Using Customer Success Roadmaps and Strategic Alliances to Grow your Business | Scott Overbeck

Matt Edmundson [0:05 - 3:13]: Welcome to the eCommerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. The eCommerce podcast is all about helping you deliver eCommerce. Wow. Oh, yes, it is. And to help us do just that, today I am chatting with my very special guest, Scott Overbeck from Seacoast Consulting group, and we are going to get into what a customer success roadmap looks like. We are going to get into monetizing subscriber lists. It's all going on today, so you're not going to want to go anywhere. You want to grab your pens, grab your bits of paper, because, you know, it's good to be old school every now and again to make your notes. Now, if you are new to the ecommerce podcast, a very warm welcome to you. Glad you're here. Hope you liked the show. I hope you enjoy what's going on. Of course, any questions you want to know more about the show, find out all the past episodes and all that sort of stuff, see who we've had on. You can find all kinds of weird and wonderful information on the website ecommerce podcast.net dot. That's all one word. It's all there. So go ahead, check it out. It'd be great to see you. Great to meet you. Reach out to me at Matt Edmundson on social media or on LinkedIn. Always love to hear from you. Always, always. And if you've got any thoughts, any comments about the show, let us know. Let us know those as well. Especially if you're a seasoned guest, a seasoned listener, rather, should I say, definitely want your feedback. I've said this before on a couple of shows. Just to reiterate, we are starting to add a new pillar of content to the podcast, which is where we interview ecommerce founders. So people that are in the trenches doing ecommerce businesses. So, as you know, if you've been a regular listener, all of the other hundreds of shows we've done, we've focused on the experts. Just like Scott, an expert in his field. We're going to dig into what he knows and see how it can help us grow our own online business. But we also want to interview you guys, you guys that are creating your own online businesses. And if you're willing to come onto the show, share your story, share your insights, your challenges, things you've learned, stuff that's going to help us, then we would love to hear from you. I'm not guaranteeing you'll be on the show, just want to caveat that. But we would genuinely love to hear from you as we're going to start featuring more and more founders. If you want to know more about that, if you want to just reach out to us, just go to the ecommercepodcast.net website. There's an apply page on there. You don't have to fill out every form field, but just get in touch. We'd love to hear from you. Would love to see what we can do. There you go. Right now, let's talk about today's guest. Scott has turbocharged businesses across not just one, not just two, but four continents, boosting growth, revenue and efficiency. After learning the secrets of the world's biggest companies. That sounds ominous, doesn't it? Learning the secrets of the world's biggest companies, he's now sharing the magic with us. Small to medium sized businesses ready for success. Well, let's take a leaf out of Scott's playbook, shall we? Scott, welcome to the show, man. Great to have you. How are you doing?

Scott Overbeck [3:13 - 3:16]: Glad to be here. I'm doing well, thanks.

Matt Edmundson [3:16 - 3:20]: Good, man. Good. Now, whereabouts in the world are you? Because it's definitely brighter where you are than where I am.

Scott Overbeck [3:20 - 3:31]: It's definitely brighter. So it's about 02:00 in the afternoon. I am on the seacoast of New Hampshire, about an hour north of Boston.

Matt Edmundson [3:31 - 3:33]: Nice. Beautiful part of the world.

Scott Overbeck [3:33 - 3:38]: It is, it is. It's been quite hot lately, but we're enjoying it.

Matt Edmundson [3:38 - 4:01]: Well, at least it's been hot for somebody. Right at the time of recording, it's summertime here in the UK. Not that you would know. No one's told the weather yet that it's summer. The weather's got to catch up with itself a little bit. But then that's the joy of living in England. I feel the joy of living in England. So tell us, Scott, a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Scott Overbeck [4:02 - 4:20]: Yeah, so I am the founder and principal of cqos consulting group. As you mentioned, our big claim to fame is we work with small to medium sized businesses and we help them to grow their revenues and ultimately their profits.

Matt Edmundson [4:21 - 4:22]: How did you get into that?

Scott Overbeck [4:23 - 5:25]: Yeah, so you had mentioned that I worked for some very large companies. I traveled the world consulting with a lot of different companies and primarily in banking, finance and fintech financial technology. So I really had an opportunity to see how these big boys do business and the different strategies that they leverage. And what I've really learned is that they're a, quite successful and good at what they do, and b, that a lot of SMBs just don't leverage a lot of these tools the way they could and the way they should. So I saw an opportunity, and I decided to take the leap from corporate. I spent about 30 years in big corporate, traveling, doing all kinds of stuff, and decided to hang my own shingle and teach these small to medium sized businesses how the big boys do it.

Matt Edmundson [5:25 - 6:16]: Wow. Wow. Well, that's cool, man. I remember the first time I did my first ever consulting gig, and it scared the life out of me in so many ways because I know what I think works in my own companies because I don't know how many tens of millions of pounds worth of product we'd sold at this point, but a lot. But then when you're doing it for somebody else, there's always that sort of nerve wracking thing. And then once you've done it a couple of times, you sort of go, ah, yes, there seems to be some principles that do actually work across the different companies here. I might be on to something. So I'm kind of curious. What was some of the. What were some of those moments for you? What were some of those things that you've learned from the big businesses that we can apply to our e.com businesses?

Scott Overbeck [6:17 - 6:34]: Well, the area that I lean into, and I would say probably the biggest opportunity area that I've seen in the years that I spent with big corporate, is the way that businesses can leverage strategic alliances.

Matt Edmundson [6:34 - 6:35]: Okay.

Scott Overbeck [6:36 - 7:18]: And I'll just define what that is. I think a lot of people have probably heard of it. They think they might know what it is. They might be right, they might be wrong. But put simply, it's just an arrangement of mutual benefit between two or more businesses who have complimentary resources. And those resources can be a lot of different things. They can be products. They can be services. They can be operational assets. They can be customer databases. And it really takes somebody who's kind of worked with these things over time to be able to kind of go in and identify the opportunity areas and then leverage and ultimately monetize them.

Matt Edmundson [7:19 - 8:38]: Wow. Yeah. It's one of those things, isn't it, with strategic alliances that. It's a very fancy sounding phrase, but I was talking to a lady the other day. She owns an agency called Lime. Give them a bit of a shout out. I can't remember the rest of the name. It will come back to me in a second. Anyway, she was lovely. And they basically, I think they work with bigger companies, but they were behind, like, a well known movie, appearing on a well known brand of potato chips, and so, you know, 150 bags of, we would call them crisps. Scott. But 150 bags of these things would be, 150 million of these bags would be made, all promoting the movie. And these were those sort of strategic alliances. It worked well for the movie company because they got in front of 150 million people. It works well for the crisp company because, well, it just makes that Chris packet a little bit different and it'll appeal to the kids or whatever, because the Star wars character is on the front. So I can see that, you know, I can see it all the time. I suppose once I saw that, I thought, yeah, that's a strategic alliance. I can see the big companies doing this. How does it, how does that translate then for smaller businesses? What kind of ways would that work?

Scott Overbeck [8:39 - 11:40]: Yeah, that's a great question, and you nailed it. I mean, there's a lot of strategic alliances that people have benefited from and have experienced with some of the bigger companies. I'll just add a few before I answer your question. You've got, like, McDonald's and Coke. That's probably the most notorious one out there, McDonald's with their happy meal product, where they have these little trinket toys in there, Star wars and Lego and so forth, Target and Starbucks and Uber and Spotify. Like, these are alliances that have been put together in terms of. To answer your question, how the smaller and medium sized businesses will benefit, we've taken a little different approach, the same mechanics, but a little different way of attacking it. And what we lean into is what we call the customer journey roadmap, or the customer success roadmap. When you think about any particular small or medium sized business, they're offering a product or a service and maybe a few products and a few services with the idea that the customers are going to be interested in them, and if all goes well, they are. When you take a look at the roadmap that our customer is on, what we typically will find out is that this particular company is really only offering maybe 10% of what the customer ultimately wants, needs on that roadmap, right? So, you know, they have a particular goal. Let's just say real simply that it's a weight loss goal. So they go and they buy a weight loss supplement from a company. You provide that supplement, they keep coming back for it. What else are they interested in? That's probably not the only thing. So we take a look at what that customer would be interested in before they buy a. During that buying process and also after. And we say, what other products and services are there that they are going elsewhere to buy? And then we say, well, these complimentary products and services. We can create strategic alliances where there are now revenue shares. So what we can do is we can now introduce those products and services to our subscriber list, to the people that really trust us the most. We're adding value because they're not having to go out and research and find these products. They're already spending their money on it. We're making it easy for them. And, oh, by the way, we're benefiting as well because we're getting some very nice revenue share in the process.

Matt Edmundson [11:42 - 12:53]: That's really cool. But if I may, it sounds over simplistic. I can just hear the skeptics going out. But surely it doesn't work like that, because it does. I mean, this is, the beauty of these frameworks is you can actually simplify them down to the basic components, isn't it? But let's think of an example then, if we can. So I'm going to pick, what can I pick? Well, let me pick this. So again, sorry, listeners, if you get bored with this example, I have here a supplement brand which I'm involved with. So this is an omega three capsule. Now, the company is called vegetology. It makes various different supplements, but they're all vegan certified supplements. So the niche was very much, how do you create omega three when it's not fish oil in an effective safe dose for the vegan market? And so some, you know, that all got figured out by the scientists at vegetology and they've done that. They've sort of cracked that. So I have that product. How would I approach this customer success roadmap?

Scott Overbeck [12:54 - 17:11]: Yeah. So, I mean, I would look at that and I would say, well, if you're spending money on that, you're probably interested in better health. What does that entail? You say, well, you know, potentially weight loss eating. Right. Maybe you need a motivational course to stay on track. There could be other supplements that we would leverage, maybe some exercise equipment, some clothing. We can just keep going on and on. Now if we go down the vegan path, I don't know that path. So I'd have to spend some time researching it. But I'd say, well, what other things would a vegan be interested in? Are there food products that we could introduce to them that are, that are kind of approved in the vegan world? Who knows? Maybe even some t shirts. If you're loud and proud about being a vegan, we can introduce those types of things. Some of them just kind of come to mind. Some of them you need to research. We have ways of obviously doing the research. One of the best ways that we found, we call this a sideways survey, which is essentially just asking your customers, what types of products have you bought in the last six months? What types of products are you considering buying in the next six months? The difference is that we don't put them through a survey monkey or some other online thing and ask them 37 questions and have them bail out a third of the way through. Right. It's literally an email that asks them one to three questions and they respond back in the email. So it's 100% coming from the customer because you say, well, if that's your niche and you're getting this information from your customer, my guess is that they're not the only person that's interested in product a. So why don't we. Why don't we create an alliance with product a? Let's see how it goes. Because there's really very little downside. Like, if you position it right, if you have that relationship with your customers and you position it right, and you're. And you're making a really strong attempt to offer them something that they would be interested in. Like, they're not gonna, you know, leave in a huff and never do business with you. And we're not talking about, like, pummeling them with offer after offer. Like, typically, what we would look to do is create three or four different alliances of these complementary products and services and offer them on a rotational basis. So let's say if we did four every three months, we're offering the same one. Because keep in mind, this is going to the subscriber list, not just the people that have purchased, right. So people who are maybe tire kicking to purchase your actual product. Also, it's capturing people that have kind of come into the funnel more recently. And as we know, people don't look at their email all the time. Right. So it's not like, be like, oh, this company sent me this exact same email 90 days ago. I can't believe it. I'm leaving. I'm unsubscribing. You're not going to see that happen. But what we'll do is we'll monitor the success of those profits, and if they start to wane, then we'll say, hey, okay, so maybe we want to pop in a different product or service, but the idea is that we're putting these things in place, and these things are just running. They're running in perpetuity. There's no reason, like, it's a one and done type of thing. It's a very, very substantial additional revenue stream with very little effort on the part of the company that's providing the distribution.

Matt Edmundson [17:12 - 17:41]: So let's say then going back to my amiga three, I've done the, I've emailed out, you know, whatever, 10,000 people and I've got a few hundred responses back. I like the idea of, actually, Scott, I like the idea of emailing as opposed to having them fill out a survey and asking them to respond to the email. I'm guessing you're doing that for a very strategic thought through reason rather than, oh, does comedy bother to create a survey monkey form?

Scott Overbeck [17:42 - 18:51]: Yeah, well, it's really just to sort of lock in the importance of that relationship. So it's like, well, I'm not just going to look at a survey monkey report and look at the feedback. Like, I'm literally going to be getting that response from a customer and it's going to go to, maybe it's the president, maybe it's the order, whatever the figurehead is. Now, in actuality, it's me that's reviewing those things. You know, it's coming from the, from a person who's built that relationship. And is it more work? Absolutely. But you say, you know, I could have an outside consulting company go in and survey my, my people, my customers, but, yeah, you know, how successful are they going to be? Because they're going to say, well, here's, here's what I think that I'm going to buy, but were more interested in what did you actually buy? What did you pull your credit card out and type in the numbers and buy? That's valuable information and that's worth a little extra effort in my mind to be able to kind of aggregate that.

Matt Edmundson [18:51 - 19:33]: Yeah. And it's super, and I like it because it's simple. They can respond straight away. They don't have to go to a new web page. They can just write one product, they could write 20. They're going to engage as much or as little as they like, aren't they? So I'm going to send out my email to the customer database asking, just super curious, what other products have you purchased in the last six months and what are some of the products you're thinking about purchasing in the next six months? Are the questions that open ended or am I being a bit more specific and saying, hey, listen, I'm curious to know what products like this you have purchased in the last six months? Or am I, am I just letting them make the association?

Scott Overbeck [19:34 - 20:55]: Yeah, no, it's a good point. I mean, because really what we're trying to do is identify for the customer that we recognize that we are kind of one stop along this journey. So, you know, if, let's say in the case of this, the supplement, like if we are a supplement company, we say we're so thankful that you're our customer. We're trying to evaluate, you know, the other things that we could potentially make available or whatever. You fill in the blank. Do you want to be open about the fact that, hey, we're trying to create some relationships with other companies that you might be interested in. Conceivably, if you got enough of a response for one particular thing, maybe that's cause for saying, hey, maybe I, maybe I should be manufactured. Maybe I create a relationship with the manufacturer to do it and I white label it. Like, there's a lot of different ways that you could go about it other than just creating that relationship. But at the end of the day, like, what you're trying to do is you're trying to add value to your existing customers and give them what they're already going to be buying.

Matt Edmundson [20:56 - 21:40]: Yeah. Okay. So I send that email out, I get all my responses, which is, you know, wonderful. And I figure out three of four different products. So let's say for the sake of argument, I'm just going to pick a random one is a bamboo toothbrush, right? Because that seems to sort of connect with that audience a little bit. So I can go to a company that sells bamboo toothbrushes. Am I, am I putting that bamboo toothbrush on my site as a product? Am I doing that bamboo toothbrush as its own landing page? Am I sending people to the bamboo toothbrush website on an affiliate link? Am I doing all of the above? Sorry to get hyper practical. I'm just wondering how you've seen this sort of work.

Scott Overbeck [21:40 - 22:54]: Well, yeah, the quick and easy answer is it depends. But in general, what we're doing is we're creating a licensing relationship between the companies. Bamboo toothbrush Company is having the email list from the Bayer company made available to market this bamboo toothbrush. So I'll call it company ABC is getting the copy that converts for this bamboo toothbrush. Right. That's going to be popped into the email system and sent out to the customers. That's going to go to bamboo toothbrush.com dot. Whether it's a specific landing page, whether there's an affiliate link, those are all details that get decided. But at the end of the day, all those sales, ultimate sales that come from that will be recognized to go to company ABCdehenite, and then they're gonna get a check for doing very little work.

Matt Edmundson [22:55 - 23:19]: Yeah, no, fair play. Fair play. I get it. I understand it now. And am I doing this for my. I guess I'm doing it just for customers in general. I'm not just focusing on one product, am I? I'm not focusing like a hero product and customers that say, buy the hero product. I'm just asking all of my customers from various different categories of customer icing.

Scott Overbeck [23:20 - 24:47]: Yeah, I would say so. And, you know, one of the things you had mentioned about making it available on your website, you know, there's something that we, you know, that we offer. It's called a resource center, and it's essentially a page on company ABC website that makes it very easy to see these businesses or these products from other businesses that are being sold. So the benefit of that is it's being socialized through the email system. Right. So that's going to get anybody on the subscriber list. But additionally, it's going to hit anybody who's tire kicking or just checking out the website. Not even. Not even in the funnel. They're going to be able to see this resource center. And we've had situations where you could see a 20% profit bump just from having that, number one, and then number two, socializing it properly. Those relationships that are built with the customers, we want that to constantly be reinforced. You send your email salutation p's. If you're interested in any products to satisfy the journey that you're on, please don't hesitate to check out a research site or whatever you want to call it.

Matt Edmundson [24:47 - 25:57]: Yeah, that's really interesting. As you're talking, I'm thinking of a company called Woodpeckers, and they are a us company. They manufacture woodworking tools. And what they do, which I think is quite interesting, similar to what you talk about, is they have their sort of main catalog of products, and then they have products which are only going to be there for a limited time. They're kind of like, they're experimenting with different things. It's like they've done your email, figured out what some of the customers want, and they've done a limited run of those products, and you can buy them for a limited time. And you know that actually this is not going to be a main product. This is just a, I don't know what they call it, but like a playground type thing, you know, a sandbox type where they're putting stuff out there and you can trial it and you can buy it and see what you think. And then when a product does really well, they'll probably put it in there a second time six months later. And then if it does well again, I think it becomes part of their main product category list. And I, as you're talking, I'm thinking actually that I wonder if that's how they do it. You know, it strikes me as a remarkably simple idea that I think we can exploit.

Scott Overbeck [25:58 - 26:34]: I think that you nailed it earlier when you said that the concept is very simple and it really. Yes. I mean, the mechanics can get a little bit dicey in terms of how to frame it and execute it and implement it, but the concept makes so much sense. It's like, well, we know for fact, I don't have to research this. I know for a fact that every customer that we're going to talk about is going other places to buy stuff. We know that for an absolute fact. And we have the ability to tap into those revenue streams. Why would we not want to do that?

Matt Edmundson [26:34 - 26:35]: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Overbeck [26:37 - 27:14]: You're going to have so many business owners that are going to spend so much time and so much money chasing these new customers and new customers and conversion and all that, and that's all fine. But so many businesses just overlook that huge value that exists with their existing customers. The statistics show that it's so much more cost effective and so much more profitable just going back to the trough. Because you've already built that trust. You've already got them to say yes once. It's a lot easier to say yes multiple times.

Matt Edmundson [27:14 - 27:53]: Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I mean, it all works from the trust that we've built up with the customer, doesn't it? Oh, you've. You've done this. We trust you. You're doing this, therefore. Okay. It's not like I'm starting a toothbrush brand from scratch. You know, I've gone out, I've gone and got the thing manufactured. I've got a toothbrush brand, and I'm trying to build it over there, which will be a nightmare. I'm actually taking a company that's already manufactured it, so I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to worry about stock because that's their problem. I just market it to the list and the customer gets it. And hopefully, if I've done my job and found a good bamboo toothbrush, everyone's happy, right?

Scott Overbeck [27:54 - 28:34]: It's true. And you look at the amount of profit that can be made with that. Whatever profit margin somebody's making. Let's just say it's 20 or 30% on their main product or service. Well, you're going to be approaching 100% with these. So our big thing is that if we work with the right company, we're going to increase their year one profits 40% to 70%. It's pretty easy to do that as long as you have a relatively decent sized list and a decent sized relationship with your customers. When you're introducing near 100% profit products and services, it adds up really quickly.

Matt Edmundson [28:35 - 28:39]: Yeah. What do you mean when you say decent sized list?

Scott Overbeck [28:40 - 30:19]: Well, I mean, it's all relative because if it's, you know, let's say if it's like a SaaS company with, with a expensive price point, like, their list is going to be a lot smaller than if it's a d to c street e.com. but, you know, decent sized lists, like, because we're not going to get 100% of people that are going to buy a new product or service, right. We're going to get a certain percentage. And everybody's always asking me, well, what's that percentage? What's that going to be? And I'm like, well, you tell me, I mean, how solid is your relationship with your, with your customers? Like, are you managing it because you're going to have a hundred thousand person list, you know, what's the last time you emailed them? You know, how many people have bought, how often do you email them? You know, that, that sort of thing. So there's so many question marks in terms of kind of, you know, what ultimate conversion will be. But the big, the big tips for success, I would say, is like decent sized list, you know, subject to interpretation, relatively good relationship with them. Those are the big ones. And then finding the right products and services that they're actually interested in doing research, whether it's asking them or oftentimes the business owners will suggest who to reach out to. I have a new client. He provided me a top 100 list of people he wanted to work with. I'm like, wow, you did?

Matt Edmundson [30:19 - 30:20]: Thanks very much.

Scott Overbeck [30:22 - 30:42]: So most of the time the business owner has an idea on what their people are actually doing, but few think of creating those relationships. They look at them as a competitor, and for every competitor, there's probably ten other people who are non competitive that could be working together.

Matt Edmundson [30:44 - 31:32]: Yeah, no, I like it. I think it, I've already got three or four different customer, different companies in my head, just going to call an approach on this whole thing, on this whole idea. Yeah, absolutely. So the customer success roadmap then you've understood what the customer is going to is what the customer is buying before their transaction. On your website, you're understanding what else they're buying during the transaction and understanding what they're going to buy afterwards. You're doing that through the emails. You're doing the research. You're looking at Amazon to see customers who bought this also bought Dot, dot, dot. You know, all those kind of things, aren't you really? You're looking at those kind of ideas. Is there anything else that we need to think about with this success roadmap or is that the predominant thing that we should focus on?

Scott Overbeck [31:32 - 32:34]: That's the predominant thing. Just really getting in the heads of the customer and it's not hard. I mean, you could do some hard research and ask them. And to your point, that Amazon feature is like, back in the day, that would have been a lot, a lot of money to get that sort of research, but you can just go out and be like, whoa, if I look at this, I'm also going to look at that. And people who have looked at this ended up buying this instead, like tremendous value. So that's essentially it just getting in the head of the customer and it's not hard to do. It's, you know, the concept is really, really simple. The mechanics can get you, and in a lot of cases, strategic alliances that people have tried have kind of fallen, fallen off unsuccessfully just because the mechanics and the intricacies of it is, you know, can get you. But.

Matt Edmundson [32:35 - 32:49]: Well, that was actually my next question. What? How? Why would this not work? As in what are some of the pitfalls I need to avoid? So mechanic, you've mentioned mechanics. Could you put a bit more flesh on that into. What do you mean when you say mechanics?

Scott Overbeck [32:49 - 34:20]: Yeah. So one of the biggest problems that people run into with the strategic alliance is they say, okay, so we have complimentary products and services. So we got company A, company B. Hey, you want to do a strategic alliance? Yes, I do. And they say, okay, so who's going to go first? Who's going to mail first, right? Everybody wants to go first, right? Or, you know, be the person that's going to get the money versus the revenue share. The way we do it, we kind of step back from that and we say, okay, so we're going to focus on a company that has a distribution. We'll say company A, Company B is going to be the company that has the solid product or service that converts. It's got to be a good partnership. But we're basically looking at plugging in Company B into Company A's list. We're not looking at reciprocity. Like, you mail to mine, I'll mail to yours, you take that component away. And that solves probably 80% of the mechanical issues, because there's usually going to be a disparity in terms of this size and this quality and all that. So that doesn't mean that ultimately we cannot, you know, go both ways, but we don't enter the relationship with the idea that it's going to be reciprocal right out of the gate.

Matt Edmundson [34:20 - 34:41]: And actually, that disarms the person that you're wanting to talk to in so many ways, isn't it, really? It's like, well, no, I don't need anything from you. I just want to make sure that we can do this. And I'm going to email my list, and you're going to sell your product, and then if this works, we can then talk about. Or if you want to do it to your list, fine, we'll talk about that later. But that's not essential for this relationship. I think you've made it.

Scott Overbeck [34:41 - 34:42]: Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [34:42 - 34:44]: You've made it really easy to enter it. Right?

Scott Overbeck [34:44 - 35:47]: Yeah, yeah. Disarming is a very good word to cover it, for sure. Now, the pitch to the company that has the, you know, the big list is, hey, you know, we can help you monetize something that you already have and monetize it better with really zero or very, very little effort on your part. Right. We're going to do all the work. We're going to take our fee out of the additional profits that we bring in. You're just going to get it. Shit. Now, so that's the pitch to the company that has the distribution. Now, the company that has a product or service, the pitch is, hey, I have a client that has a hundred thousand customers that may be interested in your product. Are you interested in having a phone call? Like, how many people are gonna be like, yeah, no, I'm not interested in 100,000 possible customers. That's gonna be, you know, laid it right in front of me. So that's a pretty easy conversation.

Matt Edmundson [35:48 - 35:57]: Yeah, no, I like that. It does make it. It does make it straightforward. But that, so you say that one simple thing takes care of 80% of the problems that are gonna come up.

Scott Overbeck [35:58 - 37:15]: It does, you know, and other things are, you know, picking. Right. Picking the right products and services, introducing it properly, like, not coming across as a spammer. Right. So you don't want to build that relationship up and then spam your people. Right. So we really kind of want to slow the roll, be like, yeah, you know, you can make a lot of extra money through this process, but you have to manage it. And it really should be like once a month, once every three weeks type of thing. And maybe there's a follow up or two in there, but it should not be a constant thing. We suggest that people introduce it. It's going to be a product of the month or a special offering or something like that. Just be really, really frank about it. I mean, if you've done the research and you've sent that out to them through email, like what you're trying to do, the follow up can be, hey, we heard you. And we're going to be introducing things periodically that we know that you're going to be interested in. We hope you find value in it, you know, that sort of thing.

Matt Edmundson [37:16 - 37:50]: Yeah, and that's cool. And I think, again, depending on, I'm just thinking about some of the companies that we do. If we positioned it in such a way that, hey, listen, we've got this product of the month, it's from another company, doesn't have our brand on it, at least at the moment, it doesn't have our brand on it because one, we know you love it, and two, we know you're going to really like this company and we arise in tide floats, all boats kind of thing, doesn't it? And so I think if we pitched it something like that to customers, I think they go, this is cool, I understand why you're doing it. And I think that could work really, really well.

Scott Overbeck [37:51 - 40:17]: Yeah, I agree. And, you know, we've been spending a bit of time kind of talking about more or less like the starting point is finding that company that has the big list. And I mean, from my perspective, you're trying to prospect. Those are the people that I would ultimately like to start with all the time because it's a much easier sell to go to a product or service and say, I've got 100,000 prospective customers of yours, you want to have a call, but there could be a lot of listeners to this podcast that are like, hey, I don't have a big list, but I have a quality, like a high quality product that converts well, so where does that leave me? Like, am I just waiting for this company to come knock it? We can be more proactive with that. So if you're a high quality product or service that converts well, that can scale, then what we can do, like I can take them on and then we go and try to find the bigger company that has the distribution. But as a starting point, we need to know how is it going to convert so it can't be like brand new product, unproven. Seems cool, but I don't know if it's going to sell. That's not going to resonate with somebody that has the distribution. But for the right company, it's one of the best ways that I know of to scale, to scale quickly, just to take a business into the stratosphere, because what you're really doing is identifying a company that spent, in some cases, millions of dollars to find your exact target client. And all we're looking to do is just plug them in. And if they can get plugged in, then their subscriber list is going to explode, their sales are going to explode. A lot of great things are going to happen. You have to make sure you're ready for it. I think the big thing is, can you scale? If you were to increase your sales by 3000% in one month, can you do that? What is it more measured? Right?

Matt Edmundson [40:17 - 41:38]: Yeah, yeah. No, it's a great point, actually, Scott, that you can do this both ways. You can be the guy with the big list and you go find the product, or you can be the guy with the product and go find the company with the big list. Either way, you're looking for that strategic alliance to grow. One of the things, which is interesting, and this is why I think I like your strategy and why I think it's successful, is you're leveraging another company on what your customer wants. So one of the tools that we all have as business people, I suppose, is if I'm turning over a million bucks a year and I want to get to 2 million, well, one of the easiest things I can do is go buy another company that turns over a million bucks a year. I can do is gross by acquisition. Right. And what you're doing with these strategic alliances is you're kind of doing that without actually buying that company or tapping into that product or that database, without going through the expense of buying that company to grow your product. And I think that sounds quite compelling in so many ways. You talk about monetizing subscriber lists. Is this what you mean then? So I have my subscribers, I'm going to add this sort of 40% to 70% extra income because I am now upselling or cross selling products which I don't currently sell to my database because they've told me they want them.

Scott Overbeck [41:39 - 42:21]: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. So really, just taking an existing asset. In a lot of cases, it's the most valuable asset that a business owns. And I think a lot of people forget that on the financials under goodwill, like that relationship that's been built is valued in there. There's a dollar value that's put on that. And when a business sells, like, that's a significant thing. You cannot fake that time and expense that it's taken to build that relationship. So it's really just a matter of monetizing what you already have in a smart way and not spamming them.

Matt Edmundson [42:21 - 42:58]: Yeah, fantastic. Scott, listen, thank you so much for that strategy, man. I feel like I've picked your brains quite comprehensively. I'm aware of time. So before we go to the next phase, I suppose of the podcast, I want to just take a few seconds and say, do you have a question for me? This is where I ask you for a question I'm going to answer on social media. I don't answer on the podcast. It's my crafty way of building up the social media following. So if you want to know my answer to the question, you've got to follow me at Edmundson across social media platforms, where I'll post the answer. But, Scott, what's your question for me?

Scott Overbeck [42:59 - 43:07]: My question for you is, I understand that you're an active player of Catan, and I want to know your best tip or trick for winning.

Matt Edmundson [43:08 - 43:15]: Okay, this is a great question. And are we just talking the regular catan board, or are we talking cities and nights? What are we talking?

Scott Overbeck [43:15 - 43:21]: Let's keep it simple. I've got a simple brain. We'll stay simple.

Matt Edmundson [43:21 - 43:24]: Okay. Do you play yourself? Are you a Catan-er?

Scott Overbeck [43:24 - 43:47]: I don't. I will tell you that I went to target this past weekend to go buy a board game, almost came home with Catan, and I came home with something else because I've got some young teenagers, and we're starting them out slowly, but we are gatewaying into Catan for success.

Matt Edmundson [43:47 - 44:14]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Catan is. We started our kids on katam when they were, like, seven or eight. So, yeah, it's a good game. It's a really good game and well worth doing. I am a very big fan, but I'm looking forward to answering that question. That's one of my favorite questions so far. Scott, listen, how do people reach you? How do they connect with you? If they want to get you involved in helping set up a strategic allowance, what's the best way to do this?

Scott Overbeck [44:15 - 45:08]: Yeah. Well, thanks for the opportunity to be on today, Matt. I really appreciate it. Two ways to reach me. You can go to my website, which is seacoastcg.com short for consulting group. Secostcg.com dot. I'm also very active on, on LinkedIn, underscott D. Overbeck. There's a link to my calendar. You can, you know, I've got an open profile. You can reach out to me. But we do offer a free sales growth analysis session that really just kind of is an understanding of what your business is looking like, whether you're the distribution or the great product or service that converts. And we talk about if there's a fit. Our fees are almost always just baked into the additional profits that we make. So there's really no barrier to entry for anybody, regardless of size.

Matt Edmundson [45:08 - 45:12]: Fantastic. And do you work transatlantic or is it just stateside?

Scott Overbeck [45:13 - 45:21]: I am primarily stateside, but I am open to all. Fantastic is everywhere. So there's really.

Matt Edmundson [45:21 - 45:42]: That's very true. That is very true. We're a UK company, but I think 30 40% of our traders or our sales come from international markets mainly. Well, quite big portion comes actually from the state. So yeah, it's interest in the world of eCommerce. Everyone's buying from our website 24/7 around the world. It's a beautiful thing.

Scott Overbeck [45:42 - 45:43]: It's a beautiful thing.

Matt Edmundson [45:43 - 46:02]: It is a beautiful thing. Scott, listen, great to meet you, buddy. And thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for sharing your, your insight. Genuinely loved it. I've got some good ideas for my own ecom business, which I'm gonna outright steal. So thanks for coming on the show, man. Really, really appreciate it.

Scott Overbeck [46:03 - 46:04]: Thank you. I appreciate it too.

Matt Edmundson [46:05 - 47:59]: Wonderful. Well, what a great conversation with Scott that was. Of course, we will link to Scott's info in the show notes, which you can see just by scrolling down on your podcast app. If you're on a mobile device, of course, they're also going to be on the website at ecommerce podcast.com. ecommerce podcast dot no, no. Give you the wrong web address. Ecommercepodcast.net dot I wasn't able to buy ecommercepodcast.com gone. I do own ecommerce podcast.com if you're interested anyway, you can go to the website, you can get all of Scott's links, you can get the show notes and the transcript and all of that sort of good stuff. Of course, if you are signed up to our email newsletter, if you're on our email list for the ecommerce podcast, then those notes will be winging their way to your inbox you may get an email from me at some point going dear ecommerce podcast, what eCommerce podcast? What eCommerce stuff do you buy? Maybe I'm just saying, if that comes, you'll know why. Anyway, be sure to follow the eCommerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got some more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Scott's got to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now, the eCommerce podcast is produced by Pod Junction. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes this show possible is Saraf Bainman and Jonah Prisca. Theme music was written by Josh Edmundson, and as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, the website ecommercepodcast.net. i'll give you the right one this time, but that's it from me. That's it from Scott. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week, wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.