The next transcript features business coach Clay Clark & Dr. Robert Zoellner (US Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year, and Venture Capitalist & Optometrist respectively) talking about the power of mystery shopping for quality control on Thrive15.com, one of the best business consultant platforms out there.
Daniel McKenna: What’s up guys? My name is Daniel McKenna. I’m the Executive Producer, not a business coach, here at Thrive 15. Today we are joined with Clay Clark and Dr. Robert Zoellner. We’re talking quality control, specifically the mystery shopper and the mastery that follows the mystery shopper. What is the mystery shopper? We’re going to be telling you about how powerful this technique can be for your business and how to implement it inside what you do.
Clay Clark: Dr. Z, how are you, Sir?
Dr. Zoellner: I’m doing great, Clay. How are you doing? How have your meetings as a business coach gone today?
Clay Clark: I’m doing well. I’m excited to be wearing our Thrive bracelet here today, nice and blue in contrast with the white.
Dr. Zoellner: I’m a little hurt. I’m a mentor. I don’t even have one. I feel practically naked.
Clay Clark: I feel as though at this point in our relationship where I can extend this great gift to you.
Dr. Zoellner: Oh great. I get a used one. Thanks, man.
Clay Clark: No, it’s not used in a way that’s bad. It’s more used in a way as like Michael Jordan’s sock as a collector item.
Dr. Zoellner: Oh my gosh.
Clay Clark: That is like Michael Jordan’s sock.
Dr. Zoellner: That could add value to it. You just added tremendous value. Thank you.
Clay Clark: We’re here today in your Z66 auto auction.
Dr. Zoellner: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Clay Clark: How many cars a day do you guys or a week do you typically move or sell out of this place?
Dr. Zoellner: We had a 1-year anniversary sale about four weeks ago. We did 1,200 cars that day which is a lot but our average is probably around 750 to 800 a week is what we’re running through here.
Clay Clark: As we’re recording here if you hear any sounds to automotive awesomeness, that’s what’s going on. We’re preparing to sell …
Dr. Zoellner: Absolutely.
Clay Clark: … another 750.
Dr. Zoellner: Absolutely, every week.
Clay Clark: Just to give you a little context of why you’re so qualified to be a quality control expert and a mystery shopping expert is that you also started an optometry practice. You still have the 2 clinics.
Dr. Zoellner: Yes.
Clay Clark: Then you also have a sleep center.
Dr. Zoellner: Yes.
Clay Clark: What’s a sleep center?
Dr. Zoellner: It’s a diagnostic sleep facility where people come in and actually sleep for the night.You need a minimum 6 hours of sleep. We hook them up to 24 different connectors if you will. We register their sleep. Then we analyze it and let them know why they’re not sleeping as well as they would like to.
Clay Clark: If I went in there and did a test, the alarms would just go off.
Dr. Zoellner: I’m going to get you in there. I will get you in there.
Clay Clark: He moves every hour. Here we go. Also though, you also have a competitive horse ranch or a ranch where you raise horses.
Dr. Zoellner: Uh-huh. I’m active in the thoroughbred breeding and racing industry. I have a ranch just south of Tulsa, Also, I have a DME, a dermal medical equipment company that specializes in C PAPS currently. A C PAP is the piece of equipment that most people need if they have sleep apnea. We find that from the sleep studies.
Clay Clark: The reason why I think this is so important for people to know this is because none of this happens if you don’t have a foundation of quality.
Dr. Zoellner: True.
Clay Clark: if you started your first practice without a business coach and you didn’t do a quality job, then it would not have grown and then grown the next business. It’s not like you’re a cereal entrepreneur who’s out there looking for a new thing. It’s more like once you’ve mastered 1 area, you move on to another area.
Dr. Zoellner: Right. It’s amazing how many of those basic principles apply to all those businesses,.
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Clay Clark: Today what we’re going to talk about specifically is this concept of the mystery shopper …
Dr. Zoellner: Yes, my favorite.
Clay Clark: … and the mastery that follows. The idea is that you send the mystery shopper in. The mastery follows. I know that a lot of people watching this might be a little bit unfamiliar with what a mystery shopper is. Can you explain just from your perspective what a mystery shopper is?
Dr. Zoellner: The image of a Ninja you need to take out of your mind. You want them to look like a normal patient that’s a friend of yours. What you do is you send them in with very specific goals of them taking notes mentally as they go through the process, the good, the bad, the ugly, the great, the not-so-great. Then when they’re done with their experience in your business, then you sit down with them. You break it all out. You go through what their experience was.
Clay Clark: I think some of this stuff might seem like common sense to you because you’ve done it for so long but when I hired my first mystery shopper for 1 of my businesses, I didn’t know that I shouldn’t tell anybody that they were the mystery shopper. Everybody knew that it wasn’t really very mysterious. It was like, “That’s Jamie. Jamie.” I guess rule number 1 is you really can’t tell people that the mystery shopper is coming to town.
Dr. Zoellner: Absolutely or 1 of the games I like to play is say, “Some time this month there will be 1.” That’s the key. Treat everybody as if they are that mystery shopper but yeah, you don’t tell them.
Clay Clark: Do you incentivize the mystery shopper, give them a bonus …
Dr. Zoellner: Absolutely, yeah, I really wish I had a business coach to help me.
Clay Clark: … to define the issues or feedback?
Dr. Zoellner: Typically you get what you pay for, typically no charge or maybe even something on top of that, no charge on the services or maybe even pay them on top of that for them to do that.
Clay Clark: Awesome. That’s what a mystery shopper is. I want to ask you this. First off, have you ever mystery shopped yourself or did you have your business coach shop for you?
Dr. Zoellner: Absolutely. I would do it myself, with or without my business coach.
Clay Clark: Walk me through the process then of how you go about mystery shopping. Let’s take this business, for instance. What is the process. Walk me through the whole process of finding the person, putting them in here. Walk me through it.
Dr. Zoellner: For me personally when I do it, most of that’s over the phone. Obviously, people know what I look like. I can’t do the full mystery shop myself. As a business owner if you’re good at changing your voice and you can actually call and mystery shop …
Clay Clark: You actually call your own business, because you are the master business coach.
Dr. Zoellner: Yeah. Hey how are you doing? I’d like to get an eye exam but you go through so much of it yourself but when you actually send in the mystery shopper, the idea is that they go through the full experience. They go online. They call the office. They show up. You might even go to them to be … I don’t want them to cause a scene but I also like to see what happens when my staff deals with shall we say an ornery or a customer that’s maybe a little upset. There’s level of mystery shopping but the basic one is to call, get an appointment and come in and then go through the actual physical experience.