What to Do With Target Accounts That Don’t Buy

WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.140 --> 00:00:08.770 welcome back to be to be growth. I'm Dan Sanchez with Sweet Fish Media, and 2 00:00:08.770 --> 00:00:12.390 I am continuing the journey into account based marketing. I mean, I've 3 00:00:12.390 --> 00:00:15.220 been saying that for three weeks now because it's been a month long journey 4 00:00:15.220 --> 00:00:19.080 and I am in the final week, which is exciting because I've learned a lot and 5 00:00:19.080 --> 00:00:22.010 I still have so much more to learn. It's like the more I learned about a B 6 00:00:22.010 --> 00:00:25.840 and the more corridors I find I haven't explored yet. And I'm excited to talk 7 00:00:25.840 --> 00:00:31.220 to Samantha Stone, who is the founder and C. M O of the Marketing Advisory 8 00:00:31.230 --> 00:00:36.400 Network, as well as the author of Unleash Possible. Um, I'm very excited 9 00:00:36.400 --> 00:00:40.910 to her because she is a B two B marketing veteran and, uh, just write 10 00:00:40.910 --> 00:00:43.950 her book over the weekend, and it was fantastic. You should definitely check 11 00:00:43.950 --> 00:00:48.110 out, unleash possible. I'll probably do it a review on that book, particularly 12 00:00:48.120 --> 00:00:51.870 in the future. Um, and I had a whole section just on account based marketing, 13 00:00:51.870 --> 00:00:55.930 which is really fun toe look through and kind of evaluate and see Samantha's 14 00:00:55.930 --> 00:01:00.240 perspective on the topic. But instead of talking about what she talked about, 15 00:01:00.250 --> 00:01:03.910 in her book. I was excited to bring her on this show. Thio ask her about 16 00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:08.240 unanswered question that even though I've explored a B M by interviewing 17 00:01:08.240 --> 00:01:11.910 multiple practitioners thought leaders reading multiple books so far, there's 18 00:01:11.910 --> 00:01:15.800 one thing that I haven't figured out yet. And that is what to do with all 19 00:01:15.800 --> 00:01:20.440 the accounts that have, like you've had in your target list. And maybe you've 20 00:01:20.450 --> 00:01:24.300 run some campaigns on, but they haven't matriculated. Maybe they made it a 21 00:01:24.300 --> 00:01:27.620 certain way into the funnel, and it just didn't pan out. They you've 22 00:01:27.620 --> 00:01:31.700 engaged them, but they never activated you've they got activated, entered the 23 00:01:31.700 --> 00:01:35.960 pipeline and dropped out. For whatever reason, what do you do with those 24 00:01:35.970 --> 00:01:39.290 accounts? What do you put them on the back burner? Do you bring the back? And 25 00:01:39.290 --> 00:01:42.870 these are the questions that I had and I'm excited to talk to Samantha about 26 00:01:42.870 --> 00:01:46.220 where you as you know, we're embarking on our own A B M campaign with sweet 27 00:01:46.220 --> 00:01:49.100 fish media, and I kind of wanna have a plan in mind for all these accounts 28 00:01:49.100 --> 00:01:53.620 that we we plan to engage in. So, Samantha, thank you so much for joining 29 00:01:53.620 --> 00:01:59.260 me on the show today. And just as an opening question toe kick things off, I 30 00:01:59.260 --> 00:02:02.980 wanted to ask you if there was ever a time, Maybe when you were on the 31 00:02:02.980 --> 00:02:07.930 receiving end of just some good account based marketing, what was it and how 32 00:02:07.930 --> 00:02:11.230 did it go? Um, have you ever been on the receiving end of someone doing good 33 00:02:11.230 --> 00:02:15.600 account based marketing? And what was it like? That's a really excellent 34 00:02:15.600 --> 00:02:20.860 question. Um, I imagine that I've been on the receiving end quite often, 35 00:02:20.870 --> 00:02:25.280 although I will admit that I've been on the receiving end in the wrong way 36 00:02:25.280 --> 00:02:31.200 where they clearly didn't target my business well, and it was a miss more 37 00:02:31.200 --> 00:02:34.250 often than it was a hit. But I'll give you a great example. Actually, one of 38 00:02:34.250 --> 00:02:39.460 my favorite examples is actually from James Carberry, right? So James and I 39 00:02:39.470 --> 00:02:44.520 did a bunch of content together. He had me a guest in the podcast. When I was 40 00:02:44.530 --> 00:02:48.370 launching the book, I had reached out to him and had me on. And then we did a 41 00:02:48.370 --> 00:02:53.250 whole bunch of subsequent episodes, and one of the most meaningful things that 42 00:02:53.250 --> 00:02:57.270 ever happened is just how much you could tell that James was listening to 43 00:02:57.270 --> 00:03:01.540 me, right and really getting to know me and really living the sort of core 44 00:03:01.540 --> 00:03:05.900 beliefs about joint content creation. And one day he mentioned to me that I 45 00:03:05.900 --> 00:03:10.750 had been the most frequent guest on the show. And, um, I jokingly said, Huh, 46 00:03:10.760 --> 00:03:14.220 Well, where's my letter jacket? Right? Like, you know, it's like varsity 47 00:03:14.220 --> 00:03:17.440 player on a team. Don't I get a life jacket? And then we went on our merry 48 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:20.790 way in our conversation, and I never thought anything about it again. Well, 49 00:03:20.790 --> 00:03:25.060 wouldn't you know a few weeks later, which shows up at my door is actually a 50 00:03:25.060 --> 00:03:28.590 letter jacket, But it's not just a letter jacket. It's a letter jacket and 51 00:03:28.590 --> 00:03:32.940 red, which is, you know, my brand color in a color I love that had my book 52 00:03:32.940 --> 00:03:38.660 cover embroidered on it and my name on the other arm on It was just like man. 53 00:03:38.840 --> 00:03:43.310 He had really listened to what I said, and this was playful and fun, which was 54 00:03:43.310 --> 00:03:46.640 appropriate for our relationship. Not all things will be that way, and not 55 00:03:46.640 --> 00:03:51.110 all things need to be gift, but it was a great example of nurturing our 56 00:03:51.110 --> 00:03:57.260 relationship and continuing to engage and I really love and respect the work 57 00:03:57.260 --> 00:04:02.130 that you guys do. And I've used sweet fish Media was clients before you guys 58 00:04:02.130 --> 00:04:06.140 helped me launch my own podcast. And in a large part of that is because of the 59 00:04:06.140 --> 00:04:10.560 relationship that James built and then subsequently other people on the team 60 00:04:10.560 --> 00:04:15.110 have picked up and expanded. But he was a really big piece of that, and I you 61 00:04:15.110 --> 00:04:19.230 know, whether he meant it or not, it felt like a really well executed, 62 00:04:19.230 --> 00:04:25.480 account based program man. I was. I'm shocked. I wasn't expecting that. But 63 00:04:25.480 --> 00:04:30.380 it makes sense. James will probably never even even heard that, right? Like, 64 00:04:30.390 --> 00:04:33.380 you know that I haven't even heard that story of the Letterman's jacket. I've 65 00:04:33.380 --> 00:04:36.400 heard James tell a lot of stories of some of the creative or interesting 66 00:04:36.400 --> 00:04:40.190 things that he's done before, so I'm like, Wow, okay, that's like next level, 67 00:04:40.190 --> 00:04:44.470 James. I'm not, like, super surprised because he's so good with gifts and so 68 00:04:44.470 --> 00:04:48.290 personal and good at this whole thing called just building relationships. 69 00:04:48.290 --> 00:04:53.270 Right. Um, that's why I work here because of James Carberry, right? But 70 00:04:53.280 --> 00:04:57.490 wow, that's a fun story to open it up with First of all, yeah, I tell that 71 00:04:57.490 --> 00:05:01.010 story quite a lot because I love it, but I also think it's really important, 72 00:05:01.010 --> 00:05:04.030 Understand, the gift was like a meaningful thing, and I'll never forget 73 00:05:04.030 --> 00:05:07.550 that. Like, legitimately never forget that. And I used it as an example, a 74 00:05:07.550 --> 00:05:11.260 lot of how to show gratitude in a way that's really meaningful and personal. 75 00:05:11.270 --> 00:05:14.740 But he also would invite me on shows that were relevant, and he would 76 00:05:14.750 --> 00:05:18.030 introduce me to people who are relevant and what we could still get together. 77 00:05:18.030 --> 00:05:21.500 He came to Boston and, you know, we had a dinner with a bunch of people that I 78 00:05:21.500 --> 00:05:26.010 found really interesting that I didn't know before. So you know what he did 79 00:05:26.010 --> 00:05:30.490 very well was understand what was important to me as an individual person 80 00:05:30.490 --> 00:05:36.130 into my company and then find opportunities that things that he was 81 00:05:36.130 --> 00:05:39.410 doing that made sense and invite me into those things. And that is 82 00:05:39.420 --> 00:05:43.430 fundamentally that's what account based market, I guess. I love it. It's the 83 00:05:43.430 --> 00:05:46.690 one, the one that gets me the most excited about account based marketing. 84 00:05:46.690 --> 00:05:49.760 Of course, the one too few in the one too many are exciting, too. But the one 85 00:05:49.760 --> 00:05:53.850 the one is definitely what makes account based marketing shine. I think 86 00:05:53.860 --> 00:05:58.360 so. Let's dive into the particular topic of what do you do with the 87 00:05:58.360 --> 00:06:03.610 accounts that you have a hard time following up with or you've you've run 88 00:06:03.610 --> 00:06:07.420 the campaign through and they just didn't matriculate. I'm sure you've run 89 00:06:07.420 --> 00:06:10.760 multiple or have worked with People have run multiple A B M campaigns by 90 00:06:10.760 --> 00:06:15.050 now. So is there a certain point in every campaign? Or maybe this isn't 91 00:06:15.050 --> 00:06:19.740 even a thing. And I think it's a thing where the you just know the account. It 92 00:06:19.740 --> 00:06:22.790 just didn't make it. You're at the end of the quarter of the end of the year, 93 00:06:22.790 --> 00:06:25.360 and you just kind of like, What do we do with this account? Um, I thinking 94 00:06:25.360 --> 00:06:28.930 about that correctly. It's a really good question. I think there's a couple 95 00:06:28.930 --> 00:06:32.780 of things that you wanna unpack before you could decide what to dio. So one of 96 00:06:32.780 --> 00:06:37.990 things you have to decide and look at is why didn't they matriculated 97 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:42.570 anything? So there may be a class of companies where we got to know them, 98 00:06:42.580 --> 00:06:48.260 and they actively chose not to pursue working with us, right? For some known 99 00:06:48.260 --> 00:06:51.420 entity, you know, we had a capability. We were missing a capability they 100 00:06:51.430 --> 00:06:56.880 really needed. Or they had, you know, a six year contract with someone else, 101 00:06:56.880 --> 00:06:59.700 right? There's a whole bunch of reasons why someone might get to know you and 102 00:06:59.700 --> 00:07:03.460 decided not to move forward. I need to treat those people very differently 103 00:07:03.460 --> 00:07:07.440 than people who just I never got their attention successfully, right? So 104 00:07:07.440 --> 00:07:10.740 there's this other class companies who they were on my target account list. 105 00:07:10.750 --> 00:07:14.780 But I I just We never had a meaningful engagement. We did lots of things. 106 00:07:14.780 --> 00:07:17.840 Maybe they attended an event here and there or they downloaded something. But 107 00:07:17.840 --> 00:07:20.990 we never got to the point where we had a meeting. That's a really different 108 00:07:20.990 --> 00:07:24.500 kind of folks, and we do something different with them on. Then there's 109 00:07:24.500 --> 00:07:29.230 like a third classifications, which says, you know, turns out they should 110 00:07:29.230 --> 00:07:32.650 never probably have been on our target a countless after all, let's look at 111 00:07:32.650 --> 00:07:37.640 how they got there and determined. Maybe we're just really bad fit, and we 112 00:07:37.640 --> 00:07:43.610 shouldn't be pursuing those, and we need to treat all three of those groups 113 00:07:43.610 --> 00:07:49.370 differently. Dan with what we do next? I never considered I'm like, Oh, but it 114 00:07:49.370 --> 00:07:52.780 makes so much sense. I'm like, I didn't even have a area in my mind for like, 115 00:07:52.780 --> 00:07:56.030 Oh, what if we just targeted them wrong, even though with the way we do 116 00:07:56.030 --> 00:08:00.900 podcasting and stuff that happens, like all the time. But that's like a do not 117 00:08:00.900 --> 00:08:05.610 follow up with list. Or maybe it is. It would be interesting. Well, you know 118 00:08:05.610 --> 00:08:09.260 what you don't want when you get to know someone sometimes, right? So 119 00:08:09.260 --> 00:08:12.510 sometimes it appeared that they were the right company to be on a target of 120 00:08:12.510 --> 00:08:16.050 countless. They were the right size and they did the right thing and they were 121 00:08:16.050 --> 00:08:21.970 in the right space for us. But then when As we got to know them, we found 122 00:08:21.970 --> 00:08:25.120 out that they actually aren't in the same business we thought they were in 123 00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:28.770 or they have a different kind of need. Or maybe in your case, they have their 124 00:08:28.780 --> 00:08:32.980 own in house podcasting studio, like right? You wouldn't know that you 125 00:08:32.980 --> 00:08:36.390 couldn't tell that on the surface. You would only know that when you engage 126 00:08:36.390 --> 00:08:41.950 with them. So those people who should not have been really ever targeted or 127 00:08:41.950 --> 00:08:45.620 we learned along the way something that would signal that we don't do anything 128 00:08:45.620 --> 00:08:49.470 with them. All right, wait. Like okay, you know, we're gonna retire them from 129 00:08:49.470 --> 00:08:53.320 our from our list if they're subscribed to some newsletters and things and you 130 00:08:53.320 --> 00:08:56.210 want to stay in touch, I believe, you know, sharing information openly with 131 00:08:56.210 --> 00:08:59.400 people who want to be that information shared. But you stopped actively 132 00:08:59.400 --> 00:09:03.500 pursuing that group. That's easy, right? That's an easy one. Okay? And it seems 133 00:09:03.500 --> 00:09:07.680 like the ones that didn't buy from you because of a specific feature set or 134 00:09:07.680 --> 00:09:11.020 they're locked into a contract. And while there might be some particulars 135 00:09:11.020 --> 00:09:15.290 there, those ones would also beyond that. Could probably take off the right. 136 00:09:15.290 --> 00:09:22.940 I'm glad. No. So 100% not do that. So But you're by the way, Dan, you have 137 00:09:22.940 --> 00:09:26.880 the reaction that most people dio. So what you're thinking is what most 138 00:09:26.890 --> 00:09:31.020 organizations dio we haven't. They have, You know, we learn something about them. 139 00:09:31.020 --> 00:09:35.250 They're not gonna buy from this in the next. Let's call it two years. So we 140 00:09:35.250 --> 00:09:38.780 stopped looking at. But if it's if it's truly the kind of account that you 141 00:09:38.780 --> 00:09:42.250 could go and you have a long sales cycle and you have a complex business 142 00:09:42.440 --> 00:09:47.430 and lots of people are involved in a buying committee. You actually want to 143 00:09:47.430 --> 00:09:51.950 maintain a relationship with that account. How you do that will look very 144 00:09:51.950 --> 00:09:55.630 different from someone who might be in an active by process. But you still 145 00:09:55.630 --> 00:09:59.840 want Thio have a relationship with them. You still wanna be including them. So 146 00:09:59.840 --> 00:10:04.100 when they already they think of you and they include you on the short list of 147 00:10:04.100 --> 00:10:09.100 consideration. Wow. Okay, so you do follow up with these people, but in a 148 00:10:09.100 --> 00:10:12.350 different way. And it's probably because, like, they might go with the 149 00:10:12.350 --> 00:10:16.800 competitors er and be unhappy with that competitors, right? It's like or the 150 00:10:16.800 --> 00:10:21.750 people who chose that leave the company. And now, now the new people aren't very 151 00:10:21.750 --> 00:10:24.870 happy with the decisions that were made in the past, and maybe they're waking 152 00:10:24.870 --> 00:10:28.330 up to it. Is that kind of like a thing you're thinking of? Totally. That's 153 00:10:28.330 --> 00:10:32.470 exactly right. And we may enhance our solution in some way. That fills the 154 00:10:32.470 --> 00:10:37.090 gap that we weren't able to meet for them. You know, like so 100. You're 155 00:10:37.100 --> 00:10:39.990 You're exactly thinking about that correctly, and then you've got those 156 00:10:39.990 --> 00:10:45.060 people in the middle who just never engaged. And it's tempting to say, Well, 157 00:10:45.060 --> 00:10:47.950 we're just not going, you know? We're going to give up They stopped engaging 158 00:10:47.950 --> 00:10:52.160 with us. We're just we're gonna, you know, put him on hold. But in fact, if 159 00:10:52.640 --> 00:10:57.570 everything we believe is that they were a good fit for our business and they 160 00:10:57.570 --> 00:11:01.910 haven't engaged, that's on us. We haven't found a way to engage with them 161 00:11:01.920 --> 00:11:05.950 that makes sense and resonate. So we have more homework to do to get to know 162 00:11:05.950 --> 00:11:10.050 those people at those companies and those companies better. And it's our 163 00:11:10.050 --> 00:11:15.630 job to find and test other waves of getting their attention. And then once 164 00:11:15.630 --> 00:11:19.150 we've engaged enough, we can make the decision if never should have been on 165 00:11:19.150 --> 00:11:23.920 target list or it's the long game. The fact is, a B M is a long game. We can't 166 00:11:23.920 --> 00:11:28.720 treat it like individual campaigns like we do other types of accounts. Now 167 00:11:28.720 --> 00:11:32.510 people can actively opt out of communicating with you and unsubscribe 168 00:11:32.510 --> 00:11:36.740 from you, and you have to honor and respect those things. But people opt 169 00:11:36.740 --> 00:11:42.210 out, not companies, and so if we have not done a good job of of engaging the 170 00:11:42.210 --> 00:11:45.290 three people that we happen to have in our database. But there are three other 171 00:11:45.290 --> 00:11:51.090 people who are equally qualified to participate in the evaluation process 172 00:11:51.090 --> 00:11:55.160 and did give us insight into their needs. We shouldn't give up on those 173 00:11:55.160 --> 00:12:00.020 folks. Okay, so it's almost like at the end, maybe at the end of a cycle or end 174 00:12:00.020 --> 00:12:03.440 of a campaign, you might want to take all the ones who didn't make it all the 175 00:12:03.440 --> 00:12:06.680 way through and do an analysis of them collectively and be like. Or is there a 176 00:12:06.680 --> 00:12:10.700 reason why some some didn't in some did. You might be able to find a correlation 177 00:12:10.700 --> 00:12:15.820 and industry or, I don't know, maybe their content. They maybe they all read 178 00:12:15.820 --> 00:12:20.320 of same piece of content. It sucked or something, um, to see if there is some 179 00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:24.670 way you could troubleshoot it or you could go down to the individual account 180 00:12:24.670 --> 00:12:28.200 level and do a little bit more homework to see if they were one the right 181 00:12:28.200 --> 00:12:33.510 account or two. Yeah, yeah, right. And there's another factor we have to 182 00:12:33.510 --> 00:12:38.470 remind ourselves about, and that is that very little, and I don't actually 183 00:12:38.470 --> 00:12:42.630 have a percentage, although I've heard percentages of you know, 10% 5. Who 184 00:12:42.630 --> 00:12:46.750 knows what the actual number is? But very little of what a buyer on account 185 00:12:46.760 --> 00:12:51.080 does in terms of their exploration of our category of solutions happens in 186 00:12:51.080 --> 00:12:54.820 our own properties. Most of what they do, we never see. It's not on our 187 00:12:54.820 --> 00:13:01.280 website. It's not with our content. And so if a B M is a real strategy for us, 188 00:13:01.280 --> 00:13:05.970 we're smart to get better at using third party signals. Whether that's 189 00:13:05.970 --> 00:13:11.510 data out of review sites, whether that's data out of media companies, 190 00:13:11.520 --> 00:13:15.510 maybe it's data coming out of a company like Tech Target with their priority 191 00:13:15.510 --> 00:13:23.040 engine. And there's lots of others in that space who look at and measure 192 00:13:23.050 --> 00:13:27.590 interest in the topic. But they do it on their own properties that we don't 193 00:13:27.590 --> 00:13:32.330 have any other way of seeing. And so before we say this is a company who 194 00:13:32.330 --> 00:13:37.090 will never be interested and we're not worth pursuing, we have to try and 195 00:13:37.090 --> 00:13:43.110 gauge not just in what marketing sees, but what in third party sees, what with 196 00:13:43.110 --> 00:13:47.450 the sales team is engaging in learning right we may have somebody who's super 197 00:13:47.450 --> 00:13:51.190 engaged with our marketing content, right? We may be just crushing the 198 00:13:51.190 --> 00:13:55.160 marketing content, doing an amazing job and the sales persons like, Hey, I've 199 00:13:55.160 --> 00:13:59.340 had four conversations with them. I've talked to six different people. There 200 00:13:59.340 --> 00:14:04.010 are 100% not a good fit for us. We should listen to that signal, right, 201 00:14:04.010 --> 00:14:08.190 And know that. So what are some of the ways to get data you mentioned? Like 202 00:14:08.200 --> 00:14:12.480 some broad third party services. But I mean six cents. This is like their 203 00:14:12.480 --> 00:14:15.260 thing. This is what they advertise. They, like, made a whole category of 204 00:14:15.260 --> 00:14:20.600 the dark funnel, which was super clever to try toe help. Marketers understand 205 00:14:20.600 --> 00:14:24.430 that they don't have the complete picture of the story and that therefore, 206 00:14:24.430 --> 00:14:27.140 you need six cents in order to do that. But let's suppose I don't have six 207 00:14:27.140 --> 00:14:30.990 cents. What are some way Second, illuminate some of this dark funnel in 208 00:14:30.990 --> 00:14:35.400 order to understand better. What part of the funnel there in? Yeah. I mean 209 00:14:35.400 --> 00:14:39.930 the ways that you you could get signals from people in lots of ways. So one of 210 00:14:39.930 --> 00:14:43.550 the ways that you could get signal is how you create content and what you 211 00:14:43.550 --> 00:14:48.460 call that content, right? So the content that somebody consumes tells me 212 00:14:48.460 --> 00:14:53.550 a lot about what's important to them, so that, you know, broadening the kinds 213 00:14:53.550 --> 00:14:57.040 of things that I'm pushing out through campaigns is such as is definitely a 214 00:14:57.040 --> 00:15:00.670 signaling that you want to pay attention. Thio looking and studying at 215 00:15:00.670 --> 00:15:04.360 the context Social profiles? What are they talking about? What are they 216 00:15:04.360 --> 00:15:07.060 posting? What seems important to them 217 00:15:08.240 --> 00:15:13.150 trying to figure out and talk to the conversations that your sales team are 218 00:15:13.150 --> 00:15:16.960 having with people? What are they learning? You know, some of this stuff 219 00:15:16.970 --> 00:15:22.580 can't be automated. I can't necessarily take all the notes of sales person has 220 00:15:22.580 --> 00:15:26.600 in my salesforce system or whatever. You know, Salesforce automation system 221 00:15:26.600 --> 00:15:33.080 I use and and run a report that tells me everything I might want to know 222 00:15:33.080 --> 00:15:35.480 about that account. But in account based marketing model, what we're 223 00:15:35.480 --> 00:15:40.300 saying is we're not going after an undefined set of accounts that have a 224 00:15:40.300 --> 00:15:44.370 profile. We're going after this set of accounts, and so it gives us the 225 00:15:44.370 --> 00:15:48.540 opportunity to sit down and do quarterly account reviews with the 226 00:15:48.540 --> 00:15:54.280 sales team and really be detailed about what we're learning what's what. What's 227 00:15:54.280 --> 00:15:57.320 happening in the press about the company. What do we what do we read in 228 00:15:57.320 --> 00:16:02.160 their annual reports? Right? There's all kinds of ways to capture 229 00:16:02.160 --> 00:16:07.420 intelligence. The problem is that we use marketers have gotten a little lazy 230 00:16:07.430 --> 00:16:12.080 and our little dependent on automatic data feeds. And if we don't have an 231 00:16:12.080 --> 00:16:15.410 automatic data feed, were a little dismissive of it because we say we 232 00:16:15.410 --> 00:16:19.370 can't scale well. It is true. We can't scale it, but that doesn't mean it's 233 00:16:19.370 --> 00:16:22.980 not worth doing well. I mean, yeah, I mean these air, if these are our top 234 00:16:22.990 --> 00:16:27.830 100 or more accounts than it's worth doing the manual effort for I mean, I'm 235 00:16:27.830 --> 00:16:30.650 all for the manual stuff. I mean, you know, sweet fish media. So and we know 236 00:16:30.650 --> 00:16:36.520 we like toe have our guest prospects on is as our ideal buyer's on his guests 237 00:16:36.520 --> 00:16:41.550 on the podcast, which is very oneto, one manual approach as much as we try 238 00:16:41.550 --> 00:16:46.160 to automate little pieces of it. So I know I'm not afraid to do the manual 239 00:16:46.160 --> 00:16:49.460 things, and it's fun to actually look at. I was writing down as you were 240 00:16:49.460 --> 00:16:52.840 talking as fast as I could, I'm like, Okay, so go look at their social 241 00:16:52.840 --> 00:16:55.910 profiles. What are they talking about? It's just so practical. It's And 242 00:16:55.910 --> 00:16:58.380 sometimes you just forget like, Oh, what's already out there that they're 243 00:16:58.380 --> 00:17:02.300 putting out there? What its sales learn from them? What conversations? Have 244 00:17:02.300 --> 00:17:05.010 there been any conversation? Do you have to go look in your own CRM to see 245 00:17:05.010 --> 00:17:08.069 what's conversations have been had? And then what are they putting out his 246 00:17:08.069 --> 00:17:11.680 press releases, annual reports, maybe even content marketing that they're 247 00:17:11.680 --> 00:17:16.260 doing in order to give you some indicators that they're where they're 248 00:17:16.260 --> 00:17:19.920 at. So those are all highly, highly practical things that you can use to 249 00:17:19.920 --> 00:17:23.550 troubleshoot accounts. Yeah, and the last thing that I would just remind us 250 00:17:23.550 --> 00:17:28.840 of. And I know you know this, but I think it's worthy. Is we as markers in 251 00:17:28.840 --> 00:17:33.970 a B M? I got a little email and add dependent, and we have to remember, 252 00:17:33.970 --> 00:17:37.280 just because somebody is not reading our emails doesn't actually mean 253 00:17:37.280 --> 00:17:42.190 they're no longer a good fit for us, and so or that we could add value to 254 00:17:42.190 --> 00:17:48.190 them. And so, until we really the mission of early a BM programs and 255 00:17:48.190 --> 00:17:52.270 campaigns is about collecting insights about the accounts were going after. 256 00:17:52.270 --> 00:17:55.290 Sure, I want to get meetings. Of course, I want to get meetings. That's not 257 00:17:55.290 --> 00:17:58.080 gonna happen overnight with all those accounts. I want to get intelligence 258 00:17:58.080 --> 00:18:01.640 about those accounts. Then once I have that intelligence now, I could make 259 00:18:01.640 --> 00:18:04.580 decisions about what do I do? I continue to nurture the relationship. 260 00:18:04.590 --> 00:18:08.850 If I do. In what way do we have the right context? Do we not have the right 261 00:18:08.850 --> 00:18:13.720 context? How engaged a salesman? How do we do better at that and so thes 262 00:18:13.720 --> 00:18:18.640 qualitative account review processes? I like to do them every quarter. I know 263 00:18:18.640 --> 00:18:24.290 that's ambitious. I think most people do it once or twice a year, but they're 264 00:18:24.300 --> 00:18:30.470 highly important to having repeatable, consistent success with your A B. M. 265 00:18:30.470 --> 00:18:34.960 You're going to get a boost with a B M right away, almost no matter what you 266 00:18:34.960 --> 00:18:38.970 do. Unless you do something really foolish, you just by focusing, you're 267 00:18:38.970 --> 00:18:43.130 going to start to see some bump. But what happens is people get a bump and 268 00:18:43.130 --> 00:18:46.380 then they quickly hit a plateau and they get to the plateau and they get 269 00:18:46.380 --> 00:18:49.120 stuck and we don't know what to do yet. Well, that's where you really need to 270 00:18:49.120 --> 00:18:52.790 dig into those accounts and what you've learned about them and adjust your 271 00:18:52.790 --> 00:18:57.420 strategies and adjust your tactics and use multiple ways of going after. Those 272 00:18:57.420 --> 00:19:01.480 folks confirm you have the right contacts and multiple contacts do all 273 00:19:01.480 --> 00:19:06.170 the normal things that you might want to do around good campaign hygiene. 274 00:19:06.840 --> 00:19:13.180 Ma'am, it's so good to circle back around the group that they didn't buy, 275 00:19:13.640 --> 00:19:17.630 um, the people that didn't pick you before, maybe a specific feature. Maybe 276 00:19:17.630 --> 00:19:20.200 they're locked into a contract, even though they had a conversation with 277 00:19:20.200 --> 00:19:25.150 sales. What do you recommend to do to follow up with those those people? Look, 278 00:19:25.150 --> 00:19:28.430 we're playing the long game. Just stay in touch with them like you normally do 279 00:19:28.440 --> 00:19:31.900 have. When you see when you create something that's an interesting and 280 00:19:31.900 --> 00:19:36.180 compelling content for them, send it to them when you create a form and round 281 00:19:36.180 --> 00:19:39.570 table discussions and you think that they would add and contribute to that 282 00:19:39.570 --> 00:19:43.330 and they would take away something, invite them right. We have to not be 283 00:19:43.330 --> 00:19:48.560 afraid to engage all those people that we think aren't ready for us. Um, 284 00:19:48.570 --> 00:19:52.130 that's Okay. What we don't want to do is stick them on a sales person. And 285 00:19:52.130 --> 00:19:54.600 what am I gonna see? My demo When I'm gonna get my demo. What am I gonna get 286 00:19:54.600 --> 00:19:57.650 my demo, right? Let me just call you. Call. You call, you call. You call you 287 00:19:57.650 --> 00:20:01.550 until you hang up on me for the 87th time, right? We don't want to do that. 288 00:20:01.550 --> 00:20:04.970 What we want to do is continue to nurture, truly nurture those 289 00:20:04.970 --> 00:20:10.020 relationships at value. And what What's hard for marketers to wrap our heads 290 00:20:10.020 --> 00:20:15.560 around, including me, is what I've experienced in the past. We have this 291 00:20:15.560 --> 00:20:20.350 notion that frequency of cadence is meaningful and that what we need to do 292 00:20:20.350 --> 00:20:25.260 is to stay in front of someone is be in front of them all the time. However, if 293 00:20:25.260 --> 00:20:28.350 this is the long game and there's someone we know is not going to be 294 00:20:28.350 --> 00:20:33.310 buying from us for a year or two for whatever those reasons are regular, 295 00:20:33.320 --> 00:20:37.360 like weekly cadences and even monthly cadences, they don't make sense. They 296 00:20:37.370 --> 00:20:41.950 they annoy more than they help. What you want to do is sporadic ad hoc 297 00:20:41.950 --> 00:20:47.490 things to stay in front of them. periodically and not overly scheduled 298 00:20:47.500 --> 00:20:53.910 that outreach. But to truly engage them in the places of the times that are 299 00:20:53.910 --> 00:20:58.130 gonna be useful, I'll give. So I'll give you an example. I got an email 300 00:20:58.130 --> 00:21:03.670 from asking for a meeting from someone for CEO of a company that I talked Teoh 301 00:21:03.680 --> 00:21:07.270 a while ago. And he has, like, I think I finally have a project for you. So I 302 00:21:07.270 --> 00:21:10.420 went back and I'm like, Oh, awesome. I recognize the name. I knew who they 303 00:21:10.420 --> 00:21:14.430 were, But I was like, What was the last time I actually had, like, a meaningful 304 00:21:14.430 --> 00:21:17.770 sales conversation with them? Would you like to guess one that waas. This 305 00:21:17.770 --> 00:21:21.370 happened last week when the last time that a meaningful sales conversation 306 00:21:21.370 --> 00:21:25.540 happened when I let her meaningful sales conversation with them. Waas have 307 00:21:25.540 --> 00:21:32.190 no idea. 2000 and 16, 2000 and 16 And I, you know they're connected to me on 308 00:21:32.190 --> 00:21:35.330 social, like every once in a while would send them something I thought was 309 00:21:35.330 --> 00:21:38.770 interesting on our block. They didn't subscribe to anything. I didn't send 310 00:21:38.770 --> 00:21:41.650 them in a regular cadence of communication. They weren't in une 311 00:21:41.650 --> 00:21:48.120 email drip right? But when there was a project that was a good fit that we 312 00:21:48.120 --> 00:21:52.490 could serve. They thought about us and they reached out right away. That's 313 00:21:52.490 --> 00:21:57.960 really what A B M is about, is not about. It's not about frequency. It's 314 00:21:57.960 --> 00:22:04.780 about quality engagement. Today's episode is sponsored by Lincoln. Did 315 00:22:04.780 --> 00:22:08.650 you know over 62 million decision makers are on Lincoln? It's the reason 316 00:22:08.650 --> 00:22:12.860 why I and attentive other B two B marketers spend hours marketing on 317 00:22:12.860 --> 00:22:17.300 Lincoln every week. In fact, recently, I just pulled the report that informed 318 00:22:17.310 --> 00:22:21.730 our team had sweet fish that Lincoln had produced three times Thea Mount of 319 00:22:21.730 --> 00:22:26.190 new customers in the last 90 days than the next lead source. Three times guys. 320 00:22:26.200 --> 00:22:31.560 It was a lot. There is not a better platform to research your key accounts. 321 00:22:31.570 --> 00:22:35.620 Find the exact people you want to connect with and actually engage them 322 00:22:35.630 --> 00:22:41.500 in a variety of meaningful ways. Do business where business is done. Get a 323 00:22:41.500 --> 00:22:46.150 $100 advertising credit toward your first Lincoln campaign. Visit Lincoln 324 00:22:46.150 --> 00:22:53.130 dot com slash BB growth Lincoln dot com slash btb Growth terms and conditions 325 00:22:53.130 --> 00:22:58.960 apply. Something we're planning on doing is trying to figure out and 326 00:22:58.960 --> 00:23:02.650 better somewhat qualified people within after they become a guest on the 327 00:23:02.650 --> 00:23:07.120 podcast. And ah, lot of my customers even asked me like, When do you sell to 328 00:23:07.120 --> 00:23:10.690 them? I'm like, Well, it's hard to like sell to someone right after they've 329 00:23:10.690 --> 00:23:13.230 been a guest on the podcast, right? Because that seems like a little bait 330 00:23:13.230 --> 00:23:17.280 and switch E right. But what we're trying Thio experiment with is doing 331 00:23:17.280 --> 00:23:21.010 original research within the podcast and maybe mixing in a few questions in 332 00:23:21.010 --> 00:23:23.860 there that air somewhat. A qualifying questions I could see if there even in 333 00:23:23.860 --> 00:23:27.990 the market or send some signals, right that maybe it be worth following up 334 00:23:27.990 --> 00:23:31.690 with some kind of consultation approach a week or two later. But of course, a 335 00:23:31.690 --> 00:23:34.330 lot of people won't be in the market, which means I'll have to come up with a 336 00:23:34.340 --> 00:23:39.220 follow up plan for everybody who might be what I call a future a future fit. 337 00:23:39.230 --> 00:23:42.320 There might not be ready to buy now, but it doesn't mean they won't be later. 338 00:23:42.330 --> 00:23:45.860 And if I did my homework, I know they don't have a podcast, right? Those 339 00:23:45.860 --> 00:23:49.860 would be a nice CP for us. They don't have a podcast, but I'd I'd have to put 340 00:23:49.860 --> 00:23:53.820 him in a queue to see like, Well, maybe I wanna have them on a block post later 341 00:23:53.820 --> 00:23:56.640 or contribute to a block post. Lots of the guests can contribute to a block 342 00:23:56.640 --> 00:24:00.540 post around a specific question. Do a round up of some kind or a clubhouse or 343 00:24:00.540 --> 00:24:04.000 some things like that. Is that is that what you're essentially saying is have, 344 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:07.880 like a bunch of things you could do it to reach back into your your queue of 345 00:24:07.880 --> 00:24:11.090 people in your account based marketing programs that you can have contribute 346 00:24:11.090 --> 00:24:14.780 to, or that you can add value to in different ways. Yeah, you just wanna 347 00:24:14.790 --> 00:24:19.350 you wanna Siris of things and the key it. So the key is there's a couple of 348 00:24:19.350 --> 00:24:22.790 keys here and what you're you're describing. So one of them is there are 349 00:24:22.790 --> 00:24:26.950 times when you need a steady and regular weekly daily whatever cadence 350 00:24:26.960 --> 00:24:29.870 of reaching out to people and highly integrated. That's when they're in an 351 00:24:29.880 --> 00:24:33.460 active by cycle. That's when you want to be really sort of regimented with 352 00:24:33.540 --> 00:24:36.870 with your cadences and your communications that are going out when 353 00:24:36.870 --> 00:24:43.550 I'm not in an active by cycle. I want to have regular good reasons to engage 354 00:24:43.550 --> 00:24:48.130 and teach out to them and and and just thio just to be in touch with them and 355 00:24:48.130 --> 00:24:52.640 build a relationship with them and and continue for them to know what we do in 356 00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:56.860 a soft way, right? Which isn't sending them your brochure, right? The first 357 00:24:56.860 --> 00:25:00.940 time I hired James to do my podcast, right for sweet Fish media wasn't 358 00:25:00.940 --> 00:25:04.780 because he sent me like, Hey, we've got this new package that's going out. It's 359 00:25:04.780 --> 00:25:10.090 because I've been reading from him how podcasting could be used to build 360 00:25:10.090 --> 00:25:13.950 relationships. And I was intrigued and he'd show me in the way he engaged with 361 00:25:13.950 --> 00:25:19.570 me and I bought into the concept. And so now I'm in an active by cycle and 362 00:25:19.580 --> 00:25:23.170 we're gonna go have a conversation about what that looks like. It's the 363 00:25:23.170 --> 00:25:28.810 same thing for any any complex product or service that we sell. It's just 364 00:25:28.820 --> 00:25:35.730 about staying connected to people and being someone that they know toe Look, 365 00:25:35.730 --> 00:25:39.230 Thio, it was really interesting phenomenon, my own consulting practice 366 00:25:39.230 --> 00:25:44.410 that I've noticed over the years I would I would guess, you know, my very 367 00:25:44.420 --> 00:25:50.020 unscientific, you know, back of napkin, probably 15 or so percent of the 368 00:25:50.020 --> 00:25:53.740 business that comes to me that people come and ask me for business. They 369 00:25:53.740 --> 00:25:57.210 actually our first coming to be, Hey, do you know anybody that does? They 370 00:25:57.210 --> 00:26:00.870 didn't even realize that I did it. They were just know that I have a good 371 00:26:00.870 --> 00:26:04.200 network of people and they trust my judgment. And they believe that, you 372 00:26:04.200 --> 00:26:08.210 know, I'm gonna introduce them to good, strong people. And they say, In fact, I 373 00:26:08.210 --> 00:26:12.830 do know people. But did you know I also do that? It's like, Oh my gosh, that's 374 00:26:12.830 --> 00:26:16.020 great, Samantha. I never thought of that right. People don't have to know 375 00:26:16.030 --> 00:26:20.610 everything they do. They just have to trust you and know the space that you 376 00:26:20.620 --> 00:26:25.280 operate in. And then they engage you when you have an opportunity to 377 00:26:25.280 --> 00:26:29.090 continue to build on those those relationships. And that's very 378 00:26:29.090 --> 00:26:34.490 different than how sales and marketing has traditionally gone. After pursuing 379 00:26:34.490 --> 00:26:39.630 opportunities, it is Dittemore different than I sometimes think we 380 00:26:39.630 --> 00:26:43.890 remember. I know James talks about this all the time. In fact, he's is a little 381 00:26:43.900 --> 00:26:47.570 app to help him call fabric, which is like on his phone that's actively 382 00:26:47.570 --> 00:26:51.000 reminding him toe like reach out to people. It's like, Hey, it's been a 383 00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:54.260 while. It's not even part of, like our hub spot CRM or anything like that. But 384 00:26:54.260 --> 00:26:57.070 she just got praise. Probably got like dozens of people in there. It's like, 385 00:26:57.070 --> 00:27:00.170 Hey, you haven't you haven't talked to so and so for a long time Shoot them a 386 00:27:00.170 --> 00:27:03.170 text, You know, it is constantly reminding him to do that. He's, but 387 00:27:03.170 --> 00:27:07.520 he's kind of the the networking power like he's, I don't know. What do you 388 00:27:07.520 --> 00:27:11.910 call those the like? This 66 degrees of separation? He's a super connected with 389 00:27:11.910 --> 00:27:17.370 money. He's so good at it. But what, like us mere mortals who aren't like 390 00:27:17.380 --> 00:27:21.950 James Carberry or like Samantha Stone, what are some things we can do? I mean, 391 00:27:21.950 --> 00:27:25.010 obviously, I try to be as helpful as possible to people all the time on 392 00:27:25.010 --> 00:27:27.810 LinkedIn, right? If people ask me a question, I send them a video message, 393 00:27:27.810 --> 00:27:30.810 and I'm like, What else? Any other Anything else you want to know? Let me 394 00:27:30.810 --> 00:27:34.030 know, and I'm here to help, right? So I try to be as helpful as possible, but 395 00:27:34.030 --> 00:27:38.060 still, I find I'm not reaching out to some people as actively as I'd like to. 396 00:27:38.060 --> 00:27:41.510 And it's not because they didn't I just didn't have necessarily an opportunity 397 00:27:41.510 --> 00:27:44.100 or they didn't drop something for me to be like. Oh, they really liked this 398 00:27:44.100 --> 00:27:48.510 thing. I should follow up with them about that. What do you do when you 399 00:27:48.510 --> 00:27:52.170 want to do that? Well, but maybe you're not in the habit of it. How do you 400 00:27:52.180 --> 00:27:56.920 build some systems into your life In orderto follow up with people I'm 401 00:27:56.920 --> 00:27:59.870 getting? You have some like, pre made things that you're like, OK, Every once 402 00:27:59.870 --> 00:28:02.750 in a while we do something like this. But how do you become a little bit more 403 00:28:02.750 --> 00:28:07.150 spontaneous, too? Yeah, that's a really good question. And I and I will say 404 00:28:07.160 --> 00:28:11.550 that I am by no means the best person that you know, doing this now. You know, 405 00:28:11.560 --> 00:28:14.910 our conversation would lead you to believe that I am always on top of 406 00:28:14.910 --> 00:28:18.330 every I know everybody's birthday and I'm like, That's just not true. Like 407 00:28:18.330 --> 00:28:22.970 not not really, but I am pretty good about when I see something. Oh, I could 408 00:28:22.980 --> 00:28:26.070 always think when I when we're doing something, I always think of what are 409 00:28:26.070 --> 00:28:29.360 the three people in my world who are most going to get excited about that, 410 00:28:29.640 --> 00:28:32.280 right? So part of it is looking at everything. We're doing it just being 411 00:28:32.280 --> 00:28:36.630 consciously take a second to say Who's going to really think this is cool and 412 00:28:36.630 --> 00:28:40.790 I'm gonna go reach out to them? The other thing that I do is I do carve off 413 00:28:40.800 --> 00:28:45.240 into my calendar 15 minutes the beginning of the day and 15 minutes at 414 00:28:45.240 --> 00:28:50.240 the end of the day where I do nothing but brow social media. I have no 415 00:28:50.240 --> 00:28:56.040 specific intention about what I'm going to do with it. I just know if something 416 00:28:56.040 --> 00:28:59.210 pops up, if somebody's posted something that I think is interesting, funny, 417 00:28:59.210 --> 00:29:03.590 clever, needs a hug, right? Like I wanna be able to respond to that. Now 418 00:29:03.590 --> 00:29:07.790 I'm I'm not. You know, I don't spend a half hour a day every day doing that, 419 00:29:07.800 --> 00:29:11.750 but because it's on my calendar for a half hour every day, several times a 420 00:29:11.750 --> 00:29:15.580 week, I actually get to it. The other thing that I do is really silly Dan, 421 00:29:15.590 --> 00:29:20.240 and this is not a little bit like I literally go through the contacts of my 422 00:29:20.240 --> 00:29:24.210 phone and every once in a while, I just scroll through. And like, Oh, I haven't 423 00:29:24.210 --> 00:29:29.420 talked Thio. You know Kwamie in a while I'm gonna just, you know, send Kwamie a 424 00:29:29.420 --> 00:29:33.890 quick note, right? Like I don't have anything to push. I don't have anything 425 00:29:33.900 --> 00:29:39.900 I want to say Hi, right? Like and really those things air. Okay, We don't 426 00:29:39.910 --> 00:29:44.590 always have to have a specific action. We want someone to take to reach out 427 00:29:44.590 --> 00:29:47.550 its relations. Now that's different than marketing campaigns, right? That's 428 00:29:47.550 --> 00:29:51.620 sort of the the sales relationship piece of it from a marketing campaign 429 00:29:51.620 --> 00:29:57.060 standpoint, our job is marketers is to give the sales team who is making these 430 00:29:57.060 --> 00:30:00.490 engagements and at which interesting things to talk about and reach out 431 00:30:00.490 --> 00:30:05.720 about to give them things to say, Who's five people who might want that? Let me 432 00:30:05.720 --> 00:30:10.170 go. Put that in front of them right now on the last thing that I would just say 433 00:30:10.540 --> 00:30:17.780 is it is incumbent on us to produce content ourselves. Most of the people 434 00:30:17.790 --> 00:30:22.590 in my network who reach out about projects I actually have not actively 435 00:30:22.590 --> 00:30:27.110 engaged with them in quite some time, but they have been silently without my 436 00:30:27.110 --> 00:30:31.160 knowledge reading things that I'm posting. And when I do talk, I'm like, 437 00:30:31.160 --> 00:30:35.400 Oh, yeah, you know, I never told you, but I thought that article on X was 438 00:30:35.400 --> 00:30:39.020 really interesting. Or thank you for sharing this thing. I found that 439 00:30:39.020 --> 00:30:45.090 helpful. And so we do have to remember that just because somebody didn't 440 00:30:45.090 --> 00:30:51.440 comment on or respond to our share doesn't mean they didn't see it. And 441 00:30:51.450 --> 00:30:55.560 that's valuable. As long as we're doing things that are of good quality and 442 00:30:55.560 --> 00:31:00.030 relevance, that's good. I like the tip specifically about just browsing your 443 00:31:00.040 --> 00:31:04.410 calendar or now your contact list every once in a while. And it could be your 444 00:31:04.410 --> 00:31:07.770 Facebook, your Twitter. You're linking connections. Something like that just 445 00:31:07.770 --> 00:31:10.830 going through the whole list every once in a while on finding, finding so and 446 00:31:10.830 --> 00:31:14.470 so on remembering for us, it would probably our podcast cast. I could roll 447 00:31:14.470 --> 00:31:17.370 through our podcast guest every once in a while and be like, Oh, yeah, I should 448 00:31:17.370 --> 00:31:20.880 probably mention to so and so that I've actually mentioned his episode, like a 449 00:31:20.880 --> 00:31:25.240 dozen times or something like that, right? It's absolutely. And when you do 450 00:31:25.240 --> 00:31:28.850 do that, like just drop Hey, I was just this actually came up the other day, a 451 00:31:28.850 --> 00:31:34.670 friend of mine was quoted in a Web seminar I did with a vendor and I 452 00:31:34.670 --> 00:31:37.300 didn't even put the quote and the person I was speaking with did. But I 453 00:31:37.300 --> 00:31:41.130 was like, Hey, hey, just like you know, your name came up. Your ears must have 454 00:31:41.130 --> 00:31:44.390 been ringing. You know, it's great. And we just had a lovely conversation. We 455 00:31:44.390 --> 00:31:47.990 hadn't connected in a while, right? I had no ulterior motive. I wasn't trying 456 00:31:47.990 --> 00:31:52.960 to sell them anything. I legitimately was just sharing something where their 457 00:31:52.960 --> 00:31:57.650 name had come up. And I specifically like the tip of always looking for who 458 00:31:57.650 --> 00:32:00.660 in my network would also be excited about this or you're looking at 459 00:32:00.660 --> 00:32:03.120 something, and maybe it's not exciting to you, but it could be exciting to 460 00:32:03.120 --> 00:32:06.190 somebody else. And if you think about it, you can usually think of a name 461 00:32:06.190 --> 00:32:09.250 that might be excited about that particular thing. I mean, that that 462 00:32:09.250 --> 00:32:12.060 happens to me on linked in all the time, especially for people who are asking 463 00:32:12.060 --> 00:32:14.510 for help on something that I know nothing about. But I'm like, but I 464 00:32:14.510 --> 00:32:17.110 could think of somebody that does, and you. You know, you could mention them 465 00:32:17.110 --> 00:32:20.880 and pull them into the conversation. It's kind of that constantly exercising 466 00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:25.290 their relationship. I really like Keith Frazee trying. Remember the name of 467 00:32:25.290 --> 00:32:29.290 that book never eat alone was really big into that. Oh, that's a great 468 00:32:29.290 --> 00:32:33.740 concept. Yeah. You know, I think the people you surround yourself make a 469 00:32:33.740 --> 00:32:38.810 very big difference because I don't know. The answer is toe lots and lots 470 00:32:38.810 --> 00:32:42.810 of questions legitimate and and never will. Sometimes I should know the 471 00:32:42.810 --> 00:32:45.510 answer, and it's gonna make me go look for an answer. But a lot of times it's 472 00:32:45.510 --> 00:32:49.690 just not my area of expertise or or something that I can comment on. And so 473 00:32:49.700 --> 00:32:54.510 but I often and in more cases than not, know somebody who is an expert on that 474 00:32:54.510 --> 00:32:59.700 area. And then I can introduce. And it has an effect, right? So building up 475 00:32:59.700 --> 00:33:03.030 those relationships and sometimes those experts, by the way, your name brand 476 00:33:03.030 --> 00:33:06.360 recognize people that other people are going to know. But a lot of times 477 00:33:06.360 --> 00:33:10.850 there's someone who doesn't have a known external presence but are really 478 00:33:10.850 --> 00:33:14.670 good at what they dio and are more than happy to have a quick. You know, 479 00:33:14.740 --> 00:33:18.280 virtual coffee chat with someone. I've introduced them Thio to answer a 480 00:33:18.280 --> 00:33:23.590 question. Absolutely. So it makes It certainly makes marketing and sales a 481 00:33:23.590 --> 00:33:27.060 lot more fun. When you don't always have an agenda to bring right and 482 00:33:27.060 --> 00:33:30.510 actually find as a marketer, I'm maybe I'm acting like a sales guy, but I'm 483 00:33:30.510 --> 00:33:34.270 not a sales guy. Um, but that I'm actively just going and talking toe 484 00:33:34.840 --> 00:33:37.920 prospects all the time. In fact, I've taken of sales call every once in a 485 00:33:37.920 --> 00:33:41.120 while just because they started asking about services. And I'm not going to 486 00:33:41.120 --> 00:33:43.960 stop. Be like, hold on. Don't talk to me. You're not allowed to talk to me 487 00:33:43.960 --> 00:33:47.470 about services when they get sales, Mike, marketers need to jump in the 488 00:33:47.470 --> 00:33:51.310 sales seat, right? Oh, my God. I'm so glad that you said that. Because how 489 00:33:51.310 --> 00:33:56.560 often is it e? But how often does that really happen? We do that all the time. 490 00:33:56.570 --> 00:34:00.640 We use our BDR s or STRS or whatever you wanna call them to do meeting, 491 00:34:00.640 --> 00:34:04.040 acquisition, but we don't train them enough to have engaged. So I've got 492 00:34:04.040 --> 00:34:07.760 somebody on the phone who's who's really interested in what we're doing 493 00:34:08.340 --> 00:34:12.300 and the person who's on the phone with them on Lee Mission is to set up a 494 00:34:12.300 --> 00:34:15.100 meeting, and if they're ready for that, hallelujah, that's great. But a lot of 495 00:34:15.100 --> 00:34:18.850 times they wanna talk, you know, I've got them engaged. Why do we not have a 496 00:34:18.850 --> 00:34:22.380 hot hand off right now? At that moment, at least of someone that I could stand 497 00:34:22.380 --> 00:34:25.000 to that could have the next conversation. But no, we got a schedule 498 00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:30.940 you from a week from now. You know a B M is about being focused so that we can 499 00:34:30.940 --> 00:34:36.739 do kinds of extraordinary things, like break some of the silly workflow 500 00:34:36.739 --> 00:34:41.260 processes that we have in place and build relationships in different ways 501 00:34:41.260 --> 00:34:46.659 and be better connected across our own organization and how we interact with 502 00:34:46.670 --> 00:34:51.150 folks. It's a It's a luxury to be able to do that. It isn't something that you 503 00:34:51.150 --> 00:34:54.830 could do in all markets and all kinds of scenarios. But if you've done a good 504 00:34:54.830 --> 00:34:59.640 job a selecting your target account list, it's pretty amazing what you 505 00:34:59.640 --> 00:35:04.190 could do with sales. I've actually been a big fan of this, a B M concept coming 506 00:35:04.190 --> 00:35:07.950 from the BBC world, where you kind of like you know, you target, But like 507 00:35:07.960 --> 00:35:10.200 just cause you're targeted, target market doesn't mean you know who your 508 00:35:10.200 --> 00:35:12.770 marketing to. You're just kind of throwing out your ads and your 509 00:35:12.770 --> 00:35:16.240 campaigns out there and, you know, as they come farther down the funnel, then 510 00:35:16.240 --> 00:35:19.880 you get to know them. Hey, beams fun because I actually know who exactly is 511 00:35:19.880 --> 00:35:22.830 the buyer already. And I could go and have a conversation with them right 512 00:35:22.830 --> 00:35:27.440 away or within much sooner time, period, right? Even if they're not in the 513 00:35:27.440 --> 00:35:31.310 market yet. It's opened up a whole new world for me in a whole new realm of 514 00:35:31.310 --> 00:35:34.590 possibilities. But the amount of information you get to work within the 515 00:35:34.590 --> 00:35:38.580 amount of mawr e don't know 1 to 1 personal relationships you get to 516 00:35:38.580 --> 00:35:42.110 building B two B. It's much more exciting place to be than B to C and B 517 00:35:42.110 --> 00:35:45.900 D. C is usually held up Is the more exciting marketing segment to be 518 00:35:45.900 --> 00:35:51.440 working at. But my God, I don't know. I'm really enjoying, you know? Well, 519 00:35:51.440 --> 00:35:55.180 I'm a I'm a b two b junkie or, you know, at least a complex sale junkie, I 520 00:35:55.180 --> 00:35:58.870 should say I don't it's not always be to be, but I do think that we have a 521 00:35:58.870 --> 00:36:02.660 lot to learn from each other, right? There's parts about traditional B two c 522 00:36:02.660 --> 00:36:07.610 marketing that I think we sometimes forget and are afraid of around brand 523 00:36:07.610 --> 00:36:11.450 building and some of the money that comes along with that and evangelism. 524 00:36:11.830 --> 00:36:16.560 And it is a luxury to be able to build a multi. Think about this multi month, 525 00:36:16.560 --> 00:36:21.230 multi year relationship with a company and instead of people, that's pretty 526 00:36:21.230 --> 00:36:25.340 exciting. And if you do it right, that's a life at least a professional, 527 00:36:25.340 --> 00:36:29.710 life long relationship that you've built right? That's something that when 528 00:36:29.710 --> 00:36:33.000 you come up with a different product or you work somewhere else or, you know, 529 00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:37.290 like the something comes up. If you've done it well, you've built that trusted 530 00:36:37.290 --> 00:36:41.590 relationship for the long haul. Doesn't go away because your job within sweet 531 00:36:41.590 --> 00:36:46.540 fish media changed. Absolutely. James has reminded me of that many times that 532 00:36:46.550 --> 00:36:51.120 we're here building even as a company, and the sweet fish is kind of different 533 00:36:51.120 --> 00:36:53.820 in this and that they're into building personal brands. Even if you were to go 534 00:36:53.820 --> 00:36:57.350 to leave sweet fish media that it's still worthwhile for the company and 535 00:36:57.350 --> 00:37:01.000 for you to build it that way and have you to build relationships with lots of 536 00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:05.960 people outside. And I think being putting an emphasis on personal brands 537 00:37:05.960 --> 00:37:09.330 and personal relationships is certainly working out for sweet fish so far. And 538 00:37:09.330 --> 00:37:13.760 I hope more companies embrace that point. Yeah, you know, one of the 539 00:37:13.760 --> 00:37:18.200 things that I think is really important in the A B M model and in this place, 540 00:37:18.200 --> 00:37:21.140 in particularly when you've got like, Hey, they're not in by Psyche yet What 541 00:37:21.140 --> 00:37:25.260 do I do with them is to create intimate experiences. Now, we can't do that in 542 00:37:25.260 --> 00:37:28.410 person for the most part right now and might not be able to for quite some 543 00:37:28.410 --> 00:37:32.750 time. But you can create some pretty amazing intimate experiences virtually. 544 00:37:33.030 --> 00:37:37.400 And, um, I did one recently for a client, and it was a wine tasting, 545 00:37:37.400 --> 00:37:43.380 which isn't, you know, in and of itself, any grand, you know, novel notion. But 546 00:37:43.380 --> 00:37:46.200 I think what made it work so well for us, I mean, the feedback we got from 547 00:37:46.200 --> 00:37:49.830 attendees was incredible was because we did a few things differently. We 548 00:37:49.830 --> 00:37:52.580 invited them to bring a plus one if they wanted to. We recognize 549 00:37:52.580 --> 00:37:56.620 everybody's at home. When we were doing introduction, somebody was to start to 550 00:37:56.620 --> 00:37:59.870 say where their job like No, no, no. Don't talk about your You know what 551 00:37:59.870 --> 00:38:04.150 your job is? We're here to have fun, right? There are forums and formats 552 00:38:04.150 --> 00:38:06.750 we're talking about. Their job made sense, but in this thing, we had 553 00:38:06.750 --> 00:38:11.100 completely billed this as you've been really rocking hard, we hear you, we 554 00:38:11.100 --> 00:38:14.890 see you and you deserve a break. And so we're hosting this really fun thing to 555 00:38:14.890 --> 00:38:19.330 do to just hang out and meet some new friends in your space. And there was 556 00:38:19.330 --> 00:38:23.820 like a visual sigh of relief in the room when we did that, like literally 557 00:38:23.820 --> 00:38:28.270 everybody's body language. The 10, whatever tension you saw, it went 558 00:38:28.270 --> 00:38:31.970 completely away. And by the end of our, you know, a couple hours together, 559 00:38:31.970 --> 00:38:36.270 people were laughing and smiling. And the thank you notes we got afterwards 560 00:38:36.270 --> 00:38:40.910 were super touching. It was it was remarkable. And so I've been 561 00:38:40.910 --> 00:38:44.670 experimenting with what the right sizes for these kinds of things, whether it's 562 00:38:44.670 --> 00:38:48.860 a wine tasting or it's a round table discussion or it's ah, broadcast 563 00:38:48.860 --> 00:38:53.810 communication. How do we create intimacy, and sometimes we get a little 564 00:38:53.810 --> 00:38:57.440 lost and it's got to be big, right? We sort of say, Well, I prefer to be 565 00:38:57.440 --> 00:39:00.830 successful. We've got about 500 people. There are 300 people. There are 6000 566 00:39:00.830 --> 00:39:06.590 people there. There are value in big events, but I'm finding for a B M long 567 00:39:06.590 --> 00:39:11.030 term relationship. Building the small stuff is what's really moving the 568 00:39:11.030 --> 00:39:14.620 needle. Absolutely. That's we're finding, too, Which is why James spends 569 00:39:14.620 --> 00:39:18.540 so much time on clubhouse right now. And honestly, he actually spends a lot 570 00:39:18.540 --> 00:39:21.990 of time just putting. I think they call them BTB growth groups, together with 571 00:39:21.990 --> 00:39:26.280 VPs of marketing and small groups. You're talking like 56 people and finds 572 00:39:26.280 --> 00:39:30.440 that just the intimacy of the small community is what makes makes it much 573 00:39:30.440 --> 00:39:33.550 more interesting. And we've been getting a lot of good feedback on that. 574 00:39:33.550 --> 00:39:36.190 So I think that's something we'll continue to dio, even though it's 575 00:39:36.200 --> 00:39:40.930 actually really hard to scale that it's still working. You know what I am isn't 576 00:39:40.930 --> 00:39:45.690 about scale, right? Damn right, you can't scale about it. I don't want 577 00:39:45.700 --> 00:39:48.410 people to think there's nothing repeatable. There's repeat ability to 578 00:39:48.410 --> 00:39:52.900 it. Oh, for sure, for sure it's we're gonna continue doing it because it's 579 00:39:52.900 --> 00:39:56.880 it's working. It was building genuine real relationship, and sometimes it 580 00:39:56.880 --> 00:40:00.420 takes a while for it to, like, come back to revenue. And that's okay. Like 581 00:40:00.420 --> 00:40:03.360 we did a whole Lincoln evangelism program and only got the report card on 582 00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:07.100 it. Now, even though we've been hard at it for 10 months and, uh, found out, 583 00:40:07.100 --> 00:40:11.860 it's highly profitable. Um, but it was 10 months. We were just like we're just 584 00:40:11.870 --> 00:40:15.100 a bunch of us making content on LinkedIn, spending a lot of soft and 585 00:40:15.100 --> 00:40:19.370 hard dollars on this thing, and now it's low and behold, it actually works. 586 00:40:19.370 --> 00:40:24.360 So you're like, Who knew? You knew James did. A lot of people have been 587 00:40:24.360 --> 00:40:27.700 saying, and we actually put it to work, but I mean, 10 months is a long time to 588 00:40:27.700 --> 00:40:31.390 test something and not know exactly of how well it's working. You know you're 589 00:40:31.390 --> 00:40:35.330 getting engagement and reach and stuff like that. But I'm glad that you said 590 00:40:35.330 --> 00:40:39.060 that because that's one of the biggest issues that people have is when they 591 00:40:39.060 --> 00:40:42.290 don't get those target accounts to engage, they give up on them. They move 592 00:40:42.290 --> 00:40:46.680 to the next set, but you're losing. A lot of you know you're constantly 593 00:40:46.680 --> 00:40:50.850 having to reinvent mo mentum when we do that. So your question today is an 594 00:40:50.860 --> 00:40:55.000 excellent one, Dan. And it's not when we talk enough about we. We really need 595 00:40:55.000 --> 00:41:00.570 to acknowledge that A B M is a long play now. Some companies longest three 596 00:41:00.570 --> 00:41:04.830 months, but for a lot of companies, long as a year, two years, and we need 597 00:41:04.830 --> 00:41:08.410 to operate in that model comfortably. Yeah, we've certainly had a lot of 598 00:41:08.410 --> 00:41:11.220 customers came through that we're interested and sign up for two years. 599 00:41:11.220 --> 00:41:14.670 We have because we've been doing this a while. It's now matriculating in, but 600 00:41:14.680 --> 00:41:17.570 it is very interesting. They just weren't ready or the person we were 601 00:41:17.570 --> 00:41:20.830 talking to switch jobs and not the new company. They want to sign up, you know? 602 00:41:20.830 --> 00:41:24.630 So you just never know That's gonna pan out. Well, Samantha, thank you so much 603 00:41:24.630 --> 00:41:30.020 for joining me on BTB growth today. I loved hearing from you. I loved that 604 00:41:30.020 --> 00:41:35.040 you totally turns false way of thinking around on me and got me toe open up my 605 00:41:35.040 --> 00:41:39.140 eyes on how you can follow up with even the people that said no for particular 606 00:41:39.140 --> 00:41:42.730 reasons, Um, certainly changing the way I'm gonna be approaching my own A B M 607 00:41:42.730 --> 00:41:46.130 campaign and sweet Fish Media. And though you've been on this show many 608 00:41:46.130 --> 00:41:48.740 times that have probably told our audience multiple times, where can they 609 00:41:48.740 --> 00:41:53.050 go to find you online? If they want to connect with you and ask you follow up 610 00:41:53.050 --> 00:41:56.810 questions from this episode, I never get tired of hearing people like, 611 00:41:56.810 --> 00:42:00.830 Sincerely, it is like my favorite thing. When I opened up my inbox or listen to 612 00:42:00.830 --> 00:42:04.920 my voice mail on someone's reached out that read the book or listened to a 613 00:42:04.920 --> 00:42:09.070 presentation, I gave her a podcast guest, So I really hope they dio then 614 00:42:09.070 --> 00:42:13.200 goto marketing advisory network dot com or unleash possible dot com. Either 615 00:42:13.200 --> 00:42:16.520 place, if they just want to kind of browse Resource is that are available. 616 00:42:16.600 --> 00:42:19.930 But if someone would like to reach out, I'm on LinkedIn and they can email me 617 00:42:19.930 --> 00:42:27.360 at Samantha dot stone at marketing advisory network dot com. And I know 618 00:42:27.360 --> 00:42:31.730 that's a mouthful, but the acronym is man dot com, and I will never let that 619 00:42:31.730 --> 00:42:37.860 happen. So it's a long email address, but I promise that I dio read all the 620 00:42:37.860 --> 00:42:42.200 email that comes to me and I don't you know, the spam stuff that comes. I'm 621 00:42:42.200 --> 00:42:45.700 pretty good at filtering out, but I really do love. If somebody has 622 00:42:45.700 --> 00:42:49.780 questions or even just a comment or they have a campaign, they ran and they 623 00:42:49.780 --> 00:42:53.980 want to share it. I love learning about what people are doing and what's 624 00:42:53.980 --> 00:42:57.350 working for them and what's not. So I encourage people to reach out anytime, 625 00:42:57.360 --> 00:43:02.370 fantastic again. Thank you so much for joining me on me to be growth. One of 626 00:43:02.370 --> 00:43:06.180 the things we've learned about podcast audience growth is that word of mouth 627 00:43:06.180 --> 00:43:10.440 works. It works really, really well, actually. So if you love this show, it 628 00:43:10.440 --> 00:43:14.730 would be awesome if you texted a friend to tell them about it. And if you send 629 00:43:14.730 --> 00:43:19.150 me a text with a screenshot of the text you sent to your friend Meta, I know 630 00:43:19.160 --> 00:43:22.780 I'll send you a copy of my book content based networking. How to instantly 631 00:43:22.780 --> 00:43:29.990 connect with anyone you want to know. My cell phone number is 4074903328 632 00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:31.010 Happy texting