer or baseball and stuff, and we'll see the fan that's in there. And it's got their faces painted. They got the jerseys on they got the hats; they got the banners; they got the bumper stickers on their cars. That's a superfan. And, you know, they're enthralled and just energized, and their energy's contagious, and they're promoting their team? And if you think about it, is the sports team paying them for that? No. So are they making money off for their merchandise? Of course. 

So, they're getting free publicity. They're getting somewhere that it's talking about the team and all that PR, they're getting other people sucked into the team to watch the team and everything else. So, the idea came about through my sales experience for many, many years was Why can't a business apply the same methodology to create their own superfans for their business to become promoting them? So, you know, there's people talk about brand advocates? Well, you know, I look at it as Okay, brand advocates cool. But a super fan is super cool. Because it's in my mind is supersedes the advocate, because they're in a sense fanatic of the business, and they're going to be promoting it, talking about it telling all their friends and family and everything else. 

Marlana  

The term ride or die kind of came to mind. So then how do we create these for our business?

Frederick  

Well, that's a really good question. Because a lot of people have written books on client retention, client engagement, and all that aspect. But really, if you think about it, that's a silo. Okay, it's strictly about that. Then there's other people that talk about employees and employee motivation, employee retention, and all that stuff. But really, that's another silo. And then nobody talks about the business, what I call business alliance partners, which are complementary businesses that complement one another. Best example I can say, is a painting person and a flooring person, they kind of go together. 

So, what I did is, through a multitude of research was that I combined all three, because at the end of the day, all three are intertwined. And that's really the difference. And so business superfans talks about how to engage those, that group of people, which is really how to handle your customers, how to make sure your employees are engaged, how to make sure your business alliance partners are motivated and everything else. Because if you think about it, let's say I'm a painter, and I'm giving the flooring guy a ton of referrals, but they're not going, they're not reciprocated, and a flooring guy's not giving me anything back. After some point in time, I'm gonna say, You know what, this relationship isn't working. It's one sided. 

I talk about that kind of stuff. It's the same thing with the employee. You know, Sir Richard Branson says it the best, you know, if you take care of your employees, they'll take care of your customers. So, if you got an employee that's going to do the flooring, the guy that did referred you, the painter to refer to visit and does a poor job, not only does it reflect negatively on your company, but it also reflects negatively on the painter. And so that's the things I talk about is, you know, things to do to motivate people and to engage them but it's a lot more than that. It's not just that part of it. I'm just keeping it short. 

Marlana  

Is it a different strategy to create these superfans to depending on the category they fall in, whether their business alliance or an employee or customer?

Frederick  

yes or no. Because one of the things I did in the book, and here's the cover of the book. I've got to kind of go through some of the chapters. So, one of the chapters is, it all begins with prospecting. So, if you're a new business, how do you go and find new clients? How do you create those relationships with those clients? So that one is focused on really getting business? Because if you don't have business, well, Russ doesn't matter. Right? Then I get into the follow up, why is it super important. And the follow up is with clients as well as employees. So, if you want to make sure that they're doing the things that they need to be doing, either they're motivated and things like that, follow up with them. 

Same thing with the business alliance partner, how did the project go? That kind of stuff. So, then we get into, and this is really what I think is really important. One of them is thank you builds a bond of trust. And a lot of businesses forget to say thank you. And people don't say thank you three employees, enough. People don't say thank you for, you know, to their business partners enough. And it's such overlooked, you know, and one of the things I talked about in the book is especially for like the home improvement industry, you know, they're notorious, I mean, we've all had worked on our houses or places, and we never hear from them again. They're gone. I mean, we had a cleaning person that came in, about three or four months ago, we never heard him again, like, they'd never came back reached out and says, Hey, you know, it's been three months. You know, you're interested in having a house cleaned again, zero, nothing. It's mind boggling. So, thank you to me is paramount.

Marlana  

Let me ask you something in that, do you think that gratitude and follow up are the same thing, or they're just kind of two sides of a coin? 

Frederick  

There are two sides of a coin. And I'll talk about gratitude in a moment. Then the other part is, you know, get personal with birthday greetings. You know, it's amazing, you know, birthdays are someone's very important day. And if you acknowledge something, and I had this happen, you know, to where I sent somebody's birthday card, and it was the only card they received. And they contacted me with such emotion that was it was just a blew me away, that they were so grateful that I actually thought of them and sent them a card. 

I'm coaching a company right now. And today, at lunchtime, I'm going there, we're celebrating an employee's birthday. And, you know, the owners asked me, well, we wanted to have a business meeting afterwards. I said, Are you nuts? You know, this is a birthday, it has nothing to do business, keep it light, keep it fun, let’s acknowledge the person because as soon as you switch from birthday, okay, now we're gonna have a meeting, you just negated the whole birthday. And they went like, oh, never looked at it that way. 

So, that aspect of the other one is creating an environment of appreciation. One of my personal quotes is that people will crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition. Tell me I'm wrong.

Marlana  

Yeah, and I don't think we get it nearly enough. 

Frederick  

No, we don't. And it's the little things you acknowledge somewhere in the little things, and they go, Oh, wow, and they'll do more. It's recognizing your customers. It's recognizing your team. It's recognizing a business partner that they did a great job. And so, you recommended them, they killed it on a project. Hey, you know, you just made me look good by doing a great job because I recommended you thanks in oncome grateful you knocked it out. So that's important. And the next one is given them what they crave, recognition. So, if I turn around and say, “John, thanks a lot for the effort that you put in on that stuff.” All right, that's fine. John feels great. If I turn around and say, “Hey, everybody, I want to take a moment and I want to acknowledge John for doing this particular project.” Now, I've done it from everybody. I've edified John. Everybody realizes that I appreciate, and I recognize John So they're gonna go, oh, man, I'm gonna do more so I can get that exposure.

Marlana  

You know, it's interesting too, because recently, I know something that happened that I'm even recognizing what somebody brings to the table, or the talent somebody brings to the table, or the skill set that somebody brings to the table. Acknowledging that and recognizing that, really goes a long way, instead of, if you're a business owner, thinking that you made it all by yourself, because nobody makes it all by themselves,

Frederick  

It takes a village. Those are a couple of things, thank you, the appreciation, the recognition, it's easy to do cost nothing. And the return on that investment is unsurmountable. So, you know, the next thing I get into here is retention saves you money. And, you know, it's basically, you know, the cost of onboarding, the new customers, phenomenal, you know, in cost. Same thing with employee, I mean, if you think of the revenue that's lost, by losing an employee, not only the lost revenue, you'd lost revenue of training that employee, but you also lost the revenue and productivity of the other employee that's training the new employee that nobody ever thinks about. 

That's monstered, it's the same thing, if you have a business alliance partner, and that relationship goes out the door, you know, your general contractor, as an example, and you lose your electrician, and you need an electrician. So now you gotta find somebody gotta make sure to qualify, and all that stuff. And so, your project falls behind the minutes. So, it's important to do things that are going to retain the team that you've got put together. And then I get down to is, go beyond expectations with unexpected extras. And this is something that blows my mind how people don't take the time to do that little something extra. 

I'll share a story that I put into the book. That is when I really realized the power of it. And it happened to me, we ordered some food from a restaurant, we lived in a nice condo area, and right across the street as a whole shopping restaurants place that was pretty close. We sold our car for eight months and walked everywhere. I go there to pick up the food, no food. So, the hostess gets the manager, and this was called blah, blah, blah. And he says, okay, I'll take care of, we'll get it. So, they goes, and they make the food comes back in buys. And it says go set the bar or buy a beer while you're waiting because you know, it's a mess up. So soon, no comes back to food. We'll look at the food. And Murphy's law comes in. Not only did the order wasn't done in the first time, one of the orders is wrong. You know, so it's like it's tumbling. And so, I'm sitting there, and he goes, Oh my god, he goes out personally make sure that it's time, so I sit there he goes and gets the food comes back. And he says Hang on a second, he runs back, and he brings back on dessert, or he goes to desserts on us and says okay, how much sorry for the food. And he goes, nothing was completely screwed it up. Matter of fact, he goes, here's a couple of tickets for five hours, two of you two tickets for five hours off for both of you for your next meal. And it was just like, No, that was, you know, the unexpected extra. And we're super fans of that place. We call her all the time, because the food's phenomenal, but the service and that little extra that he did. That means a customer for life.

Marlana  

Yeah. And it also seems that by doing that he also showed appreciation to you. So, in doing all of this, it may be obvious, but it may not be. Let's say we have alliances with various people or businesses. At what point do we cut our losses without creating an issue with that business or company? Let's say if we were working, you know as an Alliance Party.

Frederick  

Very good question! At some point in time, I would say that probably the best way to do that is to just say that you're going in a different direction. And so, it's a nice subtle way of just saying, you know, I'm changing my business model a little bit, and someone would be going in another direction. And I appreciate all your efforts. 

Again, appreciate you're grateful for the partnership and stuff. But you know, I need to grow, and the growth is taking me to a different direction. And people will appreciate that and...