How a Website Redesign Increased Booked Appointments by 371% [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 186]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

[00:00:00] Bob Ruffolo: What would a 371% increase in booked appointments mean for your business? That's what Family Security Plans saw in the first 30 days after launching their redesigned website compared to the 30 days before. So what did they change, and what can you learn from it? In this episode, I'm joined by FSP's Roberto Aponte and his Endless Customers coach, Vin Gaeta, to break down what they changed, what worked, and what they had to keep improving.

[00:00:26] Bob Ruffolo: If your website isn't turning enough visitors into sales conversations, you'll leave with specific ideas that you can put to work on your own site. Let's get into it.​

[00:01:16] Bob Ruffolo: And welcome back to the Endless Customers Podcast. We have a great episode coming at you today. We have Roberto Aponte from Family Security Planning, and you're the digital marketing strategist over there. Welcome to the episode.

[00:01:30] Roberto Apponte: Thanks very much, Bob.

[00:01:31] Bob Ruffolo: And we have his Endless Customers coach, Vin Gaeta.

[00:01:33] Bob Ruffolo: You guys all know Vin.

[00:01:34] Vin Gaeta: Hey, guys.

[00:01:35] Bob Ruffolo: So on today's episode, we're gonna go over, um, a massive website redesign project that you guys went through. Uh, phenomenal results coming out the other side. We wanna talk about what went well, what can we learn from this, and especially for the Endless Customer- uh, Endless Customers community, what can we replicate from what you guys have done?

[00:01:53] Bob Ruffolo: So let's just start here. Um, you guys, guys went through a massive redesign. Um, what was [00:02:00] broken? Why'd you have to approach a redesign?

[00:02:02] Roberto Apponte: Uh, well, uh, you know, to be frank, we, we didn't have the foundation that we needed to properly execute on the Endless Customers methodology. And what we had previously for a website was really more of a sandbox of information.

[00:02:17] Roberto Apponte: There weren't any dedicated journeys. There was a lot of friction points, um, and there wasn't a real draw for people to want to be engaged. We had really good info. Education, um, that we provide, uh, to both the credit union members and to the public at large is, is pretty robust, but it just wasn't being offered up in a way that was easily digestible and actionable.

[00:02:42] Roberto Apponte: So we had to make a change, and we decided rather than trying to improve what we have, we're gonna rebuild it from the ground up with some of the skills that we've picked up working with you guys.

[00:02:51] Bob Ruffolo: And, and your business too, so everyone here understands what you guys do and what, what the purpose of your website is, let's go into that a little

[00:02:58] Roberto Apponte: Yeah. Thank you for asking, Bob. So [00:03:00] The Family Security Plan has been working with credit unions for decades, and what we do is we enable credit unions to connect with their clients. And further, we allow, we h- we actually help them engage with those clients in a meaningful way. So for the credit union, we provide new membership, we provide loan leads, we provide, uh, value in, uh, an actual ret- a dollar amount return on the business that we do with them.

[00:03:26] Roberto Apponte: But we always start the conversations by talking about the credit union's benefits first and making sure that the client of the credit union is serviced completely in, in any way that they need f- from the credit union. Um, and then we talk about protection, and we start educating them on, on some of the benefits that are available to them through the credit union by working with the Family Security Plan.

[00:03:48] Bob Ruffolo: it. Okay. So and for scale, so everyone understands the size of your business, um, give us some kind of measure of scale of how big Family Security Plan is.

[00:03:55] Roberto Apponte: We've got about 300 employees. We've got about 110, uh, people o- [00:04:00] of that are the sales force. And, uh, we're about a $53 million company right now with, um, some aspirations over the next decade to become $170 million company.

[00:04:11] Bob Ruffolo: Incredible. So it sounds like credit unions are your main first customer, and then your second customer is the members of the credit

[00:04:19] Roberto Apponte: That's correct. You got it, Bob.

[00:04:20] Bob Ruffolo: All right, perfect. So now Vin, you had started working with them, and you saw their website. Now, what were your observations of the site, and what, what did you immediately see were the opportunities for improvement?

[00:04:31] Vin Gaeta: Yeah. There was, there was a lot, and we've talked about this, and that's part of the reason why the redesign had to happen. The information and the education in the website was really, really strong foundationally. The way that it was presented felt dated, needed an uplift, and so, so did the story, right?

[00:04:48] Vin Gaeta: That was so much of what we talked about is how do we create this compelling narrative where it's not just you need insurance or your credit union members need insurance and coverage for your family, it's [00:05:00] You need to secure your family. You need to be the hero of your family to make sure that they are protected.

[00:05:06] Vin Gaeta: 'Cause at the end of the day, let's be honest, insurance isn't sexy. No one gets out of bed thinking about insurance, but you get out of bed to secure your family for the long term, and that was a lot of the work that we did. How do we frame this up and position not only the design, but you mentioned the journeys, so people are getting to the outcome that is, my credit union is, one, set up to protect our members and ultimately give our members everything that our credit union can provide to them.

[00:05:34] Vin Gaeta: But at the end of the day, the, the family member, the, the lead of your family is able to secure everyone under that umbrella at the right clip, and that's, that is a lot of where all... That's where all of our conversations stem from.

[00:05:50] Bob Ruffolo: So, so help me understand this. So, um, we're gonna take a look at the entire journey here. So you had this outdated website and, um, and design matters, right? We don't, we, we... I [00:06:00] think sometimes people are like, "Oh, does design really matter?" It's like, no, when you land on somebody's website, if it looks dated, you immediately think the company is dated.

[00:06:05] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. If the comp- the website looks dated, you think, "Oh, they probably are old school. They don't invest in tech type of stuff." So that presence does matter, so we had to fix that. But really, um, credit unions are our first customer going to the site, and what was broken in their journey in terms of were we getting more credit unions to sign on to bring this as a benefit to their, their customers?

[00:06:24] Roberto Apponte: Okay, Bob, that's a great question because the original site was trying to serve both audiences and doing nothing for either. Um, so what we did with the new site is we bifurcated it. Like, we're like, we, we need to serve our, our families with, with one part of the website, and then serve the credit unions with another.

[00:06:42] Roberto Apponte: And so by separating the website into those two different experiences, we were able to deliver both on the promise, but on the communication in a much more meaningful way.

[00:06:50] Bob Ruffolo: Okay. So how did you decide to do this? So obviously, that makes sense, right? We wanna make sure that people get into an experience.

[00:06:57] Bob Ruffolo: Now strategically, how'd you break that apart? What, what was, would [00:07:00] that look like? 

[00:07:00] Roberto Apponte: Yeah.

[00:07:00] Roberto Apponte: so, well, we kept it simple, you know, and we were batting it around for a long time. Um, you know, Mary has been an exceptional partner. She has such an acumen for building a website in a way that it really does create a, a, a fun commerce journey for the client that's engaged.

[00:07:17] Roberto Apponte: Um, so, you know, we're like, "Do we have two separate websites? What do we do with the navigation?" And we decided that we just created a top-line navigation above the others that keeps it simple: individuals, credit unions. You make that choice, and then the experience unfolds for you. We even

[00:07:32] Bob Ruffolo: by the way, Mar- Mary is, um, one of our website strategists here at IMPACT, so yeah, just wanna make sure the audience knows that too. Yeah.

[00:07:37] Roberto Apponte: Absolutely. She's incredible. And, um, so yeah, that, that approach allowed us to, to then, y- you know, invest in, in, in each side without having to take away from either one at the same time.

[00:07:49] Bob Ruffolo: So we have a redesigned site. It looks beautiful. We've divided out the two sections. We've organized our content. We've got specificity in the examples. We've got better customer proof.

[00:07:56] Bob Ruffolo: We're now optimized for AEO. Um, site [00:08:00] is getting launched. And what was happening from a performance standpoint before launch? What were some of the early indicators that you saw that you were saying, "Oh, wow, this may actually be working for us," and where are we today?

[00:08:11] Roberto Apponte: Yeah. So before launch, it really felt stagnant. One of the things that we wanted to accomplish was get appointments scheduled for our agents.

[00:08:16] Roberto Apponte: Yeah. And that proved to be much harder than it looked on the front end. Before the website launch, we were averaging about two website appointments per month.

[00:08:25] Bob Ruffolo: For a company your size, that's kind of surprising. Why is it? Okay, are these, are these credit union, uh, uh, inquiries for the most part, or? 

[00:08:32] Roberto Apponte: Oh,

[00:08:32] Roberto Apponte: no, these are, uh, uh, cli- uh, clients of the credit union- Clients

[00:08:36] Roberto Apponte: coming to us for education on insurance and to,

[00:08:38] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, but only two a month.

[00:08:40] Bob Ruffolo: I mean, I have to imagine your sales force then is just doing everything, you know, they're the ones aggressively going after and bringing clients on, but only getting two a month. But that's kind of surprising for a company your

[00:08:50] Roberto Apponte: size.

[00:08:50] Roberto Apponte: So that's just for the appointments through digital marketing. You know, we've got a robust, um, a calling program where we, we, we're doing thousands of dials. And so the salespeople are getting it [00:09:00] after- getting after it that way. But the world's changing, and dialing is... I mean, the world has changed, and dialing is a very difficult job, and it's expensive.

[00:09:09] Roberto Apponte: So there's gotta be other ways. Uh, first we gotta make it easier for the client to protect themself. That's one thing. Um, but we also have to make it, uh... We have to meet the people in the market that they're in now. And so the problem with the appointments, it, it, it wasn't the content 'cause it was still there, but it was the way everything was delivered.

[00:09:27] Roberto Apponte: Every point had a friction point. Every experience, uh, gave a reason for you not to continue. And, and th- those are things that you don't realize sometimes until you start really digging in. And that was, that was a big motivation for the new website, was like, if there's ever a friction point, and I don't care what it is or how simple it is, we've gotta get it out of the way.

[00:09:47] Roberto Apponte: We've gotta make it insanely easy for people to get to what they

[00:09:49] Bob Ruffolo: That's right. Yeah. That's great. So, so we were very much not getting, uh, great performance in terms of people reaching out to us. Even those two per month, I mean, I imagine they probably [00:10:00] were already going there, and they wanted to reach out to you directly, so we weren't capturing as much.

[00:10:04] Bob Ruffolo: Um, we did the redesign of the site, and I think you said you were pretty excited the next morning you woke up, right?

[00:10:10] Roberto Apponte: I was excited, and I was anxious. The whole company is looking at the marketing team, at the, uh, web design group, Isadora, at you guys, because Mary was heavily involved, and they wanted to see some results. So we had to land that plane.

[00:10:24] Bob Ruffolo: Mm.

[00:10:25] Roberto Apponte: You know, you create a new website, y- y- there's no guarantees that people are gonna go there, especially when you just relaunch.

[00:10:34] Roberto Apponte: Even things like simple technical things like propagation are gonna work against

[00:10:37] Bob Ruffolo: Oh, yeah, of course, yeah.

[00:10:38] Roberto Apponte: So I warned the board, I was like, "We're gonna need some time to ramp this up." Yeah. And so the next day after launch, after a full 24 hours had passed, and we got two appointments. It sounds-- doesn't sound like anything, but 24 hours for two appointments compared to 30 days, now we're talking.

[00:10:54] Bob Ruffolo: Well, as

[00:10:55] Bob Ruffolo: you f- you, it's a huge sigh of relief. Okay, we had two in the last 30 days, and the [00:11:00] next day we got two- Yeah

[00:11:01] Bob Ruffolo: and it's like, "All right, at least I can breathe for the next, you know, month or so." That's right And then, of course, then you're antsy and be like, "All right, can we get two more? Can we get three more? Can we get four more?" So as you navigate this, okay, so what happened within 30 days after going live?

[00:11:15] Roberto Apponte: Oh, 30 days was, uh, that's where it actually blew my mind because we hadn't advertised any of these things in any way, and we didn't want to. We were still optimizing them. Yeah. Um, 30 days had passed, and I forget the actual number, but I can't forget the percentage.

[00:11:30] Roberto Apponte: Yeah. Three hundred and seventy-one percent increase 30 days after launch compared to 30 days prior.

[00:11:35] Bob Ruffolo: Okay. And that's increase in inquiries coming in?

[00:11:39] Roberto Apponte: In, no, in scheduled appointments. Scheduled appointments. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So those are people that are ready to engage with the sales agent. That's awesome.

[00:11:46] Roberto Apponte: Um, it, it is awesome. Yeah.

[00:11:48] Bob Ruffolo: Now, um, so Vin, let's turn over to you 'cause you were watching this whole thing and, and participating in it. Um, what did you see specifically that they did with their launch, um, that [00:12:00] led to them seeing this kind of improvement, and what maybe other people can learn from as well if they go to the website, look at FSP's site, and they say, "Oh, let me look at that site and learn from that, and we can replicate this for ourselves"?

[00:12:11] Vin Gaeta: Aside from positioning it, uh, as we've said already, where you're on the FSP website, but it's not all about FSP, it's about you and getting you to see where you need to get to.

[00:12:24] Vin Gaeta: One of the things that we had done before launch that we wanted to track very closely after launch was we leaned into a self-assessment tool. Score yourself, figure out where you are in your journey, and we'll give you recommendations on what you need to do to close any gaps that you found.

[00:12:39] Bob Ruffolo: And then but those two launched at the same time, right? The new website had the assessment together?

[00:12:44] Vin Gaeta: assessment was on the new website.

[00:12:46] Vin Gaeta: We had it beforehand, but it wasn't, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, it wasn't a full court press. We had it on the website, but it wasn't drive everyone there 

[00:12:53] Bob Ruffolo: Buried.

[00:12:56] Roberto Apponte: It was a prototype.

[00:12:57] Vin Gaeta: Yeah. Okay. We were proving the model before [00:13:00] we unveiled the brand-new FSP and had it as a focal point, and the early numbers showed that it was working.

[00:13:06] Vin Gaeta: We were having better conversations. The folks that were going through that assessment were turning into appointments, and, Roberto, you'll know more than I do, post-launch, that is one of the biggest drivers of seeing those appointments. Folks are, are going in, self-assessing, and ultimately understanding where they stack so they can go take a, a, a more considered next step than they might have previously.

[00:13:29] Bob Ruffolo: Now,

[00:13:29] Bob Ruffolo: when we unburied this a little bit and it was no longer, um, a prototype and we made this the foc- focal point, I think is exactly how you said it.

[00:13:38] Bob Ruffolo: Did you put it right in the hero of the homepage and with arrows and everything pointing towards it? Or how did you make this the focal point?

[00:13:47] Roberto Apponte: Well, I'll tell you. Uh, the first thing that we did is we realized the value of this tool was so strong that when we initially created it, we used a third party to build it.

[00:13:58] Roberto Apponte: Mm-hmm. The value was so strong for [00:14:00] proving that out that we decided to just start coding it ourself, so that we can have full control over it. Yeah. And that's what we're, what we've done and what we're continuing to do with the new tools that we've built. Now, we didn't have glowing neon signs pointing, "Here's the way," but we did encourage people to, uh, take a step by either providing a tidbit of information that was just enough to whet their appetite or just enough to make them uncomfortable with the fact that they didn't know more- Mm-hmm

[00:14:27] Roberto Apponte: so that they would just be interested in taking that next step to either open the article or, "Hey, if you really don't know, just take a minute to answer a few questions and give yourself a better idea of what your protection needs should be." That's really empowering to a client, to give them the control to have a real conversation with you.

[00:14:46] Roberto Apponte: W- as a professional, you guys know your job so, so well. So when a client comes to you and doesn't understand, and, and they shouldn't, um, everything that you guys have to offer and the knowledge and the skills, there's gonna be almost an in- intimidation [00:15:00] factor. So instead, give that person a real opportunity to become educated and have a really meaningful conversation with you.

[00:15:06] Roberto Apponte: That creates confidence for- at the buyer level.

[00:15:08] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Makes sense.

[00:15:09] Vin Gaeta: there, there's one thing that you, you hit on, Roberto, that I don't want to lose because it's-- For everyone listening, a- and we're talking about self-service tools, we're talking about assessment, you don't have to start with the custom route, the thing that you own, that you create yourself.

[00:15:23] Vin Gaeta: We started with an out-of-the-box option. It, it was ScoreApp, I

[00:15:26] Bob Ruffolo: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

[00:15:27] Vin Gaeta: used ScoreApp to prove the concept, to prove the model, because we can spin it up fast, we can get it into the wild, we can learn what is or is not working, and then you built the thing that you want for the long term that you control, that is inside of your ecosystem, and then we drive the folks to it.

[00:15:42] Vin Gaeta: Yeah. And that's-- that is what I would recommend for anyone listening. If you don't have a tool yet, figure out what the MVP needs to be, what the, the cheaper version. It doesn't always need to be Vibe Coding. There's a lot of stuff out there that you can prove the concept with, and then double down on what works.

[00:15:57] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, and you know, and to make this actionable for everybody, you're [00:16:00] hearing ScoreApp, you're like, "Oh, well it's another software I have to learn." Well, a couple things I might advise here is go to your AI tool and say, "I wanna build an assessment. This is my type of business." Brainstorm with it what that assessment could be.

[00:16:12] Bob Ruffolo: Have it make you a prototype, which takes two seconds. It'll build the whole thing right in front of you. Now, can you wire that up to your site and make it work? Maybe, maybe not. It's depends on how technical you are. But what you could do is say, "Hey, how can I build this in ScoreApp?" And go create a, an account in ScoreApp and wire the two up, and then just say, "Hey, uh, ChatGPT or Claude, build this in ScoreApp for me."

[00:16:34] Bob Ruffolo: And it'll go, "Da, da, da, da, da. This is done." And then you say, "Oh, is this hooked up to my HubSpot?" And be like, "No. Would you like that to happen?" And you say, "Yes." It goes, "All right, here's a couple things and da, da, da, da, da," and it's done, right? So that is how fast you could go with this. Um, now I do wanna go back to this assessment now because it's a very clear-- clearly it's a big part of what you guys are doing and it's working in your funnel. What is happening in this assessment? So what is the [00:17:00] first experience? What are you doing with, with people to walk them through it? And h- what are they getting on the other side of it that they're finding so valuable they're saying, "Hey, I should go book an appointment"?

[00:17:09] Roberto Apponte: So first of all, you said some, some really important things about

[00:17:13] Bob Ruffolo: da?

[00:17:14] Bob Ruffolo: Oh.

[00:17:14] Roberto Apponte: No, no, about AI and, and how you can really leverage it to fail fast. Yeah. And that's what we should be doing nowadays. Kids nowadays are able to use AI to u- to leverage ScoreApp.

[00:17:26] Bob Ruffolo: kids these days

[00:17:27] Roberto Apponte: year and a half ago, back in the day, I had to literally create the logic myself, um, and it was a long and arduous process, so I'm really glad that you mentioned that because using these tools, it's gonna be unique, a unique experience for every company and every user, so you, you're gonna make some mistakes.

[00:17:43] Roberto Apponte: So leverage AI to help you make those mistakes faster, so that you can get to the point, uh, where I'm gonna ask you a question now about how the self-service tool actually matriculates people through it. Yeah. You know, first you gotta attract people to it somehow.

[00:17:54] Bob Ruffolo: Sure, yeah.

[00:17:55] Roberto Apponte: And just saying to somebody, "You're gonna get some answers by taking [00:18:00] a minute here"- Yeah

[00:18:01] Roberto Apponte: is actually enough for some people- Yeah ... because that engages them where they don't have a really big commitment. It's not a huge mental load, and hopefully they're gonna get something of value out of it. So right away that, you know, that definitely gets people geared towards it.

[00:18:15] Bob Ruffolo: And it's the way you word it.

[00:18:17] Bob Ruffolo: So if you say, "Take our assessment," it's like, that sounds self-serving. What are you going to get? And we all are afraid to fill out forms on the internet these days, 'cause we all know what happens when we fill out a form. We're gonna get a bunch of emails. But if you offer something behind that form of significant value that people can perceive like, "That is, I'm perceiving that to be valuable for me.

[00:18:36] Bob Ruffolo: I want that. I, I will fill out my email address, whatever it is, because I want that so bad," that's when you actually get high conversions, and that's at least getting people to start the assessment.

[00:18:47] Roberto Apponte: No, it is. And, and, you know, I, now I see where Vin gets it from. It, it, you know, you've always gotta be conscious that it should appeal to the client. It shouldn't be you touting yourself like, you know, like you said, "Take [00:19:00] our assessment." So we did name the, uh, tool the, uh, well, the, what you get out of the tool is the family security score.

[00:19:10] Roberto Apponte: So people can feel like, "I'm gonna get an idea of how much protection my family either has or needs, and that at least is gonna give me a North Star that I can use." And so w- w- you know, with that there, it-

[00:19:22] Bob Ruffolo: which works out well because you've named your company very smartly. Fa- Family Security Plan, get your Family Security Score. And I don't want the audience to take this, like, the wrong way and say, "Well, they named their score after their company," because if your company's called Gallagher Insurance, don't get, say it's the Gallagher Score.

[00:19:39] Bob Ruffolo: That's not gonna do anything for you. 

[00:19:40] Roberto Apponte: That's 

[00:19:40] Bob Ruffolo: different. Yeah. Right. But the fact that you guys are Family Security is a perfect name for the score.

[00:19:45] Roberto Apponte: Yeah, yeah. We got lucky with that

[00:19:46] Roberto Apponte: one.

[00:19:46] Roberto Apponte: It kinda fell in our lap. Uh, I give credit to Tim, um, one of our owners. He actually came up with that. It was pretty good.

[00:19:52] Bob Ruffolo: Love that. Good. So then, um, so what are you doing in the scoring and what questions are they [00:20:00] answering, um, and are you doing any education throughout the assessment process so they come out the other side being like, "Ooh, I didn't know that"?

[00:20:08] Roberto Apponte: I love this. So first of all, we, we gotta continue to refine the questions. We've gotta make it easier. Right now we've got 10. I'd, I'd like for it to be shorter, but they ask, you know, very personal things like, you know, do you or your spouse have a dangerous job? Um, how many children would you like to protect?

[00:20:24] Roberto Apponte: Um, how, um, you know, w- how do you think that your family could survive, uh, in two months financially if you were gone? And so they're, they're, they're really direct and personal questions. Right. And so, you know, I don't

[00:20:39] Bob Ruffolo: you sign up? You have kids. I don't have kids, so I don't have

[00:20:41] Vin Gaeta: it out so many times.

[00:20:43] Roberto Apponte: But then, you know, how do you keep them engaged and educated along the way?

[00:20:46] Roberto Apponte: Well, that's where the video component comes in, and that's where Luke's storytelling comes in. We actually leveraged Vidyard for this part. Yeah. Rather than, uh, create a bunch of mini, uh, vignettes of a, of a real person, we leveraged Vidyard for this particular [00:21:00] thing, and I think it's a good spot for it because sometimes AI avatars turn people off, but this is a guide.

[00:21:06] Roberto Apponte: You know, it's not... No one's expecting this to be a real human. It's just a guide giving you seven seconds of useful info as you ponder this question. So every question has about a five to seven-second video that will play alongside it, encouraging you to keep moving.

[00:21:21] Bob Ruffolo: Oh, so we gotta make sure we show that, John, when we, uh, produce this episode so people can see that as well.

[00:21:26] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, that's fantastic. So it's educational and, and, um- And encouraging ... and encouraging. Now, are you asking for their email address and information at the start of the process, or are you asking for it at the end of the process? I'm very

[00:21:41] Roberto Apponte: love these questions, Bob, 'cause Vin has wanted us to try everything we could. Um, w- we're asking at the end right now.

[00:21:50] Bob Ruffolo: I think that's the right thing to do

[00:21:51] Roberto Apponte: you know, you lose some people in the process, but you also gain a much more qualified lead.

[00:21:56] Bob Ruffolo: That's right. Yeah. And I think, [00:22:00] um, when you go through an offer like that, um, when they start experiencing it and they get educated, they're getting more value, and they get more educated, they get more value, they get more educated, more value.

[00:22:11] Bob Ruffolo: At the end, they have that magic word that begins with a T, more trust with you. You gave me a lot already. I will now give you my information because you might give me more value at the end of this. So I strongly believe in that because there's a lot of people, like, and we've all done this. I mean, 2014 marketing, when we first started doing all this, it was download this free e-book, fill out this form.

[00:22:33] Bob Ruffolo: But we've all been-- we got a, a, an e-book that was terrible or outdated, and it wasn't worth our time, and then we got 100 emails and, and we hated it, and we were like, "We're done with this." So starting with the value and then getting the conversion when you earned the conversion makes so much more sense.

[00:22:47] Roberto Apponte: gotta give to get. It doesn't matter what you're doing.

[00:22:50] Bob Ruffolo: So

[00:22:50] Bob Ruffolo: the end, do you gate an output? So you get the email address at the end, and then they get their score and recommendations?

[00:22:57] Roberto Apponte: That is correct. So once, uh, you get through those [00:23:00] questions, we keep this form simple. You don't want 'em to drop off.

[00:23:03] Roberto Apponte: Yeah. So, um, name, phone number, email. And the phone number for us, for a lot of companies may not be as important because then you could pull people in with email, start nurturing them. But one of the things that separates our company is that we have got a human sales force that's actually interacting with people.

[00:23:18] Roberto Apponte: And as this world changes and more and more companies like TrueStage, Ethos are moving to that model where it's all digital- Yeah ... we have a landing pad for people that have gotten educated to the point that they do feel comfortable speaking to a human, and then actually want that interaction because that's where they could, you know, be vulnerable enough now that they have the confidence- Yeah

[00:23:42] Roberto Apponte: to say, "Hey, I want this, but what do you think I need also?" Yeah. And so for the sales agent, the conversation is warmer, it's more engaged, and it leads to better results.

[00:23:53] Bob Ruffolo: Well, I mean, it's the principle of Endless Customers. When you have more, better education, someone comes in and they, after they've had so much exposure to [00:24:00] your content and education and they still wanna talk to you, those are the deals that close really fast.

[00:24:04] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. So 100%. Um, no, this is great. Now, um, all right, so we've put more focus on this assessment. It sounds like if we move it to the hero and put some neon signs pointing to it, we might even get more people to sign up for it. Maybe. I don't know. You guys know better than I do. Um, but, uh, how many people are, are taking the assessment and completing it all the way through right now?

[00:24:26] Bob Ruffolo: Do you know?

[00:24:26] Roberto Apponte: Uh, yes. Don't get me wrong, it is in the hero. 

[00:24:28] Bob Ruffolo: It is. 

[00:24:29] Roberto Apponte: Okay. And it's everywhere. It's everywhere. Um, so how many people are filling it out? Um, I'll, I'll put it this way. 

[00:24:38] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. 

[00:24:38] Roberto Apponte: The MQLs and the SQLs and the appointments-

[00:24:42] Bob Ruffolo: And how, before you even go to that, um, define what you guys call an MQL, define what you call an SQL, and we know what appointments are.

[00:24:50] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead, obviously appointments are appointments, but everyone's got different definitions for them. So your MQL is, is what? Somebody that[00:25:00] 

[00:25:00] Roberto Apponte: Thanks for pulling me out of the

[00:25:00] Bob Ruffolo: No, no problem.

[00:25:01] Roberto Apponte: all. I appreciate that. Um, so for n- uh, for us, an MQL is a marketing qualified lead, and the way that we define that is somebody that has only taken an assessment.

[00:25:10] Roberto Apponte: So at first we thought that wasn't gonna be a very hot lead, which is why we were calling them MQLs, but I told you earlier, um, they're closing at a 30% rate. To me, that's an SQL. Okay. But you know, it's not fair to just, uh, throw, to, you know, to just say just because it's successful, it's an SQL.

[00:25:28] Bob Ruffolo: So your SQLs are people that have raised their hand, said, "I want an appointment", and then your appointments are people that actually get the appointment booked?

[00:25:35] Roberto Apponte: That's correct. So an SQL is somebody that has taken an assessment, but also asked to be contacted in some form or another, whether it's appointment or simply raising their hand, uh, that would be the SQL.

[00:25:46] Bob Ruffolo: a high percentage of your people that book an appointment or request an appointment, um, they have all done the assessment or, or, or do you have people that also come in not from the

[00:25:58] Roberto Apponte: We do, but we're [00:26:00] finding that-

[00:26:00] Bob Ruffolo: The assessment's the main

[00:26:01] Roberto Apponte: assessment ... the assessment is, is, you know, in order to, to matriculate to that next phase, about 70% of the people that get to that point are taking that assessment.

[00:26:08] Bob Ruffolo: And I love what we keep saying here, too. Um, uh, you can build something and launch it, but that's not where the magic actually happens.

[00:26:18] Bob Ruffolo: The magic happens when we continue to look at it and improve it, and improve it, and improve it, and improve it, and improve it month over month, over month, over month, and make those numbers go up, 'cause they're not gonna just go up on their own. So we can launch it and we're here, but we're leaving this giant gap of opportunity by not saying, "How can we make this..."

[00:26:35] Bob Ruffolo: Like you're saying, take a few questions out, make the form a little easier, put a little bit more education here, drive a little bit more people to it, um, make it easier, maybe a little AI, whatever it is, and just make those numbers go up and up and up and up. And that's actually the fun part of our jobs in, in digital marketing, which that, that's what I love about it.

[00:26:53] Vin Gaeta: That's, that's one of the things that has constantly impressed me with you and the team. Between you, Cara, everyone else, you're [00:27:00] always looking at how do we one-up what we've done? How do we take more feedback to what you said before? We went back and forth on so many emails and, and pieces of content a- as to how do we take ourselves back and put the hero a little bit more in it.

[00:27:15] Vin Gaeta: And the same goes to the tools, to anything that we're doing to the website. If you're not looking at it, if you're not treating it like a living, breathing thing, it's gonna atrophy. It's not gonna be as strong as it possibly can be. Scrabble. Yeah, that's, that's a Scrabble word. We're playing Scrabble with the kids now.

[00:27:30] Vin Gaeta: Scrabble

[00:27:30] Vin Gaeta: Because you're not giving it the attention that it deserves to fully mature into what it could be. And as you said, we have to fail fast. We're not gonna stick the landing every time, but you have to learn from those failures to make it better. And we started with 10. I hope you get it down to a really solid five so it's even faster.

[00:27:49] Vin Gaeta: And at the end of the day, that might not work. We might get it down to five and realize, you know what? We're getting less of a, a continuation rate than we were when it was 10 for whatever reason, and we can [00:28:00] learn from that. Yeah. But that's, that's the mindset that we have to adopt, and then how do you get more eyeballs?

[00:28:06] Vin Gaeta: How do we get more visibility into it? And that, I think is, is honestly the biggest name of the game is you can build it. It's not Field of Dreams. They're not gonna come just 'cause you build it. You have to drive people to it in droves. And yeah, it's not gonna be neon flashing signs all over, but it's making sure that you have a direct call to action in as many places as we can.

[00:28:26] Bob Ruffolo: That's where I want to go next with this.

[00:28:28] Bob Ruffolo: So, um, you mentioned it's everywhere, which is great, but define everywhere. What are you doing to actually drive people to take this assessment right now? And what, and what's working that we can learn from?

[00:28:38] Roberto Apponte: Yeah. So you open up to here. As soon as you get to the website, there's a tool front and center. Uh, a little bit of a descriptor, of course. And, you know, to your earlier point of constant optimization, even something as simple as changing take this three-minute quiz to take this one-minute quiz has such an impact.

[00:28:55] Roberto Apponte: And so you rattled off like a dozen things about optimization, and that's [00:29:00] so spot on. You've gotta be constantly looking at- The little things. And you can't stop doing ... This is one of your mantras. You can't stop doing the little things. So important in order to optimize. Those are the things that make a difference.

[00:29:13] Roberto Apponte: Um, so o- our tool is front and center in the hero, but it's also at every part of the journey. So if you get educated, there's an opportunity to hop off to the tool. If you wanna schedule an appointment, after you schedule the appointment, you have an opportunity to jump on that tool again to get e- educated.

[00:29:28] Roberto Apponte: If you receive an email from us, you know there is a tool in there waiting for you. So any communication, we use that as an opportunity to put that tool in front of people.

[00:29:37] Bob Ruffolo: That's great. Now, are you running ads to it?

[00:29:41] Roberto Apponte: Uh, we are. We are. Yeah. And, you know, I just wanna go back really quick- Yeah ... because feedback is a really important part of how you optimize something.

[00:29:48] Roberto Apponte: Yeah. And Vin is great at giving feedback, and our team- This guy? Oh, my God. Uh, you know, and our team, Cara, Lauren-

[00:29:56] Bob Ruffolo: hairs?

[00:29:56] Bob Ruffolo: A lot of feedback given. Lot, a lot of feedback [00:30:00] given.

[00:30:00] Roberto Apponte: You need to turn it back around. So my team, they're gluttons for feedback, you know?

[00:30:05] Roberto Apponte: They eat feedback, and they crap performance. So i-

[00:30:10] Roberto Apponte: it just

[00:30:10] Roberto Apponte: it's great, you know? Like, it's, it's like a machine. Um, but you've gotta take yourself out of it. You've gotta be objective. Yeah. You can't look at it and say, "This is the way I want it to be built." You've gotta look at it and say, "How does somebody else need it to be built?"

[00:30:24] Roberto Apponte: And that's hard sometimes. When you're in the company, when you're in the weeds, uh, to, to pull yourself away from it and be truly objective, that's one of the most important things that you could do for optimizing this journey path.

[00:30:37] Bob Ruffolo: You know, um, another great tool for feedback is AI. And, um, and I wanna stay on feedback a little bit 'cause I, I'm glad you brought us back to that. So you can have AI go through this tool and identify every single missed opportunity and, and every conversion oppor- uh, optimization opportunity that exists. If you haven't already done that, go do it [00:31:00] through Claude, go do it through ChatGPT, do it in another session, do it in another session, and you might find these, all these little missed opportunities that you might not even know about.

[00:31:08] Bob Ruffolo: And some of these ideas they'll, they'll come back will be junk, right? And you'll be like, "We're not gonna do that." That's the human judgment of feedback, and he can give you an idea, and you can say, "You don't know what you're talking about," and 'cause that's the human part of this. It's the judgment, the experience that only us as humans have.

[00:31:24] Bob Ruffolo: But AI can see things that we miss all the time. You were just talking about a client of yours, and you run- ran through an AI assessment that we have, and it found all these broken links that us as humans were just gonna overlook. They probably weren't affecting our analytics, but they were still there, and they had to be fixed.

[00:31:38] Vin Gaeta: were buried two or three pages deep, and most humans, unless you're on that specific page, weren't gonna find it. It was not on your

[00:31:45] Bob Ruffolo: Not yours. No. But, but I-- That's what I'm saying. That's, that's another way of getting feedback is just run it through your AI tools and say: How can this be better? How can it perform better for our business?

[00:31:55] Roberto Apponte: Well,

[00:31:56] Roberto Apponte: last year at the conference, you gave the, uh, [00:32:00] audience quite a few awesome agents that I use to audit these pages. Yeah. Uh, there's a pricing one. Mm-hmm. Um, there are, there, there are three that, uh, that were just great gifts by the way, just for, just for attending.

[00:32:14] Bob Ruffolo: We have new ones this year.

[00:32:15] Roberto Apponte: Awesome. Um, and please send them to me. Yeah. They do an amazing job at auditing for you and like you said, discovering things that you would have overlooked that frankly you may not think are important but are having an impact. Um, so yeah, you gotta leverage those tools. And usually, um, uh- It's gonna produce good, uh, results for you as long as you scrutinize it carefully.

[00:32:36] Bob Ruffolo: All right, so we started going to paid. Um, you're running some paid, paid campaigns to- towards

[00:32:41] Roberto Apponte: We are. We're doing a lot of testing. You know, um, social ads are finicky, and Facebook's recommendations are awful. What, w- you know, we've learned that optimizing our audience ourself actually goes a lot better than relying on Facebook's own optimization.

[00:32:54] Bob Ruffolo: many times before, absolutely.

[00:32:56] Roberto Apponte: sense. Absolutely. Just looking at the ad spend, you know, just keep it simple, 10 bucks [00:33:00] here using Facebook's, uh, recommendations, it, it got us about,

[00:33:05] Roberto Apponte: you

[00:33:05] Roberto Apponte: know, a third of what using our own recommendations did. So we've been doing a lot of testing. We've been using the self-service tool for it in particular.

[00:33:12] Roberto Apponte: Yeah. And it has been successful. Um, we are still in testing phase. Oh, yeah. So this quarter, I, I plan on spending some more money on it, but even with the simple testing, we're driving traffic, and we're also... This is actually one of the coolest things that, that resulted from that. Three out of the four people that come through social media are completely new to us- Wow

[00:33:35] Roberto Apponte: which is a new thing for the company because we've always gone after credit union members that are somehow connected to us- Mm-hmm ... or resold or sold to people that are already in our walled garden. 

[00:33:45] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. 

[00:33:46] Roberto Apponte: But now, this tool combined with social advertising is bringing us clients that have never heard of us- Wow

[00:33:52] Roberto Apponte: that have never been associated with us. Yeah. Three out of the four leads that close are completely new to our company.

[00:33:59] Bob Ruffolo: See, [00:34:00] I, I'm gonna throw out some other ideas here for you guys 'cause I'd be very, very... I keep kicking you. I'm sorry, buddy. Ah, eh. Um, sorry, we've known each other for a long time.

[00:34:08] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Uh, um, and you can keep this in too. You don't have to cut that part. Uh,

[00:34:13] Roberto Apponte: part.

[00:34:14] Bob Ruffolo: um, so you know, I, I, I'm also thinking like how can you... I hate the word influencer 'cause people think like the wrong thing with influencers, but how could you get people that already have a built-in audience that, that already cares about them, that could recommend you and say, "Take this assessment," and offer that to their audience as well?

[00:34:34] Bob Ruffolo: That could be another channel for you to explore if you haven't thought about

[00:34:36] Roberto Apponte: I totally agree with you, Bob. We haven't ac- we haven't really explored it yet, but we have been talking about it a lot. We've even identified some influencers that we are thinking about approaching. Yeah. I can't remember the running girl.

[00:34:48] Roberto Apponte: Do you know the, the girl that runs and interviews people?

[00:34:50] Bob Ruffolo: Oh, no, but yeah.

[00:34:51] Roberto Apponte: so she, uh, for some reason she's got a huge following with younger people. Yeah. They, they, they lo- She, she went on a run the other day and put, [00:35:00] um, cream in her bag to turn it into butter. She ran for, like, four hours to turn it into butter, and somehow she's interviewing somebody, it's engaging.

[00:35:07] Roberto Apponte: So we're looking at that for sure, and one of the ways that we're trying to find influencers that are really gonna have an impact but also not be that popular just yet, because they can be expensive, is we're working directly with the University of New Haven on their, uh, master's capstone program, and what we do is we pr- we, we present some problems to that group of young, intelligent people, and they give us solutions, and they've come up with actually some really cool local influencers that we can start leveraging.

[00:35:36] Roberto Apponte: So in the new year, we will be reaching out and seeing if we make some of those connections.

[00:35:39] Bob Ruffolo: making those connections.

[00:35:39] Bob Ruffolo: I could even see, I know this sounds weird, but I could see like mommy bloggers also being a really good channel because they're all about family and all that type of stuff, protecting and then- Yeah. And then, um, and they are the, you know, especially when they're bloggers, they've got some like influence at home too, and say, "We need to do this."

[00:35:57] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, you know, and they're, they're, you know, so there's, there's something, uh, [00:36:00] that might be there too. Just test

[00:36:01] Roberto Apponte: No, you're right, and even this podcast is a good example. I'm- more and more podcasts I'm seeing are advertising insurance. Yeah. You know, I'm seeing it in the weird ones, like, uh, as, uh, and also the mainstream ones. So it's definitely something that we need to explore sooner than later.

[00:36:15] Bob Ruffolo: All right. So Roberto, um, this has all been win, win, win, win, win, win, win, but we know it's not all wins, wins, wins. Um, what have you tested that failed and you learned from it that we could also learn from?

[00:36:27] Roberto Apponte: Well, the first half of the year, we, we were trying to optimize the amount of calls that were coming in, and actually Vin and John played a huge role in helping us to optimize our communication so that it did have an impact on the calls coming in.

[00:36:39] Roberto Apponte: So it's easy to say, like, we failed time and time again in that first quarter just trying to get that messaging right. We weren't moving the needle no matter what we did up to that point.

[00:36:48] Bob Ruffolo: Do you remember what was in your messaging that when you made the change it, it started working and- 

[00:36:53] Roberto Apponte: Yeah,

[00:36:53] Roberto Apponte: Vin pointed it out.

[00:36:54] Roberto Apponte: I don't know if you remember, um, but of course he did. He's the coach. We were competing [00:37:00] with ourselves We had too many CTAs. That's the first thing. Yeah. We're like, "Hey, call us, take the test, go to the education hub, um, visit the portal." Like, we had people going in every direction.

[00:37:13] Vin Gaeta: There was an email that had, I think, six calls to action in it at one point.

[00:37:17] Roberto Apponte: Another example of when it w- you know, you embarrassed me i- in, in, but internally, but you're so kind about it.

[00:37:25] Roberto Apponte: You know, it's like Vin's very good at pointing out the f- to your face that it has a nose. And, you know, sometimes that is difficult because you're like, "I've been doing this for a decade. I should've known that." Um, but that's just me, you know, internally, because Vin and John deliver with such grace and empathy that they're never in any way, like, gonna make you feel bad.

[00:37:49] Roberto Apponte: But sometimes the solution is so obvious that you can't help but think, "Why the hell didn't I think about that?"

[00:37:53] Vin Gaeta: And it's, it's always easier to see it when you're the Monday morning quarterback versus when you're actually in the game.

[00:37:59] Vin Gaeta: And [00:38:00] that's, that is one of the things that I take great pride in when I do it because you ... It could have been very easy to make it feel like a, "What the heck are you doing?" moment. But it's, you guys are in this, in the day-to-day knife fight. It's not easy to, to take five steps back when you're trying to hit deadlines and get everything moving.

[00:38:19] Bob Ruffolo: And the best analogy we can make, it's, it's being a coach. And, um, it's baseball season. We're all Yankee fans here, right? All right. No? Oh, okay. Well, some of us are Yankee fans and, uh ... Oh, you're a Red

[00:38:35] Bob Ruffolo: fans. It's 

[00:38:35] Roberto Apponte: fine. It's fine.

[00:38:36] Bob Ruffolo: Red Sox fan. Sorry about

[00:38:37] Vin Gaeta: married to a Red Sox fan.

[00:38:38] Bob Ruffolo: Oh. So, um, but pitchers, right?

[00:38:42] Bob Ruffolo: They have pitching coaches for a reason. It's not because they're, they need to learn how to pitch. It's because all they're doing is pitching, pitching, pitching. It's so hard to see when their mechanics are off or when they're making a mistake 'cause you're, they're so in the knife fight all the time.

[00:38:56] Bob Ruffolo: Takes somebody from the outside to say, "Hey, kinda obvious here, but what [00:39:00] about this?" You know?

[00:39:01] Roberto Apponte: Well, Bob, you know that I've been using these methodologies since 2014.

[00:39:04] Roberto Apponte: Yeah. And they have helped me to become, uh, helped me to help other people become very successful. But when I got a coach, that's when the results were accelerated. That's when a day later there were two appointments there. Because sure, I was actually pretty good at actually creating, um, these different levers that can increase, uh, appointments.

[00:39:29] Roberto Apponte: But the co- whether it's, I, I, you know, I, I, I think Vin himself is an amazing coach, but what comes along with the coaching that you guys provide along with all of the info and the data, that's when you get really held to a standard where it's like... And, and the other thing is, like, you guys graduate people.

[00:39:50] Roberto Apponte: Like, you don't want people to hang around forever. I love that. You give us... You, you teach us how to fish, and then, and you're like, "Look, you've got it. You don't need me anymore." And if I didn't go through that [00:40:00] coaching experience, I wouldn't really have understand how valuable it is because I'd still be thinking, "Oh, I'm doing great.

[00:40:05] Roberto Apponte: I'm, you know, I'm, these, these things work for, for my business." But working with John and Vin, it, it, it, it just accelerated my ability to see results from these methodologies. 

[00:40:16] Bob Ruffolo: Amazing

[00:40:17] Bob Ruffolo: Amazing.

[00:40:19] Bob Ruffolo: I'll

[00:40:19] Bob Ruffolo: you last, uh, the last point here. Um, what did you see that these guys have done so well that the entire audience needs to learn from that we haven't covered yet?

[00:40:29] Vin Gaeta: Hmm. That's a good one. This might be one that you're not expecting

[00:40:34] Roberto Apponte: Great.

[00:40:36] Vin Gaeta: They were tenacious 

[00:40:38] Bob Ruffolo: Which is,

[00:40:38] Bob Ruffolo: by the way what the moral of the story of what we just talked about with coaching. Not what you were expecting. Sorry, go ahead.

[00:40:43] Vin Gaeta: from, from beginning to end, one of the things that I, I took great pleasure in watching you and the team at FSP do was break down silos.

[00:40:53] Vin Gaeta: And every business that I get the pleasure to coach, some have big silos, some have small silos, but [00:41:00] there's always a silo that needs to get broken down so communication can improve, and so we can get visibility into the areas of the business that everyone's going in, in typically the right direction, but we don't have all the conversations that, that need to be had to move it forward in the right way, to get clarity where it's easy for the sales side to stay in their own sales world, for the marketing side to stay in their own marketing world, and for the IT side to not...

[00:41:28] Vin Gaeta: All the things have to be working together. We always say Endless Customers is a team sport. And that was one of the things that I, I watched transform over our time together is how everyone, not just the marketing team, not just the departments, they all became one whole around the narrative, around the story and the mission of securing families.

[00:41:49] Vin Gaeta: And, and that is something that is awesome to watch. So I challenge everyone listening, if you feel like you're not having the right conversations, you probably have a silo that needs to get broken [00:42:00] down. And when that happens, amazing things can happen. And, and Roberto and his team and everyone at FSP ran through walls to make these things happen.

[00:42:11] Vin Gaeta: It's not an overnight thing. It takes time. And to your point, I love working with you guys. We have a quarterly touch point at this point because you guys are at a certain level with what you're doing. It's always nice to have someone come in and say, "Hey, what did you think about this?" Or, "Here's the new thing that we're experimenting with.

[00:42:29] Vin Gaeta: Here's the new skill, which I'm giving to you at the end of the day, that we're working on now." That's, that's part of the name of the game.

[00:42:35] Roberto Apponte: Bob, I'd love to put a little color behind

[00:42:37] Roberto Apponte: Let's do it.

[00:42:37] Roberto Apponte: there's so much value in what he said and, and, and we took so much action based upon that. We, marketing and sales, were so disconnected at this company, and V- Vin impressed upon us the importance of bringing those groups together, creating collateral together, being inspired by the sales agents, asking them the questions that [00:43:00] you need in order to fulfill the, the, the collateral that will then engage people in a real meaningful way.

[00:43:06] Roberto Apponte: To do that, you've gotta take action. So, uh, Dustin, my boss, the chief operating officer Um, I could tell that he made it his mission to unify sales and marketing over the last year, and it has had a tremendous impact. We created a revenue team, um, at the, I think in March, and we have been every two weeks meeting and scrutinizing the projects, the revenue, um, all based on the direction of unifying sales and marketing together.

[00:43:34] Roberto Apponte: But it takes a concerted effort, and somebody's gotta run with it, and Dustin did an amazing job at actually bringing us together. But then I have to give... honestly, all the credit has to go to the teams that I'm working with. I have been blessed with an amazing partner leader, Cara, that you know, who drives our team, um, uh, hard's the wrong word.

[00:43:55] Roberto Apponte: She drives them for success. And then at the same [00:44:00] time, you know, Lauren Hoffel, who has worked so closely with John Becker on content, she's become a pro at delivering meaningful content. She had an article that went viral already, um, that had a significant impact on traffic, and it was a disruptor. I loved it.

[00:44:15] Roberto Apponte: Um, you know, Megan has doubled down on her ability to leverage Marketo so that we can have that channel distri- distributing for us. Luke is telling stories through video that's incredible. Tara has backing us up with the most amazing brand and design work, and then we added Sean too, who's our relationship specialist that's literally speaking directly to the credit unions about how we engage.

[00:44:40] Roberto Apponte: So all, honestly, the credit has to go to the way that you mentioned that we executed, especially unifying sales and marketing. It has to go to those people, and Mike Conlin, who has led the effort in sales, and one of his top salespeople, uh, named Brianna, who has been manually processing all the leads that we've been sending her way.

[00:44:59] Roberto Apponte: That [00:45:00] alone is a job, yet she sells them as well. So this

[00:45:04] Roberto Apponte: won't happen

[00:45:05] Roberto Apponte: unless you get buy-in across the company. You assign people to different ways of unifying these groups, and then you have meaningful milestones of where the groups actually come together to, to perform. So I've gotta be clear, like I've been doing this a long time.

[00:45:22] Roberto Apponte: There's no way that we could have accomplished what we did if I didn't have the people that I have working alongside

[00:45:27] Bob Ruffolo: I think the lesson from this in connecting both your final points together is that you're willing to break down the silos, you're willing to have the conversations, that there was a leader in place that made it a mission to bring sales and marketing together, and you have people that care And what that says is you have a very healthy organization.

[00:45:47] Bob Ruffolo: You have challenges just like every other organization in the world, but at least you have the right people willing to face those challenges, work together as a team and as a healthy organization to, to make change. And [00:46:00] boy, are you guys making change, and we are incredibly proud of you guys and, and all the hard work you've done.

[00:46:05] Bob Ruffolo: We're honored to have you as part of this Endless Customers community, and thank you, Roberto, so much for coming on today, and thank you for being their coach

[00:46:11] Roberto Apponte: Yeah. Bob, Vin, thank you so much for this opportunity.

[00:46:13] Roberto Apponte: Um, you know, this is sort of a seat that I've wanted to have been in for a while. Um, the only other better podcast that I think I might enjoy would be Terry Gross on NPR, but that's like, you know. But I just want-- I say that because, uh, that's how I feel about what you guys bring to the table, the value that you bring, the way that you communicate it, and I really appreciate this opportunity for us to get together and talk about it.

[00:46:35] Bob Ruffolo: No, it's an absolute honor.

[00:46:37] Bob Ruffolo: All right, Roberto, thank you so much. Thanks, Vin. And thank all of you for joining us today. We will see you at the next episode 

[00:46:43] Bob Ruffolo: If you liked this episode, please take a minute to leave us a review. Thanks for checking out the Endless Customers Podcast.