marketing – Page 5 – Sales for Nerds

028 Maurice Cherry on Content Marketing

Maurice Cherry

Maurice had always enjoyed using computers, even as far back as elementary school. He intended to get a computer science degree, but found that his degree program wasn’t very practical. He switched gears a little and became a math major. Maurice was named as one of GDUSA’s “People to Watch” in 2018, and was named one of Atlanta’s “Power 30 Under 30″ in the field of Science and Technology by the Apex Society. Maurice was also selected as one of HP’s “50 Tech Tastemakers” in conjunction with Black Web 2.0, and was also selected by Atlanta Tribune as one of 2014’s Young Professionals. He recently won the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from AIGA. He’s the host of the RevisionPath podcast, highlighting black designers and developers.

How did he accidentally end up in sales? He needed a job and telemarketers were hiring. It was humbling and soul crushing. He ended up getting fired.

Got a job working in design, based on a portfolio he had built up over time. This felt like his first real job, where he had a door with an office.

He worked at WebMD and AT&T, which sounds like it was a strange “Office Space” kind of dystopia, like a weird Black Mirror episode.

When he quite and started on his own, he had a rough time because selling was hard. He started working on a political campaign, in the aftermath of Obama’s successful use of the internet, which at the time seemed very cutting edge for the political world. (This was back in the day when MySpace was bigger than Facebook.) This led to business opportunities with other people in the city. He also joined forces with 2 other people, using this extended network to help land clients.

He ended up running his own agency for 9 years, then joined Fog Creek Software, after feeling like so much of the design world got commoditized. There, he specializes in creating content, and he’s got some important tips:

Build trust with your audience. People are so inundated that they often don’t even believe the truth, let alone marketing B.S.
Test. Test. Test. Take away the subjectivity. Even if you don’t have a huge audience.
Personalize.
How to “cheat” at content marketing– Maurice uses Google Keep to track notes. He’s had over 200 guests on his Revision Path podcast. When he sees a news item on one of his past guests, he logs it in Keep, so he can quickly put together a newsletter without having to dig for information. (Maurice uses RSS to keep on top of the news.)
Maurice uses Buffer to schedule social media posts in a queue. He likes to prepare content weeks to months in advance, and schedule it to go later. (Mental note– I need to get better at this.)
How do you know if content will be good? You may not. But ask people in surveys where they can criticize you anonymously. And stay in touch with your audience. Have a conversation. If you’re not hearing anything back from your audience, you’re not really having a conversation. Understand your audience– not only the topics that they care about, but the depth and length and language that they care about.

“Talk to your audience, get to know them.”

—-

Social Media Scheduling Apps:
Buffer
MeetEdgar (and check out the Sales for Nerds episode with MeetEdgar founder Laura Roeder.)
SocialBee

Google Keep

Black Mirror (Netflix TV series– prepare to be disturbed, especially one of the episodes that seems a little too much like one of the jobs Maurice mentioned in the interview)

Fog Creek Software (and check out the Sales for Nerds episode with Fog Creek CEO Anil Dash— really interesting technical insights into the sales process)

The wine

Venue Vineyards 2015 stage coach syrah Venge Vineyards 2015 Stagecoach Syrah –currently sold out at the vineyard– I was lucky enough to grab some at a local event– it’s a bit fancier than the wine I usually drink. 😉 Yummy, but very rich– you may want to have it with some food. (Goes nicely with BBQ, according to my research.)

Where to find Maurice:

Where you can find Reuben: @Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.

You can also listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, Player.fm.

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027 Justin Foster goes from ranching to sales to spiritual branding– come on the journey

justin-foster-300x300

No one on this podcast grows up aspiring to be in sales. I always enjoy hearing about the journey, and Justin Foster has had an amazing journey.

He grew up on a ranch– something we are more likely to experience through the mythology of the screen than in real life. While he loved ranch life, his home life was challenging.

He moved to Austin in 2014, and describes it as the first place that felt like home.

Justin started his marketing firm in 2003 with the notion that sales and marketing should get along. (Crazy talk, right?)

Justin got his first job in sales 10 years earlier, in 1993, because he and his wife had just had their first son, and he needed to make more money. He bugged an office supply company to give him a job on 100% commission, with no sales support, working a territory that no one else wanted. His sales training consisted of a product catalog. He became the top selling first-year sales rep in the company’s century-long history.

How did he do that? For one thing, ranching is hard work. He was used to doing that. So sales seemed much easier than ranching. Plus, he enjoyed talking to people, he always honest with people, and he had some charm.

He focused on small town governments and manufacturers, and a list of “maverick” accounts that other reps had tried to sell but without success.

Here’s the question he asked his buyer:

What do I need to do to make you look good? (For some people, it was about buying local, or maybe about saving money, or just avoiding running out of office supplies.)

Then he’s say, “what you need to do to make me happy is order just one thing, and I’ll hand deliver it.”

Why is it so important for sales and marketing to get along? Shouldn’t this be obvious? Yes, but the rise of social media has changed the playing field.

Here are Justin’s 3 Rules for marketing:

Tell the truth.
Find out what their needs are.
Be a human being. (This is hopefully starting to sound familiar to long time listeners.)

Branding is no longer the candy wrapper around the product.

“A brand is how other people experience what you believe”, whether you have a solo firm or Coca-Cola. Great brands are therefore spiritual experiences– Justin cites Patagonia, Yeti, and Southwest as examples of these great brands that create a connection beyond even the emotional level.

You connect with your mission. (A mission statement is evidence you don’t have a mission.)

A mission has few characteristics:

It has to improve humanity.
You can invite others to join your mission.
It’s a bit terrifying. It can seem like heresy– because it goes beyond your role, for example, of making your quarterly numbers.

What do brands need these days:

An authentic voice.
Consistently memorable experience.
Compelling story.

Unfortunately, brands usually miss some things along the way:

Lacking the will to want to be a brand.
Lacking the courage to be different– you can’t just be slightly better. (“Don’t be a karaoke singer– make your own music.”)
You have to do the work and make it a daily habit (uh-oh, I’m in trouble).

The best thing you can do for your sales team is:

Give them a product that doesn’t suck.
Provide good branding.

But #2 can’t make up for #1.

How can people get started:

Go to your website, and remove the “plastic flowers” — the jargon and other crap on your site.
Look at “time on site” in Google Analytics– this shows how much interest people– you already have a transaction with them– they are giving you their time.
Tell the stories of the people you are helping.

Most companies aren’t doing these things. Do them and see if your time-on-site goes up.

How do people find their spiritual mission and their roots?

Write down what you’ve always known to be true.
What would you be willing to commit civil disobedience over?

Justin notes that all industries are in chaos, and the only thing that cuts through the chaos is the truth. It can be hard for family businesses to brand because the older generation often ends up selling to their friends and can’t adjust.

You have to work on your personal brand, even if you’re not the founder of the company. It’s the one thing you can control. If you don’t like yourself, why would you expect others to like you? Self-worth is critical– confidence can be faked.

Books mentioned in the show:

The Go-Giver by Bob Burg.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown (“the power of choice can neither be giving away or taken away, but it can be forgotten”)

The wine whiskey…

Ben Milam Bourbon

Justin’s enjoying some Ben Milam Texas Bourbon from down the road in Blanco.

Justin’s also using a giant ice cube for less melting and dilution.

Ardbeg 10YO blanc Reuben has some Ardbeg 10 year old Islay Whisky. (Note the lack of ‘e’.) If you like it peaty, this is a great whisky for you.

Where to find Justin:

Where you can find Reuben: @Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.

You can also listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, Player.fm.

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026 The totally awesome networking strategy Chris Wike uses that you should use too

Chris Wike

Chris Wike is an attorney at Hajjar Peters here in Austin– not exactly someone you’d think to turn to for Sales for Nerds.

Lawyers can’t sell and market like everyone else. There are regulations and ethics rules and approval rules that limit what you can do. For example, if there’s a lawsuit against a business, lawyers can’t reach out and offer to help them with a specific case (unless it’s an existing client). If you want to run an ad on TV or send out a mailer, or even publish ads online, you need to get approval.

You can argue whether this is a good consumer protection or incumbent-driven efforts to make it harder for young lawyers (maybe some of both?), but that’s the reality, especially in Texas.

So, in this episode, Chris walks us through selling as a lawyer…

How Chris starts relationship building with folks you might not expect and how it gives him control of his career.
Chris’s rule for networking.
How he manages referrals.
How Chris gets meetings with high level people.
How Chris hosts networking events– this is a crazy good idea that you should start doing right now.
Why Chris doesn’t like retainers.
Chris’s strategy for networking outside of his own events.
How Chris tries to set himself apart as a service provider (great advice for any service provider).
Why it’s great that clients may not care what you’re telling them.
How do you give great value to clients.
Chris’s 2 rules for working with people and what he wishes students would learn in school.
A crazy internet lawyer ad. (And here he is getting busted for contempt.)

Plus, I interject with my philosophy on people and tell you how to get an inside track to Sales for Nerds.

Chris and his partners have a 1500 bottle cellar in their conference room.

wine wall

But you don’t need that to take advantage of Chris’s killer networking strategy.

The wine…

resign grenache 2015 Godspeed Granache from Resign Wine. Yummy blend of 80% Grenache, 20% Mourvèdre– the grapes are California, but the company is actually based here in Texas.

(As the producer notes, this label is supposed to yell, “f it! I’m out!”)

Where to find Chris:

p.s. I couldn’t make the last event Chris threw, so I’m now “banned for life.” 😉

Where you can find Reuben: @Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.

You can also listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, Player.fm.

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International Women’s Day– Some Sales Inspiration

Some awesome women have come on Sales for Nerds– here’s a quick recap:

Christina Bell accidentally learns to sell, starts training sales reps, and shares her philosophy of sales as a sorting exercise.
Laura Roeder on starting 3 businesses (plus how she got her own SXSW panel– might be too late to put this advice into practice for 2018)
Maura Thomas on managing your attention.
Jill Konrath on how to sell more in less time.
Marylou Tyler on Predictable Revenue and Predictable Prospecting (coming from a systems engineer).
Master Sommelier June Rodil on wine, customer service, delegation, and more.

There’s tons of great advice here, whether you’re a man or woman.

And even if you’re not in sales or marketing, if you ever want to convince someone to do something, especially something new, different, and perhaps scary, you are actually in the same field as those in sales and marketing.

Episode 23: Rohan Kale escapes the grind, starts a video marketing company, and travels the world

Rohan Kale is an international man of mystery. Ok, not so much mystery, but certainly adventure. He was on the typical track of a talented engineering student in India, grinding out 100 hour weeks for a big software company.

Wanting more, he made some bad choices, and got sucked into online gambling.

Needing to get away from that, he made his way to Germany. (He’ll explain why, and how we learned German and got a job at Daimler after arriving with no German language.)

Once again wanting more– to have the freedom to travel and explore the world– find out how he decided to start an online video marketing company (naturally, without knowing anything about video production).

In this episode, Rohan discusses:

How he got his first customers, before he even had a website, while he still had his day job.
The channels he used to get conversations and how he closed with no track record.
How he scaled his initial marketing efforts.

Plus, some tips from on a pro on how to craft your own videos, including:

Common pitfalls, especially the “Curse of Knowledge”.
The importance of a good script.
How to make different videos for your home page, for demos, and for support.
The simple setup you can use to get started.
When to use YouTube and when to use Wistia.
How to turn your videos into other forms of content.

Plus, get some travel inspiration from Rohan’s travel schedule and adventures at Oktoberfest.

Prost! (Or “cheers!” in German, as I learn.)

The wine…

Monchhof Riesling Mönchhof Riesling, 2008. As I mentioned, if I think of it as “wine”, I find it way too sweet. But if I think of it as “dessert in a glass”, it’s pretty good.

Rohan was drinking a Helles beer from Munich. Helles (“helles” means “bright” in German— this beer was developed in response to the popularity of lighter Czech lagers in the 1800s).

Where to find Rohan:

rkale.com
LinkedIn
@RKaleOfficial
Where Rohan learned German: Pimsleur.com

Where you can find Reuben: @Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.

You can also listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, Player.fm.

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Episode 21: Michael Katz on Winning by being a likeable (human) expert

michael-and-emily How do you differentiate yourself when your competitors are also experts?

And would you want to take advice on differentiated service from someone who spent over a decade working for a cable company?

It sounds crazy, but in this case, you should.

Michael Katz did in fact spend over a decade at a cable company. But then, through a series of happy accidents, he became Chief Penguin at Blue Penguin Development, helping small services companies market better. He’s also been quoted in the WSJ, the NYT, Business Week Online, Forbes, Inc, USA Today and more. Plus, he’s won an award for humor.

Hear about those happy accidents (well, they seem happy now) and more, including:

How he quit his stable job during the internet boom and failed.
How he accidentally stumbled on a niche and how that turned into a great business.
Why he doesn’t care about SEO or Google ranking.
Michael’s 3 step process for being successful in services (some of this advice may start to sound familiar to regular listeners).
Michael’s “Sports Illustrated” Rule for successful marketing newsletters.
How your marketing is like going to the gym (and Michael saves me a lot of time, right on the show)
How Seth Godin has been stealing his best ideas for years (remember the humor bit)
How being authentically yourself at work and beyond makes life so much easier.

Michael’s also got a new book (it just happened to come out between the time we recorded the interview and the time it’s published, which is why we didn’t talk about it on the show) called The Likeable Expert, 121 Insights to Start Your Day and Grow Your Business.

Bonus: Get the first 15 tips free here on this page Michael set up just for listeners.

The wine…

I enjoyed a(nother) glass of 2013 Franciscan Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley. A nice, up the middle of the road cab. (It’s pretty expensive on the Franciscan.com site, but you can get it for $15-18.)

Yes, this was from the episode with Aaron, saved thanks to the Vacu Vin Wine Saver (really handy for enjoying a bottle over the course of a few days).

... and the beer…

Smoke & Dagger black lager from Jack’s Abbey in Framingham, MA.

Where to find Michael:

Where you can find Reuben: @Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.

You can also listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, Player.fm.

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Episode 20: Aaron Ross on going From Impossible to Inevitable

Few authors have had the impact on sales that Aaron Ross has had over the past few years. His first book, Predictable Revenue, called “the sales bible of silicon valley”, he co-authored along with Marylou Tyler, who was on Sales for Nerds in Episode 14.

Now he’s back with From Impossible to Inevitable: How hyper growth companies create Predictable Revenue. This time, Jason Lemkin, former CEO of EchoSign, leader of SaaStr, and more, is his coauthor.

This book breaks done how companies can grow quickly and sustainably, with 7 steps:

You’re not ready to grow until you Nail a Niche.
Overnight success is a fairy tale. You’re not going to be magically discovered. You need sustainable systems that Create Predictable Pipeline.
Growth exposes your weaknesses and it will cause more problems than it solves—until you Make Sales Scalable.
It’s hard to build a big business out of small deals. Figure out how to Double Your Dealsize.
It’ll take years longer than you want, but don’t quit too soon. Make sure you can Do the Time.
Your people are renting, not owning their jobs. Develop a culture of initiative, not adequacy by Embracing Employee Ownership.
Employees, you are too accepting of “reality” and too eager to quit. You can Define Your Destiny to make a difference, for yourself and your company, no matter what you do or where you work.

Aaron does all this while he and his wife raise 12 kids (!!!) (mostly adopted, for those wondering how that’s even possible for such a young-looking guy).

You might think that Aaron’s some sort of superman, or at least a cyborg, but what’s great about his books is that he admits that this is hard. There’s no “X easy steps to winning.” In fact, the books include painful episodes in Aaron’s life, and the admission that things will be hard and tiring.

His whole career in sales started because he didn’t really know how to sell. He never thought about sales, and certainly never thought he’d end up the author of best-selling sales manuals.

But when his first company failed because he didn’t have the sales chops he wanted to have, he joined Salesforce.com. He was employee number 150, which gave him a bit of stock, but not enough to get rich, and he was “on step up from the interns.” He helped build the outbound engine that developed leads before handing them off to account managers. This helped salesforce grow rapidly and efficiently.

However, it wasn’t until he left salesforce and was consulting with another company that he realized how critical it is to specialize your prospecting (early funnel) and your account management (late funnel).

Even if you don’t have a huge sales team, even if you’re just one person doing everything, you still need a way to focus on your time and energies on these different activities. As they write in the book:

Specializing your roles is the #1 most important thing for creating predictable, scalable sales growth.

Even if it’s just marking different times in your calendar for different activities.

What else did Aaron learn?

First, the importance of “Nailing your Niche”.

This comes up again and again, but “you’re not ready to grow until you nail a niche.” This doesn’t mean you can only work in your niche, but you need to have one and nail it. It makes everything easier.

While consumers tend to buy what they want, business tend to buy what they need. If you’re talking to people and they say, “that’s cool”, but they don’t buy, that means it’s a nice-to-have.

Once you’ve got your niche nailed, you can use your:

Seeds (word-of-mouth)
Nets (marketing– including testimonials, which are a form of word-of-mouth)
Spears (outbound targeted marketing and business development)

Aaron also offers some tips on how to handle the overwhelming number of possible sales and marketing activities, with what he calls “cake vs icing.”

The cake is the core thing that helps your grow your business. For Aaron, it’s writing books. For Jason, it’s being active answering questions on Quora. (If you’re in the software world, you should follow him.) Do that one thing well, and then you can use that in other ways (the “icing”). Don’t try to do everything, or you’ll never get anywhere. Aaron blocked out Wednesdays for a year to write the the book. For Aaron, social media isn’t very interesting, so he hires someone to help him with that part of marketing.

As a pricing guy, I also appreciated Aaron’s view that you should spend as work trying to double your average deal size as you do finding and closing twice as many deals. As Marc Andressen says, “raise prices“.

Aaron also provides some tips on how he manages the family schedule (“one day at a time”). If you’v got less than 12 kids, no complaining. 😉

The wine…

Aaron couldn’t partake, because he was in the middle of the morning California time, plus, while he really wanted a glass of wine, he knew it would put him to sleep which is not good when you have a short workday and a huge household logistical puzzle to solve each day.

However, I enjoyed a glass of 2013 Franciscan Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley. A nice, up the middle of the road cab. (It’s pretty expensive on the Franciscan.com site, but you can get it for $15-18.)

Where to find Aaron:

www.PredictableRevenue.com
www.PredictableUniversity.com
www.FromImpossible.com (get your free book chapter here)
@MotoCEO
Get the books
- Predictable Revenue
- From Impossible to Inevitable

Where you can find Reuben: @Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.

~~Get the episode on iTunes.~~ (check out the new Apple Podcasts– nice!)

You can also listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, Player.fm.

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Episode 9: Matthew Pollard on learning to sell

Matthew Pollard (“The Rapid Growth Guy”) comes on Sales for Nerds to talk about how he learned to sell and become one of the top sales reps in Australia, despite being extremely introverted. He took an approach that seems so simple after he mentions it, but I hadn’t heard of anyone else doing sales “self-training” this way.

In this episode, Matt discusses:

How he taught himself to sell, including the steps of the sale, how to turn features into benefits, and how to close.
How he taught his team to sell.
“People hate to be sold to, but people love to buy.”
Why if you’re doing too much “hard core selling”, your message isn’t right.
Why introverts have a long term advantage in sales versus most extraverts. (And how to take that advantage.)
Why he puts the message first, even before the audience.
Why you need to turn features into benefits, and benefits into stories.
Why stories are so important.
What can I do above and beyond the core functional skills/services/products to give my customer an amazing experience.
Why you don’t want to spend tons of time writing “educational” proposals– it not only wastes your time, it decreases your chances of winning.
If you confuse the customer, you lose the sale.
Practical steps on niching, including a real world example (and a meta-example of Matthew’s storytelling).
Why our brains are overwhelmed by input and we have to focus.
Focus on the people who love what you do– not the people you can never make happy.
Most people have been motivated by fear of not having enough money for most of their lives. They have a set of goals that are driven from here.
Why if you do what you love, there’s always more energy (as shown by Matthew in this interview after getting 4.5 hours of sleep).
The mistake people make in underestimating themselves.

Get the episode now on iTunes.

The Wine

Senorio de Barahonda Sin Madera 2012– lots of pepper and blackberry and some licorice, but not in a bad way. Opens up nicely — although, as we note, it could really do with a steak or a lamb chop. 😉

Where you can find Matthew: Web site, @MatthewPollard_, LinkedIn. And here’s his growth exercise.

Where you can find Reuben: @Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.

p.s. Here’s Sydney Road, where Matthew started his sales career:

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Episode 8: Erik Luhrs on Positioning

Erik Luhrs (“The Bruce Lee of Lead Generation”) He is the creator of Subconscious Lead Generation and GURUS Selling, and is the author of BE DO SALE. In this episode, Erik talks about how good positioning provides the foundation for successful sales (and how bad positioning ruins your sales efforts, even if you execute well).

Here are some key nuggets:

Why if you’re crashing into a (sales) wall, you don’t want to check the last 50 feet, you want to check your map.
Why you don’t want to try to make up for bad positioning with sales heroics.
If your market doesn’t appreciate differentiation, you’re in the wrong market, or you’re looking at the market the wrong way. (The majority of businesses that have problems are going after the wrong target market.)
If you have chosen the right target market— what’s different about your perspective?
Why you need to have a niche (sound familiar if you’ve listened to other episodes?), with some great examples.
People’s biggest problem is that they don’t know what they’re biggest problem is.
If they don’t understand their biggest problem, they’ll bring in the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
If you’re going to do the same stuff as everyone else, you don’t need to open your business.
Effective positioning doesn’t just attract the right prospects, it eliminates the wrong prospects, so you don’t waste time and energy on them.
Once again, how we are not rational creatures…
How he broke the single day sales record at Champs Sporting Goods when he was 17.

The toolkit Erik mentioned.

The Wine

Pali Wine Co Pinot Noir, Santa Barbara, 2014. Really nice jammy Santa Barbara pinot. 😉 (Erik had a Blue Moon.)

Where you can find Erik: Web site, @erikluhrs, LinkedIn

Where you can find Reuben: @Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.

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Episode 6: John Livesay on How to Pitch

John Livesay (aka “The Pitch Whisperer”) helps entrepreneurs craft compelling pitches. He’s the author of The Successful Pitch: Conversations On Going From Invisible To Investable (pretty good pitch, right there in the title), host of The Successful Pitch Podcast, and has been featured in Inc., Forbes, Fast Company, CBS, Fox, and more.

….

In this episode, John discusses how he got into this niche, how hard he worked on his own pitch, plus: