020: Power of Storytelling in Software, Managing Perceived Value with Kyle Lacy

Eric Eicher and Bryan Kryder are co-founders of RightHand, a marketing agency based in Indianapolis, Indiana. I invited them on to share their framework for actively aligning stakeholders, such as executives, marketing teams, and sales leaders, to have a common language and goals for marketing campaigns. This ultimately saves teams time and gets better engagement from buyers. They learned this framework after years of making videos, websites, and campaigns that didn't "work" because strategy, messaging, and goals were misaligned.

Brent Patrick is Senior Marketing Manager at Scale Computing. He's responsible for Channel Marketing and Marketing Ops. This includes sales handoff and sourcing leads for the Account Development reps. In Episode 030, we discuss how agile marketing in 2020 has allowed their partners to increase revenue during a tough economic climate. Brent's holds certs in Pardot and the SiriusDecisions B2B Marketing. Certs help him think outside the IT industry, enabling good marketing execution with speed and confidence.

Jasmine Morris and I had blast in Part 2 talking about selling IT solutions to customers in 2020, especially when many sellers have had to execute from 100% inside and marketers have been 100% digital. Jasmine highlights how she doubled down on existing customers by helping them think about their future-state (which has been accelerated in 2020). We also touch on how getting technical certifications has helped Jasmine's confidence and ability to be a holistic seller (Tech, Business, and Human).

Jasmine Morris is an Account Manager at CBTS, selling IT solutions to small and medium-sized businesses in Indiana. She's also the Creative Director at Indy Black Millenials, and she's getting her MBA in Information Technology and has worked on a handful of sales engineering certifications.

In Part 1 of 2, we talk about Jasmine's work in the black community outside of work and how it has made her a more human, grounded professional. We discuss her lived experience as a black woman in tech.

Zach Broome is a Channel Partner at Procurri and he's produced over 30 videos on his "Procurri Zach" YouTube channel. Zach has now been in channel sales in the IT data center and infrastructure industry for almost six years, and for the past two years he's found that making video content as a salesperson keeps his relationships strong during long deal cycles. If you work in sales or marketing at a VAR, MSP, Solution Provider you'll enjoy this episode.

Zach's role at Procurri helps IT Solution Providers sell more net-new infrastructure deals by helping them drive down cost with Third Party Maintenance and hardware buybacks leading up to the old hardware asset decommission and the migration, whether that be cloud or on-prem.

We also talk about mindset, struggles as a salesperson, and how discipline, exercise, working on personal projects and waking up at 5:30am every day have helped Zach find success.

Casey Patrick O’Connor is the Owner of Can Do Can Teach ( CanDoCanTeach.com ).

He is also a mentor of mine and was one of my first managers right out of college when I worked in Sales and Tech Support at GoDaddy. Casey took what he learned after working at GoDaddy as a Leader in Customer Care for 14 years.

He’s an ultra-marathon runner, volunteer firefighter, and helps small business owners and unemployed get better traction with their professional endeavors.

At CanDoCanTeach.com he consults scaling sales and customer service teams, bringing accountability, tools, and process to organizations.

Show highlights:

01:00 – Aaron Intros Casey. Aaron tells a story of how Casey made an impact on him.

04:00 – How Casey’s mother, ultra-marathon running AND time at GoDaddy helped him be a better leader and have a strong mindset. Casey has made an impact on thousands of people in his career. Realizing the person you can become.

25:00 – How do you balance sticking to a plan, being aggressive with sense of urgency WITH a realistic timeline and patience. Starting CanDoCanTeach.com and being accountable for working through a process when you’re not where you want to be yet.

36:00 – Being a student of the process versus Fake it Until you Make it. What’s your philosophy? Believing in yourself. GoDaddy people who followed the process and leveled-up. Aaron learning how to sell from Casey and folks at GoDaddy because of the strong culture, this is systemic with the right leaders and culture.

44:00 – About Can Do Can Teach: candocanteach.com helps scaling teams with training and technology.

Find Casey Patrick O’Connor online:
Casey O’Connor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseyrunz/
Can Do Can Teach (Casey’s consulting company): https://candocanteach.com/

When do I use podcasting or branded events to get ROI versus make relationships? How do I use LinkedIn to distribute my media if I'm in a B2B business model? Who is best for starting a podcast? Should I be doing video, events, or podcast? What's the strategy for sourcing podcasts guests? Aaron Watson, CEO of Piper Creative, host of the Going Deep with Aaron podcast, and creator the Going Deep Summit discusses all this and more with us on Outcome Studio Podcast episode 025.

Show highlights:

01:00 - Aaron Watson, CEO of Piper Creative, host of the Going Deep with Aaron podcast, and creator the Going Deep Summit. Aaron graduated college in 2016 and shortly after graduation he started his podcast to find his career path since he was uninspired by the traditional career options. A mentor of his showed Aaron the power of digital media. Now he helps businesses achor their brand presence by storytelling either through video, podcast, and other media creation to capture a niche.

06:00 - What was Aaron's strategy for sourcing guests when he got started with his podcast? For him, it was easy cold outreach effort compared to cold outbound sales. It was more fun and he embarrassed himself as he started. As a host, Aaron learned to be conscious and empathetic as a communicator, and to modulate his tone and questions. He used the podcast to critique himself as host and to ultimately become a better professional.

11:00 - "Who do I want to learn from?" is the question Aaron asked himself to fuel the fire to the 400 episode mark. A question that comes up about podcasting, "Be niche or no?" or "Record the episode in-person or remote?" Aaron then discusses why he thinks listeners gravitate towards a specific host's style. Aaron says to stay interested, chase topics you're curious about that may seem like they don't fit a niche thread, but actually do. For example, Aaron talks about his podcast episode 396 with Kristy Knichel on Going Deep with Aaron. She's 22 year President and CEO of 3rd party logistics company, Knichel Logistics, but the real story? Kristy is now transforming her family business as a woman-owned, organically scaled strategy with employees and customer service is bar-non.

17:00 - How do podcasts make money? How do business owners tell stories in a way that builds relationships and trust with an audience of target customers and partners? Aaron frequently turns podcasts clients away. Why? Especially solo entrepreneurs and emerging business owners don't understand the costs to hire out the production work. Whereas, Aaron suggests that they start with video and text. The best podcast candidates are the firms that have an existing marketing budget and they need to reallocate dollars, in which case to podcast is best if there's a good company spokesperson. This scenario gives Piper Creative the opportunity to speak to the project champions at the company to start the podcast.

22:00 - Start with video first and dominate keywords in a niche now. Audio keywording and SEO won't be as relevant in search engines for 36-mounts. While the business spokespeople develop "media creation muscle", video can hide flaws more easily with jump cuts, which is great practice for raw interview and monologue style of the podcast.

27:00 - Is podcasting dead? Aaron discusses how Google is indexing voice for search algorithms and SEO. Plus, in podcasting it's still a wide open opportunity to capture a niche audience. For example, instead of the "Pittsburgh Podcast" it could be the "Restaurants of Pittsburgh Podcast" or instead of "Strength and Conditioning" it could be the "High School Football Coach Strength and Conditioning Podcast". The ability to go narrow and own a corner of podcast real estate is big.

31:00 - What is the power of a physical, branded event and bringing people together in person after doing something like digital media and the podcast? Aaron discusses the Going Deep Summit 3.0 (3rd Annual) which is March 2020.

37:00 - Why do panels at events sometimes suck? Aaron talks about "Design Thinking" that needs to be applied for panelists so that one person isn't dominating. Aaron gives the Pittsburgh nonprofit "Hello Neighbor" example. Aaron then describes how Design Thinking can be applied to create a robust Q&A. His host on stage prompts the audience by saying, "Now open for Q&A, and this time is to inspire our guests to share more of their perspective, not for you to provide your monologue on the topic. Thank you."

43:00 - What are your thoughts on LinkedIn for B2B content and distribution? Video is not required to be successful on LinkedIn. Add value, don't pitch. Take a whitepaper or an informative PowerPoint and upload it to your LinkedIn feed as a PDF. In 2019 and 2020, avoid posting external website links on LinkedIn because their algorithm devalues those posts. Remember the 90-9-1 rule for LinkedIn users, which is that 90% of LinkedIn users don't engage, 9% engage sometimes, and only 1% are actively creating. Aaron poses the question, how do you evaluate success if a post? He reminds us to treat your audience of any size, big or small, with the utmost respect because you never know who is listening.

51:00 - sign off.

This episode highlights that being a fearless professional can be easier with a confidant or mentor.

Occasionally, we luck out and get a company that invests in our training and us as a person. We might get a perfect boss.

Other times, bosses don't help us grow. Our companies might not gel with our styles. What if our management doesn't have the bandwidth to help level us up?

Can a peer mentor you? Can you proactively seek out a mentor? Should you find that individual who's learning and mentor him or her? Seth Thompson (Time Payment) and Kyle Steele (SEO Expert) share how being colleagues evolved into a mentorship and now a friendship, and they highlight how helping each other has made each of them prolific at content and creating professional brands. We also discuss the cross over between sales and marketing and tips for using LinkedIn to build relationships with interesting strangers.

Show highlights:

00:30 - Finding a mentor, stories from Kyle (mentor) and Seth (mentee) meeting in 2013 when Seth was right out of college. Mentor learns as much from the mentee, as Seth was a grinder former athlete and Kyle doesn't do well with routine

04:30 - Deal sizes roughly $30k through 100% Channel Sales, so deals can close in a few months, but the relationship can be about a year long before that deal hits the pipeline

08:00 - Finding a mentor, find someone that aligns with your style, proactively seek out relationships; mentor needs to be self aware that he or she has something to help a younger person or someone that is learning

12:00 - Find who is looking for help "Help who is swimming towards you"

16:00 - The "locker room" presence in the office, may not be manager but energy has to flow through that person to get full team buy-in; what do the senior reps know that I don't when they question management? Should I pay attention?

18:00 - Self awareness, Kyle did you annoy anyone and how did you handle it?

19:30 - cutoff, Kyle talking about hate me cuz they ain't me. "Seth, go be the best you that you can and no one can beat you." -Kyle

26:00 - Authenticity and positive intent, people can feel it in both sales, customer support, and finding the answer when you don't know it all

32:00 - Salepeople knowing marketing, and marketing people knowing sales, how is that helpful?

36:00 - Creating your own demand as a salesperson with content

41:00 - Salespeople know messaging best, marketers invent stuff because they don't have the customer relationships…"The only stopping you from winning is you."

Why should IT solution providers and manufacturers invest in content specific for buyers or verticals, even if it's a core piece of content once a quarter? In the world of IT, solution providers have access to partner portals with great content.

However, when the content is blanket and generic, is the content actually valuable to the customer? Do buyers "glaze over" it? In this episode, Greg Hammer, Director of Agency Services at IMS360 walks us through why a Field Marketer or a Solution provider would want to customize content. We also discuss positioning solutions and integrations with other tech (versus selling single technologies) and how to get sales team adoption.

Show highlights:

• 02:30 - Greg Hammer, Director of Agency Services at IMS360. He has a background in coding/ marketing undergrad/ MBA, and now gets to be both technical and do content for the IT Channel. Greg even worked a job in Yellowpages sales early in his career and has seen the marketing industry transform.
• 06:00 - Definitions for the IT Channel. OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), Resellers, and Distributors.
• 08:00 - Resellers do solution selling and sometimes partner portal content is too blanket. Manufacturers therefore are starting to enable resellers to start "customizing" content.
• 15:00 - How are we defining content? (e.g. a PowerPoint, versus video, versus email) Content for loyalty/ existing customers, versus new customers.
• 19:00 - Content formats vary, but it always needs to support sales cycle and buyers journey. Best practices working with an agency.
• 22:00 - Content can be a bad investment if it's not distributed. Marketing is both art and science.
• 25:00 - Ways to think about distribution.
• 29:00 - Account-Based Marketing and Persona Development for content.
• 33:00 - Example of how video content helped a reseller tell an in-depth story of a complex solution with one effective piece of content. They built awareness and used it for follow-up with the buyers after sales meetings.
• 37:00 - Parting words.

There are 4 main parts to a successful outbound campaign: List Optimization, Email, Phone, and Social Media. Sure, you could argue paid media might also fall into this as a channel, but let's stick to the basics. This episode 022 with Blake Johnston, CEO at OutboundView, is less focused on messaging and more focused on reducing friction within the tools and channels that help us have conversations. There is a category of technology called "Sales Acceleration" tools that the IT Channel needs to understand, because they can drastically transform your ability to connect with buyers to drive attendance to events, webinars, and other key marketing content for the purposes of educating buyers on complex IT solutions.

01:30 - Recap episode 017 with Blake Johnston on "Personalized Content Promotion", which is using Inside Sales resources to drive attendance to events, webinars, and to get engagement on content like white papers, recorded video, or demos.

02:00 - This episode is a partial case study, since Aaron and Blake did pilot for an IT manufacturer/ reseller in May 2019. What did we learn? In this episode we will put it into 4 parts: list building, email, phone, and social media.

04:00 - List building/ data cleaning fundamentals. Inside Sales team get ZoomInfo or DiscoverOrg lists. Even if the data is good, still need to do levels of validation. First, who are the specific contacts and job titles? Are some contacts a higher priority than others? Second, for events in a few weeks, how many people can you really engage? So second level validation, have people call all the way through the list to figure out direct line/ extension. THEN, third, put the sales team after everyone has been called through.

06:30 - Phone: Auto Dialing and tools that help have more conversations about your events and marketing. Let's say you only have one Sales person. First, that person could just manually dial, which takes forever and is fatiguing. Second, take a a little more automated approach by uploading leads to a tool that sits on top of a Salesforce leads or contacts report. As soon as it dials, it hangs up and moves to the next until you get a connect. Three, next level of dialers, people are calling down the list (sometimes 4-6 contacts simultaneously) and the second a contact picks up, you get the conversation in your ear. Some of these AI tools (like "ConnectandSell") take the stance, "...if you're going to be dialing, focus on conversations, not dialing itself". If event is good enough, the messaging resonates with buyers, then the more conversations you have the more you'll drive marketing engagement.

09:30 - Have Execs sit on ConnectandSell and have conversations (because they're not thrashing on the mechanics of dialing itself). How much would you pay for your VP to talk to X-job title in exact target market?

12:30 - Email: Outreach.io, a Sales Engagement technology for emailing 1:1. How is this different than Marketing Automation technologies? Making emails that look like they come from an actual person in a multi-touch sequence. When you look in your "sent" folder, you see them going out AND it's a consistent message so you can pull data off the efforts.

17:00 - How using videos paired with LinkedIn+Phone+Email can work together for Marketing to Drive attendance. Tools like Vidyard will integrate with these efforts.

21:00 - Don't over-architect process and workflows, but rather know your lists and audience and just start the outbound (making the calls, emails, and social touches). Learn, and then iterate on the first initiative. Closing remarks.