How are C-Suite buyers different from the typical inbound lead buyers? How is the conversation different with these different types of buyers? Today’s guest is Skip Miller, sales training expert, President of M3 Learning, and author. In today’s episode, Skip discusses ideas from his new book Selling Above and Below the Line: Convince the C-Suite. Win Over Management. Secure the Sale. Listen in to learn more about the difference between above the line and below the lines sales, tools you can use to create an above the line narrative, and what to focus in in above the line conversations. 

Episode Highlights:

• Whether an SDR is naturally inclined to prefer inbound
• The different languages above and below the line
• Different value propositions for buyers above and below the line
• Tools to create an above the line narrative
• Whether inbounds are typically above or below the line
• Use cases where getting people to go above shortens the lag of time
• What above the line conversations focus on
• When to discuss what the new normal will look like
• Understanding above the line energy
• The ratio of questions in above the line conversations
• Call planning
• Importance of understanding both above the line and below the line conversations

Resources:

Skip Miller

M3 Learning

Selling Above and Below the Line

Transcript:

Marylou: Hi everyone, it’s Marylou Tyler. This week I have a really fun guest. Formally, William, but informally, Skip Miller is my guest today. He’s the president of M3 Learning, which is a proactive sales management and sales training company located in Silicon Valley. Today, we’re going to talk more about Skip’s book, Selling Above And Below The Line. I’m going to let Skip further talk about his accomplishments; there’s so many here. I don’t know what he wants to talk about that relates to the book. I was very taken by some sections of the book, especially the dealing with inbound conversations and outbound conversations that I hope that we could talk about today. Skip, welcome to the podcast.

Skip: Broadcast, podcast whatever you want to call it, I’m happy to be here.

Marylou: The event, how’s that?

Skip: There you go. I’m happy to do it. Thank you for the induction and again, whatever we can do to help your audience, especially as the outbound and inbound. There’s a big difference in inbounding and outbounding. Inbounding it’s why you called us. There are some nuances there. You’re starting a stage zero, you’re not starting at stage one. I’m happy to talk about some of those differences.

Marylou: Okay, great. For those of you listening, SDR World and MRR (Marketing Response Rep) World, sometimes we’re dealing with blended SDR roles, where you’re actually fielding inbound leads and those are usually what I call continuing the conversation, and then outbound leads are the self-generated ones, the targeted ones that we’re looking to reach out to someone to start a conversation. In some cases, we’re working off a list that we had had a conversation in the past, they went dark on us for whatever reason, or we put them into long-term follow up, and now we’re coming back into the fold with these accounts trying to get them to the next stage in our sales process, that next action.

Let’s start with the inbound. I liked the way you described it and one of the things I want to ask you is, if you’re a two-year out SDR, are you more naturally inclined to like inbound because of the implied psychological thing? Or do you find it doesn’t really matter once you get the actual tactical knowledge of how to separate these types of calls? They’re both the same. They both feel the same. They both are just as fun to do. What are you seeing out there in the world?

Skip: The whole inbound marketing automation stuff was “Hi, you’ve touched our website, ask for a trial, download a white paper. How may I help you?” and I hear that very reactively. Because now, the buyer is in charge of the buy-sales cycle. “Well this is what I want and we feel if I do what they tell me to do and I do it well, I’ll get an order,” which for the low-hanging fruit does work and then create success patterns. Once those low-hanging fruit things are gone and companies start having to deal with other people—not students and stuff—coming in and selling above and below the line. We talk about two value propositions.

Marylou, I’m on a mission to destroy the term “decision maker,” because I think there’s two. I think there’s one below the line who says, “I’m responsible for making whatever we buy work,” and there’s one above the line who says, “That thing I just bought for $100,000 that’s going to make a dent in my $10 million problem.” I don’t really care if it’s blue, green, yellow, or if it’s left-handed or right-handed.

What happens is, all these inbound leads are typically below the line buyers. The SDRs and the marketing folks in the world have been taught in bootcamps and in all the meetings they have feature function, feature benefit, competitive wins, land mines, grenades, all these things. We have a great time talking about the below the line buyer. They want to talk about us. We want to talk about us. Everyone’s talking about us. We developed that tool set. When you go outbound, you typically try to go to the C-suite which we call above the line. Using below the line language to above the line buyer isn’t going to work.

Marylou: Not at all.

Skip: No. We actually have a little metaphor that’s kind of fun. I was born and raised in Ohio and we’ve got a big family and stuff. Every holiday, we used to get 50-60 people for Thanksgiving and stuff, and there’s so many people we have two tables. We have the kid table and the adult table. The kids love it because they get to speak kid talk, and the adults love it because they don’t have to speak kid talk. It’s just like the two different value proposition thing. If you’re going to go start outbounding or accepting above the line leads, you better learn a new language. That new language is more business value than it is the product value itself.

Marylou: How does one go about? I’m sitting here and thinking, “All right, I like the analogy. I get the big kid table and the little kid table.” How do we frame these conversations? Are we still talking about features but talking about them in a way that’s business language-oriented? Or are we just scrapping the whole feature benefit thing and talking about return on investment and all these how-how, more I guess result-oriented type? What’s the difference in this narrative between the two?

Skip: Let’s talk about similarities. Both above and below the line buyer want outcomes. The below the line buyer says, “Listen, I’m tired of working weekends. I’m tired of working at the thing I have. I’m going to do 40% more next year with the same stuff. It’s not going to work. I need a different tool.” The business above the line buyer has these initiatives.

Our analogy, Marylou, is we call it trains in the train station. Imagine the CMO is the train station master and he’s got five initiatives for the year. “I want to generate 30% more leads. I want to open up a new marketing arm. I want to open up a new channel in Latin America.” So, if you can make it dent in those initiatives, in the trains that are in the train station, that’s a different value proposition than the user buyer, this below the line buyer who says, “I’ve got to make this thing work. I’ve got to be trained on it because if I do this, I’ll be able to not have to work weekends, and I’ll be more productive, and we won’t have to hire as many people as we need to.” Two different value propositions.

Marylou: Two different ones, but it’s so difficult to map out or to guess. Below the line, is let’s face it, it’s easier for us because it is feature benefit-oriented. It’s the tasks that the folks that we’re trying to sell to below the line.

Skip: They want to talk about us. We want to talk about us. We have a great time.

Marylou: Right. When you’re going above, though, what are the tools in the tool kit that we can use to create a narrative for these people if we don’t really have a sense of the profile of the type? Tell us that example that you’re saying of the CIO versus the CTO. Where do we learn about stuff like that? How do we figure that out?

Skip: I’m an immersion program person. If you want to learn Russian just dive into Russia or whatever it may be. If you want to learn about CIO, it’s really simple. Number one, if you ask me when I go on a sales call to an ATL, an above the line buyer, my job is real simple. I hunt for trains and I identify gaps. Why is the train in the train station? I’ll go to the VP of Sales and say, “Hey, as you look at 2020, what are your top goals and objectives?” “One may be to increase revenue by 30 points.” “Great. How are you doing on that?” “Well, we got 20 of the 30 going, but we’re missing the 10 points.” “Well, I don’t know if I can make a dent on those or not, but at least we’ve identified the gap.”

The below the line buyer is never invited to those meetings. I think energy for a sale typically is generated above the line. If we can outbound to those ATLs, I’m hunting for trains and identifying gaps. If we don’t have any trains in the train station and there’s no gaps, I don’t think you have a qualified sale. That’s what we do differently when we go above the line. We just hunt for trains. “Hi, as you look at the next six months, as you look at the next nine months, what are your initiatives that aren’t out there making you money? They’re in the train station for a reason,” to play that metaphor out.

Marylou: Right. Also asking them the priority of getting things fixed because in the outbound world, the other thing we’re worried about is time. We need to be able to understand, are there long-, short-, and medium-sized time elements where we can bucket these things because we’re trying to manage a pipeline that’s equally balanced so that we can forecast with more regularity. In addition, they’re also the keeper of the time to get projects done. When you say six months, is that six months to completion, or six months to show a dent, is there a ramp process involved?

I like the way you described that because anyone can ask these questions, is what I’m trying to get at, but the people who are like, “No, I’m an SOO. Yes dear, I can talk to the president of the company.” Is it possibly mindset that you’re seeing? Obviously, you figured out how to get them over that hump of feeling confident to be able to have these business conversations because they’re not getting into the weeds of the bits and bytes of how that’s going to happen. They’re trying to scope out what is on the horizon, what priority have you placed on this, which ones have the highest impact for you.

These are standard questions that my kids can ask. We can all ask these kinds of questions. You should get over that fear that just because they’re in a leadership position doesn’t mean that they don’t want to have a conversation with you because you’re hitting at the heart of what’s concerning for them.

Skip: Yeah. Think about it this way as well. In an inbound lead, it’s, “How may I help you?” and our receptors are open of, “Okay, I’m going to listen to how we can help. It’s all about us, what we do, and how I might be able to put together a proposal, or a solution that can help what you’re talking to me about.”

Outbound or especially an ATL, it’s kicking in that natural curiosity. It’s, “Hi, as you look at next year,” always time travel, “what are the trains in the train station?” Because if you ask an ATL, “What train station do you have on the station right now?” he’s going to go, “I don’t know. I’ve been attending meetings that talk about 2020,” and every one of their trains has a reason.

To your priority issue, you go to Europe, there’s the TGV trains, very fast trains, there’s the intercity trains. The TGV trains, the real fast trains, those are going to be a top priority. What I love about talking to the CIO, or CTO, or CMO is they have the trains in the station for a reason. They want to talk about getting them out. You sit there and you want to give them a slide deck, pitch deck. No. “Why would a CIO or a CMO talk to me?” Well, if you ask them about why their trains are in the train station, they’ll light up because they want to get them out. They don’t want to sit through a, “Let me give you a quick five-slideshow deck on who we are, and what we do, and why are we uniquely qualified.” The number one thing we found talking to CEOs is what do CEOs hate when talking to SDRs or salespeople? It’s when I pick up the phone and it’s a solution looking for a problem.

Marylou: Exactly.

Skip: That natural curiosity is the top trade of top SDRs.

Marylou: That’s such a great advice. I’m cringing on this side of the phone because the emails that I get from people are that very thing. They asked for time and give me no reason why.

Skip: Right, and then they start pitching because that’s what they’ve been trained to do. We call it, Marylou, we don’t talk about the dog. You can’t woof, you can’t bark. For years, I’ve told people in your initial touches of your cadences and sequences, “Don’t talk about yourself. Have the other person talk about themselves,” and everybody goes, “I get it. Okay, sure,” and then you get on a live connect and it’s like, “Hi, what we do quickly,” four minutes later they’re still talking.

What we tell people is no barking and no woofing. I’ll get an email, “Here’s my email I want to send to the CMO. What do you think Skip?” I’ll just send it back with a big woof because you used the word “I” 17 times. “What we do… our company…” Stop it. Just really ask questions, listen, hunt for trains. That’s your goal.

You could hunt for trains by persona. Your SDRs are pretty smart. What keeps that type in, what keeps the CMO awake at night in 2020, what keeps the CIO awake at 2020, what keeps a small business owner awake in 2020? You’ll get some ideas of what trains are in the station.

Marylou: Right. Plus the internet is very helpful in looking around and researching. I think in your book, even, you talk about how to find out where to uncover these value props, and just by looking through the internet. Now, my guys, I want you to develop a profile of these folks that are in that bullseye that you’re going to be having conversations with. The role, not the title, the role of the person because that way, you can make a decision as to whether you want to develop a sequence. You want to develop a lengthy touch cadence over a time period, or if this is a blitz type of conversation where you’re mapping to the organization to find the right person for example.

I had a client that had 30 marketing positions in the firm. “Which one is the right one for me to talk to?” You still have to map. I hate it when they say, “Yeah, the Internet’s here. We know who’s who. We know what they want,” Yeah. Go through three marketing titles and you tell me which one specifically is going to be the one that I want to start.

Skip: “Who’s the alpha dog? I just want to talk to the alpha dog.”

Marylou: Exactly.

Skip: Also quickly, for your SDRs that are inbound, most inbounds are going to be below the line. “Hi, I noticed you guys do this, can you give me a demo or a trial?” and that happens and then what we hear from SDRs and salespeople is, “Once I’ve done that, how do I get to the above the line buyer? I don’t want to go over my below the line buyer’s head. How do I get there? Do I say, ‘Hi John, this has been really good, but I need to talk to somebody who’s more important than you.’” Which never really works well.

Marylou: No, that’s what we’re thinking though.

Skip: Yeah. We really try to really position the question where. Not who, not what, because who is attacking. Where. “Hey John, what we offer can really affect numerous trains in your organization. It might be of little effect in lead gen, this and that. Where should we go to find out the other trains for the investment you’re making that—for the same amount of money—could make a dent in two or three other different business issues?” John being the conductor on track one is going to go, “Well, I really don’t know,” and then you can say, “Well, let’s go find out because my job as a salesperson is to make sure I am maximizing any investment you guys are going to be making. Boy, I would be derelict in my job if I didn’t find additional trains like lead gen, opening new channels, whatever else your company does, to help out.” That’s a good way to try to get to ATLs, by using the question where, not who.

Marylou: I love that and if you get the hands-on-hips guy saying, “The buck stops here,” you can still navigate around that, “I appreciate that the buck stops here,” and then segue into that conversation you just said about my role and it’s my duty to find and look and make sure that what we’re going to be talking about going forward will have more insights into different parts of the organization as well. I’m going to be looking out for that because that is what I must do in order to be a quality partner with you going forward. There’s lots of ways to get around it.

Skip: Yeah. Think about it. Right now, it’s October. Every ATL in the world is thinking about next year and every BTL in the world is not invited those meetings. How BTL know what’s coming down the track next year? Why don’t we find out because we don’t want in four or five months to go, where all of a sudden the ATL goes, “I want to do this, too,” and the BTL goes, “Well, you never asked for that. I didn’t buy that.” Then we’re all in a mess. We’re not a good place.

Marylou: Right, definitely not in a good place. I love that and it’s very comfortable. To everybody listening, didn’t that sound like something we can all do and do well? If we practice and make sure that we role play that with our peers and our colleagues? These are natural questioning skills that allow us to go both inbound, outbound, and even referrals. When we get a referral from a client or a colleague or an external person, in addition to asking them to make the introduction we still need to have a way to get to the right person. That might not be the right person, they may be that those below, as Skip calls below the line people rather than the above the line people, where we want to have those conversations.

That also is going to shrink the lag. Do you have any hunt that you can share with us? Some case or use cases where getting people to go above more often has actually shorten the lag of time, the cycles have shrunk to get to that next action in the selling cycle?

Skip: It happens all the time. Quick story, a couple years ago, we started with the company that sold some stuff to marketing, especially to ecommerce people for AB testing. I walked in there and said, “What’s the average sale?” They said, “$60,000.” I said, “What’s the average sales length?” They said, “132 days.” I go, “That’s impossible. You cannot take 132 days to go $60,000.” They said, “Skip, you don’t understand AB testing.” I said, “Folks, you don’t understand business.” I go, “Let me explain how this works.” The VP of Marketing just got her butt kicked, because she missed her ecommerce revenue goals by 50% last year.

She’s at the board meeting going, “Trust me, I got it down. Give me another shot,” so they do. She goes to her manager of ecommerce website and says, “Hey Bob, why did we missed the number? What happened?” He goes, “I don’t know, maybe we should do testing.” She goes, yeah, okay. We should do some testing.” So Bob and her take 132 days to run the business, to run the sales cycle, 60 days to run a trial, 30 days to get the results. They’ll have the results of the AB testing website issue by October.

Well by October, the VP of Marketing’s fired, because right she’s run through three quarters. All of a sudden when you sit back and go, “Wow, there’s two different energies here. The below the line buyer does want to make a mistake and wants to buy the right one, but the business is you can’t wait. Their sales cycles dropped in half. We see that constantly when you get more above the line business understanding of what are the trains in the train station, what priorities are there and what’s the results expected for those trains, are different questions than what do you want our stuff to do for you? For a small deal, take it down and go, but for your bigger deals, you got to identify trains and hunt for gaps, that’s for sure.

Marylou: Now, tell us about the differentiation above the line dialogue. Let’s say you’re trying to go and replace the current vendor. Will the above the line people focus on, “Hey, we’re happy. We’ve got somebody. What makes you different?” Do you hear those conversations a lot, above the line?

Skip: Typically, above the line lives three, six or nine months in the future, so it’s like, “Okay, what do you guys are going to be doing in nine months that you want your current thing to do? Because if it’s still what you wanted, based on the new goals and drivers in nine months, I wouldn’t switch either.” But typically, there’s going to be a gap. That’s gap’s going to say, “Guys, if your current vendor can solve that gap, great. My guess is they can’t. That’s why you’re talking to us.”

I’m always going to time travel with the ATLs. The BTLs don’t know what’s coming up in six or nine months, so it’s going to be more of a feature benefit war. That’s what we do differently to the ATLs. We definitely time travel and ask them, “As you look in the next six months, what new trains are coming to the station? Because if those are your new trains, I wouldn’t want to use what you guys are using.”

Marylou: Right. There is some discussion then or is there some discussion about what the new normal would look like six to nine months down? Do you give them a teaser, any taste at all or you’re just focused on the sense of urgency of the moment?

Skip: You are so correct. I’m going to sit there and say, “In nine months, what do you think the outcome should be?” and let them paint their picture, which is what ATLs are really good at and then go, “Well boy, if that’s your outcome you want…” You want them to paint the outcome and you can prompt to help them, but that outcome is with the ATLs are all about. I’m going to get 30% growth and once I get there, I’ll be able to start this division and do this and do that.

They know they’ve got hiccups of trying to get to their vision, which is why the trains in the train station. That’s where you can actually start having a good dialogue with your ATLs, but always time travel. Always time travel.

Marylou: I love that. You have a chapter in the book about understanding the ATL energy. I’ve really enjoyed that and I think that’s a great chapter for SDRs to read, because we have to get ourselves over this fear of talking to people who have a higher role value than we do. I think that is the key to the beginning of this, because if you can get the mindset to the point where you’re on equal ground, then your natural curiosity as a sales development representative will come out and you’ll start asking those questions.

You’ll start sitting there really wondering why they do things a certain way, how they do things, what makes them different and unique. Those kinds of questions are not role specific. We’re peer-to-peer at that point. I really want you guys to think about that and get over this, “Well, I have to really understand ROI.” Have you heard, Skip, talk about ROI the whole time?

Skip: I find it funny that we can go to a party and talk to anybody. You know, “Hi, how are you? What’s your name?” and stuff and so on, but when we get an ATL on the phone, we just kind of like shrink because, “Well, they’re much more important than I am.”

Marylou: That’s exactly it.

Skip: No, they’re not. Number one, use your curiosity. Number two, they want to talk to you because they want to talk about themselves and their trains and their gaps. Just be focused and let them talk about their trains and their gaps, you’ll win. You’re a lot better than that, “Let me give you a quick overview of what we do, then you could tell me how I fit in your stuff.” There’s that solution hunting for a problem again.

Marylou: Right. This is something that also if you’re in the technical industry—I’m working with a client right now, very technical people, scientists and technologists—they still have these business issues. They have to get a product to market. They have to make sure that their stuff works so that they can get it to trial. There are these issues that are everyday issues, that all humans have, about the quality of what they’re producing and making sure that it’s going to be done right and that they’ll get it done. If we go in with that mindset, we could talk to anybody. Anybody, right?

Skip: Because they want to talk about themselves. They want to talk about their gaps. If they can just get past the, “Hi, quickly, let me frame up who we are for you,” no. You’ve got to earn the right to get there and that’s a whole different issue. Once you there, let them talk about themselves.

I’m convinced initial ATL conversation should be almost 70/30 where were asking questions. Now, we may have to frame up a little bit of who we are put context to it. Marylou, quickly, if you’re going to talk an ATL, your vision should be next-next. Your vision should be, “Okay, what’s the outcome of the call I want and what’s our next step after that?” Always think next-next before you pick up the phone, so you’re intentional and directional on the call rather than, when I ask a couple questions and see what happens, that’s not really kind of cool.

Marylou: Yes, so we like to do call planning forms when we’re starting out with SDRs, especially when we’re calling into our, what I call, jump accounts. Jump accounts for us are the accounts that if they move an eyelash, we jump. We definitely want these accounts, so call planning especially when you’re not confident and you want to make sure you have all your I’s dotted, your T’s crossed would get you to the point where you would have the next action. You would basically ask your questions but then suggest next steps. Let’s go through that. You have a chapter on that your book, too, about what happens now to accelerate the next step.

Skip: Sure. If I need energy, deals are always going to be important and in my opinion, energy is pretty much going to be above the line, where they’ve got a revenue gap or they’ve got some train the train station needs fixed and they realize that and then give their below the line buyer, Bob, a budget and Bob have to go for a ride. Energy is going to be above the line, which we believe if you’re going to start as an SDR getting leads and I don’t really care if you follow a lead through sale or if you flipped it over the wall to an AE, if you’re going to find a good lead, finding out what the BTL buyer is all about, the features or functions they’re looking for, and the ATL’s gap, now I think you’ve got a very energized deal.

Rather than let the BTL say, “Well, we’re going to take six months to evaluate all vendors.” What’s the ATL think on that one? Because business need is not going to go away six months. The problem we see is leads go to stage three or four then they go dark, they ghost, they go deck south, and we have names for these, is because in six months that BTLs taken a lot time to evaluate and pick a vendor, the ATLs trains already left the station and there’s new trains coming in. Don’t expect the deal that’s in your pipeline for six months or nine months.

We were at this deal the other day with a company, where they were looking through their pipeline and they had a couple deals there were 272 days old. The deal’s dead. The guy died. The ATLs trains left the station. I’m sure you want to be the selected vendor, but now when they go back to the ATL and ask for, “Do we release these funds?” The ATLs are going to go, “No, we kind of solved that problem. Here’s my new problems.” They’re going to be playing musical chairs here.

Marylou: The cookie is to try to get a synergy between the above the line and below the line early on and that way progress the sale with you being essentially the coach, the consultant, the person that’s going to move the sale and advance the sale forward and keep everybody lined up. Like you said, if you’re going to carry it all the way to close, getting to close or if you’re going to do a hand off to the person who’s going to take it to close, the more that you can get that synergy in that energy aligned before it gets handed off, the better. You’re saying stage two, right?

Skip: Yeah, but Bob’s my champion. He’s my below the line champ. He’s my guy. You’re doing you’re killing yourself because there’s two value propositions you want to get early and taking a risk by thinking that just the below the line value prop’s going to carry you through. It may, but your deal’s going to be longer and you’ll have more increase of the deal going dark because you didn’t get ATL early.

Marylou: The operative phrase here that I want you guys to internalize is you’ve got to get both. No matter what your sales development role is, you have got to collect and understand the business conversation and, not or, and the future benefit conversation in order to be able to have a qualified opportunity that can take it to the next steps. It’s not one or the other.

Skip: Kids table and adults table. Everybody’s having Thanksgiving, but there’s two tables.

Marylou: There are two tables, so that influence map is your guide to get your foot in the door and start the conversations, but to continue the conversation to the point where it gets into discovery and further down into the pipeline, you have got to have that knowledge and pass that along if you’re going to be passing that lead along.

By definition, it’s not one or the other, it’s both and I think that’s where we missed the boat a lot, a lot. We’re not collecting enough of the conversation and the energy, as you say, of the conversation to be able to take the business and the future benefit discussion to the next stage in the pipeline. I love it.

Tells us what else we want to know before we say goodbye, because I’m already over our allotted time for our conversation.

Skip: If your viewers want to get at my LinkedIn, I’ve got a bunch of videos. When I go to cities, like Paris, Amsterdam, Chicago and stuff, I do these two- to three-minute videos; they’re free. Just a reminder of some of the stuff we talked about here. That’s an easy way to get a hold of me, watch some of my videos, and I try to get those out. Or visit the website m3learning.com. We’ve got about 20 two- to three-minute videos on a lot of topics. They’re all free. I’m not going to capture URL and market to you. We don’t do that. There’s some free stuff for you. If they want to do that, that’s great and just continue when it sounds like it’s really aligned with what you’ve been telling them as well.

Marylou: It is and I think the book is a must-read guys. It’s going to be a reference book for you. I have a Kindle version of it that I highlight that way, but really we’re all about role-playing, we’re all about huddling in getting better with our sales conversations, and this book is a great guideline to practice during your huddle sessions, in order for you to all get better as a team.

What we’re trying to do here, remember, is to reduce the amount of time it takes to get from initial or follow-on conversations, all the way up or we’re really looking at the high revenue potential of clients which typically you’re going to need that C-suite discussion at some capacity.

What I’m telling you today is that you need both and Skip, he’s the one. He’s the main man. He definitely has drank that Kool-Aid, because the whole book is about that.

Skip: What’s fun is when once you try it and start exercising the muscle. When the BTL says, “I’m in charge,” you go, “Yes you are, Bob, but my job is to hunt for additional trains. How can we do that together?” or, “Where should I go?” I mean, just don’t say, “Well who’s making the decision?” and Bob goes, “Well, I am.” Then you go, “Well, there’s no way anybody on the planet would give Bob the authority to make this decision,” but now you’re stuck. Nah, you don’t want to […].

Marylou: Yes, you’re stuck. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been stuck with that level of buyer who will not let us in, who will not let us talk to anybody else. A lot of times you have to do what I call blow the account, go around them, it’s just yucky. Using the where question, that’s a game changer. I think it’s a take away for today is definitely, if we had one thing to change that would be it. It is change the narrative of trying to get to the higher level buyer by using the where question.

Skip, anything else that you want to share with everybody? I’ll put all the links and stuff on your page at the podcast, but get the book. It’s on Amazon and you have the M3 Learning website. Anything else we want to add or we’re good to go?

Skip: The bottom line that we see in SDRs is that underlying confidence, the confidence to make these calls and ask where these additional trains. Marylou, I was told a long time ago that the definition of confidence is an equal share of wins and losses. I’ll ask any sales rep, “Who in this room would agree that you’re brewing more from your losses than your victories?” and everybody’s started to raise their hand. If you want to really get good at ATL and especially early to getting both value props, you’re going to have to get dirty and take a couple punches and take a couple hits in the head, you’ll figure it out. You can make lemonade out of lemons. Do the right thing and get through your customer both value propositions early and everyone wins then.

Marylou: Definitely. We have a way to do that if you guys remember, when we look at our tiers of accounts or segmentation, go to those level three minnow accounts and practice this conversation. They’re nice to haves but they’re not going to make or break you. As you feel more confident, move into the tier two and then finally to those jump accounts and I think that that’s a good training way to feel more confident.

The more conversations you have, the better you get. We all know that, but start with the smaller minnowy type of accounts and practice that way and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised how quickly you can pick this up.

Skip: The CMO of $5 million minimum account has the same problems of a CMO of $100 million, so you’re right. You’re exactly right, try things small and then work your way up and all that confidence. Wonderful to be here, thank you..

Marylou: Yes, I enjoyed it tremendously. Thank you so much, take care.

Skip: Take care.

Can daily meditations help you develop your brand or find your purpose? To talk about that, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing joins the podcast today. Listen in to hear what John has to say about his new book, why he was interested in putting out a book on daily meditations, and what John learned while he worked on putting the book together. 

Episode Highlights:

• How long John has been running Duct Tape Marketing
• John’s new book
• What got John interested in putting out a book on daily meditations
• The self-reliant part of John’s meditation book
• Similarities between this and previous cycles in history
• How John’s book could help entrepreneurs develop their brand or purpose
• What John learned while putting his book together
• John’s thoughts on the human condition
• How recent college grads could benefit from John’s book
• The daily rhythm of John’s book
• What a passage from John’s book is like

Resources:

Duct Tape Marketing

The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business

Transcript:

Marylou: Hey everybody. It’s Marylou Tyler. This week’s guest, you guys all know John. You can’t not know John. John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and also author of the book by the same name. He has quite single-handedly transformed so many folks who wanted to get into their own business, maybe solo entrepreneurs, or even I’ve heard from executives at companies who utilized a lot of his practices, to better their craft while they were at the companies.

It’s just wonderful if you guys haven’t been over to John’s site. How long have you been up and running on this now, John?

John: I actually flipped the switch on the site, ducttapemarketing.com, 17 years ago now.

Marylou: Seventeen. Oh, my gosh. Granted, there’s a lot of information out there and he keeps it fresh and interesting. I’ll put his link to all of his connections over there at Duct Tape Marketing. But that’s not the reason why we have this call today with John. We’re here to talk about John’s new book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business. Welcome to the podcast, John.

John: Thanks, Marylou. Glad to be here.

Marylou: So, 366. Hmm. To cover the leap year, huh?

John: I did. I have a brother that was born March first in a non-leap year. Had it been a leap year, His birthday would have been February 29th. I don’t want to miss all those people that are born February 29th or they wake up and it’s February 29 because it’s a leap year and they want their daily meditation.

Marylou: There you go. Tell us about what got you along this path. We were sharing before we got on the call how there are some daily meditation folks in a variety of different fields, in a variety of different soul-feeding as I call them. I used to have one on my desk all the time that I read every single day. When I saw that you had done this book, first question is what got you interested in putting out a book like this?

John: The format is not new. I didn’t invent it, obviously, and it’s pretty proven. Fifteen years ago, I used to read The Daily Drucker, which was a business book that was essentially somebody had gone and curated all of Peter Drucker’s—the management consultant and author—writings and put it into a daily thing.

I liked Peter Druker a lot and that was the book I was familiar with. My grandmother worked for Unity Village all of her life and every Christmas, she used to give us a publication they put out called The Daily Word. There’s something about that idea of a short, hopefully inspirational but certainly positive reading to start the day. I put it into my morning routine. I always have.

I read Wayne Dyer and people like that everyday morning type of thing because I feel like it’s one of the best ways to start. It’s like breakfast is the most important meal, like our parents used to say or my mom used to say. Feeding your soul first thing in the day is probably the most important thing you can do.

Marylou: I love the morning rituals of things and part of what I teach, even in Predictable Prospecting is this daily habit. Building micro habits to get to the ultimate habit of being a good prospector and a consistent prospector, and it starts with a daily rhythm and I love this idea. But what is the self-reliant part of the meditation book that you put together?

John: It borrows and maybe I should tell you the structure of the pages. Everyday starts with a title of the page, kind of a big concept. Then, reading from a vein of mid-19th century literature that I think today is still some of the best entrepreneurial writing ever. Then, 150 words from me maybe contextualizing it a little bit around my experience, and then I actually give you a question to ponder everyday as well. There’s a lot going on in each of these short, little pages.

The self-reliant part actually borrows from a very well-known essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson called Self-Reliance and it’s one of those that you often see quoted on Pinterest boards, Instagram and things. There are a lot of entrepreneurs that are familiar with that writing from that time period. But once I dove into that and I’m always been a fan of that writing, but to start looking at the literature, even that. A lot of people are familiar with Rhodes, Walden, and I already mentioned Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

A lot of the fiction that we are asked to read in that time period—Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Little Women—all had characters that the protagonist of each of those works, were all very self-reliant or realized, “I need to go out there and trust myself, realize what I do, control, and don’t control, and then I have a unique gift to bring to the world.”

Again, why did I pick that vein? If you think about what was going on in America at that time—we were in the cusp of the civil war, women were marching the streets to get the right to be heard or to vote, we were trying to abolish slavery—it was really the first counter-culture period in America and the writing that came out of that period was very much, “Hey, you need to think for yourself.” We got ourselves in this cultural and political divide because we didn’t trust ourselves. We listened to politicians, we listened to our preachers, we listened to people who told us we had to do a certain thing, when what we really had to do is just find our own truth and figure out where we fit in the world.

That was revolutionary thinking 150 years ago, but I’m still thinking it is some of the best advice for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs have always been, “I’m going to go out there and do my own thing,” but I think this human condition suggest that we also suffer from the fear, the doubt, and people who tell us we can’t make it in the stress of trying to get by everyday. Having this idea of trusting yourself, trusting your ideas, bringing your ideas to the world, and blocking what other people say, is not the same as being a loner and going it alone. It’s trusting yourself to know when you’re getting good advice, when you’re bad advice, when you need to listen, when you need to shut up.

Marylou: Yeah and I think that a lot of it, too, is that trusting in ourselves is a big one in our gut. Really listening to that and not being so influenced by what’s happening out there in the world and the pressures of the world. I read a title of Nicholas of Wall Street Journal. This is 2019 while we’re recording this. It’s crazy out there right now with our political divide. The headline was, Kindness is Trying to Make a Comeback.

John: Marylou, I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest that we are experiencing maybe a similar period to what they were experiencing in the 1850s and a lot of historians suggest that these things kind of cycle. I think that entrepreneurs have always been one of the sources of goodness and trying to cure the world’s ills, trying to bring their thing to life, and bring value to other people. I think more entrepreneurs are armed with this idea of self-reliance, may actually be one of the paths to creating a little more unity in the world.

Marylou: Yeah and the other thing I know in reading these daily, I call them affirmations, this daily pumping up of the spirit within you and really changing the narrative to, “How do I add more value?” That is the goal of an entrepreneur to begin with this, “How do I add more value?” What else do you think this book could help in terms of entrepreneurs developing either their brand or their purpose?

John: I want to also suggest that a lot of this idea of self-reliance means a huge dollop of empathy as well. What we’re really trying to do is go out […] experience things and find our own path and our own truth. Emerson famously kind of said, “Hey, you get to change your mind.” I think the thing that holds a lot of people back is that they don’t want to disappoint people who already decided you’re this or that, or you can’t do this or you can’t do that.

I think that if you have this view that, “My life is a complete journey, evolving, it’s never done. My whole goal or my whole job is to continue to grow,” if you have all the answers already and you’re not open to new things, how can you possibly go? I actually said that I think that one of our jobs as entrepreneurs is to prove ourselves wrong. Like I said, if we already know all of the answers, then we’re not going to grow.

Marylou: What were some of the things that you learned as you were putting together and curating the actual pages of this book?

John: There were names. I’ve thrown out some names that most people have heard anything Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Margaret Fuller maybe, but one of the things I learned this is because I had to have 366 entries, so I went very deep into the literature of this era, and I just met so many authors or introduced to so many authors that I was not familiar with, particularly female authors.

It was actually important for me to represent as many female voices in this book as possible, and that was a challenge. Given the time, a lot of women were not allowed to actually publish publicly or to be involved in editing newspapers and […]. A lot of their works only came out much later right after their deaths. So, I dove into journals and letters.

One of the things that was fun in that era and eras past is people wrote beautiful letters back and forth to each other. These letters were often collected later into memoirs, into collections. How expansive these things were throughout was certainly one of the things and then in learning about new things.

The other thing that just struck me time and again, is how often I would read a passage and say, “There’s no way that was written.” 150 years ago. Thoreau was talking about not […] away your time on Facebook. That’s what he was talking about. How did he write that 150 years ago. I think it just suggest that the human condition hasn’t changed. We all have this technology and all these stuff that we blame for all of our stress and our woes, but it’s really the human condition hasn’t changed at all.

Marylou: Let’s expand on that. When you say the human condition, you mean the way we think, feel, act?

John: Yeah, absolutely. We still care about what others think and we still wake up everyday and wonder, “Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing?” Again, the tools and the things that we use now because we’re bored or whatever it is, may have changed, but the fact that the vast amount of us are not actually being true to our agreement and chasing the thing that we are meant to be, discovering and then chasing the thing we were meant to do is something that I think is gone throughout time.

Marylou: What are your thoughts on the busyness of today versus back then? Is it a different kind of busyness? Were they just luxuriating in life? I hear that so much that people are so busy now. How does that relate to what you discovered through your curating?

John: I don’t think we’re any busier today than we were. I think we are focused on different things. We no longer have to build our houses, make our clothes, butcher our meat. That’s all done for us now. That’s certainly what took up a significant amount of people’s time in mid-19th century.

But now, we certainly are figuring in the sand. There’s a great, Thoreau passage that talks about this idea how he was talking about it then, so involved in commerce, making money, doing the things that they think they’re supposed to do. They’re not living their lives. I think today, that is absolutely just been replaced by—I’ve already picked on Facebook, I’ll do it again—this social media and the news cycle that’s wearing us out, and the things that we do out of addiction and out of boredom, more than actually going out and seeking real experiences with real people.

Marylou: Yeah, definitely. Is there a generational gap here that you want to talk about? You and I have been doing this for a while now, but if my kids are just coming out of college, how would they benefit from a book like this do you think?

John: It’s funny. As of this writing, this book is so different. Like a lot of authors, I was like, “This makes sense?” I’m sharing it with people of different generations. I happen to have four millennial children and I was sharing with them and just a little sidenote, if you are reading along and you come to a certain date, four times throughout the book, I have four daughters, they wrote the entry for their birthday. So, I got a little contribution from them.

To answer your question, I find that I’m in the tail of the baby boomers, the next generation coming along right behind me. We listed this book and I’m starting to think about impact. What impact have I had? What difference have I made? And those themes certainly run through this book. The millennial or younger generation that I shared this with is very energized by the positive message, is actually very interested in the literature.

I think they’re far enough removed from when they were forced to read some of this, that they now start looking at applying the context of this literature to what they’re now doing in their careers, in their own life. I feel like they come to it with a lot of energy and the older generation come through a little more is that like you said, feeding the soul, looking back, reflecting, and seeing the sense.

In some ways, this is a book that took me 30 years to write, so it is sort of a reflection on my total experience and I see folks that have been in the game for a little while, but that are starting to look at that as well.

Marylou: And I think like you said, the self-reflection, seeing how life was then, that it really hasn’t changed all that much in the sense of human behavior, and that transforms anyone who’s reading these passages to really get an understanding of their purpose, the brand purpose, their purpose, why they serve, how they add value, and that the struggles that we experience today are really no different.

Like you said, change the media, change the channel of what it is that’s affecting us, but at the end of the day, belly-to-belly, we’re a person-to-person communication and it’s impossible to lose sight of that, that we really are a human-to-human in all of our interactions, whether we are entrepreneurs or not.

I just love this idea. I can already hear my audience. “Well, we don’t have time to read a whole book.” What is the daily rhythm that you think would be nice for consuming?

John: The beauty of this book is that you don’t read it. In fact, I can’t imagine picking this book up and reading it cover-to-cover because everyday is just a nugget for you to think about. I like to tell people to think of this as a practice more than a book. You pick up today’s reading, you read that, you think about, and if that makes sense, I said we have a challenge question at the end of everyday. My publisher allowed me to put a couple of lines at the bottom of each of those so they can actually jot some notes. […] just thinking about it or take it into the day and just witness how it shows up in your day.

I think that’s the real key. We don’t have some intention setting for everyday, then you go out there and life hits you in the face. Next thing you know, it’s five o’clock and you go, “I […] what I did today but I sure was busy.”

Marylou: Yeah. We call it winging it.

John: Yeah, but I think having that thought to think about each day, what it does is then as things happen, maybe you start to go, “Oh, that’s how that applies to what I’m doing today,” because you’re not going to read a book like this and go, “Ah, totally nailed this. I’m self-reliant.”

Marylou: You’re right, exactly.

John: And that’s true of any book. Think about the books that have really impacts you. I’ve gone back and read so many books, 10, 12, 15 times and they have a different meaning to me because I’m a different person. I think that, that’s the idea behind this and that’s why I call it a practice.

Salespeople—a lot of times, not all—when you’re out there prospecting, sometimes you’re facing a lot of rejection, you’re facing other people’s negativity sometimes. Arming yourself with a little bit of a shield maybe for that or really more than that, allowing you, hopefully, to react to it in a different way because that’s really the only thing we control and it really comes down to it.

How we show up and how we change to respond to everything that happens everyday is the only thing we control. Hopefully, you’ll find some passage that hit you in a particular way that day and it helps you better respond and process other people’s problems, input, and feedback.

Marylou: And it’s called daily meditation, so there are lessons embedded in the passages that you read everyday, that you internalize, you self-reflect, you observe during the day. This is going to be an interesting practice for those people who do get up and just go, and don’t think about where they’re going or how they’re going to get there. This is probably a must-read for those people who do want to incorporate heart, hand, as well as head during the day and get all the balance that they need.

Do you have a favorite passage that you can read us, a daily meditation you can read to us?

John: Well, that’s like asking me if I’m a favorite child.

Marylou: Okay. Then just randomly pick one then.

John: I’m sure that if I went through and I go, “Oh, yeah. I really particularly like that one,” but I went really deep in this literature, so these are not social media quotes. I mean, these are things I said are like letters, journals, and…

Marylou: Are Instagram, those Instagram things.

John: Right. These are a little deeper. To tell you the truth, Marylou, maybe the best way to give people an example is I’ll just read one, an entire day takes two minutes. Give your listeners an exact idea of not only the content, but how long it would take them to read one and reflect.

Marylou: Let’s do that.

John: I just pulled one up. It starts with a title and then a reading from the literature, then 150 or so words from me, and a challenge question. So, here we go.

Marylou: All right.

John: Failure’s message. “However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.” That’s from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, 1854.

Marylou: Wow, amazing.

John: And then my reflection on it. “So, let’s face it. At some point, everybody gets knocked down. Things don’t go as planned, but it’s how you handle adversity that would come the ultimate expression of your success. There are only so many things you have control over and number one on that list is how you think and feel about daily events. We can’t control the weather, what others say about us, or when someone decides to rip our ideas off as their own. We can’t control failure or paradise. We can only decide what we want to learn from it, and the lessons are countless.

In some cases, what we see as failure is a mistake or error in judgment on our part, coming home to roost. Or it could just be something we weren’t quite ready to pull of in precisely the manner we chose. But either way, there’s a lesson if we wish to accept it. The fantastic thing about growing as an entrepreneur is that either you flame out through resistance of things like change and failure, and oh, hard work, or you learn to accept that all is as it should be. The key is to love the setting sun from where you are right now, or you’ll always find it hard to love the setting sun, no matter how high you soar by some other person’s gauge of your success.”

Marylou: Amen.

John: Your challenge question for the day: Who is one entrepreneur you deeply admire. Why?

Marylou: Nice. That would be sitting on my desk to come in and read in the morning before I start my day.

John: Yeah and I think it can be part of a larger practice. I have for years spent some time in the morning meditating, journaling, reading. I try to throw exercising every morning. I have about an hour or an hour-and-a-half in some cases that I take pretty much every morning for myself and for those people that go, “Wow, I don’t have an hour-and-a-half.” I contend that it gives me more time back than years in terms of me being more focused and productive.

Marylou: And then I would add to that because my troops here understand that concept of micro habits that we build. We’re not going to get to that hour-and-a-half necessarily, not all of us, so let’s build one thing. And I always talk about my push-up and pull-up goals. Then, I started with 1 push-up, now I’m up to 25. I still am struggling on the pull-up thing, but I’m getting there.

I think this is something that we’re going to add to our daily rhythm. I like the mornings, some people like the evening, but sit down and just reflect. Really this book is great for that. I love it. I’m so glad that you did this.

John: I actually do morning and evening because I find that if you take that evening out, the whole day has happened to you and it’s just like, “Okay, what did I learn from today?” Again, like you said, microsteps.

This was the hardest book I’ve ever written by far. It was the most fun and I’m thrilled to bring it to the world and hopefully it will, as Henderson said, scatter some joy.

Marylou: Scatter some joy. The book again, folks, is The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business. John, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and sharing this. I’ll put all the links. I know there’s probably a selfreliantentrepreneur.com out there or something.

John: There is.

Marylou: Yes, there is. There you go. So that we can make sure that we put that in the show notes. Anything else you want to add before we say goodbye? And thank you for your time.

John: No. I think we’ve said pretty much all. As you said, selfreliantentrepreneur.com is where you can find more on the book and obviously it is available wherever you choose to buy books. There’ll be a Kindle version as well as an audio book version.

Marylou: Nice. This is published by Wiley, so we’ll see it at the bookstore, too, correct?

John: Absolutely.

Marylou: That’s great. Well, John, thanks again. Remember guys, […] Duct Tape Marketing as well. There’s a ton of information on that site that helps with business development, sales executives, marketers. You pretty much cover everything over there. So, the well-rounded entrepreneur, who’s both marketing, operations, servicing, and sales. You are covered by John’s site, Duct Tape Marketing. Thanks again, John. I really appreciate your time.

John: My pleasure.

Podcasting is still a new and growing medium, but it has a lot of exciting potential as a sales tool, among other things. Today’s guest, Matt Johnson, is the founder of a podcasting production agency and he has explored some interesting ways to use the medium that may be valuable to sales professionals. Listen in to hear about Matt’s LinkedIn script, his strategy using podcasting, and the results rates that he’s seen from his methods. 

Episode Highlights:

• What Matt does and who he serves
• How Matt’s LinkedIn script works
• Matt’s response rates, and how they compare to the average
• The overall reaction to Matt’s lead generation
• Matt’s overall strategy
• Developing relationships with people in different parts of the sales process
• How podcasting relates to problem solving and expertise
• Where to start in podcasting
• Where to look for podcasts that are a potential fit
• Goals for beginning podcast hosts and guests

Resources:

Pursuing Results

How to Get Featured

Transcript:

Marylou: Hey, everybody. It’s Marylou Tyler. This week’s guest is going to really help us think outside the box when it comes to lead generation. A lot of us are focused on the touches that we do, the systematic follow-up. The guest today, his name is Matt Johnson, is the founder of a podcast production agency. You’re probably wondering, “Why are we talking about this, Marylou?” I will let Matt take it away because he said a couple of things to me that were really intriguing and I know that you guys are going to love this discussion. So without further ado, Matt, welcome to the podcast. Start by telling us what you do and how you serve.

Matt: Thanks so much. First of all, I’m super excited to be here. I read the book, Predictable Revenue, years ago so this is a little mini-dream for me to be here as it is. The skinny is that I accidentally stumbled onto some really interesting lead generation strategies that use podcasting in unconventional ways. We’ll get into more of the tactical side of it, but suffice it to say that when I first got into podcasting, I was able to generate 15-minute appointments with people just by reaching out with very simple script on LinkedIn and offering to introduce them to a podcast host.

I was doing it partly for networking and relationships. That ended up getting me directly onto the phone with potential clients and those intro 15-minute calls would turn into sales appointments. Some of my best clients and good friends, frankly, came from that strategy including the man that I now consider my business coach and mentor actually came from that strategy.

Then there’s all kinds of fun stuff you can do. You can actually run a podcast as a lead generator or you, as a sales executive, can build your own brand by getting featured on podcasts as a guest. We’re going to talk about the interesting, out-of-the-box ways to use podcasting to generate sales appointments or build your personal brand as a sales executive and present yourself as an expert in what clients do so when you get on the phone with them, there’s already a built-in level of respect and they know that you know that they’re business. That’s the short version.

Marylou: Okay, very good. I know that some of you are thinking, “I am an SDR. I am someone, a sales development rep, just starting out. How does this work for somebody like me?” Matt, if you could just walk us through a typical scenario. Matt prefaced this as any level of skill in the sales chain. So, whether you’re a marketing response rep getting in-bound calls, if you’re an outbound person, if you work on referrals, if you do account management, or a sales executive, any of those roles are applicable to what Matt’s going to teach us today when it comes to lead gen and getting those 15 minutes for what we call AWAF, the “Are We A Fit” call. Matt, walk us through how does it work and when we would want to use this?

Matt: If I were an SDR starting out in today’s environment, knowing what I know about podcasting, here’s how I would do it. I would go out and I would look at the podcast where my potential clients might be a good guest for that show. I would put a list together of let’s say 10 or 15 of those podcasts. There’s now 700,000 podcasts on iTunes. Believe me, there’s probably more out there than you think that would apply very, very specifically to the people that you want to sell to. If you know who you want to sell to, if you know who you want relationships with, then it’s relatively easy to find the podcast that they should be listening to if they’re not already, so go find those podcasts.

My first step would be to reach out and start building a relationship with the host. I would track down their email and I would just send them a short cold email that goes something like this, “Hey, my name is so-and-so, I work with XYZ company, and I constantly meet good people that I think might be good fits for your podcast because they’re in such and such industry. Here’s who they typically are. I noticed that you run a podcast in this space. I was just curious if you’re open if I want to call somebody that I think might be a good guest, would you be okay if I introduce them or pass them along for you?”

Speaking as a podcast host, that’s a no-brainer yes for me. The only question is, “Are you going to follow through?” and “Are you going to send me people that are a waste of my time?” If they say yes, great. Run with it. If they want to jump on a call and tell you who their ideal client is, by all means do that because that’s your core, your foundation, the relationships with a couple of handfuls of podcast hosts, that’s your leverage now then go to step two. You build those relationships with the podcast hosts.

Now, you’re going to step two which is to go out into the market and either find the cold emails of the people that you want to reach out to or even better yet, as your building out your LinkedIn presence like I was, a lot of my potential clients were 1–2 steps removed on LinkedIn. I was starting to build my network to the point where when I found somebody on LinkedIn that I wanted to reach out to, I personally knew one of those mutual friends.

Then I would send a very, very short message with a connect request or something like that, that went something like this, “Hey, John. I noticed that we’re connected through Mandy McQuillan. I just talked to her the other day. She’s awesome. I just happened to check out your profile real quick and thought you might be a good guest for this podcast I know. If you’re interested, let me know and I could either shoot over some details or we can jump on a quick call.”

It’s two very short, essentially 2–3 sentence messages. I think my response rate back in the day—it’s been a couple of years since I did this as an active lead gen strategy—was insane. When I’m dropping a real mutual name, it was over 50% was yes. A lot of times those yesses were to a 15-minute phone call. That was really impactful because I was able to get on the line with my ideal clients and even the influencers that were one level above them, and build really good relationships.

Of course, the natural question is, “Hey, what do you do?” I would just give the idea behind my company like, “This is what we do.” Because they were a good fit, because I was reaching out to people who were my ideal clients, their reaction was, “Oh, well maybe you and I need to have a conversation.” Of course, that leads to, “Great. Let’s set up another call.” It was kind of an exploratory or discovery call.

That very simple progression of build relationships with podcast hosts, which is what gives you the excuse for step two, to reach out and offer to introduce them. But the principle there, you could do it without podcasting, but it works a lot better right now using podcasting as the bait because it’s just the environment we’re in right now. The principle is the same, which is you reach out with an offer of a strategic introduction that adds a legitimate value to that person’s life. Then, the only question is just how do you execute on making the introduction and do you ask them to do a phone call first or make the introduction and then follow-up later?

Marylou: Right. Let’s compare that, everyone, who’s been knowing my waterfalls. A 50% response rate, let’s say it’s 40%, the average sequence we are hoping for somewhere between 11%–20% response rate over the course of X number of touches. In the old Predictable Revenue book way back in 2011, we are hoping for a 7%–9% response rate on one email.

These numbers, just think of how valuable the list would be. We wouldn’t be wasting names in the list and you don’t have to do this with a ton of records. Basically, you’re working to fill up your funnel with accounts that you think are a good fit, and you would use another tool in the tool kit for you to be able to start having conversations, because that’s what it’s all about. It’s starting conversations with people we don’t know and getting a relationship started so that we could move them and advance them in the pipeline towards an opportunity.

When you first approached people with this process and this concept, Matt, what is the overall reaction of people to do this type of lead generation? Are they scared? Are they excited? Are they somewhere in the middle? What did people think?

Matt: Well, we’re in an interesting time with podcasting because people are very, very open to it. There’s a few industries where I ran into where there is a little bit of suspicion. Financial advising, wealth management was one of them, just an old, very traditional industry. I was booking rank and file financial advisors on a podcast at that time, just testing that and seeing how it went.

I do think there are industries where podcasting hasn’t made as much inroads, where there’ll still be some fear and hesitation, but even then, my response rate was still really good and out of the people that I introduced or booked on a podcast, it was half of the people. I could do maybe twice as much of the work to get them booked and nailed down, but it wasn’t that much more. Then the influencers in that space were just as eager as influencers in any other space.

Even in industries that you think might be a little stodgy and out of touch with the podcasting angle, still give it a try because it might just be the rank and file people but it takes a little bit of extra hand holding, but everybody else in that space might be gung-ho and ready to show up on the show and that’s all you need. All you need is that openness because that’s what gives you the ability to reach out and get that easy yes to a phone call or to an introduction.

Marylou: Right, and I will tell you all that the first one of building a relationship with a podcaster, I love it when you guys reach out to me and tell me, “Hey, you should have so and so on your podcast.” or “Hey, I’d love this topic discussed on your podcast.” I’m always looking for talent. I’m always looking for content. I’m always looking to enrich the work that we’re doing with this podcast so that you guys feel supercharged, ready to go out, and do your lead gen.

The other thing I want to say, Matt, that I use it for this type of work is to get referrals because if you triangulate and you say to the guy, “Well, not a good fit but hey, if you have a colleague or do you know a colleague or two that might be interested in this?” Now you’re starting to grow your list of potential prospects, also potential people who can help out later on in the sales process. I use it for that as well. One call gets me two referrals. That’s always my goal when I’m working on that.

Matt: Yeah. I just interviewed somebody the other day and they said something similar and I love that approach. In fact, I don’t always utilize that as much as I should, personally, even though I do think of things in the realm of relationships. I don’t always keep that in mind, tell on every phone call, ask for referrals of some kind.

It’s true though. Anytime you’re on the phone with somebody that’s in the right space, they all know that all of their peers, all of their colleagues, everybody knows somebody or a couple of people that is a good fit for whatever you sell. So yeah, don’t be afraid to ask.

Marylou: This is any level podcasting lead gen, getting us to that 15-minute AWAF, the “Are We A Fit” call. Let’s segue over to the other type of way to use podcasting. You mentioned that we can look at it as building our brand for social proof. For me for example, the author of two books, that gives me a certain level of clout that with podcast is only enhanced.

For example, no one has ever asked me for a reference in any of the accounts I’ve worked in, ever. A lot of that is because there is this presumed expertise that I possess or that they think I posses. A lot of it is because of the fact that I’m out there all the time, speaking on the topic, talking to people who are experts in the topic, talking to people who are practitioners of the topic which is always a wonderful thing to do. Let’s talk about that side of it, what you’ve seen there, and if there’s a process around that. I’d love to hear that as well.

Matt: I want to comment on the overall strategy first because you’re right about that. There’s a presumption of expertise and I think we can have expertise on two levels. Obviously, we want to be an expert in what we’re selling. But one of the things I noticed, that I didn’t do as intentionally but I happened into this strategy because of how I came to podcasting, was by interviewing all of the top people in the niche that I was selling into. I’d read all the books. I knew who all the players were. I knew who the coaches and influences were so I unintentionally became an expert in what they did.

When I was having conversations with people but eventually turn into clients, it didn’t very much revolve around my service. It was more about their business and I was able to have very, very in depth, intelligent conversations and ask really good questions because I understood their business at a deep level. I became an expert not just in what I did, but I became an expert in what my clients did, and that really changed the […] for me.

The sales conversations were less about my service. The actual description, talking them through what I did, and getting them to sign up was like five minutes. It was 45 and 50 minutes of talking about their business and then the bigger strategy and stuff and understanding where their head was at and what their goals were. They were like, “Okay. Now, how can this help me?” I would give them the elevator pitch and they’re like, “Yup. Send the contract over. Let’s do it.” There’s a change to the conversation.

Marylou: That’s great. There’s also the perception that, especially if you look at our bullseye of influencers that we work with to get people to close, there’s decision makers, there’s direct influencers, there’s indirect influencers, stakeholders. There’s a lot of people with whom we have dialogue with and all of them need to feel comfortable that we know what we’re talking about, that we got their back, and that we’re really focused on the business.

This gives a nice way of really getting in deep with people and having you represent them in the sales process and the sales cycle as a champion of what they’re trying to accomplish—what challenges they have, the outcomes that they’re to pursue, and also, the new normal of what you can do, what you can bring to the table that they might not have even thought about. To get to that discussion, you typically have to have a better relationship with the stakeholders in order to get to this new normal. They’re trying to just satisfy what they think is the solution to the problem, but a lot of times when we’re selling, we want to be able to bridge the gap with what they actually want and what we can provide them. That is what sets us apart from the competition.

Matt: I’m curious, just from your perspective, how many of the percentage of the audience, how many of them do you feel like you’re selling something that their potential clients are not expecting to be pitched versus they’re selling something that fits into an established category or a line item in a budget where they already know they need it. The only question is who are they going to get it from.

Marylou: Well, there’s a combination. If we draw a box and then a vertical line and a horizontal line, you’ve got four quadrants. My guys fit in all those quadrants. They’re selling existing products to new and existing clients.  They’re selling new products to new and existing clients. At any given time, there is going to be a conversation in one of those areas.

I think that this prepares them to be able to have those conversations and to switch, depending on where they’re at in the sales process and also with thom they’re speaking with. A lot of times we do have to sell above the expectation because people are supposedly well-educated these days and know the outcome that they’re trying to achieve. To sell better, we have to be able to satisfy that outcome but also, start to talk to them, get them to buy into what this new normal is of the opportunity that only our company or I can provide.

That requires the relationship. That’s why this is a beautiful way, I think, to get into that because you start adding and flowing with people. They get an understanding of your expertise. They get a comfort level. There’s this implied relationship already starting because they think they know you. They’ve heard you. They’ve listened to your passion, your enthusiasm. They can see the smiles coming through the lines of his face. It just gives you a heads up in so many ways, that whole, building that relationship. In certain industries, it’s hard to break in. I have some clients who work with scientists and they’re not necessarily a chatty bunch versus marketing people.

Matt: Yeah. I have a client who’s in the innovation commercialization space in health care, and yeah, exactly the same way. She went on and got a PhD in marketing, partially, to be considered on their level. Scientists are not interested in talking to people that they think are dumb. Let’s put it that way.

Marylou: You’re right. Education could be that way, too. When you’re working with professors and things, they’re writing papers, “Are you published? If you’re not published, we don’t want to talk to you.” There’s a lot of hurdles to overcome. Again, this is another tool, everybody. It’s not replacing anything you’re already doing but for those of you who are looking for ways to stand out from the crowd, as they say, and also to really home in on what your expertise is and how you could help solve problems. Podcasting is a great way to do that.

Matt: Yeah, 100% agree. I’ve got a friend of mine who I was introduced to by my business coach and he is a high level executive recruiter. He has two sets of clients he’s trying to put together which are, on the one hand, the boards, the C-suites, and the private hedge fund guys that are hiring people. Then on the other side, you’ve got high powered C-suite executives that are being placed. It’s a tough, cut-throat business.

Not only does he get interviewed on podcast, but he runs a podcast called the Aerospace Executive where he presents himself not just as an authority on recruiting, but an authority on leadership. He gives his perspective on the industry so people get a sense of the fact that he actually has opinions and really deep level of expertise in the industry itself, that position. When he walks into a meeting with a board of directors to hire a new CFO or something, it puts him on an entirely different footing even though at his heart, he is a sales person selling his ability to sell the right person to come work for them.

It’s 100% rails all the way through and through, but he walks in on a completely different footing versus if he walked in there as just some guy that was an independent recruiter. Whether you get interviewed as a guest expert on podcast or whether you host your own, it puts you in the same position as an expert in your own right. You walk into a client meeting as a peer and a colleague and not as someone that they’re just going to pay to do a job.

Marylou: Yes. The other thing is you’re a trusted advisor because you walk the walk. Whether you have a degree or not. If you’re working in the steel industry and you don’t have any steel products but you know what goes on in the steel industry and you know what problems they have, what challenges they have, you just immediately get a seat at the table.

That’s really what we’re trying to do here is I’ll give you guys the tool so that no matter who you’re talking to, you have a seat at their table because you’ve earned that. You’ve earned that by doing these other things to build who you are, your authority, and your brand. Even if you’re working for a company, you’re building your expertise on the topic that your company solves.

This is so great. Now we’re all like, “Wow. This is really cool. I think I want to figure it out how to podcast.” Equipment, what do you do? You can’t use your computer. You and I, we’ve been […] the audio here with my thing, but you can’t use, typically, the standard computer audio. What’s the next step?

Matt: Well, I would say before even looking at starting your own podcast, if you’re a sales executive or someone that has something to say about your industry, focus on getting interviewed first because that’s a much easier place to start. It requires a lot less commitment and consistency. You can dial in how much you want to be visible and stuff like that by how many shows to go after and get featured on.

The really simple place to start is you don’t need anything fancy. Most of us have laptops that are just fine, good enough. Really, what you need is just a good microphone that’s made for something like podcasting, that doesn’t have to be in a pristine recording studio and environment in order to sound good. For example, I’m speaking into what’s called an Audio-Technica ATR2100 and that cost me the princely sum of $80 on Amazon.

What’s funny about that is I’m a musician. I recorded my own album, I’ve been in recording studios a lot, and I used to have a really nice, more expensive vocal microphone that I used for all my podcasting, and this sounds better because it’s not made for a studio. It’s not made for an environment where everything is absolutely controlled. It’s made to be used out in the real world where the other day, I was recording a podcast and a helicopter flew over head, then there’s a leaf blower 20 feet away from me, and all this stuff. Or you have to record from the hotel and the maid is cleaning the room next door with the world’s loudest vacuum cleaner.

That’s it. That’s just the way podcasting is, if you’re a real human being with a life and you like to travel and stuff. You don’t need an expensive microphone. You need the laptop that you probably already have, an ATR microphone from Amazon, and you’re set. If you have that, and you just show up on time and prepared, podcast hosts are going to love you. They’re going to appreciate the effort of you having a decent microphone and that’s about all you need.

Marylou: That’s great. As Matt said, there are a plethora of podcast shows that are out there. Do you suggest looking through iTunes or are there other places that people would look for potential shows that would be a good fit for them?

Matt: Yeah. I would always start with thinking about who you’re selling to and thinking about what podcast they’re listening to. You can also go to Google and type in, “The best of,” or “the top 10,” or whatever podcast of your space, so, “The top 10 podcasts in real estate,” or, “The top 10 podcasts in areospace.”

Some of those are going to be a list put together by other companies in the space. Some of the podcasts on that list are just going to be good entrepreneurial podcasts that they think people in that space should listen to. Some of them are going to be specific to that industry only. It’s going to be a grab bag but that’s the two places I would start. I’d start with iTunes and then start with a Google search for “the best of” or “the top 10 podcasts” in your industry and just start there.

A lot of times, if you find two or three of them, if you go into iTunes and you pop the name of one of them in and you find their show page, scroll all the way down to the bottom of iTunes and iTunes is going to suggest 10 or 15 more. A lot of times, that’s when you’ll find the smaller shows that you might not have found through a Google search but are maybe even more influential in that space because they’re more niche.

Marylou: That’s nice, nice tip. Just like LinkedIn when they first started, if we had a prospect that we wanted to go after, on the right hand side was all the colleagues he was connected to which helped us build our influence map. This is just really nice. Love it. I want to be respectful of time because we’re hitting the top of the hour here. Where should we look for you or if someone really wants to have a conversation with you, what’s the best way that we can pop in and talk to you?

Matt: You can check out the website in turnkey production services at pursuingresults.com, and then, I’ve got a training. So, if you’re an influencer who’s listening, if you’re a sales executive or maybe you’re a CEO founder and you want to get your company more attention by you getting out and building your personal brand—I think everyone of us in this economy needs to do anyway, even if you don’t think you need to—just go to howtogetfeatured.com.

I did a training there where I did go really deep on how to find the right podcast for you, how to leverage the right audiences, how to make the podcast host your friend so you actually build more of a strategic referral relationship, how to be a good guest, how to come up with a compelling story hook or an angle so that when you reach out to a podcast host, you can tell them why they should have you as a guest, all that fun stuff, as well as how you can push all that work, the behind-the-scenes stuff, down to an assistant, a virtual assistant, an intern, or maybe an SDR on the team, something like that.

There’s a way to get all of the behind-the-scenes work done for you by someone on your team so that you’re not the one doing all the research and scheduling. You can just show up, hit record, and have fun conversations like this.

Marylou: Okay. Well, last question, Matt. The audience is understanding that there’s workflow behind any success. We do things in blocked time and we do things repetitively to build habit. If you’re starting out, what’s a good goal to podcast or be a guest on a podcast? Is it one a month, one week, one a quarter? Do you have some round numbers you can help us understand the landscape of this?

Matt: Yes. If you’re going really heavy duty, you can set a goal to be featured on 100 in a year. That’s actually only two a week and that’s entirely doable. But to start out with, especially if you’re really just getting focused on being interviewed in places where your ideal clients are listening, I would just set a target of one a month.

Marylou: One a month. Okay. Very good. Matt, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. Now, everybody, I’ll put all Matt’s information, including that website about howtogetfeatured.com. I’ll make sure that all of those are written as notes and from there, you guys should really look at this as an option. I know for me personally, podcasting has been such a rewarding process.

I launched a book in 2016 and I said to myself, “Well, I should probably do a podcast.” So for the first 30 days, I did 1 a day to launch the book because that sounded right. I don’t know. I had no idea but now, I’m up to 140. I just love it. I think it’s the best thing and I hear from so many of you, how rewarding you think it is, that you try some tips from these podcasts, you actually put them into play, and they’re working. It’s all good.

I do appreciate you taking the time to come and speak with us about how to integrate this type of lead generation into the daily activities of anyone—any level or to build your brand and expertise. Thanks so much, Matt.

Matt: Thanks, Marylou.

While the importance of diversity is stressed in many industries today, other fields are still known for being “old boys clubs” – and sales is one of those fields. Today’s guest is here to talk about diversity in the sales and marketing industry and what has and hasn’t changed for women in those fields.

Natalie Severino is the Vice President of Marketing at Chorus.ai. Listen to the conversation to hear what Natalie has to say about the research studying differences between men and women in sales, how men and women respond differently to job descriptions and requirements, and what people in leadership can do to bring in more women.

Episode Highlights:

• What’s changing for women in sales and marketing
• What the research says about the difference between the ways men and women sell
• Reasons why women might outperform men in sales
• Building rapport and establishing status
• How the language in job descriptions affects female candidates
• The difference between how men and women respond to job requirements
• How marketing and sales differ in terms of diversity
• What leadership can do to bring in more women
• Women’s groups that listeners can attend

Resources:

Natalie Severino

Women Sales Pros

Girls Club

Transcript

Marlyou: Everyone, it’s Marylou Tyler. Welcome to the podcast. This week’s guest is Natalie Severino. She is the VP of Marketing at a company called Chorus.ai. Many of you probably use Chorus to help you have better sales conversations, but today, we’re not really going to talk about the product per se. What we’re going to talk about today is an important topic that affects all of us, especially for those of you who are women in sales or women in marketing.

Natalie has done a lot of research in this area and wants to share with us some of her findings. I tell you folks, it’s still pretty shocking. Natalie and I talked offline about being women in general and most of you know I came up through the ranks of engineering. I graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 1981 with a Computer Science degree. I was the only girl in my class and I was always surrounded by men, boys, whatever you want to call us students.

My trajectory to where I am today was not an easy one. Let’s face it. Natalie has news to share that it’s still very troublesome. So, without further ado, I want to introduce Natalie. The first topic is, to Natalie, what’s changing, what’s changed, what’s still the same, where do we go from here? Natalie, welcome to the podcast.

Natalie: Thanks, Marylou. I’m really excited to be here and to get to speak with a badass woman in the sales space which is what you are. I think that the reality is that there are a lot of badass women in sales. I had the pleasure of us meeting a lot of them. I’m also shocked to realize that in today’s day and age, a lot of women are still struggling. Struggling to get the recognition that they deserve, struggling to get the promotions that they deserve, struggling to fit in, and sometimes a “bro culture” that still exists in sales. I’d love to chat more about that.

Marylou. Let’s start with everybody in my audience are people who love process, people who love numbers. You shared some numbers that I want the audience to hear. Tell us about the sampling of a research study that you just did and tell us the results of that study in terms of performance of women executives in sales and marketing.

Natalie: What we did is we took a sampling of 100,000 calls that were recorded through Chorus amongst our high growth, world-class sales teams. We just wanted to take a look and see, “Do we really think that there’s a difference between the way that women and men are selling or performing? What we found was that amongst those calls, 32% of the reps were women, only 32%, and 68% were men. I don’t think that that’s a surprise in and of itself. It’s so fairly male-dominated as a career path.

What was interesting was that we saw that 40% of the top performers were women and only 60% were men. Women were outpacing men on the performance side of things. Leading indicators related to that is that we saw that women actually had higher win rates than men did. Women were at a 33% win rate and men were at a 24% win rate. Women typically had a 20% higher ACV in the deals that they were closing.

I don’t think that we can look at that and just say, “Women are better than men.” I don’t think it’s about that, but I do wonder if it’s related to how hard women have to work to be successful in sales. Maybe it’s a little bit of survival of the fittest and the women that are really performing and succeeding are badasses as I’ve alluded to already. I also happen to wonder if it’s related to the way that women approach the consultative process of being a seller, about how they listen to understand during the discovery process and how they actually work with their customers along the way.

When we looked at the underlying data, we didn’t really see that there were too many differences other than they were maybe asking a few more engaging questions of their prospects. Aside from that, approaches seemed really pretty similar, although they were having more success at the end of the day, which I found pretty fascinating.

Marylou: That is and I think some of it goes to what you said earlier. We do have, in some cases, to work harder for the same benefit. We have a tendency to think through things in a little bit more detail sometimes. We also are relationship engines. We like to build relationships for the most part and rapport. We may take our time upfront to develop that relationship with a prospect or client and have more empathy as we work through getting to close. I will be the first to admit, the audience knows this, that getting closes is not my area of expertise, but I have seen it upfront atop a funnel, from initial conversation to opportunity, that building rapport is a very important part of it because we’re emotion at those layers of the pipeline.

Women do tend to, at least the women in STRs, BERs, and ADRs that I’ve worked with, have a tendency to take it a little further in, to build that empathy but also are really good at setting the tone for the conversation upfront. Once we’re on the phone or we’re working with the prospect, there is a better not only rapport but also status. They establish status a lot faster, it seems, which is an interesting concept.

As you told me offline, one of the worries are that they don’t have the status in the team, but they definitely have the status with the clients and prospects. That’s an interesting duality here that I’m hearing because definitely, the confidence levels are there in talking with clients but maybe not so much working with their peers. Is that what you’re discovering when you to your meet-ups and things?

Natalie: Definitely. Just a little bit about that as background for your audience, Chorus has been hosting some meet-ups both in San Francisco and in Boston. We’ve had some amazing turnouts from actually both women and men and it’s been so awesome to see men show up to support their women colleagues. It’s been incredible, but the topics that have been really resonating with women sellers has been, “What do I need to do to be successful as a woman in sales? How do I ask for the job that I think that I deserve? And what do I need to do to break through that glass ceiling, not only to get the job of being a leader but to be really effective as a leader and as a woman?”

We’ve been having some really interesting conversations about that. For example, in the first meet-up that we had there was a debate amongst our panelists about whether or not we should be hiring for diversity or just hiring for the best performers. There was a real difference of opinion amongst the women on the team about how to approach that.

There was also some really sad and shocking things that women were surfacing in, asking for help as they were doing the networking around, “I’m just coming back from parental leave and I’m being asked to take several steps back in my career in order to get back into the workforce. How do I deal with that? I’m being judged as a parent while working in sales. Can I really go the distance? Can I do the travel? Can I put in the effort in the work that’s required?” Feeling they’re being judged in a different way than their male counterparts.

Like I say, I think that in today’s day and age, that’s surprising to me. So many women work. Generally, they have to be the CEO of their house as well as really effective in their jobs. So many women find a way to make that work regardless of what job they’re in. It’s interesting to hear that they’re feeling extra judgement on that front. As a sales professional, what do you think about that?

Marylou: I’d know, definitely, in traveling the world that there are pockets and communities within the United States. I’m from Iowa. Actually a lot of insurance companies have women in very high-level positions. While it’s an equal opportunity, I was shocked to see how many women are actually in those bigger roles. But there are some pockets where it’s still family-first and women are correlated to the family, and it’s difficult to turn that mindset off when you give into the work world.

I used to say, “Look, I have my work persona and I have my at-home persona, and the two are not the same.” So when you talk to me at work, I would like to be spoken to and given the advantage of someone who is committed to the work that I’m doing, someone who is able to coordinate any type of travel. We have to educate the management team and leadership in some areas of the country.

I don’t see that in Europe. A lot of times, in Europe, women are regarded very highly in certain countries. Denmark comes to mind because I have a client there now. They’re definitely focused on, it’s the person. It’s not women versus men, it’s the person. I would love to get to that type of nomenclature, the type of working workflow here in the United States, but there are certainly verticals. There are certainly pockets and not having had a conversation with the folks from Boston or San Francisco to see if they’re working in tech versus healthcare versus services companies, where they are, financial services. It can be different even on the vertical side of things.

Natalie: That was actually going to be what I was going to ask since you go across so many different types of clients, if that’s something that you’ve run into. Quite honestly, for me personally, I was surprised. This wasn’t something that was on my mind. It was something that was suggested by one of our AEs. She had observed that there didn’t appear to be meet-up groups. She’s very active in meet-ups in the San Francisco area that one existed and she felt like there was a real need for it.

It didn’t strike me at first probably because I started my career at a very progressive company. You may have heard of it, Intuit, a big prominent company in the tech and financial tech space. I worked there for the first 15 years of my career and I happened to work under a female VP of sales. On some level, it didn’t even occur to me that that should be an issue because not only was she so well-respected and that she rocket out every single day, we also had some women account executives on the team that were also very successful.

I didn’t personally experience that in the early part of my career. Actually, it wasn’t until I left Intuit and went to another company that was more in the hardware space that I encountered the good old boys-club, and it was shocking to me. I do think that there’s differences based on industry verticals, in terms of what women encounter.

Marylou: There are, definitely. One of the things that was brought to me early on in my career was I needed to be a role model for people, for women coming up after me, that right down to the reviewing of the job descriptions for employment. If you look at and gathered right now, all the job descriptions on LinkedIn for business development, sales, professional sales, executives, there’s a lot of male-oriented language in those documents.

We, as women, tend to get turned off by some of it. We don’t want to kill. We don’t want to necessarily spear somebody or get involved in the hunt. It’s just the way that we use words, even in job descriptions, is appalling for women. That deters a lot of women from even beginning to get into these types of roles because the language used in the onboarding process is very male-oriented.

Natalie: There are two things that I’d love to share on that. One is, I don’t think that that’s actually something that is limited to sales. I had a role open on my team a few months ago that I was recruiting for that was on the marketing team to do customer marketing, and I had a woman that I spoke to for the role and she’s not the one that we ended up hiring. When I got on the phone with her to have that initial conversation, she was so concerned because she didn’t have 100% of the requirements covered for the job.

She only had maybe two-thirds or three-quarters of them. I just said to her, “We’re asking for a really interesting mix of experience and it’s not my expectation that anyone would actually have 100%.” She’s like, “I wasn’t sure if I should even apply.” I’m like, “You’re awesome. I would love to have you join the team. Why do you think that way? Look at these things that you did.” I think that this is a common thing, is that women—there’s been studies on it—more tend to think, “If I don’t meet 100% of the requirements, I shouldn’t even try,” whereas men, if they have maybe 50%–60% of the requirements will go ahead and throw their hat in the ring.

To your point about the language that’s in the job description, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the company TextSEO. They’re based off in Seattle. They’re doing something really interesting for companies that are looking to hire. They actually have AI models that will look for and flag language that’s in a job description will lead to bias in candidates that will apply.

I think that there’s interesting things that we as leaders can do to make sure that we’re casting a wide net of candidates and looking for not just diverse candidates based on gender, or race, or sexual orientation, or any of those things. But also, it’s really important that you get candidates with diversity in experience, and the way that they think and what they’re going to bring to the table, because if you only hire a group of people that look, sound, and think exactly the way that you do, nobody is going to be challenged.

Marylou: Right. The other thing, too, that I’m starting to see is that there are pockets now of schools, educational facilities that are actually teaching the art and process of sales. The enrollment in those classes is interesting, in that we’re seeing a lot more women now who don’t have this “wing it” personality.

I was never taught sales. I’m an engineer who reluctantly was good at client-facing, so I could speak to the clients and translate what the programmers needed to do. I was always pushed into these positions that were none of my sweet spots, were not comfortable, there was no place to go learn about it. Nor, like you said, there’s definitely no women’s groups back then for engineering women. 1981. No. There weren’t any.

Its feels like this island. You’re on your own. You’re siloed out there, trying to figure it out. I applaud that one of the things that we can do as women, and men too, men need to educate themselves on what the concerns are to bring women sales executives into the organization. The leaders, if they’re male or women, need to really understand the concerns and start breaking those barriers down by changing the language of their job enrollment, changing the way the teams are organized, and bringing in people.

Like you said, the diversity is so important because the different points of view are what make the whole thing just hum. It’s just wonderful to see all these different opinions about things. That’s why I love working with teams, both in Europe and the US because we have the ability to get theses different cultures in. It’s a wild ride, but so much fun to get an understanding of how to have these conversations. And we never talk about gender. It’s all about, what could we do in these different geographies to get this conversation started or continue the conversation and get people to advance in the pipeline?

Natalie: Definitely. You brought up education. Do you know Dr. Howard Dover from UTD?

Marylou: Yes. I think it was last year, UT Dallas, I spoke at that event. That’s how I learned about him. After learning and meeting him, I marched down to Drake University in Des Moines and said, “I want to be an adjunct professor and teach sales.” I actually put together their very first sales class for Drake.

Natalie: That’s awesome. I brought up Howard because Chorus actually did some work with Dr. Dover and his class last term of last year. I’m with you, I think that teaching sales as a discipline and how to be a good seller, how to be that consultative seller that really understands the pinpoints that their buyers are trying to solve, and earning their way into the business by showing them how you can help solve those business problems is something that is so needed. In the past, people just sell into a soles role because they graduated from school and they didn’t know what the next thing was that they were going to do.

With Dr. Dover’s program, he actually gives them a quota. They actually have stuff to sell. They get on the phone and they do it. They have to prospect and build a pipeline, and his class is using Chorus as part of the curriculum. I had the pleasure of going down and meeting with him and some of the students. They were so impressive, so impressive and not even ready to graduate yet, and all I could think of is, “When do I get to hire these kids? They’re so good.”

It was just great to see him and one of the things that he shared with me is that his first term where they were using Chorus to help the students with their role plays, to learn what they were doing well and not doing well, they went from having the standard bell curve to having no curve. There was no curves in the performance.

I got to interview and talk to some of the kids. They were literally going on and recording their calls with Chorus to see, “What was my talk time? Am I asking the right engaging questions? Am I following the process? Are all of those things lighting up in the calls? What can I learn from my peers who are doing it right?” Their performance just shot through the roof, which is just awesome to say.

Marylou: It is awesome. More importantly too is that there is a diversity of male-female because when I was speaking in the audience, I didn’t get a sense like when I normally go to speak a place is primarily 80% men. There was a nice split and enthusiasm. The ones that I had the opportunity to talk with, the graduates, had five or six job offers already. That was also a nice plus out of the whole thing was they’re in high demand because they’re going through a rigorous program. It’s fun, they’re engaged, they’re happy.

It was just a wonderful thing to see so I’m hoping that pockets of those types courses open up across the US. Some of that will break the barrier down of women not even considering a role in sales because there’s so much stigma around it. Because this is a sales and marketing conversation, what are your thoughts on marketing versus sales in terms of diversity with women versus men?

Natalie: I think it’s a whole different ball game. I think it depends on what level of the organization that you’re in, we’ll put it that way. I don’t know why I would say expected, but I feel like it’s definitely a more diverse role in general. There’s generally more women on a marketing than even men. It may even be a little bit of the reverse. When I look at my team, I have a good mix. I’m slightly heavier on women than men, but I have both. It’s typically leaned to more women than men on my teams in the past.

It’s not something that I’ve generally thought about in the same way. When I look at the flipside of that for sales, like I said, some of the things that these women have talked about has been shocking. They have to worry about asking for the business and how that’s going to be perceived. When they are firm, when they’re negotiating, when they’re rolling their shoulders back and saying, “This is what I need,” they’re worried about being perceived as being, pardon the language here, an aggressive bitch just for doing the same thing that a man would do in their shoes. I don’t think we have the same challenges on the marketing side.

Marylou: No. It’s interesting too. I grew up in direct mail and pre-internet, and even in demand generation back then there were a lot more women in that. It’s still about generating leads and marketing qualified leads that are going to result in revenue. It’s just interesting because top of funnel is considered more emotion-based and bottom of funnel is switching from that emotion to logic negotiation. There’s a perception out there that women are great at attracting and getting the conversation started, but when you get to the nitty-gritty of closing and negotiating, that’s where women fall short.

Now, that’s an overgeneralization. You can see it in politics. You can see it in certain areas of the world and I think that that is interesting. That’s where I think we can focus is you have every right to ask for the business as does your counterpart. Maybe you’ll feel better about it if you can create the argument, like that woman you said, she wanted to know everything. Cross the T’s, dot those those I’s so that your confidence level goes up when you do ask for the business whereas men might want to wing it, at least my guys, a lot of them like to wing it to the end. Sometimes, that doesn’t result in a higher close rate.

That’s what we’re seeing here, is that there’s probably more prep going into the close. There’s probably more of every which way you can to create that argument to convince someone that this is a time to act now, they should change, they should change now, and they should change with you. There’s probably a lot more preparation going into that early on in a sales woman’s career, but as you progress up and have more confidence and do more of these types of transactions, there’s no reason why you can’t do that minimum prep and get to the close.

I think women are a little bit more organized in making sure they’ve covered more of the bases before they go out the door whereas men, like you said, are more apt to just go out the door and sends you results. Sometimes, I get very nervous. Why? Because we don’t necessarily have a spray and pray list we can work with. Every record is counting so we need quality. That’s why sometimes the prep work upfront is a better way to go.

Natalie: Agreed.

Marylou: Managers sitting here are thinking, “All right, Looking at my team now, it’s 80–20. Where do I start? What do I do? As a manager, yes, I’ll look at our job descriptions.” What else can leadership do to invite more women into the fold? In your opinion and talking to these women, what’s two or three things that we can start looking at, scrutinizing, changing, making better, if we are trying to blend into the team, male versus female?

Natalie: I think that one thing is making an effort to at least interview a diverse set of candidates and of course, you’ve got to find who you think is best for your company, your role, your culture, but making a concerted effort to at least look at a diverse set is one thing. Certainly, the job descriptions will help.

The second thing is, what I’m hearing is that women are more cautious about wanting to understand what kind of culture they’re going to be walking into. The companies that are really able to attract the highest caliber talents are actually putting a focus on their employer brand and making sure that they’re not only talking the talk, but walking the walk and being able to show that externally.

As an example, one of the things that I really benefited from early on in my career is that same VP that I mentioned, she actually sponsored me. She didn’t just mentor me. She sponsored me. She helped me grow my career. She looked for opportunities for me to grow my skill set, to help me be on the leadership path. She made a deliberate effort and she put her political capital on the line to help me grow and develop.

Find someone on your team that you want to do that for and who you think has the runway to grow into a leader, and make a concerted effort. I guarantee you, they’ll talk about it. They will be a magnet to bring more rock stars to your team if you make that effort. Really, as a leader, that should be your top job. It’s not coaching a deal to come in, although that’s important. It’s important to make the number and bring it over the line, but it’s coaching the professional growth and skills that are going to help your team succeed. Your team will tell others about it and you will become a magnet for the type of people that you want to hire.

Marylou: That’s great advice. I know of one organization called WOMEN Sales Pros that is out there in the universe that people—women and men—they sponsor events. They have meet-ups. I think one in Boston actually. Lori Richardson is the one who runs that, I think. I’ll put it in the show notes just to make sure. Do you have any other women’s group that we can add to the show notes, that people who are in pockets, usually urban pockets, can attend? Or what are your suggestions if you’re sitting here as a woman thinking, “You know what? I’m going to try and get a meet-up together.”

In fact one of the folks that just started working with you in business development started a group of business development people. There’s just a lot of different ways to do this. What are your recommendations there, for a woman listening to this saying, “I want to put my hat in the ring, start having these conversations, and help others advance, and myself advance as well in the field”?

Natalie: I think that Lori has done wonders for women in sales. There’s no greater champion than Lori Richardson. I’m so excited because for any of your listeners that are in the Boston area, Lori is going to be coming to our next meet-up in Boston on September 11 and speaking on our panels. I’d love for anyone that’s interested, go to the Meetup platform and just search women in sales and it should come up.

For people outside of San Francisco and Boston, we got started in a really simple way. There are lots of companies that are willing to let people use their space for meet-ups. The one that we’re doing in Boston is actually hosted at a WeWork based in, great to give us the space to use there. Look for a company that’s willing to open their doors to a group.

It’s been a really simple thing for us to start these groups and get people to come, just putting it on Meetup which is a platform that’s made for people that are looking for other groups to come and talk about things. Search out a couple of people that you really expect and ask them if they’re willing to speak. Promoting it on social with very little effort. Our Boston group had 100 people show up last time.

We sponsored things like food and drinks, got the location, and got all the speakers to be there, but I do think that there’s a pent-up demand for this, that people are looking for an opportunity to network and learn from their peers, and hear from others. So, that would be one thing if you’re looking to start your own.

The other organization that I would love to give a shout-out to is called #GirlsClub. Chorus is a title sponsor of #GirlsClub. What they aim to do is help those next rising stars learn what it takes to be a leader in sales. They have an annual curriculum for women and we need to work on getting our landing page up at Chorus, but we’re actually going to be giving away a scholarship to #GirlsClub for 2020. If any of that sounds interesting, if you want to talk about it, please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from you and follow Chorus on LinkedIn and we’ll be announcing that scholarship coming up.

Marylou: Wonderful. I will also put everything in the show notes for everybody. Natalie, it’s been such a great conversation. I appreciate you enlightening us and making people aware that these issues are still front of mind, they still exist, and that we, as sales and marketing professionals, really owe it to the folks coming up in the ranks and even those who want to rise in their careers, to be a mentor, to work with people, to network together in these meet-ups.

It’s not always going to be bitching sessions. Like you said, there are speakers, there are other things that happened as you started dancing into this where you can learn about topics that you want, closing techniques. I have done levels of awareness, how to write good copy, blah-blah-blah. There’s a lot of stuff that we can learn together to help us advance in our careers. Thank you so much for your time, very much appreciated.

Natalie: Thanks for having me, Marylou. It was a great conversation and it was my pleasure.

Who is the right person to talk to when you want to advance a prospect through the pipeline? When is the right time to talk to that person, and how should you do it? Today’s guest has some ideas.

Joining the podcast today is Tukan Das, CEO of a company called LeadSift. Tukan is here to talk about whether or not you really can predict who is ready to buy, what a good work flow is, and how you work those leads so that you can increase the yield and lower the time it takes to get from the initial conversation to close.

Episode Highlights:

• The statistics mentioned on LeadSift’s website
• Why Tuakan started the LeadSift tool
• Gauging intent data
• Hyper personalizing sales conversations
• Building an ideal signal profile
• The steps toward scaling
• How soon to jump into the middle term
• What comes after the middle term
• An exciting customer story
• How the audience can connect with Tukan

Resources:

Tukan Das

Email: tdas@leadsift.com

Free Tool to Automate Research for prospecting

LeadSift HomePage

Google Alerts

Twitter Search

LinkedInSales Navigator

BuiltWith

BuiltWith Toolbar

Alexa Ranking

SEMRush

Transcript

Marylou: Hey everybody, it’s Marylou Tyler. This week’s guest is Tukan Das. He’s the CEO of a company called LeadSift. He’s talking to me today out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It’s quite an honor to be reaching out to the Canadians up there. What we’re talking about today is something that’s really focusing on how, who, and when do we talk to the right person to advance them into the pipeline.

You know that I’m all about predictability, and Tukan is as well. My first question to him is, can you really truly predict who is ready to buy, so that we’re not wasting time, that we’re maximizing our return on effort. As you all know, we put records into a funnel, into a list—whatever you want to call it—and we work really hard to figure out who of these hundreds of people are the ones that are ready to buy.

Tukan is going to talk to us today about whether or not you really can predict and what a good work flow is if you had that magic wand of predictability, how do you work those leads so that you can increase the yield, lower the time it takes to get from that initial conversation all the way to close.

Tukan, welcome to the podcast.

Tukan: Thanks a lot for having me. It’s an honor to be in the show. I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts around this super interesting and relevant topic.

Marylou: I’m on your website right now and I have to read this to our audience because they all get it. He has a promise on here, it says, “No more spray and pray.” That really hit home with me because I’m still hearing that people are doing that. What he says here is that, “We can buy those static lists from the list vendors. We can spend day and night on LinkedIn, trying to figure out who those people are. We can scrape the entire internet with all of our tools, but the cold hard truth,” according to Tukan, “is that only 3% of qualified leads are currently in the buying journey.”

How the heck do you know that, Tukan?

Tukan: That actual stat is not from us. We actually found that in one of the research that I believe Gartner did of serious decisions, they did that. It says, “Three percent of your total addressable market at any given point is in the market for the solution like yours, but 40% or something around that number is starting to be in the buying journey, more top of the funnel, and the remainder of them are happy, they are not looking.” That’s what the stats says.

Marylou: We have in our world, and I preach—it’s even in my book—that we call the hundred audience formula. That 3% number is the same number, even for us. We don’t rely on anything other than our data, now it’s millions of records because we started looking at this probably late 80s, early 90s. It’s been a while since we’ve been around.

Really, what it says is 3% are ready to buy now—we get a little bit more specificity—7% are somewhere on that ladder of level of awareness. They’re problem-aware may be, but they’re not necessarily vendor-savvy yet, or situation when these problems come up aware, that’s 10%. Ten percent is in the ballpark, in that bull’s eye. Then we have 30% who know they don’t want anything, they’re happy, they don’t even want to talk to you. The remaining 60, though, are somewhere along that level of awareness ladder of, “I didn’t even know I have a problem,” to “Yup. It’s on the docket. It’s an initiative. It’s not a high priority.”

We’re aligned and I’m happy to hear that the big boys who do these types of research are aligned with what we have, and we have even more specificity because we get down to levels of awareness. Given that, what got you going on this tool that you’ve put together?

Tukan: I’ll give a brief context about LeadSift and how it got you going in this. We started LeadSift around 2012. Our mission when we started LeadSift was around mining publicly available unstructured data to predict buying behavior. That was the goal. When we first started in 2012, it was more around consumer-facing brands. We are trying to predict when someone was going to buy a new car, or a new phone, or looking to buy a new house or a new credit card, looking to book a travel and things like that. That’s what we were focusing on, by crawling the public web. Trying to understand from the language, what they are saying, and then inferring or predicting when they would be looking to buy a product like that.

About 3½ years ago, we pivoted into the B2B sales intelligence […]. The mission is still the same, but instead of predicting who’s looking to buy a new phone or a car, we focused on when a company, or a person within that company would be looking to buy a new software or services for their company. That’s what our journey has been. Thankfully, our mission statement has remained the same. It’s just the application has changed.

Now, to answer your question or the thing that you stated, can you really predict when someone is in the market for your solution, at least in a B2B setting? I have some good news and bad news. The reality is, every marketer, every sales person wants to know that. Everyone wants to know who’s going to buy your product right now. If everyone knew, the problem would have been solved. It’s crazy. But unfortunately, that’s not the case. There is no one waving a flag and say, “Hey, I’m looking to buy a database software, or IT security software, or a sales intelligence software.” No one does that in a B2B setting.

Until and unless obviously they’re coming through a website, picking up the phone, calling you, emailing you, and saying, “Hey, I’m interested in buying.” Until that happens, it is always a prediction. That’s where this whole term or concept of buyer intent or intent data comes into play, which is really a probability of guessing where a company is in the buying journey of buying that solution.

Whenever you use the term probability, there is always a chance that it’s not going to be right, it’s not going to be if you say it’s 90% accurate, it might not be there, that they are not 90% in the buying journey. It might be 60% or something like that. That’s the reality. That’s the bad news.

The good news is, there are ways that you can get pretty good at making these predictions of when someone is looking to buy your solution, your software, or your services, so that you do not waste time spraying and praying and basically focus on the right accounts where more likely to be taking a meeting, who are more problem-aware, who are more willing to listen to what you have to offer because if they don’t buy now, maybe 3-6 months later, they might be interested in buying. That’s the good news.

Marylou: I have a question about the intent data. Here’s where I get stumbled up a little bit. When I work with clients and we’re looking at keywords or intent words, do you find that the client you work with actually know which words trigger the ability for us to gauge the level of intent or is your analytics or your engine supplying and helping the client figure out which words to use, look for, search for, for a given product or service?

What ingredients do the client help you with? Or is this purely you saying, “Hey, just give us all your content or comment data and we’ll come up with the magic list of the words, the phrases, the intentions to use in our process”?

Tukan: That’s a great question. I don’t think there is a fix set of keywords, or phrases, or terms that can indicate intent, at least when you’re looking at it from a keyword perspective. What we tell customers is, “Give us a list of your competitors.” That’s the first thing because we look at competitors and partners to infer intent. Other is, “There is a list of keywords that you are currently creating content about. Give us the topics.”

If you see people engaging with those topics that you are already creating content on, then we can try to find other people who are engaging in those topics. One thing that I’d like to add, is this whole idea of intent. There’s a bit of misconception out there.

Marylou: One hundred percent. A lot of confusion of yes.

Tukan: A lot. So I like to demystify it a little bit […] marketing perspective. According to me, there is no one single source of intent or there is no one single lens that you look at buying intent from, at least from a B2B setting. What I mean by that is, if someone is searching on Google for a specific term, that’s a pretty good sign of intent, but if you look for that specific term, let’s say it’s best marketing automation software, that’s how someone would search if they’re looking for a marketing automation software.

If you look for that exact term—those four key words—on the internet, no one writes like that on a blog. If you’re looking on the web for that kind of signal, you’re not going to find much intent there. Let’s look at marketing automation as a topic on its own, and see who are engaging that kind of content to figure out intent, that’s one side of it.

Other thing is, intent is not just keyword search or content consumption. It is a whole bunch of different things. Just diving into what are three things that someone can do from a sales perspective or marketing perspective right now, to define intent with the goal of predicting if someone is in the market, the first thing you need to do is what does indicate buying behavior? The buying behaviors are very different based on which industry you are in, what product you are selling.

To give an example, let’s say if you are selling anything to do in the sales intelligence space, a good buying behavior or indicator of buying behavior that someone might need a sales intelligence software is if you see a company aggressively hiring a whole bunch of SDRs or BDRs. That might be a good signal of intent.

It has got nothing to do with any keyword search, any topic research or just the fact that someone is going there, sales development or business development team, gives you an indication that they might be a sales acceleration tool, a sales intelligence software, and things that are auxiliary to that role. That could be a signal of intent. You need to understand what would be a buying behaviour for your software.

Let’s take a few other examples. For example, if you sell office furniture, which is not your SaaS software. For you, a buying behaviour would be, when you find out a company’s opening up a new office, or relocating. If you find that out, that would be a signal of intent.

Let’s take it even further. Let’s say you sell an IT security software. For you, your signal of intent would be if you go to a website and you notice that they don’t have a secured sign-in on their website. That could be a signal of intent.

A signal of intent or a buying behaviour is one and the same. It could be there is no activity. A classic example that I give to our customers is, let’s say you’re a content marketing agency. A signal of intent could be, that you look at a company that are functioning, that are growing, but they are not creating enough content; their competitor is creating a lot of content.

That difference that your competitor’s creating content and attracting traffic and you are not creating content, or blogs, or any content, is a signal of intent for a content marketing agency to talk to them saying, “Hey! You’re competing with these guys. They are absolutely killing it with their content strategy, we can help you create content.” That’s a signal of intent if you think about it.

Anyone, when they’re thinking of intent, it shouldn’t be that someone is researching about a keyword or a topic. It’s much, much broader than that. The first thing that I would suggest is, is to understand what would indicate buying behavior and then work back from there. If that makes sense.

Marylou: Yes. I’m a visual person, in my mind, graphically, I’ve drawn a bull’s eye in the middle, so I have a circle in the middle and then I have all these spokes coming out from that circle because the gravitational pull of multiple types of indicators all contribute to the—I love that term—signals of intent. I like it better than buying behavior, but that’s just my preference. 

That allows you to think outside the box. Because I came in, you heard me say, “Hey Tukan, it’s all about keywords,” and you’re saying, “Well, partially, but there’s more to it than that. There is behavior, there’s activity, there’s action, or inactivity, or inaction. There’s a lot of different levers that are used to generate the intent index that then goes into a software system.” I’m totally loving this. 

The biggest problem we have now, as you know, is this whole spray and pray, it’s still around. Mass email is still around, but there’s legislation coming up in the US, it’s already in Europe, the GDPR, that says, “Hey, you can’t be reaching out to hundreds of people. It’s got to be personalized,” and what you’re giving us is the ability to hyper personalize a conversation by understanding where the buyer is in his head at any given time.

I can just see that list fatigue probably goes down with your clients because we’re not over taking the list by touching so often that, it’s just thrown in the wastebasket type of thing. We’re just touching for the sake of touching. It’s what I call vanity touching. We’re just touching for the sake of touching with no conversion rate in mind. I love this. 

Let’s do the one-two-three right now, so that audience really understands and give it to me in order. Step one, step two, step three, and then we’ll go on to what we can do middle term.

Tukan: In the immediate short term, what I would say is, first thing is, you draw that circle out and figure out what are the indicators these signals of intent for your industry. Figure that out, list all of these things out. It could be very well engagement with topics, but it is always, has to be much, much more than that. Let’s start all of those things. That’s the first thing.

Once you defined that, like what are all the different things, then comes an interesting task of I know if someone is moving an office, if they’re doing this, or they’re not doing this, that could be a good signal. How do I track it? Then comes the tracking part. In the short term, what I would suggest is, trying out simple, easy, and most importantly free tools that could help you get some of these information.

The first thing that I would do is use Google Alerts, and a lot of your audience probably are using it. Google Alerts’ pretty good, it has limitations. Twitter Search is a very good tool. Twitter has a probably good pulse on what’s going on. LinkedIn Sales Navigator, not a free tool, but I know a lot of sales people in their organizations are using it. LinkedIn Sales Navigator would be a good tool to help you track your accounts or active opportunities for some interesting signals.

Finally, this is a shameless plug, we just launched a free tool. It’s not even on our website, it’s that early, we’re just testing with some beta customers. It’s called Buzz.  It’s buzz.leadsift.com. Basically what it does is, you can track in 10 of your top accounts that you’re trying to prospect, or it’s an active opportunity. We can track them to get some of these information, see if they are opening a new office, did they raise funding, are they aggressively hiring for certain roles, they launched a new product, and things like that that are automatically delivered to you so that you can then start taking those information and then focusing on the reaching out part of it. That would be the second thing that I would use a bunch of these different free tools.

The third thing that I would also do is, this is another set of tools that you can use, you can go to a website and then use them as Chrome Extensions. Few of them would be BuiltWith, which basically gives you information of what are the current tech stats they are using, because if you know what they are using, or what they are not using, that gives you an edge into saying, “Oh, I see you’re using this,” or “I see you’re not using any of these hence you should be using this.”

Other tools would be Alexa Ranking. One classic example I was going to give is, let’s say you are selling a software that has something to do with an ecommerce space, whether it’s a shopping cart or website personalization tool, or something like that. One simple thing you can do is, you go to an account, plug that in Alexa. Get the idea an idea of what the number of visitors they get on a monthly basis.

Let’s say you are seeing they are getting over half a million visitors or a million visitors a month, you obviously know that ecommerce side is highly traffic, they need solutions. And then using BuiltWith, let’s say you see they are using an outdated shopping cart, or they are not using a product personalization tool. Boom! That’s your perfect in to pitch your product personalization tool saying, “Hey, I know that you’re getting a ton of traffic and you’re not using anything. Did you know that one customer in the similar space got a 20% increased conversion by using our personalization would suggest better products to them.”

Again, all of these you can do for free.

Marylou: That’s so helpful.

Tukan: Thank you. SimilarWeb is another tool. SEMrush or AdSpy are a couple of tools that give you more intelligence on what your competitors are doing, or what certain websites are doing in terms of content or keywords they’re bidding on, what tools they are using and stuff. For me, those would be the three immediate things that I would start doing.

First, figuring out what are the different buying signals that your customers would have. From then on, start tracking those signals using free tools on the active opportunities you have. You have your Google Alerts, LinkedIn Sales Nav, Twitter Search, LeadSift Buzz. Then you add another level of intelligence using tools like BuiltWith, Alexa, SimilarWeb, SEMrush to get all of these intelligence and from there on, you then go ahead, do your targeted outreach to these companies.

That would be the first immediate thing that I would suggest someone in a sales role when they’re prospecting, that’s that’s what they should be doing.

Marylou: Yeah, and then for those of you who are process-oriented, which most of you are, otherwise you wouldn’t be listening to me, what we would then take is those terms, those signals, and decide should we store these things in a field of data in our database so that we can take the sequences that we build and actually use the sentiment and those indexes of intent, those signals of intent in a templated email.

If you think about this, you spend the time figuring out what those signals are, you’re looking not only keywords but operational, tasks, firmographic. It’s almost like building an ideal account profile, but we’re building an ideal signal profile essentially, an ISP just to add yet another acronym to our world.

Tukan: There you go.

Marylou: We’re taking that ideal signal intent list and we’re now incorporating into our CRM fields of influence database because what we want to do is then track, once we go through these  conversations, and we actually start getting conversion rates, which signals did bubble up to the top? Which signals did lead to a sense of urgency? So that we and reduce the lag in the pipeline, increase the yield of the conversion.

This is like the beginning of a beautiful, rhythmic touch sequence that allows us to not only start with a pretty good head start given what Tukan has done but allows us to track the results of those conversations with those indicators and those signals to see is our signal list optimal? Or do we need to optimize it after we run it through a statistically relevant sample of records?

I just love this flow. It just sounds so nice. Here I am. I’ve done what you said, I’ve gone through some records, I’m seeing some successes. How long do I stay here in this particular mode and then where do I branch out from there? Let’s talk about middle term now. Now that I’ve taken that exercise, I’ve run it through, I’ve proven the concept to myself and I want to scale this thing. What’s the next step towards scaling?

Tukan: Then comes the whole idea of let’s now incorporate some of the first party intelligence that I already have. What I mean by that is, assuming you are using some marketing automation software and choose your favourite one to track activity of buyers on your website and on your content.

What I mean is, you’re reaching out to people using these different triggers, at the same time, you should start measuring how many of these people are opening emails, how many of them are coming to my website, engaging with my call-to-action, what are all the activities they are doing, and then start scoring these activities on what they are doing on my website, on my content, on your first party content, that’s what they call it.

That would be the immediate next step. Now you’re getting a little bit more sophisticated saying, okay, I’ve identified a certain subset of people within my ICP that are throwing signals. I’m taking some proactive action towards them. Let’s now track what happens once I do a proactive action, whether it’s an email campaign, LinkedIn campaign, phone calls, or ad campaign.

Some of these people will be coming back to my website. Let’s start tracking them. Let’s score these leads using whatever tools—most marketing automation tools have some kind of scoring—and then start prioritizing even more and learning from them what’s happening, which triggers are working better, how many of these ones are turning into MQLs, SQLs, opportunities, and things like that. That would be one not immediate in a middle term I would say.

Other thing that I would do is, another good source of buying behavior intent signal would be what people are doing on a review website. G2 Crowd is a very popular one. I think they call themselves G2 now. You can buy a subscription of that and they would, not really would they help you showcase your product and get your customers to write reviews for social proof, they also sell company level data of people that are coming to yours or your competitors website within G2 Crowd. Just on their website. If someone is searching for another IT security software, they will tell you, “This company was searching for an IT security software.” Some of those might be vendors, they’re just doing competitive intelligence, but some of them are real buyers at a company level.

That would be the second step. You’re now advancing using some automations, some scoring to really build up these signal profiles on accounts that you should be really honing in. That would be my middle term action items.

Marylou: How soon do people jump into middle term? In my world, we’re looking at statistical relevance plus or minus, we’d like to get to a 5% margin of error. But in this world, is that a realistic number or do we jump sooner based on the data that we collected in that phase one immediate right now? You have that feel for that?

Tukan: Ninety days, that’s what we have seen, is a good enough period for you to build out your progress, start tracking, and then sending out email campaigns with templated cadences. Ninety days should be a good enough time period for you to start seeing results to say, “You know what? This kind of intelligence is providing value.” And then talking to your marketing operations or sales operations to tie in the first party data from marketing automation tools or sales automation tools and rolling it up into a scoring module within your marketing automation system. Ninety days would be a good enough time period for you to get some basic results and then move on to the second phase, the middle term phase.

Marylou: Okay, and then I want to emphasize to the audience that this 90 days should be in a  production 90 days. Don’t do it over the summer when half of Europe is on vacation, I’m so jealous. A bunch of European clients are like, “See you in six weeks!” Like, “You’re kidding me!”

Tukan: I hear you.

Marylou: Maybe in your world, not in the US. Make sure it’s at a fully production quarter that you’re picking to do this test. Then you’ll have first of all, confidence that you’re going into the next quarter with information that’s viable and to get to that middle term.

You run through the middle term. Now, some of you will probably stop at the middle term and just be happy in that zone for a while. For those of you who are always at the bleeding edge of technology and at work in the process, what’s the optimized, once you’ve gone through that middle, what’s next after that?

Tukan: This is when you really need buying from your marketing team, the demand gen team, would be to leverage a third party intense solution. You are using these free tools to at least gather a solution to get you a list. A third party intent solution, based on all of these different triggers would automatically flow in a list of account and key context within their accounts into your CRM every morning suggesting. “Hey, these are the top 20 accounts that you as the SDR of the salesperson needs to be going after because in the last 24 hours, they did this, this, this.” That could be one thing when you’re going a little bit advanced.

Something very interesting starts happening. As these third party intent data solutions start picking up signals, a certain percentage of signals will be making accounts and contacts that’s delivered to you every morning. You log in, you go after them, which is great. But the small percentage of those signals would actually be on your existing accounts and active opportunities that have come to your website, filled out a form, you spoke to them six months ago, but nothing happened.

Now all of a sudden, you just saw a signal of them talking to a competitor of yours or hiring for a specific role or attending an industry where you are going to go. That’s a signal that you can then tie in with your first party data that’s already in your CRM, overlaying third party, notifying your account executive saying, “Hey, there’s an activity happened. Do something. This deal has gone cold, but now all of a sudden, it just jump up. Let’s put them in a different workflow so that we can re-engage them.”

Those could be some advanced things that you can use to really beef up this whole buying intent signal process.

Marylou: That’s the engine. That’s the scaling engine, is that last area because how great would it be to come in your office. We used to say this on Predictable Revenue back in 2011 was, how great is it when you come into your office and see all these replies from your emails.

Tukan: It’s like Christmas.

Marylou: Now, it’s how great would it be to come in and have your entire workflow ready to go because it’s ordering it in order of priority. Highest impact, least amount of effort which is the nirvana for us, is what we’re trying to do is maximize return on effort. The other thing you’re hearing from Tukan, it’s not out in the future, it’s here now. It is here now, everyone. What it’s going to focus us on is creating the very best sales message. We’re going to be needing to be on top of our game as to why people should change, why now and why us. We really need to focus on flipping that script to, “Hey, are you the right person?” to more of a bit like Tukan said, “I have this information. Winter is coming, I know that you are going to need this. Here’s the reason why other people like you have gone through this process with us and here’s some data to get you really excited about what the next steps are and what you need to do next.”

We really need to focus now—I love this—on creating compelling sales conversations and spraying them out over a canvas of time so that we can leverage this intent data to be always in the front mind of the prospect. Wow, cool.

I’ve noticed on your website, you got some really beefy clients and I see some 100% increases. What’s the most exciting story you can share with the audience before we part ways today, as someone who’s come into your fold, where they were, how long it took them to get there, and what they’re enjoying now in terms of conversion rates?

Tukan: I’ll give an example of a customer that came to us from a sales perspective, without doing a lot of marketing but purely from a sales cadence perspective.

Marylou: Okay, mostly outbound, direct reaching out.

Tukan: Exactly.

Marylou: Okay.

Tukan: They are one of the top Facebook ad agencies nationally in the US and Canada. One of the things they were doing, they leverage LeadSift was to get intent data signals pushed directly to their system and what they were doing was, they were taking the data and breaking it up into three different nurture streams. One was when a prospect was taking to a competitor on a complementary company of theirs. They put them on a separate sequence.

The second them, they were putting them, if they were researching about a specific topic that they were hiring for certain roles or engaging certain keywords, they’d put them in another sequence with a very different message, with a similar call-to-actions of meetings book.

And the third one was in their world, they were tracking industry events and trade shows, whether it’s niche events or large trade shows, they were tracking them and see which companies were attending those trade shows that give them an indication of their budget, they are more likely to learn new things, and they were putting them in a separate sequence.

This one, the call-to-action was around downloading a piece of content, more educational than let’s book a meeting. Those are the three sequences. It is personalized. It is completely automated, leads coming, going to one of these three sequences based on the trigger that they found, and the results that they’re seeing are phenomenal.

I do not know what the reply rate is, but their reading book rate is about 6%, which is incredibly high from a cold email because it’s so contextual, relevant, and timely. For the third email sequence where they were pushing people to download or see a piece of content, which is a lower barrier, top of the funnel, they’re getting 11% response rate. Positive response rate come back.

Marylou: Guys, that 9%-11% is the sweet spot that we spend months trying to get to for a click through. The fact that they’re coming out the gate with an 11% is phenomenal. All of you sitting out there, know your click through rate and it’s not 9%. It’s down in the 2% and 3%. Be honest. That’s wonderful, I love it.

Tukan: The best part is, all of this result was done in a 45-day window, the first 45 days. But one thing I will preface, though, is this customer was extremely savvy with the email copy they had to nurture these leads into these different sequences. That […] key. You would know a lot better than I do is a lot of the times, you can give them the best data, but if their email copy of their messaging is not up to par, it doesn’t matter. Everything will fall apart.

Marylou: That’s what I just preached. I just preach that. If we don’t know our sales conversation, why change, why now, why us? Which is persuasive copywriting at it’s finest, if we don’t spend the time nurturing that, optimizing that, and split testing that. This is from the old masters back in the direct mail days. Read those books! Those books are the bible in teaching us how to write effective copy.

I’m so glad that you said that, Tukan, because it just emphasizes the importance that we cannot have shoddy copy out there. Amp up the people who know how to do it. There’s a lot of freelance copywriters out there. Copyhackers is one of the places I go to all the time to find the latest tricks of the trade and how to write good copy for landing pages, for websites, for emails. You name it they have it. That’s constantly an education that we need to get emboldened, embedded into our sales world for sure.

Tukan: Absolutely.

Marylou: Cool. How do we get a hold of you? I could go on forever, but I want to be respectful for our audience. What’s the best way for us to reach you? How to get started? What should we do?

Tukan: A few things. To reach out to me personally, you can email at tdas@leadsift.com. I’ll be more than happy to reply to your emails. Connect with me on LinkedIn. The other two things to try out is this free product we’ve launched. It’s literally free, there’s no strings attached. It’s called LeadSift Buzz, so buzz.leadsift.com. Check it out. It’s early. There might be some kinks, but I love to hear your feedback and work from thereon.

If you want to talk to one of our sales team to figure it out, you can automatically get intent signals to identify new accounts and also get signals on your existing accounts. Just go to leadsift.com and book a demo. One of our sales folks will be more than happy to walk you through and see if it’s a fit.

Marylou: Probably just to give folks an idea, the market is B2B, you kept saying, so I don’t want to dissuade people who are not B2B to not look at this. At least get an understanding of how you can apply it, but the B2B is mostly the sweet spot for this type of product. There are so many applications that this can be used for.

You mentioned, Tukan, just really briefly trade shows. A lot of times, what we’re trying to do is get our inbound people to help develop actual appointments while we’re in the booth. This is a perfect way to utilize from an inbound perspective the ability to know who’s going to a trade show because they’re going to talk about it online about, “Hey, I got to this hotel and we’re going to this trade show.”

Here you are developing this list of potential people who will come to your booth, get them set-up with appointments, get that face-to-face belly-to-belly thing going, and that’s going to improve your trade show conversion rate, which a lot of you are spending a ton of money on trade shows with nothing to show for. 

Tukan: One of the big use cases that you see is this where marketing and sales align very well. On average, what you see is a lot of companies go to about six trade shows. At least six trade show events, one in every two months. One of the things they do is a month or six weeks prior to the event, they start tracking that event or trade show with lead data. Leads would start suggesting the companies and people that will be attending it.

What they do is then they would start sending nurture campaigns, reaching out to these people personally and companies saying, “Hey, we are going to be there. We would love to talk to you or meet up for coffee or something,” and they get amazing results.

One way to maximize ROI on your trade show—not cheap by the way—would be to start tracking them and figuring out which companies are going. Some of them even might actually be your existing customers that are going. That’s a perfect opportunity for you to meet them there. So, there’s a few interesting applications.

Again, as I said, intent is not just keyword. It is way bigger than that. If you start figuring that out, once you map it out, it clears a lot of confusion.

Marylou: The next thing I’m going to ask you to put together for your website is this whole planning idea. Really, we’re limiting ourselves. Until you said the words ‘trade show,’ that wasn’t on my little circle and my spokes, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that’s a whole other channel that we can leverage.” Awesome. Very good.

Thank you so much for your time, Tukan. It was great having you on the show. For everybody, I’ll put as many links as I heard and my team will get as many links on Tukan’s page so that you guys have all these free tools, the next level up, and all of that. So, don’t worry about that. You can always reach out to him directly and I’m sure we’ll just keep a watch on this because it’s a fabulous next step.

If you have list issues, it’s a great option. If you have a ubiquitous number of records but want to start doing more responsible marketing, whether it’s outbound, inbound, or even your referral network, that’s another spoke that can go on this as your partners and what they’re doing with their clients.

It could just go on ad nauseum, but it can definitely help us hone in on the conversation, talk to the relevant people with that sense of urgency. We’re going to get better in our sales conversation because we’re talking to people who are ready to buy. They can tell us why they chose us and that all comes back to marketing and improving our sales conversations going forward.

Tukan, thanks again, very much appreciate your time.

Tukan: Thanks a lot, Marylou, it was great.

Should you consider podcasting as part of your multi-touch campaigns? Can podcasting improve your sales numbers, and can you use your sales skills to make a quality podcast – or use podcasting to hone your sales skills? Today’s guest is here to discuss how sales professionals could be using podcasts.

Michael Greenberg is the CEO of Call for Content, a podcasting agency that makes it easy for businesses and organizations to develop podcasts. Listen to the interview to hear what Michael has to say about strategies for using podcasts to drive sales, routines and duration options for beginning podcasters, and the importance of consistency in podcasting.

Episode Highlights:

• Whether podcasting is on the radar for sales executives
• Success rates using podcasting strategies
• Inviting prospects onto the podcast as experts
• What sales executives can talk about on a podcast
• Typical rhythms of salespeople starting a podcast
• Building camaraderie through podcasts
• Coordinating guest posts with your social media
• Using podcast agencies
• Podcast duration guidelines
• What kind of research goes into a 30-minute podcast
• Consistency in podcasting
• Next steps for salespeople who are interested in podcasting
• Podcasts as an opportunity for role-playing

Resources:

Michael Greenberg

Call for Content

The B2B Podcast Playbook

Transcript:

Marylou: Hey everybody, it’s Marylou Tyler. We have such […] great things to talk with you about today. But also, there’s this background noise that I hope you guys are going to bear with us. I really wanted to talk to Michael Greenberg today and know that the situation and the acoustics of this podcast may not be the best because there’s people next door trying to drill off or I don’t know what to call it, jackhammer their floor balcony in California here.

Michael Greenberg is the CEO of a company called Call for Content. He is an expert in many things, but mostly today, I want to talk to him about […] marketing and podcasting. We’re going to throw some wild ideas out to you guys about podcasting. What that means in terms of you, the sales executive, and whether or not you should consider podcasting as a part of your daily touches or multi touch campaigns. Without further ado, I’d like to welcome Michael to the podcast. Welcome Michael.

Michael: Marylou, thanks for having me today. We’re going to have a lot of fun, even with the noise.

Marylou: Yes, the noise is going to drive me insane, but we’ll get through it. Let’s try this weird and wild notion out the people of I am a sales executive at a Fortune 1000 company or even a startup, and I’m thinking about different channels that I could use to woo people over to my way of thinking and to start to convince them why my product or service would be best for them. Is podcasting even on the radar for mem Michael?

Michael: It should be, but it isn’t. Podcasting is this really weird thing that just appeared out of nowhere and that now every marketer has a little bit of budget set aside for, “We need some podcasting content. We need some audio content,” but the big thing and my background is a B2B growth strategy, so have neither a marketer nor a salesperson which lets me take out to both.

The big thing that the marketers forget is that that content is a chance to interact with a customer. I love podcasts for that because the best podcasts are interview shows. If you plan your show effectively, then it can be the show that all of your prospects, and all of your major accounts want to be on. It’s the warmest cold outreach that I do coming on and saying, “Hey, I’ve got this podcast. You’d be a good fit for it. Do you want to come on the show and talk about your business? Talk about what you’re doing?” Last we checked, it was 74% or 75% of all the outreach we do for inviting guests on, turns into a yes. It’s a real great door opener.

Marylou: […] people listening to Michael right now, pop quiz. What is our conversion rate? What is the conversion rate that we’re hoping for with our email engines? Well, if you guessed 79%, that was the old predictable revenue formula back in 2011 that we are hoping to get. Now, it’s down into the 2%-5% and Michael just threw out 75%. Doesn’t that sound so much better? For every 100 people you reach out to, to invite them onto our podcast, even if it’s 40% of the 100 that reply, that sounds interesting or what’s it about?

You just started the conversation with 10X, 20X, 30X of what you could do with an email engine. Think about that. Let that sink in and then Michael, I want to focus on what you just said with your inviting prospects. People with whom you want to do business with and flattering them beyond what they can imagine by saying, “Hey, I want you to come on as an expert and talk about your business,” who would say no?

Michael: People who don’t think it’s worth their time. We see good success with that strategy. In a small business space, it works exceedingly well up to middle market. For enterprise, it’s a multi touch process. You know you’re not going to make an enterprise sale often for one introduction. Knowing that generally, when we get to those bigger deals where we’ve got four or five stakeholders at the table, maybe more, and we’ve got to really break in there, we’ll be using the show either as our first entrance point in those deals or we’ll be using the show as a touch point to help move it forward and to help build relations with one of the stakeholders where we might be weaker.

Marylou: Remember, we have, based on predictable prospecting, three different types of stakeholders that we can go after. Decision makers, direct influencers, and even indirect influencers. Indirect influencers can cover industry-related hooks. It’s not just people within the company, it’s people who service the company in similar industry as to ours, but different products and services that we could reach out to, as well as people within the company itself who will be warm referrals for us getting in the door.

Now, this is getting in the door. It can also be used for continuing the conversation which is drilling down into those stakeholders who “matter most” in getting us further into the pipeline. Michael, I’m sure people are thinking, “I don’t know. Me, do a podcast? No. How do I do that? What do I talk about?”

Michael: It’s your job to talk all day. The best salespeople I know, that is their job. If you’re building a sales organization, that’s your goal at the end of the day, to keep your sales executives on the phone or in meetings with prospects and clients, and that’s what your BDRs and your SDRs are for. That’s what everyone else is for, it’s to get them to that point. That being the case, you want to have a conversation. As the host of the show, you get to direct that conversation just like you’re directing me, Marylou.

It puts you in a really powerful position for getting in the door, especially on the big deals, we’ve seen success positioning the show and developing the format of the show to include some prospecting and qualification on air. Put a little context around this. Call for content. My company, we offer our white label services to agency partners who then resell to their clients. If I want to get in front of those agencies, I’d want to speak with the owner of the company.

Now, if I want to speak with them and see if they’re going to be a good fit, then I might interview them, have them on the show and I actually have a show focused on Colorado entrepreneurs that features a lot of agency owners, coincidentally. I might have them on the show and one of the questions I might ask on air is, “What’s next? How are you trying to grow? How are you trying to expand?”

If they say, “We’re growing really fast. Our biggest problems are that we just can’t hire fast enough, that we can’t staff up fast enough, but our clients love us and we’re selling more every day,” then I know after the recording in that 5-10 minutes at the end, while we’re just chatting after the show on how it went, I can bring up, “You mentioned on air that you guys are having difficulty scaling the budgets of your clients and your services to capture as much as possible. Have you looked at white label offerings before? They really don’t add to your workload, but they do add to your bottom line.”

I’ve been able to invite them on the show, have a great conversation with them, and warm them up to the idea of liking me, and working with me. Then when I make that recommendation, when I start that sales conversation after, I already know whether or not they’re a good fit.

Marylou: Exactly. We all know from learnings on this podcast for sure is that, we prequalify as well. In the invite, we can put our top three qualifiers so that they answer the question as part of the invitation and scheduling of the podcast itself. If I’m working in tiers of accounts […] people, we can do that by the questions, very simple questions we ask our client, for them to fill out part of the scheduling process.

What that does is it helps us hone in on certain areas of conversation that we want to make sure we cover with each of these people. Michael, what is a typical rhythm of someone starting up with a podcast? Are we trying to do one or two a week? Is it a daily thing for us? Once a month? What do you think would be a good rhythm for people who are thinking, “Wow, I never thought of this and I want to try it out.” What’s a typical schedule that you recommend?

Michael: This really comes down to your purpose with the show, and what your actual pipeline, how many prospects you actually close are, and the level of qualification you can reach before you speak with them as well. I generally recommend a weekly show to start, because it’s got that regular rhythm, but it’s not something where you have to go all in to get there.

That being said if you’re doing a weekly show you can’t be selling a $4,000 or $5,000 package. That’s not going to be able to move the needle for you if you only have 50 good prospects that you’re coming through the show. Knowing that if I’m doing a weekly show, I want to be targeting my highest value possible.

Marylou: Right. Let’s take the predictable revenue model of typically 8–10 qualified opportunities every month, somewhere in the greater than 5000 a month range, 10,000 a month range, so somewhere between those numbers. That breaks down to typically 3–5 meaningful conversations a day, of which some of those could be a podcast. We can do a podcast maybe two a week. I do typically two interviews every Tuesday. It is my schedule, my rhythm, and like anything, you get better as you go along. You start learning where people are having problems. “You,” as Michael said, “were in control of that conversation,” so we can lead them down the path of […] goodness towards what they need to think about or just jolt them into saying, “Oh my gosh, I never thought of it that way,” or “Wow, I didn’t realize there are other people out there that are suffering where I’m suffering,” kind of thing.

It allows us the opportunity to really hone our sales conversation to that sense of urgency point, but frame it in a podcast, where they’re telling us their story. We’re also getting great stories peers, potential newer prospects of ours and there’s a camaraderie there of sharing experiences in realizing that they’re not alone.

Michael: Yeah, to build on that. Let’s say, one of the biggest things I see people, especially sales  people not making use of, when it comes to a podcast is coordinating and making sure that the guests post on their social media, whatever social’s big for your industry, so probably LinkedIn. That’s really important because your first 5 or 10 guests, you might not be able to get that major key account, that global VP, but once you’ve had on one or two people that they know, they want to be on the show just so they don’t look like they were left out.

Marylou: Yes. There’s social […] involved. If you think about […], there are a number of buttons that we hit with the podcast. When I first started, the first person I interviewed was Darren Ross, who was the co-author of Predictable Revenue. From there, I just realized how much I loved it. So, I reached out to people I didn’t even know, colleagues that were in the field, and ask them to be on the podcast to talk about what they did and why they chose the field that they were in. It just snowballed from there, to the point where after a while, you get people reaching out to you—how cool is that—looking for interviews or,  “Hey, I heard so and so, a colleague of mine on your podcast, do you take reservations, or can I be a guest?”

Michael: Yeah and that is reciprocity and the fact that your show only has so many episodes a year gets the scarcity. You’re inviting on authorities. And it gives them just another opportunity to continue to prove their authority. I was hoping I could make it through all six of the […].

Marylou: You did really great, Michael. What I want the audience to think about is, you guys are the masters of the sales conversation. Don’t forget that. You are the masters, so why not share a little bit of your genuine—first of all—enthusiasm for your product, your expertise in what your product can do, and your unique genius in how to sell this thing. What better way to demonstrate that over time, consistently, authentically, by doing a podcast? It’s a brilliant strategy to add to your toolbox.

Michael: Thank you. I can say without a doubt it works, especially for the solopreneur, for the consultant, for the executive coach. That’s a show that we’ve set up a call for content many times and that we consistently add six figures to their bottom line within the first 18 months.

Marylou: That’s just beautiful. I love it. Brilliant. I’m sure someone sitting at a SaaS company right now, […] financing, so there’s enough people, and I the lonely STR running a podcast, or is it really meant people who are in the account executive type […]? Michael, does it really matter?

Michael: I don’t think it really matters. I do think that you get more value when you have somebody higher up within the organization being the host of the show. A great example of a company that, (1) specializes in developing these types of shows, and (2) really does it mostly for middle market tech companies—hitting that SaaS right on—is Sweet Fish Media. They are podcast agency for B2B and they’re putting out a book around this content-based networking now.

Logan heads up their daily podcast show called The B2B Growth Show. He’s not the head of the company, nor is he the head of sales, but I guarantee, he passes plenty of leads back to the team.

Marylou: Right. The other thing to remember is that doing these types of podcasts builds your social proof. It also builds your ability to be the expert and be the thought leader in many areas. It’s just good will all the way around, because depending on the length of the podcast—we’ll go into that a little bit in a minute because I’m very curious about the length of these things—we go from an hour-and-a-half in some of them down the five-minute shorts. But importantly, I want to get through you guys is that this is something that is done routinely.

So, the first step is repetition, is doing it weekly. Whether you publish them or not is another thing. At least get those conversations and those interviews going because the repetition will lead to the discipline. That discipline will be lead to routine, and then finally it becomes a habit, which is what happened to me.

The other thing is, you’re growing your sales conversations. Albeit, they’re not always ask, ask, ask, they’re help, help, help in a lot of cases, but you’re also creating sweet training products for your team as to how to approach different situations. They can listen to different scenarios. Their prospects are challenged by, suffering with, just sick of, and articulating perhaps a way out. That is just gold in terms of training material or nuance in the sales conversation for your team.

Michael, let me ask you about the duration. Are there guidelines, best practices—I hate to use that term—are there guidelines to how long these things should be? Or is it dependent on industry? What are some of the criteria that you need to think about if we’re toying with the idea of doing a podcast?

Michael: First off, it’s important to develop a show that doesn’t look like you’re just using it for prospecting. That’s when I see people mess up quite a bit. If you’ve got a 15-minute daily show and you’re asking me, “What do I do?” then, “What are some tips for the audience?” we’ve got, say, 30- or 35-minute recording slot, and then when I come on air, you tell me, “Yeah, I’ve got four more of these that I’m recording today,” that’s a lot of red flags, because you’re not investing a lot of time into the show. You’re putting out the show very frequently.

As a result, an individual episode might not get as much promotion. Often times, those shows are done on the phone and they’re going to be lower audio quality. If you see all that together, you can know that that show’s probably being used to prospect, because it’s got the number is going through it and it’s designed in such a way that it isn’t really going to make great content. That’s key to look at, but going the other way, I really like a 30-minute show, because that’s about the average drive time, 30–35 minutes.

Having that, I call it a commuter show, works well. If you go up to the hour or to the 45 minute, I don’t think you’re going to have a problem there. If you’ve got more technical topics to discuss, if you’re really digging in, then that could be quite doable. The other thing to look at with that, though, is you’re editing costs and the actual amount of time it might go into making the show sound good and look good afterwards. Once you get up to the hour that can start to get expensive or just time consuming. The 30 minute is really what I recommend for no other reason than it works well. Once you start going to the extremes, you run into difficulties.

Marylou: Let’s talk then research for the 30 minute programs. A lot of times, it’s basically drilled into our heads that we’ve got to research any type of account that we’re going after, whether it’s what I call a jump account, […] accounts that no matter what they respond to us, we jump as high as they want us to jump because we want them as our client. We do a lot of research and try to personalize that conversation. On average what research goes into a 30-minute podcast?

Michael: It’s very similar to the same research you do before a sales call. You want to know who they are, you want to know where they come from, you want to know what they’re trying to deal with if you can, and you want to be ready to talk. Even more important than research before a show is looking at the format and the outline of the episode. I like to think it anywhere from three to five segments. Even though they might not be real segments, even though you might not have a lightning round, or you might not have an outro section, that you announced to the audience.

When I think about my personal show, we start out with their journey, how did they get started as an entrepreneur, and then we move into what their business does today. That’s a segment, too. With that current business, we talk about the industry climate, we talk about some other things going on there. Then we moved to segment three, looking forward. That’s talking about the opportunities for growth, what they see coming in the next five years. Then, we transition at the end to our final segment, which is a book recommendation.

You will see that in every single episode. You will see that, even in the show notes that becomes apparent. If I have their LinkedIn profile and I skimmed their website, I know what we’re talking about and I know it’s going to produce the desired result for me at the end.

Marylou: I know from you personally, when I’ve been a guest on podcast, sometimes I get some interview questions that they want to know before I come on. There’s also the ability to give them a couple topics that I’m interested in speaking about, and some of them also let me know that there’s like a hot seat session, which is fun, especially if you’re an industry expert the way I am. They just sit you down and say, “Okay, here’s our top three questions,” like blind-folded, “that we want you to answer,” which sometimes are fun to do.

The point here, though folks, is if there’s a rhythm, if you could put together what I call a storyboard, the acts of the podcast, that would help you to organize your thoughts, and who would be a good candidate to be on as well. Remember, the influence map of decision makers, direct influencers, and indirect influences are all viable people we want to talk to at some point in the sales pipeline, depending where we focus our efforts, whether it’s prospecting, closing, servicing. We want to make sure that we’ve covered that bull’s eye with guests, because everyone who we touch or are engaged with, we want to make sure that we have as guests on the show, so that everybody feels represented.

I make a big effort to bring in marketing people, salespeople, operations people, analysts, digital marketing, and things that are in and around my sphere of influence, because that gives the audience an education beyond what they’re used to seeing, like today’s show.

When we’ve come in really thinking about, “Wow, I should have a podcast,” it’s not something that we think about. We’re so drawn to email, telephone, direct mail, and social, we don’t really think about the other avenues of conversation that we can be having with prospects to win the right to have that next conversation and further advance them in the pipeline.

I really enjoy the fact that, Michael, you want us to think about this is a show we’re producing. This is a movie or a radio show and there is a format to that. Consistency is comforting to the audience as well.

Michael: Yeah, without consistency, if they don’t know what’s coming next, they stop listening. I know that, having audited shows where somebody will bring me in and why their downloads dropped three months ago, Well, you dropped that hot seat, you dropped your lightning round. That’s thrown all your listeners off.

That consistency makes it easier for you to be able to go week after week and it makes it easier for your audience to listen. It also makes it easier for the guest when they come on, because then they can listen to a past episode and be like, “Oh, okay. I know what I’m getting into,” and be comfortable when they start.

Marylou: Let’s recap here for the audience. We just heard Michael that the response to conversion rates of implementing a podcasting type of channel in and around our sales conversation, is going to lift our ability to talk with more people, which is what we are hired to do, is to have more legal sales conversation that convert to opportunities, that convert to close one deal.

We also learned that, while it’s nice to have the expert in the field of the podcast, we can certainly contribute to that. So, for an STR—there’s an AE who we love the way they talk to clients—we want to strongly suggest that they consider doing some type of show. Or we organize that, so that we have industry experts on every week talking about whatever, then we invite prospects and talk about their situation.

We learned about the formats. We learned about the time, finding elements, somewhere between 30 and 45 would start as a good show. Though if I’m thinking, Michael, “All right, I want to talk to my manager about this. I want to consider doing this. I’m a solo out there. I had been working in property and casualty insurance, and I want to build my book, so I want to be able to do this,” what’s a good next step? If I got this tickle in my throat thinking, “Hmm. This is something I want to explore,” what should we do next?

Michael: I’ll make my shameless plug here. I would go to callforcontent.com and download the B2B Podcast Playbook.

Marylou: Playbooks. Yay, we love playbooks.

Michael: So do I. As a company, we’re getting ready to put out our first podcast, but we’ve only put out playbooks up until now, because when somebody asks me, “How do you do this thing?” I can just say, “Hey, we posted the entire playbook we use,” and that makes things easy for everyone.

The playbook covers a couple other different types of shows that are not quite as sales-focused. We’ve got one that we talk about called the authority builder show, and that really is designed for B2B prospecting and sales. We’ve got our formula in there. Doing the math, is a B2B podcast worth it? Where we walk you through, how many customers? What’s my close rate? What number of prospects am I coming on versus other subject matter experts? How many podcasts am I doing? And my customer value. We’ve got a little equation we walk through to see, is this show worthwhile from a business case standpoint?

Marylou: We love formulas, too. We love playbooks, we love formulas, because that specificity around, “Should I or shouldn’t I?” when you let the data tell you and help you make those decisions rather than just pulling something out of the air, is much better.

Michael: And for a week, we sure found it’s right around that 10,000 mark for average […] value.

Marylou: For those of you driving who are saying, “I can’t write this down,” I will put everything in Michael’s show notes. All the links to his website, a link to the playbook so that you guys can download away and start working on this.

We’re entering the era of hyper personalization. Mass emails are horribly, just […] in the market, and the response rates more importantly are just negligible; they’re horrible. We want to be able to differentiate ourselves and set ourselves apart from the crowd. What better way for us to do so by letting people know our authentic self  through conversation?

This is a great way for us to hone our conversation. We get better and better the more we practice and what better way to practice than having a podcast where you’re asking questions, and you’re getting feedback, and you’re responding to that feedback, you’re really honing your sale skills at the same time. I wholeheartedly believe that the more that you’re doing these types of conversations, the better you can get at it. Do you agree, Michael?

Michael: Yeah. She does a weekly podcast just for their sales team and they chose podcast because those guys are on the road a lot. They’ve got an outside sales team and they focus on, “Hey, here are some updates on information. Here’s what’s working for our people right now.” It’s like a mini sales call, almost. I know I, with our sales team and with some of the investments I’ve made in other organizations,  we do mock sales calls all the time. One of the biggest things especially with new reps, or with a new market, or with a new product, or service is just putting those reps in and it’s just getting on calls. Podcast guarantees that every time you have that podcast, you’re going to have at least a conversation.

Marylou: And if you record it, then you have a role play that is in the library for the sales skills development, which is so important. I mean, with my clients, I constantly harp on huddles and role playing. The more we practice our conversations, the better we get. It’s like an actor. An actor reads from a script. […] actors. They really sounds like they’re reading from a script when they finally deliver the performance. That is essentially what role playing gives us the opportunity to do. It’s to finesse that conversation so that it’s just naturally rolling off our tongues.

Podcasts give you that ability and I love that idea, Michael, with remote sales forces which I have a ton of, is to get together and do a podcast, and broadcast that out. We can archive it into a library. We can transcribe the audio into snippets of conversation that we can then import into our templates for emails, voicemails, voice conversations, and even direct mail. There is a plethora of repurposing that goes on by recording these conversations as well as building our sales skills.

Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. I know we could talk forever, but I do want to be respectful of the crowd here. I have all the information to put on the page to get a hold of you. Anything else you want us to know before we disconnect today?

Michael: Yeah, one last thing. I have office hours. They are office hours with a professor. There is a resource and then I record my calls so can create great content from them later. Anywhere on the website, the chatbot should be able to direct you to that office hours. If you want to just sit with me and work through how to get your show to your manager, I am happy to do that, or if you just want to sit with me and talk about how bread baking crosses over into sales, we can do that, too.

Marylou: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time. Again guys, this is a channel that is not even thinking outside the box, but it kind of is because we’re just not used to this. This is the perfect channel for those of you who already or want to master the sales conversations, and also start building your prospect database of people who want to further conversations with you because they get to know you via this medium. It’s just a natural way. Flattery, all the wonderful triggers that we’re trying to get people. Curiosity, social […] it’s all there in a podcast format […] people on our show. Thanks again, Michael, for your time. I very much appreciate you coming on.

Michael: Yeah. Thank you Marylou. It’s been a lot of fun.