Outcome Studio Podcast - Marketing & B2B Technology Talk - 017: Helping Buyers Access Valuable Marketing Content via Personalized Outbound with Blake Johnston

017: Helping Buyers Access Valuable Marketing Content via Personalized Outbound with Blake Johnston

02/15/19 • 47 min

Outcome Studio Podcast - Marketing & B2B Technology Talk

Show highlights:

05:30 - Blake's background, talking about how he did eCommerce around college and mastered it. Then took sales role and realized that he liked marketing just as much as sales. He loved the new customer part. He also describes why enterprise outside sales is a tough role when it comes to closing deals.
11:00 - B2B vs B2C, and why B2C marketing is harder. We take a quick sidebar into eCommerce affiliate marketing and why it's a good side project for any B2B marketer. We also talk about how B2C eCommerce is closer to Inside Sales because of the quicker time to close, but with eCommerce you can't hide if your efforts are working or not. The ad sped directly correlates to payments on the website or not.
14:50 - We discuss Inbound, outbound, and paid. What are the differences? Inbound - how do you know what to be writing about, what will be interesting to your buyers, and what will get traffic. Creating the content isn't enough because you have to get the traffic SEO. Inbound marketers also need to understand how to execute on conversion and high level strategies that get results. Typically, bringing this in-house requires writers and designers. Outbound - setting up Inside Sales, how do we set up cadence tools, and how do we get to our buyers, plus how to be leveraging marketing automation. Paid - this are is difficult to just dip your toe in because it's complex. Outbound View, Blake's company, does all three of these because even with a good engine going, companies need to diversify because a channel can quit working at any time. Paid efforts enhances inbound and outbound.
19:00 - Hiring internal marketing resources is hard, and every single marketing agency service is easily $1,000-2,000. Smaller business owners either have to figure it out on their own, or find the local "cheap guy" in the city to get some tactical results at a lower cost than the big agency.
21:00 - ADRs and SDRs - are they becoming a marketing function versus just appointment setters in 2019? Blake is seeing more ADRs rolling up to marketing, but really the ADRs and Inside teams simply need to belong in the group with the best nurturing and oversight. So whichever function can provide that gets the SDRs, which is organization-specific. Typically, there is no compensation plan for Inside Sales people to want to push a white paper, event, webinar, etc. The proposed fix: doing an ADR or Inside Sales rotation where Inside Sales is dedicated to marketing content promotion for entire month in a quarter. Personalized emails work better than email blasts.
27:40 - It's not groundbreaking that Inside Sales should help marketing promote content, but if there's not structure to do this it becomes everyone's part time job which isn't effective and not thoughtful. Instead, Blake argues that there needs to be a human caller dedicated to providing buyer value. They're not asking for meetings out of nowhere. They're doing soft call to action, not hard. This method is a good introduction to your company to entire strangers (individuals or departments in existing accounts).
29:30 - Account Based Marketing with personalized content promotion, use for new logos or account expansion. Soft to use the call to action as events or webinars.
33:00 - How do sales and marketing get aligned for ABM? It can get complex quickly. It requires a legitimate marketing plan for an account, but that won't happen without executive sponsorship.
34:00 - LinkedIn ads for targeted accounts. $10 per click is expensive, but it depends on what buyer level you're shooting for. You can pretty easily get to very specific people on LinkedIn. Consider Facebook and Instagram targeting for cheaper if you have a list to upload.
37:00 - We discuss free LinkedIn organic methods, and doing social sales cadences.
40:00 - Executives are getting more involved in sharing knowledge with the community (especially on Social and LinkedIn) because they have something unique to say versus their ADRs who are new and don't have an opinion yet. Blake says he does podcast interviews or guest blogging because it leads to sales and pipeline and ROI on his time invested.
43:00 - Closing remarks from Blake at Outbound View.

Show highlights:

05:30 - Blake's background, talking about how he did eCommerce around college and mastered it. Then took sales role and realized that he liked marketing just as much as sales. He loved the new customer part. He also describes why enterprise outside sales is a tough role when it comes to closing deals.
11:00 - B2B vs B2C, and why B2C marketing is harder. We take a quick sidebar into eCommerce affiliate marketing and why it's a good side project for any B2B marketer. We also talk about how B2C eCommerce is closer to Inside Sales because of the quicker time to close, but with eCommerce you can't hide if your efforts are working or not. The ad sped directly correlates to payments on the website or not.
14:50 - We discuss Inbound, outbound, and paid. What are the differences? Inbound - how do you know what to be writing about, what will be interesting to your buyers, and what will get traffic. Creating the content isn't enough because you have to get the traffic SEO. Inbound marketers also need to understand how to execute on conversion and high level strategies that get results. Typically, bringing this in-house requires writers and designers. Outbound - setting up Inside Sales, how do we set up cadence tools, and how do we get to our buyers, plus how to be leveraging marketing automation. Paid - this are is difficult to just dip your toe in because it's complex. Outbound View, Blake's company, does all three of these because even with a good engine going, companies need to diversify because a channel can quit working at any time. Paid efforts enhances inbound and outbound.
19:00 - Hiring internal marketing resources is hard, and every single marketing agency service is easily $1,000-2,000. Smaller business owners either have to figure it out on their own, or find the local "cheap guy" in the city to get some tactical results at a lower cost than the big agency.
21:00 - ADRs and SDRs - are they becoming a marketing function versus just appointment setters in 2019? Blake is seeing more ADRs rolling up to marketing, but really the ADRs and Inside teams simply need to belong in the group with the best nurturing and oversight. So whichever function can provide that gets the SDRs, which is organization-specific. Typically, there is no compensation plan for Inside Sales people to want to push a white paper, event, webinar, etc. The proposed fix: doing an ADR or Inside Sales rotation where Inside Sales is dedicated to marketing content promotion for entire month in a quarter. Personalized emails work better than email blasts.
27:40 - It's not groundbreaking that Inside Sales should help marketing promote content, but if there's not structure to do this it becomes everyone's part time job which isn't effective and not thoughtful. Instead, Blake argues that there needs to be a human caller dedicated to providing buyer value. They're not asking for meetings out of nowhere. They're doing soft call to action, not hard. This method is a good introduction to your company to entire strangers (individuals or departments in existing accounts).
29:30 - Account Based Marketing with personalized content promotion, use for new logos or account expansion. Soft to use the call to action as events or webinars.
33:00 - How do sales and marketing get aligned for ABM? It can get complex quickly. It requires a legitimate marketing plan for an account, but that won't happen without executive sponsorship.
34:00 - LinkedIn ads for targeted accounts. $10 per click is expensive, but it depends on what buyer level you're shooting for. You can pretty easily get to very specific people on LinkedIn. Consider Facebook and Instagram targeting for cheaper if you have a list to upload.
37:00 - We discuss free LinkedIn organic methods, and doing social sales cadences.
40:00 - Executives are getting more involved in sharing knowledge with the community (especially on Social and LinkedIn) because they have something unique to say versus their ADRs who are new and don't have an opinion yet. Blake says he does podcast interviews or guest blogging because it leads to sales and pipeline and ROI on his time invested.
43:00 - Closing remarks from Blake at Outbound View.

Previous Episode

016: Understanding Buyer Problems as an Industry Expert for Sales Success with Shane Healy

Show highlights:

01:00 - Shane Healy talking about what got him interested in enterprise software, sales, and marketing. He introduced automation to a job that allowed him to do other work instead of manual processes.
05:00 - Using an alumni network and LinkedIn to get a job.
09:00 - How did college athletics make Shane successful in the Account and Sales Development Representative (ADR or SDR) role? Practice and constantly working on your craft as a baseball pitcher takes a lot of work. ADR role is the same and you have to decide you're going to be the best, or very, very good.
12:00 - How did Shane get interested in Customer Service and how those workflows can be improved by software? Especially customer service in software and how we can do better making it easier on the customer with data and predictive analytics and connecting siloed departments with workflows to connect the back end.
18:00 - Positioning value props as an SDR to different buyer personas. For example, in software it's that the buyer can get a better Net Promoter Score with improved customer service. Shane recommends working our way backwards from what problems the customers are trying to solve.
20:00 - Reps get too caught up in personalization. Shane empathizes with reps who have to get a lot of volume in their outreach, because his greatest success was leveraging 10k Annual Reports. "We solve a similar problem and helped a similar company with their Net Promoter Score. Outreach.io has a piece of content that helps reps leverage 10k reports. "Don't think these people are too big to respond if there's a problem to solve."
23:30 - Being careful in how you mention information you find in your research and having empathy in, say, a cybersecurity breach or an outage.
25:30 - Hand-off between ADR and Sales Rep. Shane supported product line team with shared quota with some district managers. When in doubt, loop everyone in internally.
30:00 - Shane walks through his ADR process and workflow for breaking into accounts. Shane used targeted accounts and similar case studies that made sense to the other accounts with similar companies. Then, he breaks it out across multiple emails for his cadence, so example: 2 emails problems we solve for similar companies, 2 are trends in the industry, and 2 initiatives with the company over a time period build out in Sales Loft. THEN, LinkedIn and DiscoverOrg are good cross-reference, then everything goes into the CRM.
34:00 - Philosophies on calling cell phones. Shout out to Jeremy from LeadIQ. The fact they have cell phone numbers is powerful. Not intrusive if it's not abused.
37:00 - Getting promoted from ADR to quota-carrying Inside Sales Executive. His mindset was that if he was close to or at quota, Shane spent time focusing on the toughest meetings his sales reps needed, which helped his internal brand at the company.
41:00 - First impression of quota carrying and leading demos, first meetings, deep dives to deal close. One, Shane says understand who you bring in and when (e.g. partner ecosystem). Two, the best sales reps don't know every nook and cranny about the product, but they know how to listen and bring in resources. Two, is time management. Shane has a lot of customers and some have more upside than others, so a sales rep has to choose where he or she spends time.
45:00 - Personal branding and Shane's take as a sales rep that they themselves get their views about the industry out there. Shane says you have to bring value as a sales rep other than taking orders, expressing ideas, and being a human is the new form of marketing.

Next Episode

018: Answering Questions for Buyers with LinkedIn Videos in IT and Telecom Financing with Seth Thompson

Importance of sales reps answering buyer questions, on video, and then distributing the video on LinkedIn to engage buyers in a way that builds trust and sets appointments over time. Show highlights:

07:00 - Seth Thompson's thoughts on majoring in communications studies. Also part of Powerlifting club. How University of Iowa and athletics made Seth the professional he is today. Valuing intellectual and physical strength and persistence. Not going to get quick wins because guaranteed results are never guaranteed. 13:00 - Idea of injury prevention in competitive fitness is similar to avoiding burn out in business. Doing the little, boring things right over time with discipline to get payoff. 16:00 - How Seth ended up in Sales. Why Seth enjoys customer facing. 21:00 - UCaaS (Unified Communications) as a service. Seth provides different ways for those that provide those services financial programs to help end customers to make purchases. SMB space is Device-as-a-Service, how do I have the latest and greatest and not go out of date. 26:00 - How Seth is acting as an advocate for his customers on LinkedIn. Using social media, not to sell customers but to educate them. Need to be using video because that's the trend to personalize to buyers. Answer questions in a non-biased way. You don't have to be an expert, just try to be helpful. 32:00 - Your personal branding content doesn't have to be perfect! Don't have to over-script, can't fear failure, it's okay to look away from the camera and sound dumb. Putting something out there imperfect is better than never putting anything at all. 36:00 - The internet didn't allow us to share video the same way. Sales people are so well suited in this new age of selling. 37:00 - Concern about not being an industry expert to not technobabble. How do you add value to a customer base without being technical in a technical industry? Seth says that you don't have to share groundbreaking stuff. Think of the top 10 questions your customers ask and "who is Seth?". Start asking questions. That's all you have to do and 80% of buyers will have the same questions. 42:00 - in 6 months you will start seeing return, Sales Navigator. You have to cold call and follow-up after sharing and engaging on LinkedIn. 45:20 - Seth's company wants him to get better at LinkedIn and supports him to do it. Takes it back to his business and makes a case. Virtual networking events. "LinkedIn is digital industry event our our time." 48:00 - Every lead you got at a tradeshow doesn't call you back, either...don't know how to do it without selling." I'm a person first, and then I happen to sell this, too. That buyer must believe in you first to buy from you. 50:00 - Company can take your tools, but they can't take your personal brand. 52:30 - Job hopping and documenting your story on LinkedIn. Protect career. 54:00 - Sales Leaders, you want these personal branding sales reps on your team because they will bring you customers. 55:00 - "I trust Aaron, he trusts his company, so therefore I trust his company." 56:00 - a lot of buyers aren't active on LinkedIn, and even if they are your still have to cold call and email. 57:00 - Final thoughts from Seth, driving the point home about being okay with failure and finding ways to help other professionals in personal development and their jobs.