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Join George Leith on the latest episode of the Conquer Local Podcast as he chats with Will Palmer about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the legal niche. While Will has 15 years of professional Sales and Marketing experience, he has dedicated the last nine years to the legal industry. His accomplishments include being a 4-time winner of The Sales President’s Club Qualifier by ADP & Thomson Reuters, and Regional Salesperson of the Year by Thomson Reuters. He founded three companies; KyteStrings Digital, dedicated to Med Spa Marketing, Growth Lab, a Legal Marketing service, and lastly, Performance Content Partners, his most recent SEO content services. To learn more about Growth Lab, visit: https://growthlabseo.com/about/ Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners, agencies, and enterprise-level organizations. Learn more about Vendasta, and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) make up to $10,000 off referrals. Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Then, keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy. SEO in the Legal Niche Introduction George: This is the Conquer Local podcast, a show about billion-dollar sales leaders, marketers leading local economic growth, and entrepreneurs that have created their dream organizations. They wanna share their secrets, giving you the distilled version of their extraordinary feats. Our hope is, with the tangible takeaways from each episode, you can rewire, rework, and reimagine your business. I'm George Leith, and on this episode, we welcome Will Palmer. With over 15 years of professional sales and marketing experience and nine of the 15 dedicated to lawyers, we're gonna learn from Will how to capture this lucrative niche. He's a four-times President's Club Qualifier and won Regional Salesperson of the Year, and when you listen to Will, you'll see he is a dialed-in sales professional. He founded and rebranded three different companies and I wanna hear that story for sure. Get ready, conquerors, for Will Palmer. He's coming up next on this week's episode of the Conquer Local podcast.  George: Well, it's been a while since I've been to Kansas City, Missouri, so today we're gonna do it virtually. Will Palmer on the line with us from Kansas City, CEO, and founder of Growth Lab. Welcome, Will, to the Conquer Local podcast. Will: Thanks, George, good to be here. George: We're pretty excited to have you on the show because you've been very successful in your career working in what I consider to be a really lucrative space, which is working with law firms. But love to understand a little bit more about your background and how you became the SEO expert that you are today. Will: Yeah, I'll give you the rundown with my experience. So, I guess the best way I would describe myself would be sort of an internet nerd, and my wife would attest to that. I've just always been on the computer from a young age and sort of turned into this legal marketing entrepreneur over the last almost 10 years, believe it or not. And so, worked with, you know, pretty national well-known agency in the marketing space for legal. Before that, had pretty traditional professional sales experience with some big players, like ADP, and ultimately, in the last couple of years, have realized my dream of being an entrepreneur and quitting sorta the corporate world to give myself just an opportunity to kinda build my own empire, so to speak, to have really better work-life balance, to build a team, to take sorta my creativity and apply it to the business world, take my sales experience, apply that to my ability to acquire our own customers and really just gain a lot more control over the sales process, the marketing solutions that we provide that lead to really good results for our law firms that we serve. So it's been a really fun ride and I just wish I did it sooner. George: Yeah, you know, we were talking about this before we jumped onto the show. You were in the corporate world for quite some time, honed all your skills, and then took the plunge. So congratulations on that. And what you are articulating, I hear from lots of entrepreneurs, "I just that we woulda done it earlier." But for folks that are listening on to the show today, I do wanna talk a little bit about your experience, because you mentioned, you know, you're doing the sales. Like you're right in there doing the sales and leveraging all those skills. Is that a key component to your success, obviously? Will: Yeah, I think, and I've talked about this before, in my humble opinion, one of the most important common traits among the most successful entrepreneurs, no matter how big the business is, is the ability to sell and get out of your comfort zone if you aren't familiar with sales and to sell. So yeah, I would say it's played a significant role in our ability to scale quickly because the sales process, obviously, being one sort of cog in the machine in terms of how you can scale quickly with revenue and make a really valuable service for your clients. But sales has been a huge component of that, no doubt. George: So you founded and rebranded three different companies. Let's talk about those and the niches that they serve. Will: Yeah. Try not to do that if you're listening. Yeah, you know, you learn and you make kinda some mistakes, but yeah, that's really what happened. And just to touch on the why behind that and a little bit about my journey. When I was with a large organization serving legal, and I've served legal for close to 10 years now, coming up on 10 years, you know, I certainly didn't wanna violate any non-competes, things like that. So really, I carved out a niche in a space that was geared towards med spas and sorta healthcare. And it worked really well. We brought in a lotta good money and it was called KyteStrings Digital. It was really an integrated approach where we would essentially touch every channel. Despite my sales background, I guess I'm a little bit unique in that I, like I mentioned, I'm sorta the marketing nerd as well, and that I can practice what I preach. I love digging into analytics and different acquisition channels and all that. So we could say yes to a lotta different things over there. So we could say yes to automation, email marketing, Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO, website, I mean, everything you could think of, we could say yes to, and that was good because it earned us a lotta business quickly. The bad part of that was that it was not scalable. There was a lot of elements to that that were out of our control in terms of building repeatable, predictable, and high-output processes within each of those channels. It's just almost impossible to do effectively unless you have a 30- or 40-employee agency and you've been around for a long time. So, when I left the corporate world and I was out of the non-compete, I was able to pivot back into legal. Between that process, I had created a new entity and made a different brand. And that was purposes for equity distribution among the partnerships I was exploring, so I won't get in the weeds on that. But ultimately, we did finalize sort of hopefully our, knock on wood, our final rebrand, which is called Growth Lab. It really exists to allude to the fact that, you know, my team is, we're very deep and skilled in a few very key areas, and we're not wide. I literally took the opposite approach. Instead of trying to offer a lot of things so that I could say yes to a lot of business, I turned down a ton of business or refer it to agency partners or colleagues in the space that do things outside of what we do. And really, we only do three things for law firms at this point with Growth Lab. We do SEO, which is really our bread and butter. We do SEM, so we run ads on Google, Yahoo, Bing, so search ads. And we do websites. That's the only three things we do. We do not touch anything else. And Growth Lab has been successful at really scaling because of how deep our knowledge is in those areas. George: Well, it's fascinating to me, because what you're referring to, I've talked a lot on this show about over my career, where I sold radio ads, on one station with one format to reach one audience. And then digital comes along and I loved the fact that we could solve more problems, but I wanna understand why tailoring it to just three things, I think it has something to do with scalability, but explain to us what the strategy is there. Will: Yeah, it has to do with scalability, but even more important than that, I think, it has to do with how we can best serve our customer base. And so, if you're an agency owner or even if you're a business and you're trying to understand where to invest a dollar in marketing and sort of, what are the most high-priority things, 'cause as I just alluded to, there's let's say a dozen different channels or strategies you can invest in, depends on your clients' clients. So our law firms' clients, unlike other industries, like healthcare or e-comm or product-based stuff, where you're trying to sort of educate the marketplace, where that's, in my opinion, social media can work really well, if you're trying to create demand, demand creation, we're not in the business of demand creation for legal. We're in the business of demand fulfillment. And so, if you think about a law firm, let's say, you get a DUI. You have a pretty urgent need for an attorney if you're arrested for some kinda criminal charge. Let's say you're trying to get a divorce or you need a divorce attorney. There's a pretty, typically a pretty high urgency around that or personal injury, if you're in a car accident, right? We see the billboards and the TV slots for that. There's a need that needs to be fulfilled with some urgency, and there's some legal questions that need to be urgently answered. So, when we looked at our clients' clients and the legal consumer and their journey to connect to a law firm, and just having been in the space and tried a lotta different things, the most linear path for a legal consumer to connect with a law firm is through search, through SEO, I mean, it's the real estate on Google. And so, if you do a search for top car wreck attorney in whatever city or any of the other practice areas I just mentioned, that real estate includes the local service area ads and pay-per-click at the top, of course, map section and basically organic below that. And that's when our clients can dominate those areas and there's a website on the backend that tells a really unique story, it tells people who they are, what they do, and how to contact them and sort of the five-second rule that I call it, and it converts, that, those three things are the highest return on investment channels, in my opinion, that legal can pursue with their dollars. That, again, is the most linear path. So yeah, it's scalable, but it also serves our client best. And I can talk more about the scalability piece, but it's just been incredibly effective at the results piece. And that's where we're getting referred and getting a lot of growth happening. George: How do you overcome the fact that lawyers are competitive? If you're working with one law firm in a market, are you able to work with others or do you have to go into another market and kinda give 'em a bit of an exclusivity? Will: That's a great question. And our prospects ask us the same question as well. Like, well, "Are you working with other firms in Atlanta," or Houston or LA or whatever it is? And I'm always, of course, honest about it, but what I usually tell people, because when I was with in the corporate world and with Thomson Reuters, I had over 100 clients in Kansas City alone, which is kinda mind-boggling. People don't realize how many solo and small law firms are out there in every metro. And that is problematic. I mean, that's incredibly saturated. But what I usually tell people, and to answer your question is, you want a law firm or any business to participate in the process of search, in the process of client, you know, decision-making processes. And the data behind the legal consumer, and I'm sure this applies to other industries that some of your listeners may be dabbling in or focused on, is that consumers aren't looking at one website before they make a call or fill out a web form. They're looking, you know, between three and four, at least in the legal space. So, as long as our clients are participating in that process and we can effectively differentiate them through unique value proposition language and content and headlines, and just to give you some real-life examples, you know, you may be a woman that needs a divorce and maybe you want a female divorce attorney on your side, or maybe, you know, you got a DUI and there's a younger, hungrier looking attorney with a bunch of accolades or maybe there's an older attorney that has more experience, 'cause you have a really high-stakes, you know, white collar crime involved. And there's always this psychological and cognitive decision-making process at play. And as long as we can get our clients into that position, they usually are going to win because consumers do want choices. So, the other thing too, there's always a right way and a wrong way to do marketing with legal. And if you're an attorney and you believe in the power of digital, and you believe in legal consumers going online to choose an attorney, which is what they do, you can either work with somebody that has seen it all and knows exactly how to build these campaigns, or you can work with somebody that may claim they do and you're still having to compete with everybody else. Do you know what I mean? George: Right. Will: We understand that and we can differentiate our clients so that they're all getting results, in my opinion. George: No, that's really, really well thought out. What I was jumping at is, I got a good feeling that you've had this conversation a few times where you're dealing with a client and they say to you at the end of the presentation, after they sign on the contract, they go, "Just don't sell it to my competitor." 'Cause they see it as a competitive advantage. That's the idea of the perfect sales pitch, in my opinion. Will: Yeah. And that, I'd probably say this, you know, I get it, I'd probably say something similar. But you know, I'm a business owner, they're a business owner, we're all entrepreneurial. George: Yeah. Will: At the end of the day, if they're not happy with the results we're providing, I certainly don't want anybody handcuffed to us with, you know, 12-month term agreements and things like that. I mean, we're a very flexible team. Our team is, we're very entrepreneurial. We're very pragmatic. We're incredibly skilled at what we do and dynamic, and I'm just bragging on my team because we understand the marketing systems that grow our clients' businesses. And if, for some reason, there's a competition issue where it's preventing results from happening, I mean, we'll get it fixed. It's not something we've had to come across thus far. George: That's fascinating. Hey, often, the account manager and the SEO fulfillment coordinator are two different fields. Do you have one person fulfilling both account management and SEO for your clients? Will: We do. The way I structured our team is a bit unique in that our account managers are fulfilling a lot of the SEO services that we provide. Not all of them, but that was intentional after sort of some trial and error where they were, you know, leading teams behind them and just reporting on results and acting as that liaison. But the problem is, when you have an account manager also fulfilling a lot of the SEO, the technical SEO stuff, it reduces the distance between results and communication with clients. 'Cause the SEO space is full of a lot of imposters, unfortunately, that talk a big game, but they don't deliver what they promise, you know? George: No, unfortunately, it is tainted with that for sure. So, given the knowledge and experience that you've garnered over the last number of years in your career, this 15-year career, if you go back and do something differently or a couple things differently, what would that be? Will: Yeah, I mean, based on the knowledge that I have now, I would certainly say niche down, both with clients and with your service offerings. In fact, there's a company that a colleague and I just incorporated and we're gonna bring on some clients that is so niche, it's geared content, it's content only. So it's a content marketing agency geared specifically towards a single niche. So it's not even SEO and website. I mean, it's literally we're just going to produce SEO content. It's called Performance Content Partners where the entire point of that content is just to drive qualified traffic and leads through a website through, you know, high-intent content. So when we're scaling down and niching down, and serving a very specific audience with a very specific service set, that is what I would do much earlier on in sorta my entrepreneurial journey with marketing. It's just much easier to create repeatable processes, teams that are very expert in what they do, and that, again, it leads to higher value for our clients. George: And I think that it's a really good lesson, because where missed expectations happen is where you get that, you know, huge menu of items that you deliver and some of them you don't deliver on a regular basis aren't very good, and then it leads to bad experience. I'm trying to dig into this, but I think that this is what you're trying to solve against by having a smaller set of things that you do really, really well. Will: Yeah, exactly, and I think, for the entrepreneurs and agency owners that are listening and also the business owners that are trying to understand how to best grow their business with marketing, the advice I always tell people, and this is not a sales pitch towards what we do, I even say to prospects, even if you don't work with our team, what I would encourage you to find is a agency or a marketer that is really focused on what you do. Because I think most agencies out there have what I call a heterogeneous customer base problem, in that their customers are not all the same. They serve lots of small businesses or even enterprise kinds of clients. And the problem with that is when you don't have a niche that you serve, like legal as an example, one of many, then the insights that you gather, the strategies you use from working with just legal or just one kind of customer are not able to be recycled, there's no relearning. And when you're marketing to each new customer, you're having to sort of relearn things. And as a result, there's an efficiency problem that happens and your ability to deliver consistent results to your customer base, that is lost. And I think the more customer types you bring on in an agency, the worse service can get for each customer because it's sorta creating this negative feedback loop and customer results ultimately get hurt in that process that we found. George: No, there's some really good lessons in there, and you know, the one thing I wanna leave our audience with is we've gotta congratulate you on the big award that you won here recently, Will. So congratulations, Vendasta's Strategy Excellence Award for 2022. We'll see if you can defend that next year. But thanks for educating us today, some great learnings, and we wish you all the best with your organization as you continue to grow. Growth Lab is a juggernaut. You're doing a great job there. Will: Thanks, George, really appreciate you having me on. Conclusion George: We've been hearing about this niching down thing, phenomenon. I wonder if it shouldn't be niching to win, because niching down, to me, is a little bit negative. But what Will was referring to is by dialing in your offerings and having less offerings that very clearly solve the problems that your customer base has, and then not selling to everybody, being very focused on one vertical or one niche that you do really well, you have a chance to get higher paying customers with larger margin, and you deliver every time. And wouldn't it be great to say that when you sit down with your customer and you get a smile on their face and they're just talking about, "Wow, that was a great month? Look at all of the leads that we were delivered or the new customers that we were able to speak to." It's pretty cool to see it happen, and Will is living it every single day. And you can hear because he's been doing it for a long time, there's quite a bit of discipline needed. Because you have to be ready to say no, to say that that doesn't fit with what we know we can deliver and be successful with. If you liked Will's episode, I sure did, discussing SEO in the legal niche, then let's continue the conversation. Check out these episodes. 217, "The Evolution of Search Engine Marketing," with Sandy Lohr, episode 422, "A Guide to Google Ads," with Mike Rhodes, or episode 514, "The Current State of Vendor and Media Company Relations," with Martin Kristiseter. Please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and thanks for joining us this week on the "Conquer Local" podcast. My name is George Leith. I'll see you when I see you.

SEO permeates every facet of the modern business. Local businesses need to be practicing SEO tactics to survive, and consumers depend on search results to make informed purchase decisions. But, as a salesperson, how do you position SEO to deliver a clear value proposition? And how does that change 30, 60, 90, or 120 days down the road? All of your questions will be answered as we are joined by Will Scott, CEO of Search Influence, and a true pioneer in the digital space. Will launched his first website in 1994 and has been driving digital innovation in the space ever since. — Introduction George: It is the latest edition of the "ConquerLocal" podcast. We continue our special editions where we're speaking about everything to do with the digital marketing stack for local businesses and we're talking about every stage. And we actually might cover off a bunch of stages today because joining me on the line, he's in Florida right now because he's getting ready to run an Ironman on Sunday. But he hangs his hat in New Orleans, one of my favorite cities in the world. Will Scott, the CEO of search influence. He's probably one of the sharpest guys when it comes to SEO, started in the space in 1994 when he launched his first website and we are gonna bring him on the show to give us some insights into how to position SEO to your customer and also how to speak to the value proposition 30, 60, 90, 120 days down the road with those clients. And Will always have some great stories to tell. So we're gonna get some of those and we're going to fill you in on that world of search engine optimization. It's all coming up. Will Scott, the CEO of Search Influence is next on the "ConquerLocal" podcast. — It is the latest addition to the "ConquerLocal" podcast. Thanks for joining us today. We have a special guest joining us from New Orleans, one of my favorite cities. And Will Scott, the CEO of Search Influence on the line. Will, thanks for joining us. Will: George, thanks for asking me. George: You know, we're talking about the digital marketing stack that a local business needs to deploy from awareness through to, you know, your listings and your online reputation and your website and the ranking of that website, the conversion and then the advocacy that you need to get from your existing customers. And, you know, we would need to talk about SEO, who should I call? And there was just one name that came to my mind and that was you, Will, because I remember when you and I met about five-and-a-half years ago, I was speaking on a panel and somebody made some outrageous comment that was on the panel and you jumped in. And I think it was, "You don't wanna respond to negative reviews because you'll get negative keywords," or I can't remember what it was, but it's some crazy bloody thing of not responding to a negative review, you didn't wanna do that. The SEO (R)evolution George: Anyways, that's how we met. And, you know, the purpose of this podcast is to help those sales reps that are listening to it as the training material that we try to provide on how to position this digital marketing stack. That's our goal. And we haven't really said it's gonna be 6 episodes, 12, it might be 20 by the time we're done depending upon who we're able to bring in to speak to it. So today, let's talk about SEO. And, you know, can you give us a bit of an overview of the SEO business and how it's kind of evolved in the last five years? Will: Yeah, thanks, George. I think the growth of the SEO business and the sort of changing of the SEO business from the time that I got into it. And for context, I put my first website online in 1994. So I've been doing this for, conservatively speaking, a long-ass time. The thing that's most interesting to me is there's a great scene in the movie "All That Jazz" where they dance to the song "Everything Old is New Again." And I feel like that is just so relevant because whether we call it SEO or even now online PR or content marketing, it's all of the same stuff. George: Okay. So how is that that it's all the same stuff? Will: Will Reynolds gives a great talk in which he sort of shows how Google does things in response to what they believe are human behaviors. And then SEOs do things in response to what Google has done. And Will's point is that instead of chasing Google, SEO should be chasing the human beings. So how do you answer the questions that they have? How do you help them get their job done? How do you help...in your case, how do you help a sales rep better understand the products that they're trying to take to market? So the last probably three or four years, I think there's been a rhetorical shift from SEO to content marketing and sometimes to local search where people are talking more about how you show up well in maps and in other directory listings, something that your products do very well in helping. But this idea of SEO has perhaps become a little bit less popular than it once was. The Value Proposition for SEO George: So I've also heard it sometimes referred to as, you know, the voodoo of SEO, meaning that it's hard sometimes to explain the benefit or what the ROI is. So if you were to sit down with a local businessperson and say, "I'm gonna help you with your SEO," what would be the way that you would position the deliverable so that you can have that comfortable conversation 30, 60, 90 days down the road rather than an uncomfortable conversation where the client thinks they bought something that they didn't get? Will: It's pretty simple. The art of SEO is being where the prospective customer is searching. So in a way back at the dawn of time, the Yellow Pages had a slogan which was. "We put buyers and sellers together." In essence, what SEO does is puts buyers and sellers together online. And interestingly, depending on where you approach SEO, it may be at different points in the funnel. If you're creating content that talks about a need that's further up the funnel than the actual point of purchase, then you can be actually in the awareness phase. If you talk about things like Google listings and directory listings where someone's actively doing a search and you want to show up on the map, that's very much bottom of funnel, that's transactional, they're ready to buy. So I think that the way to position it and the way that we positioned it to our customers is you wanna be in the places where your customer is searching whether they're just getting to know you or whether they're at the point of purchase and there's different tactics that work for each of those places. George: So I have one VP of sales of a newspaper group, transitioned to a digital marketing company, I should say, that shall go nameless, but he very famously says you need to deploy onsite SEO tactics and offsite SEO tactics. Can we talk about both of those and kind of explain them so the sales rep can understand? Will: I actually think that that's a good starting point and I think it's a tad simplistic. Traditionally, when we talk about onsite SEO, we're talking about things like the title of the pages, the content on the pages. Some very low-level bit twiddling like naming images properly, right? All of those things could go into onsite SEO. And then some much more technical things like the use of schema markup to make sure that your addresses are showing up correctly and there's schema for all kinds of things, schema for videos, schema for articles, schema for medical procedures, interestingly. So while I believe that it's a good sort of entry point to talk about onsite and offsite SEO, I think that when you dig down deeper, onsite SEO can be all kinds of things, some of which is very technical and some of which is marketing, right? The language you use, the calls to action, that sort of thing, those all in my mind are part of what a modern SEO wants to think about. Now I can dig deeper in offsite if you like. And that's a place where I think, interestingly, and we use the Vendasta toolset for some of this, distribution to local directories would be an example of offsite SEO. The creation of content that you promote through PR websites and other places where you can get them placed, those are examples of offsite SEO. Finding reasons for other people to link to you, an example might be a sponsorship of a local organization, right? Those are all examples of offsite SEO. But like I said, it's a good basic idea of onsite versus offsite, and then as you dig in, I think that the subtleties and nuances can make it something that you can have a really productive conversation about for years to come George: So that, you know, you're going exactly where I was hoping you would go with this. I think what the VP of sales was trying to do was to position it very simply for the local businessperson that doesn't understand any of that. But what you started to dig into with the schema discussion...and I'll tell you about something that happened today. I have a couple of clients that are actual end businesses because we of course deal through media companies and agencies and I don't get to talk to too many hardware store people or a whitetail deer ranches or mortgage brokers. So I have a couple people that I deal with directly and there are people that I've met over the years in. And so I was talking to the marketing director, it was 33 mortgage brokers. She was going to have a meeting with her boss and her boss's boss to justify the spend that she has against a number of tactics. And you know, she was lamenting over it because she wants to do a great job and they don't really know. They just know that they're looking for some sort of result and they wanna see the till in the cash register. So we were walking through some of those things around schema and page load times and all the things that we had done to optimize their website, which, you know, excuse my French was a piece of shit when we took it over. And so pretty easy to show that we're getting you more traffic and that the people that are coming to the website are spending more time and you're ranking better on search. But you know, she was looking to have pages upon pages of information because she thought that more pages would show that we'd done a better job. How would you describe that call 30, 60, 90 days down the road for a rep to position it? So we've got our baby digital client over here, doesn't really care too much, just wants to see some metrics, and then we've got the maybe a little more savvy customer we need to have a discussion with. Can we walk through both of those as to how you would do it? Will: Well, I think that we have to help the customer understand for the first maybe 60 days an engagement like that you're really kind of covering the bases. You're managing the basic blocking and tackling of SEO. Can the search engines read the content on your site? Do the words and the language on your site speak to the searcher's intent? So those are very much kind of basic stuff. And then next is, is your information accurate across all of the places where searchers might be looking and Google and other search engines might be looking to validate that you are who you say you are, right? So those are, to me, the 30, 60, 90-day kind of discussions as well as do you have a means of telling whether or not you're getting the results that you're looking for? We have a phrase that we use around our office, which is, "Metrics that matter," right? Because I can give you all kinds of metrics. I can flood you with numbers, but 99% of them don't matter. And the one that I think your marketing director is gonna be most interested in demonstrating is does this tactic drive these leads, right? And then what's my relative cost of this tactic relative to these leads? And that to me is, I think, you know, it's a challenge for a lot of folks to do because they're additive. Now paid search is easy, right? You flip a switch, leads come or they don't come, you know if it's working. With non-paid efforts, with organic efforts, there really is a bit of a cumulative effect. Question Period (SEO Style) George: So first off, setting the expectation that this is not a 30-day fix, it's not a 60-day fix, it is 90 at the minimum or maybe even longer than that? Will: Just this week, in fact, Tuesday afternoon we had a summit with one of our customers who has been a customer of ours actively paying us to engage in SEO for 10 years. And they're still seeing value, right? That guy had 400 plastic surgery patients that you can attribute to SEO, and his cost for acquisition of each of those is considerably lower than his cost of acquisition of any other channel that he's in. But, you know, it's an ongoing process. And I used to have customers asked me all the time, "When do we get to stop paying you?" And I would say, only half joking, "When we've driven all your competition out of business and nobody's graduating from school in your industry. At that point in time, you can stop paying us." Is the demand for SEO growing? George: Now that is a great line. And it's very true because, you know, the money that is invested in this tactic is a very low cost of acquisition compared to the other things that, you know, even compared to buying an ad campaign. So it's really interesting. Do you think the demand for SEO today is higher than it was three years ago? Will: So it's a really interesting question. The answer is yes, but the interesting thing is that customers aren't necessarily calling it SEO, right? In some cases, they're calling it content marketing. In some cases, they're even calling it social media marketing, right? Because the activity in social media and the content that one creates there could be considered as part of the bucket, which we would think of as SEO. Should you showcase positive reviews on-site? George: That's a very good point. I have a question. Should I put my positive reviews of my business on my website? Will: You know, people like me usually like to give the "it depends" answer. I think the answer is yes, right? I think that in certain cases the answer is yes. The reason that I think that is because there may be instances where you're collecting reviews that don't necessarily exist out on the review platforms, you know, Google and Yelp and TripAdvisor and Health Grades, and you may have great reviews from customers that don't exist out there. And also, much of the benefit that Google confers to a business is based on the extent to which they look like a real brand. And so if I attract a user to my website and I keep them on my website, there's a higher likelihood that Google is gonna believe that I'm a real brand, and one of the things that people are looking for is reviews from real customers. And so if you think about...back to the Will Reynolds example, if you think about helping the user get done the thing that they're trying to do versus worrying about what Google wants you to do, then you would have some of those on your own website. How important are GMB posts? George: Posting on Google my Business, how big of a deal was that when they brought it out? Will: It was a pretty big deal and we're actually really in favor of having a regular posting schedule to the posts feature in Google My Business. Our rationale is that if you...you know, those cycled through over time, right? We used to talk this way about Twitter as well, is that part of it is because not everybody's logged into Twitter all the time. If you're not present with some regularity, then people aren't gonna see your messaging. These days I tend to tell small businesses that Twitter is a complete waste of their time. However, that same kind of content, if you post with some regularity, a couple, three times a week to Google Posts associated with your Google My Business listing that has the same effect. And if you format your images correctly, you can use them for calls to action like, you know, come in to try one today, buy now, couponing, that sort of thing, which we know does have a big impact on people's interaction with businesses. What is the connection between GMB posts and rank? George: So is Google going to rank you higher in search because you are participating with reviews on the map and you're participating with Google My Business posts? Will: So the real correct answer is no, but what's going to happen is users are going to interact with you more through Google and Google is going to infer from that user behavior that you are a better answer to the question being asked. Google's inference that you're a better answer to the question being asked is a positive ranking factor, no doubt in my mind. George: And the reason that it's so important is because that's the thousand-pound gorilla in the room. It's the users that are using Google that drives that importance. So it's interesting because I've heard people say, "I got to do it because Google ranks you higher," but the reason is they got all the users and it shows that you're interacting with a real business. Will: Well, you know, and it's a really nuanced answer, right? Because you could also just as easily answer yes and leave out all of the detail, the detail being it's because of this and this and this, and Google wants to deliver to the advertiser, Google wants to deliver it to the user the best answer to their question. What happens to inactive GMB accounts? George: Have you saw in the last...if a business claims Google My Business, I mean goes through the steps, postcard, the whole deal, and then doesn't touch the bloody thing for a year that it goes away? Will: We have seen some disappear, and interestingly Google sends out emails every once in a while and says, "Hey, we noticed you haven't logged into your account. Hey, we noticed you haven't updated your listing," and we'll then turn them off. So I do think that there is a real business reason to stay active there. How important are user signals? George: Yeah. And then there's this other piece. I was in Florida...see, you spurred me when you brought up Florida before we went live. I was in Florida about a year-and-a-half ago. We were trying to find this really good seafood restaurant that we found online, had some great reviews, but when we looked at the map, it said that it may be closed. And what had actually happened is there was some sort of construction on the road and people couldn't get to the restaurant on the road that it is going towards. You had to do this big detour and they just basically said, "Don't bother going there, it's closed," you know. So if you're not interacting with those pages, and this just isn't Google My Business, this is others, the user could impact your data. Will: Well, and in fact, you know, we've heard from folks who work at Google that they treat that user data with almost as much credibility as they treat the business owner's data. If they get a preponderance of signals from users there are different than what they get from the business owner, then that's what they're gonna believe. Are local business owners becoming more tech savvy? George: So it's interesting, in your opinion, SEO is a bigger business today, bigger opportunity. Could that be because we have a group of business owners that are becoming a little bit more tech savvy? Will: Well, I think, you know, the great news about having all of the sales efforts out there is that we tend to educate the market. So even if they didn't go to a seminar, you know, even if they didn't go to one of the sessions that you put on with your local newspaper and media clients, even if they didn't come to one of our local university sessions, they're gonna be educated by the people who call them on the phone every day saying, "Hey, this is important." So I think that the demand is actually being driven a lot by the sales efforts. So if you can be the one who was there at the time of need and you can speak smartly about what it is that you're going do to help, I think that the business owner knows they need it, they often don't know where to go, and you know, it's the savvy salesperson who's there and who assures them that their experience in businesses like theirs says that that works. Search Influence & Will Scott George: So I didn't get a chance...I wanted to leave it until the end here to ask about Search Influence. You know, you've been doing this for quite some time. You've got a great business there in New Orleans. Give us the 60-second plug on Search Influence and how things have been going. Will: Well, we're in our 13th year as Search Influence. We, as many companies that have been around that long, have gone through a number of iterations. You know, our vision is that we wanna have a positive impact on one every charged marketer and company whether they work for us or not. And to that end, we spend a lot of energy in making sure that our teams are the best they can be in the areas that they work. We, like you, have worked with media companies and newspapers, in some instances a backend fulfillment of their SEO and social media. And we've also developed products that streamline that process for other marketing companies. So we are ostensibly a digital marketing agency for whom a lot of our work has been in a white label forms for media companies and also a successfully managing fulfillment for companies that might seem to be competitive with us. George: So the New Orleans market has been good to you because I think, we talked about this a couple of years back, you said it's been good for you finding talent in that market. Will: We're not afraid to train and I think that that means that any market that has smart people in it is a good market for us. I jokingly say that we are the number one training organization for digital marketing in the Gulf South because oftentimes people will come to us, learn their craft, and then move onto places like HubSpot and fidelity in Boston, right? It is a good market for us. We're finding more and more a need for greater professional maturity and so we're hiring less at the very entry level, but we do still feel like that's an important part of our role is add that knowledge regardless of whether it sticks with us or not. Will Scott's Favorite Resources George: So I know that you've been running up a storm here lately over the last two years, but I know that that's not the only thing you do outside of work. I wanna ask about what you're listening to as far as podcasts are concerned, what books are you reading, you know, what blogs, where is will Scott going to learn the latest and greatest? Will: A mentor of mine once said that nothing happens until something gets sold. And so for that reason, as a business leader, I do spend a fair amount of my time reading and listening to sales and marketing. You remarked on running, but there's also swimming and biking in there too. The reason I'm in Florida right now is because on Sunday I'm gonna take part in Ironman Florida. George: Nice. Will: So, you know, so I'm a big fan of the "Cut the Crap" podcast because it gives you sort of great bytes of information on books that I think we all should probably be reading. And unless you're an endurance athlete like me, you may not have several hours a week all by yourself with headphones in. And, you know, the other stuff that I'm absorbing right this minute, because this is my first full Ironman and I'm a little bit anxious about it, is I'm doing a lot, a lot of sport listening. I listen to one of your countrymen quite a lot, a guy named Triathlon Taren who's in Winnipeg, I believe, which may or may not be colder than Saskatoon, I don't know. George: Well, on the corner of Portage and Main it is. Yes, they call it "Winterpeg" for a reason. Will: Well, that's a lot of my listening. I've also lately been...I just finished one of Deepak Chopra's early works because I think it's really important to manage the way in which you respond. My two top favorite books right this second are "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday, and Ryan Holiday, this one's a few years old and he looks at stoicism with a bit of a modern lens. And I joke that, you know, stoicism is basically that internet meme where you see something really tragic with the headline, "So this happened," right? And that's really what it is, is that anytime something happens, two things happen, right? There's the thing that happened, and then there's your response to it, right? Typically, you can't control the thing that happened. All you can really control is your response to it, right? And then the other one is a book called "Born to Run," which is this great story of this epic race with a bunch of American ultra runners and the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico. George: So interesting fact, when I first met you, you weren't doing endurance races and things like that. You made a big lifestyle change. Will: I did. I did. I like to tell people, "Don't let your business try to kill you." George: And I can't wait for that book, when you write that book, or maybe you're in the throes of writing it right now, that story, because I think it's quite inspiring and I see you online, see you running, I didn't know about the swimming and the biking part, but a good for you on the Ironman. That is very, very impressive. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I know that you're quite busy and you got a busy schedule. Search Influence is a juggernaut in that New Orleans market and you've got a lot of very happy customers. I happen to know a number of them and they're very pleased with the work that you and your teams have been doing. I appreciate your insight. I think that there definitely are some nuggets in there for our audiences. They're out talking about SEO and helping their customers find new leads and new opportunities. So thanks for joining us on the podcast. Will: My pleasure, George, thanks for taking this on. It's a great service you provide. Conclusion George: Well, always entertaining to speak to Will. I've had the privilege of running into him at conventions and seeing him speak. His content is always bang-on. And interesting, everything old is new again. And I think what he's referring to, and he really dug into that, this content marketing thing and social media marketing thing, that is SEO. If you take that content and you provision it properly, it can help your rank because what you really should be concerned, don't be concerned about Google. Be concerned about the people that are looking for your content and Google will be happy with that because that's what they're tracking is what the users are doing online. I was glad that he was able to dispel that myth that just by getting Google reviews and posting on Google My Business will get you a better search rank. He added to it, you get the better search rank because that's where 83% of all consumers go to do their searches and that's where they're interacting with that content. So again, you have to do the tactics to get the result, not necessarily if you do that Google is going to give you the rank. And interestingly enough, he talked more about getting your listings correct and making sure that you position it that in your first 60 days you're just to cover the bases and there really isn't gonna be a deliverable for about 90 days. And then that one piece that I thought was really inspiring with the customer that he has been working with on their SEO for 10 years is as long as you run all your competitors out of business and nobody else graduates from being a plastic surgeon at the university, you could stop doing SEO, but up until that point you better keep doing it. So very interesting and very thought-provoking from Will Scott. I think that as a salesperson, there are nuggets in there that you can take into your next call to position those tactics for success of the client and your success as the salesperson and the professional expert in the space. We have more episodes. We continue to cover the digital marketing stack for local SMEs and SMBs. It is the "ConquerLocal" podcast and I really appreciate the feedback that we've been getting online through my LinkedIn page. That is the best way to get ahold of me is on LinkedIn, and I read every single comment that we get. I respond to every comment, even the spam of people saying that they'll put me at the top of iTunes in their professional podcast promoters. So anyways, I read them all and I'm looking for that feedback. That's actually where this series came from was from you the listener saying, "Why don't you do something around digital marketing stack? Why don't you bring in some experts?" That's what we're doing and we're gonna continue to do it until we have given you all of the items that you need to be successful in positioning the local digital marketing stack to your customers. My name is George Leith. I will see you when I see you.

Listings aren't just names, addresses, and phone numbers anymore. They now have a SEO effect. Jonathan Best, Uberall's new Chief Revenue Officer, is our guest this week on the Conquer Local Podcast. Our audience can't get enough insight into how to sell the value of consistent listing data for a local business. Jonathan explains that Listings now need to include voice search capability and how that is impacting things like how it integrates into online reputation. The standard "Can I find you?" is now very closely matched with, "Can I trust you?" Jonathan Best is responsible for all revenue generating functions of the location marketing leader. Prior to Uberall, he was Senior Vice President and General Manager for Europe and Africa at Kony Inc. Earlier in his career, Jonathan served in various sales leadership roles at SAP, Oracle and a range of startups.   Introduction George: It's the latest edition of the Conquer Local podcast. My name is George Leith, your host, and I just don't think that we can get enough insight into selling the value of consistent listing data for local business. Because this space isn't just name, address, phone number anymore. It's now basically your content, it's voice search and how that's impacting things, and then it all marries into online reputation. Can I find you is now very closely matched up with, can I trust you? So we're going to get some more insights into this space from the new Chief Revenue Officer at Uberall. Jonathan Best is our guest, and he's coming up next all about local listing data on the Conquer Local podcast.   George: It's another edition of the Conquer Local podcast, and joining us on the line, the Chief Revenue Officer for Uberall, Jonathan Best. Hello Jonathan. How are you doing today?   Jonathan: Hey George, doing great. Thank you. How are you?   George: I'm fantastic. I'm excited to have you on the show. I'm actually going to be in your offices here in a couple of weeks when I travel to Berlin, so I was pumped to get you on the line. But Uberall, head office in Berlin, but you're all over the world.   Jonathan: Oh, we are all over the world. I'm in London today, but I'm often in Berlin, San Francisco, New York, Cape Town, South Africa, Paris, and London as well. So yeah, we're pretty well spread, and we're growing rapidly, and opening new offices all the time. So ...   George: Good. Well, you live the life that I live. Planes and Hilton hotels. Let's dig into Uberall. Give us the elevator pitch on Uberall, who you are, and what your organization does.   Jonathan: Well, the first thing that people typically ask me when we say the name Uberall is that you guys, some part of Uber, which is the first piece that we have to dispel. We're not. Uberall actually means everywhere in German, is the closest translation. And it's a pretty apt title given that what we're trying to do is help local businesses get found everywhere online. So that's the genesis, the title.   Jonathan: We've got a pretty interesting background. We're a seven-year-old company. We were started in Berlin, as you said, by ... actually by two friends who met in grade school, and said, as far back as that, that they were going to start a business together someday. And 20, 30 years later they actually got around to wanting to do that and set up in Berlin together to start a business. And of course, being in an interesting city, trying to figure out how to start a business, the thing that they did a lot was go sit in bars, and drink beer, and try and come up with the inspiration or idea for a business.   Jonathan: And one of the problems in Berlin that you may know because I know you've spent some time here is there's so many cool bars. They're opening all the time. But actually keeping up with them, and finding which are the new cool ones to try and go to is quite difficult.   Jonathan: And back in 2012, when I found ... as David and Florian were trying to come up with their business concept, they decided that that was a pretty neat problem to try and solve. 2012, when Apple Maps was just getting started to challenge Google Maps, Foursquare was starting to get a lot of traction. So there were plenty of platforms that you could go to and look to find new, interesting places. But the content of the places that was listed on those platforms was pretty crappy. So that's the problem that we set up the company to solve. And seven years later, we're one of the major global players in that. And we work with a lot of small SMBs. So those individual bars now get themselves found online using our services. And we also work with some huge enterprises, like McDonald's and KFC, Shell, BP, who've obviously got hundreds and thousands of brick and mortar locations that they need to get found online, and we help them do that.   Jonathan: So we started in Europe where we've still got most of our operations. But we operate and sell globally around the world now.   Accurate Listings = More Opportunities for Success George: So Jonathan, I want to really dig into listings because our audience, the salespeople that listen to the Conquer Local podcast, as part of that local marketing stack, we all know that listings are a very important piece of the puzzle. But it's often difficult to explain the value to a local businessperson on why they need to be doing this, and why they need to constantly pay attention to make sure that that data is correct. Can we talk a little bit about the impact on a local business by getting this information correct? And then, what are some of the common problems with maintaining that correct data?   Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, sure. You're alluding to the kind of SEO effect, and that's definitely one of the big reasons that people are trying to invest in these technologies today. But actually, there's ... when we focus on SEO, and I'll talk about that a bit in a minute, people often overlook some of the even more foundational, kind of fundamental challenges that people have with this plethora of online publishers that they want to get listed in.   Jonathan: And the first one is that one that I just talked about. There's a ton of platforms now that are out there. People are looking for local businesses and services across a range of platforms. Definitely Google, but Yelp, or the local Yellow Page directory. If you're looking for a restaurant or a hotel, you might be checking things like TripAdvisor. A lot of local cities and regions have got pretty decent directories that people search for businesses in. Folk want to have their businesses advertised on Facebook and Instagram because we know that there's a ton of people that are on those platforms.   Jonathan: So the first question for a local business is, if you want to be found online, you've got to be on all of those directories. And the fundamental problem, if you're the guy that's running the bar, or the restaurant, or the dental surgery, or whatever it may be is, your business is about doing something that isn't listing your business all over the place and ensuring that you've got great, consistent data. None of these directories make it super easy for small businesses to do that. They all have their own ways of collecting data and harmonizing it. They all ask you for different things in different formats.   Jonathan: So fundamentally, if you're sales folk, you're listening to the podcast and talking to small local businesses, the easy way to start the conversation is to ask that business what kind of platforms, publishers they actually can be found on. And if they are well represented across a bunch of different people, then typically that's because they're spending a lot of time and effort doing that. And listing solutions like ours really reduce that manual effort.   Jonathan: Or if they're not, then you can get into a conversation really quickly about how much business may you be losing if folk don't find you on the relevant platform or directory that they're looking in.   Simplify Listing Maintenance and Save Time with Listings Solutions George: I want to jump in on that because I think you hit on something that was really important for reps. Because I have people, when I'm out training salespeople, they're saying to me, "Well, if they've got good listings, they don't need some sort of a solution to continue to push that data." But that might just be the business person that needs a solution the most, because if they've got good listings, they probably did it by hand, which is very expensive, time-consuming, and painful. And if you could give them something that just is going to give them peace of mind, there's enormous value there. So the fact that, if you're using some sort of a grading tool on the business that you're calling on, and it throws an A, that might be because they are doing it by hand. And if we could get a robot to do that, that'd be much better.   George: The other piece you're talking about is the fear of loss, where you walk in and you know that they aren't listed properly, they have that discrepancy, and then we prey on the fact that they're missing out on business. So two very important approaches. Because what I have found is the business that has great listing data sometimes is not doing that work in an automated fashion or doesn't even know that that's a possibility. So let's go further down the road now on this whole listing value proposition.   Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, you hit it exactly right. Folk either have really good data online, and it's consistent, or they don't. If they do, then they're either spending a ton of time and effort getting it there and then maintaining it, or they're already using some kind of listings provider. And obviously, if it's the latter, then you're into potentially a replacement situation. But I'll talk a little bit later on about the kind of overall penetration in the market. The vast majority of people that you're going to run into, folk listening to the podcast might run into, they definitely have not solved this problem.   Jonathan: Maintenance is the next thing. If you get all of that data proliferated well, and consistent across a bunch of platforms, that's great. Right up to the point when you change your opening hours, or you want to promote a different offer. At which point, now, you've got to push all of that new data out to the range of platforms. So it's kind of a double-edged sword. Businesses know that they need to have their data on all of these platforms, so they do a bunch of work to get it there. But then once it's there, you have a bunch more work to keep it all consistent and updated. There's nothing worse, obviously, than somebody coming to your store at 6:00 pm because they saw on Facebook that that's what time you're open until, but actually you changed and you now close at 5:00, but you didn't update your Facebook page. So solving the problem of getting listed is only part of the battle. Then you have the subsequent problem of keeping everything consistent.   George: When we step out of name, address, phone number, and hours of operation, there's a bunch of other stuff that we want to have out there. Short, long descriptions. I guess the example that I always like to talk about is the person that's looking for a pet-friendly apartment with a swimming pool. And they do that search ... and there's a chance that they'll do that search, not into a keyboard now, they'll do that search into voice assistance. So there's more data that I need to be concerned about as a businessperson because people are doing more specific searches for the things that they're looking for online.   Jonathan: Yeah, absolutely right. And obviously, if there's any one element of that data that isn't on your online listings, then that person is not going to come to you. They're going to come to somebody who does have that. And as people get more and more familiar with searching online, and expect that there will be a provider out there that has got exactly what they want, those searches are going to get more and more specific. And therefore, the data that you hold is only ever going to need to get more. It will get greater as time passes. And therefore, anybody who's doing this well today and isn't using a listings technology to do it, is just going down a path which is going to pretty rapidly become unsustainable.   Winning vs Losing the Search Game: It’s All About the Keywords George: So we're missing out on business, and new leads coming into our business if we're not putting the correct data out there, because we're just losing at the search game, then. We also aren't able to change our data as our offer changes. We may not have positioned all of the value propositions that we have in the marketplace, and that could come right down to a product that you sell.   George: So I like to use Aveda hair products, and I will go into Google when I'm out ... maybe I'm running out while I'm on the road, and I'll say, "Show me a salon with the Aveda" ... Oh, I don't type it, by the way. I just say, "Siri, show me a hair salon with Aveda hair products nearby." That's the search that a local business needs to be winning, isn't it?   Jonathan: Yeah, absolutely right. And you pick up Aveda hair products. We do a huge amount of work with Schwarzkopf, who are one of the big hair care companies over here in Europe. And they were our founder client for doing exactly that. They wanted to have their products listed in every local store in Europe that stocked them so that folk like you who are on the road and need to get their fix of shampoo and conditioner know exactly where, nearby, they can pick it up from. It's a huge new area that large enterprise are working into. And it's of course imperative that those local businesses that stock those products are able to have their listings reflect that.   George: Jonathan, I want to make sure I understand what you're saying, because I think what I heard you say is, "Schwarzkopf is a brand, and they are paying you to make sure that all the places that sell Schwarzkopf have that information inside some sort of their dataset." Is that what I heard?   Jonathan: Absolutely right. It's one of the biggest developments in our market. More and more of the brands that don't necessarily have physical locations are looking to ensure that the locations that stock their products have their products listed within the local listing of that physical location. So yeah, it's a ...   George: So they offer the listing solution, then, as just a bonus to their vendor?   Jonathan: Yeah, no. Absolutely. They use a couple of different products from us to do that.   George: Salesperson in me thinks: enormous opportunity. It's the first time that I've heard of that.   Jonathan: Well, it's certainly a very large opportunity that we're seeing grow very, very rapidly in our business at the moment.   Voice Search Is a New Medium Using Traditional Algorithms George: Interesting. So the manufacturers and distributors of certain products, making sure that that data shows up in the various businesses that are out there that offer it. Voice search. Lots of people talking about it. I'm sure lots of us are ... we've got a Google Home, we got an Alexa, we got Cortana, we've got Siri, condescending voice on my phone. Tell us how to navigate that space as a local business person. Like, how concerned do I need to be about voice search?   Jonathan: Well, it depends what you've done with your existing listings. If you've done a pretty bang up job already of getting your data listed online, then you're actually in pretty good shape. We just ran a big survey. We surveyed every business location in Boston for a big piece of marketing research that we called the Voice Readiness Study, that we just released. It's available on Uberall.com for anyone that's interested. Which was essentially saying, how ready are businesses in Boston for voice search? And there were some really interesting conclusions, which I won't shove down your throat now.   Jonathan: The thing about search that kind of gets misleading is that people think it's a whole different technology. It really isn't. What Siri, or Cortana, or Alexa are doing when they record your voice question, is going off and picking the words out of your question, and going in and looking for them in a traditional search. So if you're asking for a hotel that's good with pets and has a swimming pool, then the keywords are going to get picked out of that and run through a fairly traditional search algorithm. Of course, what that means is, you've got to have those search terms listed in your locations listing in order for Siri, or Alexa, or Cortana to return that result.   Jonathan: The reason why voice makes it super important is that of course, unlike a typical online or phone-based search where you get a list of answers, and you're hopefully coming high up on that list of answers, your voice assistant is going to give you a single answer. It doesn't give you five different options, it gives you one. So it just makes it even more important that your latest, greatest data, with all of the attributes of the products and services you provide are really accurately listed for your business.   Pictures Are Worth 1,000 Words - Show People Your Business George: I've always wondered about the photos and video portion of that data that lives around ... We're at my buddy, T-bone's, studio here recording the podcast, as we do every week. And he's got a pretty nice place here. He's got this new monitor that he just bought, probably costs a lot of money. He's got new speakers. He's got a new haircut. He wants people to see that and have a virtual tour of the studio, and check ... maybe I'm coming here to film a movie from China to ... T-bone's studio is sitting here, I want to check it out. I want to look at it before I ever talk to him on the phone because we all know that we don't like talking to humans anymore. So tell me about the photos and the video portion of that listing data. Because I think listings ... I think name, address, phone number, maybe hours of operation, maybe business category, but more and more of the photo and video piece is becoming important.   Jonathan: Yeah, no. It completely is. And for all the reasons that you say. I mean ... by the way, your buddy T-bone was only ever going to operate a recording studio or a tattoo parlor with a name like that, wasn't he? So I think the great thing about pictures and videos is the old saying, right, it's worth a thousand words. If somebody can get a sense of what you do with some great pictures or video, then they're going to get much more of a sense for your business. But how do you get people to look at those pictures and videos, right? It goes back to the same thing. You've got to get found first. Then when people have found you, the content that you show them, be that pictures, video, text, or anything else has got to to be great. And obviously, that means that you want to be able to constantly update and promote the latest, greatest pictures of your studio. If T-bone just got some new, fancy piece of kit in, he needs that to be reflected not just in his search terms, but also in the pictures that he's showing.   Jonathan: And obviously then there's the ... so you want to manage that positively. The thing you also need to be able to manage is any user-generated content. User-generated content can be fantastic, but if somebody takes a really terrible photo of T-bone's studio, and it really looks awful, you want to know that that's up online. You want your listings provider to help you identify that. You probably want to get that removed from your listing fairly quickly if it's an image that isn't necessarily reflecting the attributes of your business that you would want to.   The Million Dollar Question for Business Owners Comes Back to the Return on Investment George: I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I do. When you're talking to a local businessperson, because I know that you folks work through partners, but then you get to speak to lots of business people. And they say to you, “Jonathan, how much money am I going to make if I do this listing work that you want me to do? You've convinced me that there may be some value here. What is the ROI for my business if I take you up on this?”   Jonathan: So I just hired a really smart guy in Berlin who's job is Head of Value Engineering. And the reason we hired him, that is the most common question that we get from SMB customers who want to know, generically how good is this going to be? And obviously for the large enterprises that our partners sell to on our behalf, they really want to understand what's this worth? Of course, when you put me on the spot, I can't give you a direct answer, because the value for any individual business is a function of what they're doing, how well they do this already, and what kind of investment they're able to make. Not in our tools, but in using our tools in really smart ways to do a great job of ensuring that the content is consistent, it's well-updated. Because we know those are the things that are strongly affiliated with good ranking results and driving more business.   Jonathan: But I can tell you that the majority of customers that we work with, be they SMBs or enterprises, are seeing a positive return on the investment that they make with us in a small number of months. Three to six months, most people are seeing a positive return on investment. We found some smart ways that we can measure increases of impressions, increases in clicks to call. We can correlate that to in-store visits. We can correlate that, if folk have got a fairly good understanding of average basket size to the revenue they gain. The thing that we can never figure out, and the thing that, frankly, a lot of folk are most interested to understand is, how much business am I losing today because I don't have this kind of technology in place? And of course that's a difficult question to answer. But most folk, when you talk to them a little bit about the types of publishers that their competitors are probably listing on with a listings provider like ours, realize that if they're not already across all of those different platforms, then they're probably missing some eyeballs that they ought to be trying to capture.   George: Yeah, so the ROI discussion in digital marketing always has been a challenge. And I don't understand why people who were used to buying radio ads, you can't measure the ROI on that, or even measuring a directory ad back in the day ... like why it's so important to get this thing that we've never really been able to get. So what you're saying there is, we've got to keep ... as salespeople, because that's our audience of the Conquer Local podcast, working with local businesses. We always need to be throwing that fear of loss out there, that by not doing this, your competitor that's doing it better is going to get the business.   George: Number two, isn't there a way to take the information inside GMB, in the Google My Business Insights, and show a correlation, where before I started working with you, you weren't getting any search results, you weren't getting any clicks on the map button, you weren't getting any clicks to call. And since we started working together and got all this right, those numbers have went up and to the right. Is that the one way that we could tell that story?   From Listings to Reviews, All Data Play a Role Jonathan: Yeah, absolutely. And we've got some great, specific customer data, and we've some great aggregated data across customers that really reflects that. Which is why I'm able to give you some kind of high level, generic ROI returns. The thing that's super interesting that we haven't talked about, which kind of relates to that question is, the ... I guess five years ago when we started this business, we thought that this was going to be kind of a game-changing technology that would really allow people to kind of move the needle by being online and across a whole bunch of different platforms, and getting a really positive ranking effect because of doing that well. Today, five years later, pretty much most people are aware that they need to do this. Doesn't mean everybody's doing it. But at least people are aware that listings is a foundation technology that they should have.   Jonathan: The thing that's really interesting, and it's going to be the next generation, and is the other great talking point for your sales audience when they're out talking to customers is, we already talked about voice search. You can't really be ready for voice if you haven't already solved this problem. But there's a bunch of other interesting things that are coming down the pike as well. And probably the biggest of them is reviews. For folk who follow what Google are doing with the algorithm, increasingly, the most important factor that Google will use to rank your business is the positivity of reviews and recommendations that you have. And a lot of folk are building on top of the listings foundation that they have the capability now to manage reviews across all of those platforms, to aggregate them using a tool like ours, to turn them into a single stream. So you don't have to go to each individual platform in turn, look at the different reviews that you've got, answer them and manage them. But actually to be able to do that in a much more simple flow.   Jonathan: The only thing worse than having bad reviews is having bad reviews that you don't do anything about. And that's why people are now moving from the focus on just the foundational listings product to really managing reviews, recommendations, getting ready for voice search, and all of the other technologies that are really going to require every business to have a really good management of the digital content and the digital information that they push out.   George: So when you're talking to your sales organizations that you deal with, what do you think is one of the biggest challenges in speaking to a local business about the value behind this? What's the piece you really need to drive home?   Jonathan: To be honest, George, the hard part of this is just getting in front of enough local businesses. The thing that's kind of crazy, a lot of folk, especially our investors, ask us about the total addressable market for this kind of technology. Which is pretty difficult to define, because obviously, the total market is every physical business location that exists on the planet. So getting an account of how many organizations there are out there that might need this stuff is difficult to do. But the best guess that anybody's able to provide us with, somewhere between seven and 10% of the physical locations that are out there in the world are already managing their physical location data well online. So there's 90 something percent of businesses that don't do this well.   Jonathan: This is not a difficult conversation to have. And I'd really encourage your listeners to go, when they're talking to local businesses about whatever other solutions they sell to them, ask them about this stuff. Which platforms are you on? I'm pretty sure most businesses will be aware of Google My Business. But are they on Facebook? Are they on Instagram? Are they on Foursquare? Are they managing stuff on TripAdvisor and Yelp. If they are, then they've got this kind of manual challenge that we already talked about. If they're not, then how much business are they losing? That's the start of the conversation. You can get real sophisticated if you want to from there, but this is a foundational, fundamentally simple product that everybody should be confident in talking about to a local business. And confident also that pretty much every local business you talk to is going to need it.   George: No, I think that that's ... you're absolutely right. And that's where we've transitioned in the last six and a half years in this space is, the business people know that they need to do this. It's just, they're looking for a trusted provider. And there has been some snake oil out there when it comes to the listing sites, and getting a fix, and having them maintained. It's good to have folks like you that have nailed it. And when you press that button on the fantastic solution that you folks offer, the data is right, and you have the ability to continue to communicate with those sites.   Conclusion George: So we've been speaking today to Jonathan Best, the Chief Revenue Officer of Uberall. And Jonathan, we really appreciate your time. I know it's early evening there, so we'll let you get back to watching ... I guess it's football. So watching football or whatever you're going to do on a Wednesday evening, and thanks for joining us in the Conquer Local podcast.   Jonathan: Thanks George. Appreciate it. Take care.   George: It's interesting to listen to Jonathan. He arrived at Uberall about eight months ago, and he's been out working with their channel partners, and talking to SMBs, and it's interesting to hear his take on where this space is going. You heard him talk about Schwarzkopf, and utilizing the correct listing data with the Schwarzkopf branding, and with their products and services for businesses that they don't even own. It's businesses that distribute their products and services. I'm interested to learn more about how that might move forward as a revenue line that we, the folks that are listening to this broadcast, might be able to exploit.   George: The other thing that we keep hearing about is the value of having that correct data around voice search. And voice search, as you heard Jonathan mention, you're going to have to be exactly what they're looking for, because when we do a voice search, we ask for way more information about the business. That business has to be populated across the wide array of sources where you need consistent listing data. And now for listing data, not just name, address, phone number, hours of operation, business category. It's what products and services do you sell? What's your unique value proposition? In the case of our examples that we gave you, you heard the pet-friendly apartment building with the swimming pool, or the hotel that's close to the airport, that has a fitness center. Something like that where it's not just, show me a good hotel nearby. It's, show me a good hotel nearby with these attributes that I'm looking for.   George: So we always like to keep educating, and there's some new tidbits from the new Chief Revenue Officer at Uberall. Jonathan Best, our guest this week on the Conquer Local podcast. My name is George Leith, I'll see you when I see you.

DrRissysWriting.com is ranked #1 in PR and top ten in Social Media and SEO for New York and New Jersey. Dr. Morissa Schwartz (aka Dr. Rissy) has been featured on Forbes and MTV. She speaks professionally about inspiring others through words and entrepreneurship, and through her publishing, was named the “Voice of Generation Z” by Community Magazine.  Dr. Rissy talks with George Leith about 360-degree marketing; SEO, Social Media, Ads, PR, and how these 4 pillars need to work together in your marketing strategy. She discusses trials and tribulations such as lacking confidence in your content creation and the 95% "no" response rate she got when approaching publishers before she became a proprietor with GenZ Publishing. This episode will make you reimagine what it means to think "inside" the box, "outside" the box, or what this box people keep speaking of is? Is there even a box? Dr. Rissy doesn't think so. All this and more in this episode of the Conquer Local Podcast. Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5+ million local businesses through 50,000+ channel partners. Learn more about Vendasta and we can help you build your dream agency or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) are making up to $10,000 off referrals. Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy. Introduction George: Welcome to this edition of the Conquer Local Podcast. Our guest this week, Dr. Morissa Schwartz, is the founder and CEO at Dr. Rissy's Writing, and the proprietor at GenZ Publishing. And when we started to do our research on Dr. Rissy, we found that this individual knows how to help local businesses. And her passion around helping local businesses is going to come out in this episode, I guarantee it. So what we want to learn more about is how she became ranked number one in PR, and in the top 10 in social media and SEO for New York and New Jersey on Thumbtack, and keep in mind, that's one of the biggest markets on the planet. She's been featured on Forbes, and she's been named The Voice of Generation Z by Community Magazine. One of our first doctors on the show, Dr. Morissa Schwartz, coming up next on the Conquer Local Podcast. I am going to learn a lot, and I know you're going to learn a lot in the next few minutes on this episode of the Conquer Local Podcast. Dr. Morissa Schwartz, joining us from New York City, and from here on in it's Dr. Rissy. Good day, welcome to the show. Dr. Rissy: Thank you so much, happy to be here. George: So in the preamble, I gave a little bit of an overview, but Morissa, I'd love to hear your words, your voice, just a little bit of an overview of you and your organization. And then we're going to talk all about content. I'm really excited to dig into this with you today. Dr. Rissy: Yeah, absolutely. So I own Dr. Rissy's Writing and Marketing. We're a 360-Marketing company, focused on helping businesses and startups that help their communities. I grew up my parents, mom/pop carpet shops, so, you know, helping small businesses and startups, it's in my blood and I love it, I love the atmosphere. I also own a book publishing company called GenZ Publishing. And yeah, that's me in a nutshell. Growing Up In Local Business George: Well, when I went to your website, and we're going to put all of the contact information so that our listeners can learn more about you in the show notes, but when I went to your website, I like, what a roster! You have graphic designers and writers, and you know, that organization that you've built, pretty impressive to say the least. But I'd to talk about this passion of yours around local business, because I think you and I share the same passion. In that family business and the businesses that you folks support, it really is about helping those local businesses, you know, with the digital marketing they need to do to thrive. I'd love to learn more about that mission that you're on with your team, and how many people in your organization. Dr. Rissy: Yeah, so I have a team of about 25, and I mean, small business, so as I mentioned, a girl from my parent's shop, last night, even, I went down to Main Street where I grew up and my mother reminded me, you were at the store everyday. Like before school, after school, I was at their store and it was nice. I would get to see the community. And, you know, I had a little mini office that was just really, a really great experience. So last night I was at this car show at my parent's, run in town, and just got to see the community members and the joy that is brought to them by this community event, not to mention the, you know, the money they raise goes to charity. And it just shows how these small businesses, they are the backbone of communities, they do make a difference, and being able to work with them and, you know, kind of put the humanity back in online work, it's a really great feeling. 'Cause, you know, a lot of the time you can be working on a computer and forget almost that you're, you know, there's another person on the other side of that screen. So I always like to have that kind of small town and community minded thought process when, you know, when I'm working with my clients. To Think Outside Or Inside The Box? How About We Just Ditch The Box. George: Yeah, I try to remember back to the, you know, May of last year, when we were driving down the street or maybe walking down the street and there was just nobody. And all of that buzz, you know, we were driving the other night and saw, you know, two kid's teams playing baseball, and just seeing those local communities back in action again, I know that it's been impacted in your markets the same way it has been in ours, but seeing all that activity, we definitely missed it when it was gone, that's for sure. So what, if we were to, in a nutshell, put one line out there that they could take away from this episode and put to use, what would be one piece of advice that you would give? Dr. Rissy: To realize that you don't just have to think outside the box, realize that there is no box. You know, a lot of people think, oh, because it's been done this way before, this is how it always has to be. And tradition's important, but there also comes a time for innovation and realizing that you can do things differently. So I always like to, you know, realize that there was no box. And I think my business is a testament to that. I started it, because when I was in high school, I went to a biomedical science academy, and I caught myself rushing through my biomedical science work to do freelance writing and editing work for clients and to write my own books. And I thought, hmm, I think I have a passion for this instead. And everybody said to me, oh, you know, you can't do it. You got to get an internship. You have to get a job at the mall, well, all the friends that I had that had jobs at the mall, well, they hated it. So I wanted to do something different. So, you know, I started freelancing online and I realized, hey, I might be on something when a teacher of mine said, can you hook me up with a freelance gig online? That's great. And I'm thinking, wow, that's my teacher. Like I was in high school. My teacher was asking me to hook him up for a job. So that was my first time I realized that you really can not only think outside the box, create your own box, right? Like one box would have been, get a job at the mall, but one would have been, you know, intern somewhere, but no, you can make your own path. And I have enjoyed following that through every project that we do. Just, you know, make your own path. You don't have to do something just 'cause everybody else does. George: You know, when the team told me we'd landed the opportunity to have you on the show, I was saying, this is our first doctor that we've had on the show. And that doctorate in literature and your master's in communication, how important has that been as you've built out this organization? Dr. Rissy: I think it shows people that I'm a lifelong learner. I'm somebody who, you know, even after getting my doctorate, I got certified in this, We Thrive program, which is for female entrepreneurs, and it shows them everything from, you know, bookkeeping skills to how to keep your website safe. So I'm always learning more. So I think that's the biggest thing. It shows prospective clients that myself, my team, 'cause a lot of my team members also have advanced degrees. Actually I think 95% of them have advanced degrees. It shows that, you know, we are always educating. You need to do that to be competitive online, you know, because SEO, ads, social media, it changes so quickly, you need to adapt and learn. So I will say, I think it helps with that, but I don't think everybody needs to do that to have a successful business. I've learned more outside of the classroom than I have inside the classroom. I think the classroom gives you skills that you need to know to continue learning things on your own. But you know, it's definitely not prerequisite to have advanced degrees like that to be successful online. 360 Degree Marketing: Social Media, SEO, PR, Ads George: In your writings and content, I see you talk a lot about 360 degree marketing. What does that mean to you if we were to come up with a description? Dr. Rissy: Yeah, I divide it into four pillars. So you have social media, SEO, PR, and ads. And the four of those things go hand in hand. So some companies, they'll just do SEO or some will just do PR. The reason why we do all of them is because they feed into each other. So if you have good social media presence, it's going to bleed into your SEO, it's going to improve your SEO. Case in point, Dwayne Johnson is the number one celebrity on the planet. When you search his name, the first result that comes up is his Twitter profile. Twitter is great for SEO. Then you have PR when you, let's say you're on a podcast, you won't just go on the podcast and that's it. You put it on your social media so it's giving you great social media content. It also helps your SEO because the podcaster is going to put a backlink to your website, they're going to put your name on there. It's helping your SEO. And then of course, ads drives people to your social media, and to your website, which, you know, SEO and your Google ads go hand in hand, because if you have your keywords figured out, it's going to decrease your ad rates or your ad costs. So they really all go hand in hand. That's why we do all of those areas. George: You know, I'm glad that you're bringing that to light, that they do go hand to hand, because when I'm talking to a business owner and we're analyzing, what's working and what's not working, usually it's because they don't understand that all this works together, and it's not necessarily one tactic. You know, thanks for bringing up the Twitter one. That's a really good example. It's like, what the hell does social media have to do with SEO? But you just nailed it right there. It's a really important component, but it has to all work together. So those learnings, again, we're going to have links to your website and to your material where people can learn more about that. When your team is working with a business owner and trying to tell that story around, you know, the content and the message, and it all has to tie together, where do you feel that business owners should pay attention? If there was one area, I know it's all important, but if there's one area where it just keeps coming up, time and time again, that they're not getting, is there that area that needs to be addressed? Dr. Rissy: I think the biggest issue that I see with clients is just them not having enough confidence or fearing what people are going to judge. So I, for example, I had this amazing, I have this amazing artist, he's a musician, and he takes these beautiful photos and he would post them. And they just, he literally has the most aesthetically-pleasing Instagram I've ever seen, but he was so afraid of people's negative comments that he turned off commenting on his posts. And I said, you know, you're missing out on so much engagement. You could be growing so much more, but you're shutting people out of the conversation. Then on the other end of the spectrum, I have a client who is a great speaker, but he's too afraid to film himself. He says, oh, I don't know how to film myself on video. I feel uncomfortable with that, I'm not going to do it. So he puts out, you know, these blogs, which are great, but I know people will want to hear him talk, people like to see a face. So I think a lot of the time, people are their own worst enemies with things like that. It's just a matter of not being afraid of that judgment. And just put yourself out there, go on that, you know, go on that ledge and you'll see, you're not going to be thrown to the sharks. Like, it's it's okay, and you're doing yourself a disservice if you're not fully engaging with your audience. The Voice Of Generation Z: GenZ Publishing George: One of the passions that I know you have, and it's probably tied into this Community Magazine naming you The Voice of Generation Z, is your GenZ publishing, and helping those debut it, the writers that are debuting and emerging, or even underrepresented, where did that all come about? Because I know it's a very important component of your business. Dr. Rissy: Yeah, so I have always loved writing. Always had passion for writing, and I, in college, well, actually in high school, I had self published my first book and realized, oh shoot, you know, you need to market these things. In high school, I thought, oh, I'm a high school kid writing a book. They just sell themselves. They didn't. You know, nobody knew about it so they didn't sell themselves. So that was when I realized, okay, you need some more behind this. So in college I wrote another book and actually went to traditional publishing companies. I pitched my book to about a hundred publishers, and about 95 of them never even responded. It was a, it was like, did they not get the submission? Like, what is this? Four rejected, most of them saying, oh, you know, we, you know, we usually publish more established authors, a.k.a. older authors. One of them actually said we really don't want to publish people under the age of 40, because they don't have enough experience and things to say. It's like, wow, that's blunt. And then there was one publishing company that did publish it. So, I learned a lot from having a book published. I learned some things that, you know, are working well, and some things that really could be improved in the industry as a whole or, as a publisher, I want to try to improve some of those things, the best that I could. So the first thing that I instituted was, hey, we respond to everybody who submits a book. Like, that getting ignored by 95 of them, not a great feeling. I want authors to at least know that we received the work, but not only do we let them know that we received, that we let them know we read each work. So kind of, when you submit a query to us, you know you're going to get some kind of constructive criticism or not even criticism, constructive feedback back. So, you know, usually if we get, let's say we get a query where it's good, but they have some grammatical errors. We'll say something like, hey, your story is great. If you maybe hire an editor or use some editing software and, you know, resubmit, we might consider publishing it, that kind of thing. So that was something that I learned from my own experience of feeling how yucky it felt, not hearing back from people. And then from the folks who had the attitude of, oh, you're, you're 20 years old, you can't publish a book unless you're, you know, an A-list celebrity, we opened it up to any age, anybody who has a writing talent, let's do it. So that's why we call the GenZ Publishing. 'Cause it's showing we work with people who have innovative things to say. So, yeah, it's been great. We've published 115 books, mostly young adult, but we have memoirs as well. We've published poetry books, and it's been really fun. We have our first book being turned into a film right now. George: That's amazing. And it's amazing that that business was born out of a lousy customer experience. Dr. Rissy: Exactly. And most businesses seem to be right. It's a founder sees a problem and wants to fix it. George: No, and that's where some of the best ideas come from. That's great. And thanks for getting those authors a place to get their, you know, their works known, because I learned a lot from lots of authors under 40. So you dispelled the fake news that that publisher told you. Dr. Rissy: Right?! George: And you know, the 360-Marketing concept, I want to come back to that before we wrap things up. I, you know, these, when I go through the website and I see all of these great team members that you have, and I see the different things that you're tying together, I think that that lesson for businesses there, I think a lot of people are looking for this silver bullet and it's not. There is no silver bullet. It's a series of components that come together. And then how do I put it into a box? Well, no, you gotta really be outside the box because that box thing's a myth. And even if you get the one box figured out, there's going to be a different play tomorrow because the world is changing. So, you know, those components around 360, really, really important. If I wanted to get more Dr. Rissy, what's the best way to do that? Dr. Rissy: I'm on social media everywhere as Morissa Schwartz and Dr. Rissy, so literally wherever your favorite channel is, whether it's TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, just type in "Morissa" with an O. Morissa Schwartz or Dr. Rissy and you'll find me. And my website is drrissy.com. Dr. Rissy x MTV: Constantly Jump On Opportunity George: Well, we really appreciate your time today. And thanks for educating us on a 360-Marketing, and where businesses are falling down and where they might be able to find some opportunity. And I'm sure that our listeners will appreciate getting more- Oh, one more thing! There is one thing I wanted to ask you. You were on MTV. I found it when I was doing some research. Tell us about that. Dr. Rissy: Oh, so, you know, I grew up idolizing American Idol. Like that was the epitome of "you knew you made it" when you were on American idol, as a kid, right? So growing up, I knew I needed to be on one of those singing competition shows, and I kept auditioning and auditioning as soon as I was of age. So as soon as I was 16, which was like the age to be on one of those shows, I started auditioning. And at 19, I did a video audition for this new MTV show, which was supposed to be their version of The Voice or American Idol, it was going to be a big thing. And I submitted a tape and they liked it. So they invited me to do another audition, another audition. And this was just something that I found online on MTV's site. Like I didn't have an agent or anything like that. I knew I was a studious person. It was just kind of a lifelong dream. So I wound up making it, and they said the words that I dreamed of hearing my whole life, which was "you're going to Hollywood!" They gave me a golden ticket, they flew me out to Hollywood. It was hosted by Jonathan Bennett, who played Aaron Samuels in Mean Girls, which talk about another lifelong dream, meeting a Mean Girls cast member was the coolest thing ever. So I got to perform on the show, and you know, I love rock music. I love classic kind of music, but it's MTV. So they made me sing a very modern pop, like Ellie Goulding, who I had never heard of before the show, but I learned it and pretended to be her super fan. And yeah, I made it, I was in the top five, and I was actually beaten by a guy who went on to be a finalist on American Idol, because our show, this MTV show, it was on for one season. And it was by no means a successful show like American Idol, but it was very fun. And it was just another thing crossed off the bucket list. You know, it was a dream since childhood to sing on a show like that. George: It's an amazing story. So one of our first doctors on the show as a guest, and the only person who's been on MTV as a guest here on the podcast. So you have those two accolades, and we're looking forward to learning more about you and sharing this information with our audience. So, Dr. Rissy, thanks for joining us all the way from New Jersey today. And we'll put all of the contact information in the show notes, and we appreciate having you here for our Conquer audience. Dr. Rissy: Awesome. Thank you so much. Conclusion George: I was expecting that we would talk a lot about writing and we would talk a lot about content, and the show went in a different path than what I was expecting, because what Morissa has learned, or Dr. Rissy, is that you need to have it all working together. One of the biggest takeaways is around her four pillars. You got SEO, you got social media, you've got ads, you've got PR, and are those swim lanes? No, they all work together. And businesses need to understand how they all work together, and how one component might impact the other. And what we find, and you notice that in what she was talking about from her experience on the street, and I love when we have guests that take it right down to the street level, is that businesses may be doing a great job in one tactic, but don't understand how it's impacting other components. And then they're looking to see the outcome, and having a hard time sometimes backing that out. And the biggest issue is around the confidence. The fact that things are changing all the time, and it comes back to this constant theme that we've heard over and over and over again from the day the Conquer Local Podcast was founded. Businesses are looking for either the "learn it on their own," and start to understand it, or "someone who can help teach them," and show them what good looks like. And when you talk about those 25 people in her organization, those folks are helping with the graphic design, and the writing, and bringing it to that local business group to help them have that confidence and eventually understand what's working and what's not. So that idea of this all coming together, we hear this more and more as we continue to bring subject matter experts like Dr. Rissy onto the show. And I appreciate that she really highlighted that maybe something you're doing over here in social media could be impacting those other components. So the four pillars, again, SEO, social media, ads, and PR just all are part of what a business needs to be understanding and working together to get the outcome that they're looking for. And, plus, just a very engaging speaker. When you dig deeper into her work, and we encourage you to do that, because we shared all of the contact information inside the show notes, you'll find that she's very passionate about helping local businesses, and, hey, that's right in our title. That's what we're all about here at the Conquer Local Podcast. So thanks to Dr. Rissy for joining us this week. My name is George Leith. We'll be back next week with another episode of the Conquer Local Podcast. I'll see you when I see you.

Get ready conquerors for this week’s episode of the Conquer Local Podcast as we feature Jordan Roscoe, President & CEO of Unique Pro Media, an agency that helps local businesses launch, grow, and scale. Jordan previously spent over a decade as a Journeyman Lineman. While he succeeded in that role, he aspired to achieve more and explored alternative ways of producing income. He quickly became obsessed with launching an agency capable of producing high-quality video content with the resources and skills to distribute digital media solutions. Jordan shares how becoming an affiliate helped him in elevating his agency to new heights by offering services like Google Ads, SEO, Web Design, and an intuitive client dashboard that streamlines SAAS and reporting. Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners, agencies, and enterprise-level organizations. Learn more about Vendasta, and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) make up to $10,000 off referrals. Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Then, keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy. Becoming an Affiliate Introduction George: This is the Conquer Local podcast, a show about billion-dollar sales leaders, marketers leading local economic growth, and entrepreneurs that have created their dream organizations. They wanna share their secrets giving you the distilled version of their extraordinary feats. Our hope is that with the tangible takeaways from each episode, you can rewire rework, and reimagine your business. I'm George Leith. And, on this episode, we welcome Jordan Roscoe, the president and CEO of Unique Pro Media. He spent over a decade as a journeyman lineman and then founded Unique Pro Media with an ambition to become more and serve others at a higher level. Although Jordan found success as a lineman, he always aspired to achieve more. He would explore alternative ways of producing income but routinely failed to establish an authentic connection with a new set of skills. After struggling for years to find alignment with his new career path, he finally had an epiphany. He became obsessed with the idea of launching an agency capable of producing high-quality videos with the resources and skills to strategically distribute and leverage the content. And, he went back to his career as a journeyman lineman and started working in home services. Get ready conquerors, for Jordan Roscoe, coming up next on this week's episode of the Conquer Local podcast. George: Jordan Roscoe, joining us all the way from Abbottstown, Pennsylvania. Jordan, thanks for coming on the show this week. I'm excited to have you on the program. Jordan: Yeah, I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me. George:  And, I know you're feeling a little under the weather today, but I'm telling you, your voice sounds great, so whatever you're doing, you might wanna keep doing it. It's deeper from what I saw. Jordan: You got that. Got that face for radio voice for video kind of thing going on. George: Yeah, that's what my mom's been telling me for 35 years, face made for radio. So, what we're talking about today is Jordan Roscoe and we wanna get to the affiliates program and passive income, because I think it's something that a lot of people are speaking about, but tell us about what you do in your agency from Abbottstown Pennsylvania. Jordan: Yeah, so here in Abbottstown, we serve, at my agency, we serve a lot of local business. I've got a pretty direct connection to small to medium-sized businesses as both my mother and my stepfather are small business owners themselves. So, I grew up in home services, specifically custom kitchens, and bathrooms, additions. And, then my mother's in the med spa industry, has been for the last 18 years. So, both of them are successful in their career, but it wasn't always rainbows and unicorns, right? So, there were definitely many years growing up as a kid where their businesses struggled, as a result, we struggled, and my brother and I too, right? So, there were tough times, but they were resilient, and they were committed, and they stuck in it. And, as a result, they've grown very successful businesses. So, we like to serve small businesses, and local business, that way we can help smooth out that kind of peak and valley, those peak and valley months or years, and just give us a smooth trajectory. So, we're passionate about local. And Vendasta has certainly been able to, has certainly equipped us with the resources necessary to do that at a high level. George: Thanks for sharing that part of your story, because I think it's a really important part is, at an early age, if I unpack that, you were impacted by struggles that small business people inevitably go through, and your mission is to smooth out that runway so that there isn't the peaks and valleys, which I think that's a hell of a reason to wake up every day. In the time that you've been running your agency, have you found specific niches that you folks do a really good job for, or is it more about people in the community that you're able to serve? Jordan: Yeah, so that's a good question. Starting the business and starting the agency, I wanted to serve the home services vertical and real estate, because that's what I have the deepest connection to throughout my life. My wife's a real estate agent now. I've always been fascinated by all things real estate, in terms of investing and just the lucrative opportunity that that brings. So, I wanted to include that into my home services vertical with my past directly connecting me to those folks, right? I understand what their day is like. I can speak that language pretty fluently. So, I've taken referrals and generalized a bit to work with other businesses within the community, but, ultimately, I'm always really called back to that home services vertical just because of my past. George:  Do you find in that vertical, that there is a request from the customer, that only work with me, because I don't want you helping my competitor get better at this. Like, do you ever find that happening? Jordan: Oh, absolutely. And, that's really one of the key pillars that we've built the agency on is that it's... It is exclusive, right? So, all of our contracts are based on exclusivity, as it relates to any sort of lead generation activity. So, they love that. And, exclusivity sells, it creates scarcity, it creates urgency, right? And, that's really helped our sales process too. So, yeah, exclusivity sells and our customers certainly appreciate that. George:  So, you become a trusted member of their team and they don't have to worry about you going out and giving the trade secrets to somebody else. But, doesn't that reduce the total addressable market that you may have? How have you overcome that? Because, if you're only working with one plumber, can't go work with other plumbers, so how have you been able to expand the business with that lens? Jordan: Yeah, so it's a good question. In a... In a cluster of zip codes, that's true, where you really can't work with a competing company, but outside of that addressable market, we've got the whole world at our fingertips here, and you and I, we're meeting from different countries, I believe anyway. I believe that you're... I'm not sure where you're tuning in from, but let's just say that you are in Canada, I'm in the US. You could be a plumbing company in Canada and I can still apply the same services. Now, we don't have a handshake, but the fundamentals of the strategy still apply, and we can do this business virtually. So, my market is infinite and that's what I love about running an agency. George: Well, and I, that's amazing, not the answer that I was expecting by the way, but I think that's a great answer. I just go outside of the market and find another customer that doesn't compete and run the same plays. But, the other thing I was wondering is if we're looking at home services, because you didn't just say plumbers, you said home services, isn't there an ecosystem there where the plumber usually recommends an electrician, and that's their buddy, and they know they do a great job. And, then the electrician recommends maybe a general contractor, who then maybe recommends a real estate agent that will sell the home down the road. Like, isn't there like a community in there that you might be able to go to as well? Jordan: Oh, absolutely. So, it only takes one. So, for me, it started in roofing and then I was able to infiltrate that entire network. And, just like you're saying, I was able to acquire their preferred HVAC partner, their preferred plumber. And, it did, it became an entire ecosystem of home services within just a couple cluster... Or, a cluster of zip codes. That's advantageous for me, because marketing, when we're talking about small local business, is everything. So, for me, it just took, it just took one. And, then I was able to infiltrate multiple networks as a result of that. George: No, and I love the word infiltrate, because the other thing that we know is all those real estate agents, all those plumbers, all those electricians, go to some sort of convention or belong to some sort of a network, and that's where other leads could come in that are outside of that zip code. And, I'm just making an assumption here, so help me out if I'm on the right track. Jordan: Yeah, absolutely. So, like we said, infiltrating, that that network only grows, because everybody knows somebody else, and their exposure to someone else, right? So, it's everybody knows 20 people, continue to apply that, that philosophy outward. Yeah, business cards. I still use business cards depending on the setting, right? But, I strategically put business cards in the hands of certain folks, and it does work. It does bring business back in. George: Well, everybody that does business properly uses a freaking a business card. Like, this whole thing, the business cards are dead, I probably handed out 50 business cards in the last month. It's like, no. Oh, how dead are QR codes? Yeah, that didn't quite work out, did it? So, good. Now, we've laid the foundation. Jordan is an expert at getting referrals and an expert at building networks. Now, let's talk about passive income and affiliates, because I believe that all of those things that you're doing inside your agency have been part of the reason why you were one of our top affiliate partners as well. So, can we talk about that journey? Jordan: Yeah, absolutely. So, after, I guess it was pretty, I guess, it was pretty early on in my partnership with Ven Dasta that I was exploring the idea of how I could also use the affiliate tools that were available to me, because I was an immediately an advocate, right? So, after becoming a partner, I became very passionate about the platform itself. And, I just... Like, I'm a very... I'm an advocate for the Peloton brand, right? And, if I could be an affiliate for them, I swear I could sell those bikes all day long, no problem, because my heart's in it. I feel the same way about Ven Dasta. So, as I was collaborating with other agency owners, and then just other folks in, other consultants that are in the marketing space, I was able to have that same type of passionate conversation, and it really wasn't about selling the platform. It was just about enthusiastically connecting other people in my industry to a really great resource, and the affiliate program, it's changed since I first came on, and it's definitely a much more lucrative opportunity than it used to be, which is awesome. And, yeah, I've been able to leverage that and definitely build some passive income there. And, it's been a lot of fun doing it too. George: The reason why I was excited about this episode, number one, I wanted to meet you, I feel like I've already met you, because there was amazing case study that was released just before this episode, and there's a video in there about you telling your story, I highly recommend people have a look at that case study, but also I think that business owners need to understand this concept of affiliate better. And, software companies, they jump into all this new stuff, right? And, that's really where affiliate was born. But, what I'm noticing is I think any business could utilize the bones of an affiliate program to help them generate new leads. Like, when I talk to business owner, they usually tell me they're looking for two things, they want more leads. That's always the item. And, they usually go to some long story about telling me that they want more leads. But, then the other thing is their looking for efficiencies, because of what we're dealing with right now in the business climate, like how can we find efficiencies and automate process? But, that, that lead component usually comes from running a great business. If you run a great business, you just get referrals, but putting a foundation in for affiliate, and putting a foundation in, foundation in place where it's easy for people to drive referrals your way, is really at the heart of the affiliate program. So, if you were to highlight the top two things, as you went down this affiliate journey, what would they be? The recommendation that you have to others that are thinking about I need to get in on this affiliate thing. Jordan: Oh, yeah. Referral based sales, right? So, take the consultative approach make yourself available. Something that's really worked well for me is to actually bring and host my own platform demonstrations before I go to the sales team, right? So, I get to build trust with the prospect and then basically as a user of the platform, show them how I'm using it, 'cause Ven Dasta is very robust, right? And, there's so many different avenues that you can go into in using the platform, and I'm quite confident in saying that I'm sure everyone uses it a little different. I think it would be a stretch to say that two people use it exactly the same. So, I have that, I take that consultative approach. I hold their hand, show them the platform. And, then I tee it up to the sales team and they're able to connect the dots from there. George: So, for our, for our listeners, if you're not familiar with the affiliate program, Jordan has an agency and is doing very well with that agency, but then taking all of those learnings, and through the affiliate program, able to talk to other potential agency owners, and get a fee for bringing that lead into the ecosystem. And, I'll tell you where it is, where I'm sitting on my desk. We gotta pay X number of dollars for a lead. And, I'd rather pay Jordan than pay it to Google or Facebook for ads. When a business looks at their cost to acquire a customer, that number is it's... There's a figure there. And, could we just pay it to somebody like Jordan who is a raving fan of the platform? That to me just makes sense to have you promote it to other organizations. So, this isn't a paid announcement for Ven Dasta affiliate program. What I wanted to get to is I think any business could use this model to just put their referral program on steroids. How do you feel about that? Jordan: Yeah, yeah, 100%. And, that's really what it comes down to. It's referral marketing at the end of the day, right? It's not necessarily, or at least the way that I treat it, it's not affiliate marketing, right? I kind of removed that piece of it. It's referral marketing. So, it's for any business to build a referral program around some affiliate marketing strategies or affiliate marketing programs is an absolute lead gen beast, right? And, it's... It wouldn't be that difficult to do so it's not... And, it's not a... It's not uncommon for businesses in existence now to give a referral kickback, right? So, if you could essentially raise an army of affiliates underneath, if you just think what that would represent in your revenue, right? To have an army of people out there as raving fans, like you said, promoting your company and your brand. George: Well, and I want to come back to what we were talking about off the top, because this whole thing ties together. When you go into one of your ecosystems, and you get the plumber, and the electrician, and the HVAC, and then the moving company, and what? Just down the line, right? The paint store, whatever it is, that's working with that audience, when you serve them really well, they usually just offer you the referral. Now, we teach people on this show to ask, create an environment for it, this is just putting some foundation around it. And, you've been very successful in driving this buzzword of passive income, like money in your sleep, but by the way, it's not that you sleep all the time, and you earn the money, you're doing a bunch of work to make this happen. So, I wanna be very clear on that. You're putting effort in to generate the affiliate fees that you're getting. Jordan: Yeah, absolutely. You have to generate the conversation or nothing... Nothing happens at that point. So, for me, it's a lot of community outreach in Facebook, LinkedIn, sometimes it's face to face, right? Because, I collaborate with other agency owners directly just as a result of being in the industry. So, and there's... I have... I'm in coaching programs, I'm a coach, right? So, there are... There's always conversations that are taking place. And, I try not to ever leave any money on the table, right? So, again, I love the Grant Cardone theory of sell or be sold. And, I definitely apply that here to the... My, both, my partnership with Ven Dasta and also my status as an affiliate, because I really am passionate about the product, and I have no problem connecting someone else with that service. George: Well, we appreciate your partnership and all the great work that we've been able to do together over the months with our teams. And, I know that inside our organization your name is a household name, Jordan. People know who Jordan Roscoe is. And, now, as a guest here on the Conquer Local podcast, I'm sure you've got a bunch of other potential raving fans. How can people connect with your organization if they were looking to speak to you about these programs that you're involved in? Jordan: Yeah, The easiest way to get back to me would be to go to my website, which is uniquepromedia.com and, yeah, book a consultation, be happy to chat and collaborate. George: Alright, and our team is going to put your case study into the show notes. We'll have the link if people are looking to speak to you. And, thanks for educating us today and congratulations on the success that you're having with Unique Pro Media. And, being one of our top affiliate programs. I know that Cass, and Jacob, and the team, and the affiliates, they talk about you very fondly. So, thanks for joining us in educating us today. Jordan: Yeah, thanks. It's been a pleasure. Conclusion George: Great speaking to Jordan today and learning from his experience in building out his agency in that very tough niche of home services. And, I love hearing from him that he's been able to figure out how to build some sort of value around an exclusive relationship without reducing his total addressable market, which is always a challenge. So, there's definitely some learnings for you there. The other component is that exclusivity creates urgency. And, all it takes is one happy customer in a network. And, then you can infiltrate that market. Everyone knows 20 people, and so on, and so on, and so on. So, in the early part of the episode we got basic understanding of how to build an ecosystem of referrals. Now, let's talk about affiliate, and, as Jordan likes to call it, referral marketing. Any business can utilize this strategy to build a network and a community to establish trust. And, there's a lot of effort involved, but there's a really nice payday at the end of the day. Generate the conversation. Then, take that conversation online through various communities, whether it be Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, coaching programs. And, I love the fact that Jordan talks about Grant Cardone around his sell or be sold methodology. So, Jordan gave us a master's class today in building out an agency to deal with an ecosystem, then mining that ecosystem for unlimited referrals, and then taking everything that he's learned, and putting it into this buzzword of affiliate marketing, or I like the way that Jordan refers to it better, referral marketing, but referral marketing on steroids. If you like Jordan's episode discussing affiliate marketing, let's continue the conversation. Check out episode 521, personal branding with Libby Gill, or episode 444, the psychology of starting and running an agency with our good friend, Robert Davis. Please subscribe and leave us a review. And, thanks for joining us this week on the Conquer Local podcast. My name is George Leith. I'll see you when I see you.

In this episode of the Conquer Local Podcast, we are joined by Corey Quinn, an accomplished entrepreneur, sales leader, and former Chief Marketing Officer of Scorpion, a digital marketing agency that experienced exponential growth under his leadership.  Corey shares his insights and strategies that propelled Scorpion from $20 to an astounding $150M in recurring revenue within six years and challenges the notion that more is always better.  Corey is the Fractional CMO and GTM Strategist at Corey Quinn, Inc., providing practical tips and secrets to help agencies and B2B SaaS businesses unlock their full potential. As the host of the "Vertical Go-To-Market" podcast and the author of the eagerly anticipated book, "Focus Vertical," Corey is at the forefront of the latest strategies and trends in the industry. Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners. Learn more about Vendasta and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) are making up to $10,000 off referrals. Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy. The Power of Verticals and Go-To-Market Strategies Introduction Jeff: Welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast! Our show features successful sales leaders, marketers, thought leaders and entrepreneurs who will inspire you with their success stories. Each episode is packed with practical strategies, as our guests share their secrets to achieving their dreams. Listen in to learn the highlights of their remarkable accomplishments and get tips to revamp, rework, and reimagine your business. Whether you're a small business owner, a marketer, or aspiring entrepreneur, the Conquer Local Podcast is your ultimate guide to dominating your local market. Tune in now to take your business to the next level!  I’m Jeff Tomlin and on this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Corey Quinn.  Corey has a 25-year track record of extraordinary success as an entrepreneur, sales leader, and CMO of Scorpion, a digital marketing agency serving SMBs where they grew from $20 to $150M in recurring revenue in just 6 years. Today, he unlocks sales and customer loyalty for Agencies and B2B SaaS by doing less, not more. He's also the host of the "Vertical Go-To-Market" podcast and author of the book,  "Focus Vertical" to be released soon.  Get ready Conquerors for Corey Quinn coming up next on this week’s episode of the Conquer Local Podcast. ​​Corey Quinn's Agency Growth Expertise Jeff: Corey Quinn, hey. It is a pleasure to have you on the Conquer Local Podcast, sir. Welcome, and how are you doing? Corey: I'm doing great, Jeff. Super excited to be here. Jeff: Hey, well, glad to have you. So we went through a little bit of your background throughout the intro, but why don't you tell the audience a little bit more about you and about your life, and life as a fractional CMO and all things great. Corey: Sure, so, thanks for that. I have over two decades of experience, a combination of entrepreneurship and sales and business development. About 15 of those years directly in an agency as an operator. My last role at an agency was as a Chief Marketing Officer of a company called Scorpion. And Scorpion is a digital marketing agency and technology company that services small to medium-sized local businesses with a focus on vertical, a couple of verticals. And while I was there, I joined the company in 2015. And at the time, it was about 100 employees, 1000 customers, and about $20 million in revenue. By the time I left the agency it was, at the end of 2021, it was 1000 employees, 14,000 clients, and about $150 million in revenue. So during those six and a half years, just we had that explosive growth, and gosh, I learned so much. I had such a good time, and made lifelong friendships. And now what I'm doing is I've left Scorpion just over a year ago, and I'm spending my time helping agencies to grow by leveraging some of the big sort of insights and learnings that I had both of my time at Scorpion, as well as across my professional career. Scorpion's Growth: Vertical Focus, Inbound, Outbound Marketing & Relationships Jeff: So you've helped SaaS companies and agencies grow from seven to eight figures. You've grown Scorpion from 20 million to 150 million, which is an incredible amount of growth and a really incredible top line. So talk a little bit about some of the practices that you had in place. So like, how do you take something from 20 million to 150 million? Not a lot of people have reached that level of growth. And so you must have some war wounds and battle scars and some practical experience to share. Corey:  It was not a straight line. You don't get there. It was definitely an interesting experience for sure. So when I arrived on the scene at Scorpion, as I mentioned, it was about 100 person company and a nine-person sales team. I'll talk a bit more about that in a second. But what I remember, I was in the conference room, I was interviewing for the Chief Marketing Officer role, which by the way was their first marketing hire for the agency. Previous to that, the founder and CEO had kind of done random acts of marketing to get the phone to ring. But the thing I learned in the interview process, I was interviewing with my colleague on the sales side, my counterpart on the sales side. He was already at the company at that time. And he shared with me something that frankly I did not believe when I first heard it. And so what he shared with me was that the client retention rate was 93%. Which for any agency of any size, that's a fantastic number. But when you're dealing with small local businesses that come in and out of business and change locations, and you know, it's more volatile potentially than larger companies, just to due to their size, I was taken aback. And I eventually was given the job, given an offer to join Scorpion. I took the offer in part because there was something special about the company that I wanted to understand and to help the CEO to grow the company from where they were. And what I learned was a big part of Scorpion's success, in my experience and others, is the vertical focus, the vertical go-to-market. And I'll explain to you what that means specifically in this context. Out of the thousand customers that were Scorpion clients, the vast majority of them were attorneys, and the vast majority of those were personal injury attorneys. And so they'd really built the business since 2001 to 2015 when I was there, when I joined, around really focusing in on that specific customer. And as a result of that focus, we were able to drive a lot of value for those customers and resulting in that great customer retention ratio. So one of the big factors, and this is one of the things that we could talk more about, I share with my clients, is taking a vertical focus to the market. The other thing that was really instrumental in our growth was there's sort of three legs to a marketing, sort of go-to-market process, it's inbound, outbound, and relationship-based marketing. When it came to the sales team, it was a nine person sales team at the time, and they all drove very nice cars, they all lived a very comfortable lifestyle, and it was a good time to be a scorpion salesperson. And the reason was because there was a ton of inbound interest. A lot of inbound leads and a lot of people, attorneys raising their hand and saying, hey, I wanna be a Scorpion customer. I wanna learn more about your services. The reason why was because every single Scorpion client got a brand new website that was SEO optimized. And back in the early 2010s, it was a lot easier to rank for competitive keywords than it is, I'd argue, today, but even still. And so the way that an attorney would shop for a website is that they would go to Google and they search for attorney in whatever city they're in. In Los Angeles or Baltimore or whatever it is, and they would look, see who came up in the search results, and they'd click on those websites. And inevitably, it would be a Scorpion website client, and they'd go to the bottom of the client website and there would be a link over to Scorpion. And that's how they'd get a lot of the business. The challenge was, and part of the reason why I was brought into help Scorpion was the founder, as I mentioned, really wanted to grow, really wanted to grow the business. Wanted to help more people, wanted to reach more people. And the way that, we were not going to be able to reach our revenue targets by just depending on inbound. We had to do something that's called outbound. And outbound sales and marketing is really about going into the market and having proactive conversations before people reach out to us. And so we had taken a very inbound focused sales culture, and we brought in an outbound methodology, we trained the folks up on that, and we brought that in. And by doing that alone, that really helped us to almost double the business overnight just by adding outbound to the inbound process. And then the third thing that we did, which is really critical for, especially if you want to be a specialist in a vertical, is do something what I call relationship based marketing. And from a high level, that's basically building trust with the people in the industry that you're targeting through going to the conferences, associations, and being sort of value driven. Vertical Focus Streamlines and Specializes in Marketing Impact Jeff: Yeah. So I'm still reeling a bit by the retention rate that you talked about. 93% is really unheard of because one of the reasons some, investors particular who stay away from the SMB space is because there's a natural rate of churn built into the market. And 93% is absolutely unbelievable. And so you talked a little about the vertical strategy. So unpack that a little bit. What are specifically some of the benefit focusing on a vertical like you guys did at Scorpion? Corey: Yeah. Well, through my experience as well, I have interviewed a bunch of vertical specialists, agency, the founders of those agencies. I've asked them the same question. Everyone comes back with the same answer, which is everything becomes easier and better when you are focused on a vertical. Now what I mean by that is you know what lists to buy or to create. You know what content to write. You're not just writing a generic infographic about SEO, but you're writing an infographic for SEO for dental offices, right? You're making a much bigger impact with your content. You know where to advertise, you know which conferences to go to and which associations to get involved in and which podcasts to start and so on and so forth. So it just brings a lot of focus and clarity to an agency or any business, it could be SaaS or agency, that helps to streamline and create a bigger impact in today's world, especially in the crowded world of agencies or this particular audience. Being a generalist, it makes it very difficult to get your message across. That's number one, it makes it easier. And then number two, I would just add to that that when you are vertically focused, you're able to operationalize your business. You know, we went from 100 employees to 1000 employees, but 14 times our number of employees. And the way that we were able to do that with great client retention rates was through operationalizing the business. And the only way you could do that is if you're doing very, very similar things every day, all day. Repeated actions lead to processes and systems. And then we built a lot of software that allowed us to provide the same amount of value that a human would, in some respects, in certain aspects of the business, without relying on humans to do it. So we brought a lot of software in to help us to run the operations of the business. Jeff: That makes perfect sense. And I can understand it too, I came from a world where we focused on building real estate websites and building real estate website platform had the same benefits that you're describing, and it totally resonates. You've got a very target audience and you can create repeatable systems. Corey: One more thought I wanted to add on that you reminded me, which is that you begin to get really familiar with your buyer. If you're just servicing a real estate agent or, you know, in your case, you become very familiar with them, their world, the problems you're solving for them, and that allows you to stand out even more with your marketing and your positioning 'cause you are a specialist in their world. And in many cases, in the case of Scorpion, what we were able to do was to solve problems that they didn't even realize they had yet. Because we knew their business, we knew what success looked like for them. And many cases, these attorneys were not very sophisticated when it came to marketing. So we were able to use our specialization and our familiarity with their world to help them to achieve a lot of growth in a short period of time. Jeff: Must make things easier on your sales floor and building repeatable processes on the sales floor too. Because similar to all of your marketing efforts, your salespeople are becoming experts at speaking to a very specific client and a lot of repeatability that you can build into that I can see for sure. Corey: 100%. Vertical Go-to-Market Podcast Jeff: One thing I did wanna note, by the way, 'cause I heard you mentioned podcast, you have a vertical go-to-market podcast, and I wanted to ask you, I can imagine what the focus is, but who's the target audience in that podcast? Corey: Thank you. So it's the Vertical Go-To-Market Podcast, and it's for business owners, agency owners who have been successful by being a generalist, meaning serving businesses of all shapes and sizes, and they're at that point where they wanna specialize. And they know that they need to sharpen their focus and get more vertically oriented potentially. And so that's really the audience. And what I do on this podcast is I interview founders of agencies and of SaaS businesses who've already made that transition from a generalist to a specialist, and they've been wildly successful. So this the sort of the after, the people who've, like I said, been through that transformation. They've been through the process of being a generalist, knowing what that's like, and then deciding to specialize and then being very successful as a result. Vertical focus: Inbound, Outbound, and Relationship-based Marketing. Jeff: Well, there you go. So one of the other things that you had touched on earlier on is the three legs of the stool. And can we back up to that a little bit and you go through that? Corey: Sure, of course. Jeff: Because I think that it's such an important concept for people to be super clear on their go-to-market strategies. And it's just an important concept. Corey: I speak with a lot of agencies who really today focus on inbound as their primary channel for growing their business. And I think that there's nothing wrong with that, and I think it's a very good way to go to market. It becomes a challenge, however, when you want to increase the volume of business that you're driving. You're sort of subject to the market. And what I mean by that, let's just say you're targeting local businesses or it could be any vertical. At any one point, and there's been various studies about this, let's say three to 5% of the market is searching for a solution. They're actively looking. Which means that 95% of the market is not currently looking. However, there's gonna be some percentage of those businesses that would benefit from your service. And so, you know, inbound is, and what I'm talking about is outbound, I'll talk about that here in a second. But from an inbound perspective, the way to do inbound very effectively is, number one, if you speak to me, I'll always say that you need to be vertically focused. You need to understand your specific consumer, the person you're buying to at a very deep level. As a result of that, you're able to communicate to them much more effectively than if you were a generalist. And so doing the customer research and being vertically focused is really important. And the purpose of inbound is to make sure that your offer and your brand is in front of those three to 5% of the market who's actively searching for a solution. So that means being on search, being on social. It's a bit about putting out great content that educates the buyer about the problem that they're trying to figure out, so on and so forth. That's what good inbound is is being visible in the buyer's journey so that they can include you to the list of businesses that they're thinking about interviewing to become their partner or vendor. That's inbound. Outbound is targeting the rest of the market that's not currently shopping. And I'll share with you a concept that I talk about with my clients, which is the zone of indifference. Probably haven't heard of that, heard of that concept. Jeff: I have not heard of the concept. Corey: Okay. Jeff: Fill us in. Corey: Okay. So yeah, all right, I'll fill in the gap here. So I'll give you an example by sharing a story about my wife. So my wife has the iPhone X, okay? I think right now, the latest iPhone is the 14. And the phone crashes. The memory card is full, it's slow. It has a short battery life. And she complains about it once in a while. However, for whatever reason, she doesn't go and get the new phone. I encourage her like, honey, all this stuff will be resolved by just going to the store. We're with Verizon here. And I said, "Go to the Verizon store." And she says, "Well, you know, "I really am frustrated by this phone, "but gosh, I don't wanna lose my photos. "And so I'm just gonna, you know, "I'll go down there sometime." And of course she never does. And so where she is is she's in what I call the zone of indifference. She doesn't love her phone, but she doesn't hate it enough to actually go and fix it. She's not yet in that three to 5% of the market that's actively looking for a solution. She knows what she needs to do, but she's not doing it. And that's what really good effective outbound does. It attacks that zone of indifference. It finds the largest percentage of the market that you're targeting who know they have a problem, but it's not bad enough yet for them to actually go through the pain of making a change. We all hate change, right? Human nature. And so what good outbound does is, assuming you really know who your target customer is, you can go outbound to them and encourage them to think about the problem that you solve in a way that helps them to realize, hey, I can actually solve this really easily through these services and do so proactively. What the great thing about outbound is, from a strategic perspective is, by the time they're in the buying process, they're already in the inbound process. They're gonna be shopping, and they're gonna be comparing you to everyone else. If you reach out to them directly, you can bypass that whole comparison sort of competitive nature. You can have a direct conversation with them and influence them potentially to buy your service right out the gate. So that's number two, inbound outbound. And the third one is relationship-based marketing. The focus of relationship-based marketing, and I mentioned this briefly a minute ago, but it is in any vertical or industry, there are going to be places where the people who are a part of that industry go and spend time and socialize and hang out. Things like associations, conferences, events, meetings. All those things are really important when you're focusing in on a vertical. But in addition to that, there's an author, Gladwell, who mentioned this concept of connectors and mavens. And where I apply this in, Malcolm Gladwell, sorry, where I apply this into my work is, in any vertical industry, there are going to be people in that industry who have more social capital than anyone else. They're the ones that everyone else looks to to make decisions. Maybe it could be the biggest brand, it could be the biggest influencers. And so from a strategic perspective, knowing that these folks, these influential folks are out there and they're very believable by their vertical, building relationships with them is really a smart thing to do, as well as targeting the companies and the brands in your target vertical who have the most credibility. If you can bring them on as your clients, you're gonna make your sales process a lot faster and a lot smoother than if you didn't. Engineering Powerful Word-of-Mouth and Meeting Customers’ Unrecognized Needs Jeff: You know, in the past two episodes, we had Barrett King and Jack Pires who were speaking to us. And in both episodes, the idea of the trifecta, inbound, outbound, and partnerships or word of mouth and referral-based marketing came up. And so I'm so glad to hear you talk about it because it reinforces that, hey, some of our positions on this, we're not just making this shit up. This is a great way to think. And you made a couple of things a little bit sharper. And number one was focusing on verticalization for inbound, which I think is super smart. And then you layered in this concept of this gap of indifference, which I think is a really cool way of thinking about the opportunity with outbound because we do know if you can quantify the amount of pain that somebody has and get them to see that actually solving that amount of pain, even if they think it's kind of small, you go a long way to getting them to agree to a certain path. Corey: Yep, that's right. Jeff: And one of the things we were also chatting about in the previous episode was partnerships. And Barrett King at HubSpot was talking a lot about, his focus is on global partnerships there. And there's a couple of different ways of looking at that at sort of indirect channels if you will. Indirect being word of mouth and referral, and you have an equation when you're thinking about word of mouth. You wanna explain that a little bit? Corey: Yes. Sure, absolutely. So I am basing this off of the work of Chip Conley. Chip is the ex founder and CEO of a boutique hotel group called Joie de Vivre. It's no longer in existence. They were bought by some massive company, and he ended up becoming the Chief Customer Officer over at Airbnb for a while. And what he taught in a book he wrote as well as just in general is that the way to really build word of mouth predictably is to meet your customers' unrecognized needs. So I'll give you an example of what the heck that means. So I do use an equation. So the first part of the equation is you wanna meet your customers' needs. I'll use Scorpion as the example. So what we did at Scorpion is they came to our attorney clients and later other verticals, but the attorney clients came to us because they had a need to fill, which is they needed more cases. And so of course in order for us to stay in business, we needed to make sure that we were delivering on that need. The challenge with stopping there as a business is that it becomes a very transactional relationship. Did you get me the leads today? If you did, great. If you didn't, then I'm gonna find someone else. You end up becoming a commodity and competing on price and all these really horrible things. And so what you don't wanna do is you don't wanna stop at meeting your customers' needs, you also wanna meet their wants. And so what does an attorney want with a company like Scorpion or other agencies? Well, they probably want, based on my experience, they want someone who is gonna answer the phone, is gonna listen to my questions and help me to understand what's going on and be an advisor, really, and be a trusted resource. And when you are able to meet their wants, you create more customer intimacy. And sure, you're gonna get some word of mouth and some referrals over time, but there's one more level, which is to meet your clients' unrecognized needs. And so the context for this, and I'll again use Scorpion, is that what we realized was, because a lot of attorneys were new to internet marketing, they didn't really know what to do with leads. And so, as a result, I'll give you an example. So they would advertise on Google, and then maybe a potential client or potential case would call in and no one would answer the phone or maybe they wouldn't get back to them in a couple days. And what we found was the best attorneys, who are our clients, would have a really what I'd call dial dialed in intake process. And that's the process of what happens as the campaigns are running, what happens when the phone rings or when someone sends in an email. Like how do you process those leads? And what we realized was that a lot of these attorneys would not be successful with Scorpion or anyone else if they didn't have someone to help them figure out really what is the best practice when it comes to intake. And so what we learned by working with some of the best law firms in the country is like, we inherited sort of an understanding of how to do the best intake. And so what we would do as part of the sales process, we would ask them, "So tell me about your intake process. "What happens when the phone rings?" And we would begin to consult them on things far outside of just, you know, is my website ranking on page one of Google? We got into more of a position of a business advisor, a true trusted business advisor. Someone who really cared for their business. And what that did is it really solved an unrecognized need that, in our case, the attorney clients really needed. They were a fish out of water when it came to internet marketing. They needed someone who could take care of them and help them to understand what's going on, as well as how internet marketing fits within the larger context of their business. So as a result of us being more of that trusted advisor for these attorneys and helping them to grow their business on topics across the entire law firm, we were able to really resolve or solve an unrecognized need. They weren't coming to us to help them with intake and these other sorts of larger business growth topics, but that's the value that we provided. And as a result of that, the client intimacy went through the roof 'cause we were solving very profound problems, but we were only charging them for a fraction of the value that we were creating. You do that enough with enough of your clients over a long enough period of time and you're gonna generate a lot more word of mouth than if you were just meeting their needs. Jeff: I can completely agree with that. We had another gentleman on the podcast, his name was Tim Riesterer with Corporate Visions, and he talked about this idea of an unconsidered need. And if you can uncover it or you can introduce an unconsidered need in a sales conversation, instantly you create this break in this status quo bias that the the buyer has. This bias to just stay with the way things are because you get them scratching their head and say, hey, maybe things aren't all perfect over here. And it opens up their mind. I really like that, I like that thinking. I can perfectly see how you can't get to that level of understanding of your buyer persona if you're not vertically focused in a particular correct area. Corey: Correct. It goes back to just continually doing the same work for the same buyer. Over time, that intimacy goes through the roof from an institutional perspective. Your salespeople get really smart, your account managers really understand it, and the value that you're able to provide as a result of that goes through the roof. Verticalize your business for long-term success Jeff: Hey, it's a privilege being able to chat with such a seasoned marketer. These are amazing insights. And I learn something new with everyone that I chat with. Especially on your one idea of the zone of indifference. When I go home this evening and my wife asks what I'd like to make for supper, I'm gonna tell her that I'm just currently in a zone of indifference. Tell her I just learned that today. Hey Corey, it's been a pleasure having you on. One thing that we like to do in the Conquer Local Podcast is to leave people with one takeaway. There's a an awful lot to digest in some of the great insights that you had on the chat, but if there's one thing that you wanted to leave people with, what would it be? Corey: This is gonna shock you, but I'm gonna recommend that you verticalize your business. And that doesn't mean necessarily day one you have to commit yourself to one vertical and only do that. If you're a younger or an agency that's just getting started, I actually prefer that you do the opposite and really take on a lot of different clients and say yes a lot. But over time, you begin to understand and see really where your best fit customer is with regard to the work that you do, the value you create, who you like working with. Once you have some of those signals, it's time to start verticalizing, focusing your business so you can benefit from some of the things we talked about in today's episode. Getting in touch with Corey Quinn Jeff: I've learned the incredible value of consistent messaging, and I totally agree with you and your stance on verticalization. Hey Corey, if someone wants to get ahold of you and reach out, they've got additional questions, how can they reach you?  Corey: Great, so the best way to find me is on my website. It's coreyquinn.com, that's spelled C-O-R-E-Y-Q-U-I-N-N .com. I also have a daily newsletter where I send out marketing tips specifically around this concept of going from a generalist to a specialist. If that's of interest to you and you may wanna check it out, you can find the link to sign up on my website. So thank you.  Jeff: Hey, it's been a pleasure having you on the Conquer Local Podcast, and it's been a pleasure chatting with you. I wanna thank you for taking some of your very valuable time to spend with us and chat today, and hope you'll come back and visit us again and we can have another chat in the not-too-distant future. Corey: I would love that, Jeff. Thank you so much for the opportunity, appreciate it. Conclusion Jeff: It was a pleasure speaking to Corey about Verticals and Go-to-Market strategies. Focusing on a vertical go-to-market strategy, which includes inbound, outbound, and relationship-based marketing, can lead to success in maintaining customer retention and driving customer success. Outbound marketing is particularly useful in targeting the market that is not buying and engaging the zone of indifference. And lastly, relationship-based marketing involves building a relationship with influential people in the industry who can become trusted business advisors. Providing value to clients through client intimacy and assisting them with growth across multiple platforms can lead to success in helping agencies and SMBs grow their business. Understanding the consumer and being visible in the buyer journey through inbound marketing, such as being on search, social, and putting up educational content, is key to being a trusted vendor or partner. Adding outbound marketing can help double the business by proactively targeting potential clients before they reach out. If you’ve enjoyed Corey’s episode discussing The Power of Verticals and Go-To-Market  let’s keep the conversation going and revisit some of our older episodes from the archives: Check out episode 530: Increasing Revenue with Social Selling with Jamie Shanks or Episode 523, Lead Generation through Podcasting with Collin Mitchell  Until next time, I’m Jeff Tomlin. Get out there and be awesome everyone! 

Regardless of what your sales strategy is, you need to have some type of post-sales retention strategy. Tune in to learn the 4 Keys to Retention. Matt Tennison, VP of Business Development and Partners with Boostability, joins George this week to discuss retention. Matt gave such an insightful presentation at Conquer Local that we had to have him on the podcast to share it with our listeners. He walks us through the four keys to retention; Product Knowledge, Post Sales Engagement, Sales Training, and Product Sales Support. Matt and George dig deep into each key to retention, and provide examples and best practices. Matt has over 20 years of experience in the marketing and advertising field and over 15 years of experience in high-level business development and partner relations. Over his career, Matt has worked for large advertising publications and national agencies, where he achieved great success in advertising sales, business development, and sales management. Prior to joining Boostability in 2011, Matt ran an advertising agency for eight years, where he became very familiar with both traditional marketing methods and digital marketing techniques. He has an intimate understanding of the small business marketplace and an expertise in forging high-performing partner relationships.   Introduction George: It's the latest edition of the Conquer Local Podcast. There were some great speeches this year and great keynotes this year at Conquer Local, our conference in San Diego. I'm going to bring you one of the best presentations of the entire event. Matt Tennison, the VP of Business Development from Boostability will give us a synopsis of his presentation at Conquer Local, and that is coming up next. George: It's the latest edition of the Conquer Local Podcast. Matt Tennison joining me, the VP of Business Development for Boostability. Matt, thanks for joining us. Matt: Thanks, George. Thanks for having me, and thanks for putting on such a great conference. I'm excited to keep it going by participating in this podcast. George: Well, we had a lot of really good feedback from your presentation at Conquer Local. It was a great topic because I think that this is something that every salesperson and sales manager needs to be concerned about and that is retention of customers. You spoke at the convention about the four keys to retention. We got a ton of great feedback on it so congratulations on coming up with something that was very relevant. Can we talk about what you believe to be the four keys to client retention? Matt: Yeah, sure. You want me to just start off by outlining them? George: Yeah, let's jump into it. Matt: Okay. I think before I actually outline what the four keys to retention are, maybe a forward about how I came up with this and a little bit about my experience might be helpful. Matt: What I basically have done is taken an evaluation of my eight years' time working in Boostability and working hand-in-hand with partners and observations of what I've seen that is really good and what I've seen that is really poor with regard to retaining clients because retention is the ... well, it's pretty much the crux for most of our partners. Matt: As we deal with partners that range anywhere in size from the small one-man website design agency to national Yellow Pages companies on up to global hosting and domain registrar companies and everything in between. It's surprising to see some of the misses and as well as some of the areas of success that all of these very diverse set of partners have in common. Matt: I kind of just looked back over that timeframe and thought, "You know, these are the four things that have really stuck out in my mind, observing these partners over the last eight years," and so here they go. Matt: First key is point of sales strategy. What I mean by that is is that client retention really begins at and even before the point of sale. The second key is post-sales engagement and reselling. The third key is sales training, and the fourth key is product sales support. George: I found that these really spoke to a sales process. When I was watching you deliver the presentation, all of this stuff really hit home. I'm looking forward to the way that you lay this out. I didn't even really consider what you were talking about in number one, but after you explained it, it really hit home. Point of sales strategy, let's dig into that a little bit.   Point of Sales: It’s All About the Value Matt: Well, the idea here is, in my mind, really simple. It's that you need to begin laying out the basis of the client experience and client journey when you sell the client. The way that I like to look at this is what is the core value of the product that you're selling? How do you break that down into super simple terms, and how do you express it over and over in the point of sale so that you begin to actually lay down the consistent messaging and terminology that your client will expect to hear at every touchpoint they have along their client experience. Matt: I'll utilize an example with SEO because it's what I'm the most familiar with, but I do believe that this applies to any digital product that would lie within a partner suite of products. Matt: When we train people how to sell SEO, we train them on the basis of relevance and trust, meaning that SEO was the process by which you create relevance and trust to a website so that it deserves to rank. We laid this idea of relevance and trust. We do work on your website such as optimizing code and copy to generate relevance. We do work off your website, such as writing blogs and articles that link back to the website to create trust. Matt: But what we're really doing is not only are we selling the client on the value of SEO and what SEO is, we're laying the foundation for every touchpoint that client's going to have because from then on out, every piece of engagement that that client's going to have is going to revolve around these two keywords, these two main value propositions behind the product. We're creating relevance and trust so you deserve to rank. Matt: For instance, in the term of a general question, a general question might be from a client to a client services agent, "Hey, why are you doing these particular tasks." Well, this particular task creates relevance so that when someone searches for a particular service that you provide, Google deems your website relevant for that service. “Why do you do this task?” Well, we do this task because this helps build trust to Google that you are an authoritative company in the space you represent. Matt: From an escalation standpoint, like a point of frustration, "Why is it taking my website so long to rank?" Well, you recall the idea that we're accomplishing is building relevance and trust, and it just simply doesn't happen overnight. You don't become relevant the first time you set foot into the arena, and you're not trusted the first time you open your mouth. Google needs to recognize the work that we're doing over and over and over on a monthly basis so that they really recognize that you are indeed relevant and trusted. Matt: Anyway, a long story to show though that you begin retention by laying the framework and the value right at the point of sale. George: No, I love the way that you've put this together because it is very simple. First off, you didn't give them eight things that they need to remember. You gave them two things, and what business wouldn't like to be more relevant and more trusted. It blows me away sometimes how the most effective tactics are the simplest to deploy. By keeping it to just those two items that they're going to hear over and over and over again, whether it's an email report that's going out, they're just talking to someone in your customer success team or when we come in to do some post-sales engagement, and I think you're going to get into that when we talk about number two, which is post-sales engagement and reselling.   Post-Sales Engagement and Reselling: It’s All About Connecting with the Client Matt: Yeah, it is. It does take a little bit of a turn here. When I talked about observations that I've seen with partners over the last eight years, one of the biggest offenders and, quite frankly, one of the biggest surprises is how poorly sales organizations go out and resell their clients. Sometimes they literally just forget. A digital product is established generally on some type of a contracted basis whether it be a six or a 12-month contract. Most of ... say most, but a good amount, let's just say a good amount of clients that I have seen churn out over the years are due to someone simply forgetting about them and not ever going out and reselling them on the value, whether it's relevance and trust or whatever that value is based on whatever product that we're dealing with. Matt: What I said at the Conquer Local conference was is that set and forget is not a winning strategy. These clients need to be told the value story over and over and over. Then there needs to be some type of a mechanism in place that alerts sales organizations or alerts clients services organizations to when these clients are coming up on their contract end dates so that someone can literally go out, give them phone call, pay them a visit and say, "Hey, Mr. Customer, I want to talk to you about the value and the success you've had in your campaign and talk about how we can keep this moving forward for you into a new term." That simply just doesn't happen very often. Like I said, I'm shocked. Matt: When I talk to partners about it, the number one response is, "Well, our salespeople are focused on selling new business." In my mind I'm thinking, "Well, I see your sales numbers, so is that really the case?" Regardless of what your sales strategy is, you need to have some type of post-sales engagement strategy. Matt: If you are indeed a sales organization where you want your sellers to always be focusing in on new business and not servicing old business, then create a position that does do that because I think one of the bigger takeaways in doing this for me, and my counterpart, Amanda, actually presented this point at the conference was that it is five times more expensive to go and acquire a new customer than it is to save an old customer. George: Right. Matt: From a pure economics standpoint, it makes perfect sense. Then from a review standpoint and a client experience standpoint of what that client is going to say to other people, it also makes perfect sense. It's a double win to have some type of post-sales engagement strategy. George: Matt, I've seen a new tactic. Maybe it's not a new tactic but in the recent months, I'm like, "Wow, this makes a lot of sense," where organizations are using email marketing to teach the customer, to remind the customer of the value that they bought day one. The thinking is, and I've talked to a number of organizations that are deploying this tactic, were using marketing automation to drive new leads and to warm up cold prospects. George: But what happens, a salesperson goes in, makes a great presentation of the value proposition and what the solution is going to do, and then they don't have that ongoing conversation. There is a way to do it with an email to remind the customer of what that value proposition is so it doesn't have to be a face-to-face tactic. As part of that post-sales engagement and reselling or teaching is reminding them of the value proposition that they have purchased in the hope of retaining that customer.   Sales Training: It’s All About Product Mastery Through Simplicity George: Let's get into sales training because I know that you have worked with a lot of sales organizations, and I value that eight years of experience. What's the one thing that you've learned about sales organizations over the last eight years? Matt: I think the biggest key here is product mastery through simplicity. George: I love it. I love it. Tell us all about it. Matt: Yeah. Being such a master of your product that you can break it down into the most simple terms possible and direct and own a conversation and keep it on that simple path. You can only really do that, you can only control a conversation to that degree when you really know what you're talking about. The more you know what you're talking about, the more simple you can make things and the more you can direct that conversation to where you want to go because at the end of the day, your salespeople should never be product people. Salespeople should be salespeople. They should be talking about value and features, advantages, benefits, how this product is going to make the client more money, how it's going to drive more customers. It should never be a conversation that's based on jargon and industry terms and fancy technical terms. Leave that to the product folks and to the client services folks if and when that client wants to get into deeper conversations. As a salesperson, you own the conversation by keeping it super simple. Matt: I think that the phraseology and the imagery that I used at the conference was pretty poignant, right? I had a picture of a big weed whacker mowing down a patch of weeds. My comment was is that in sales training, if you're not focused on the core value elements like the relevance and trust, then what you're doing is you're not enabling salespeople. You're creating weed whackers because then you're leaving salespeople to their own devices to go out and educate themselves. By and large, it holds true that salespeople will go and educate themselves on the most irrelevant, least important things because they want to sound educated and fancy when in reality they should be all about the value. George: What happens when I have a customer and they want to go deeper into the product and they really want to understand the technical side of it. How would you suggest, as part of your four keys to retention, that salespeople handle that? Matt: Well, George, that's a great set-up for the fourth point, which is this idea of a product sales support role. I'm going to give some background on this. We've had a couple of SEO partners who were very poor at selling SEO, right? They had experienced, knowledgeable sales forces, but perhaps these sales forces were more adept at selling traditional media or selling cheaper products. The SEO sale can be quite complicated and nuanced. Matt: We could give them all the training we wanted; train them, train them, train them, relevance and trust up the ying-yang, give them all types of webinars, all types of collateral pieces, but at the end of the day, they would sometimes just get into a place where they couldn't direct the conversation to where it needed to go. They were underperforming. We needed to come up with an idea here at Boostability to make it worthwhile to have these partners, right, because a partner is only as good as how much they're selling.   Product Sales Support: It’s All About Diving Deeper with Experts Matt: We came up with this idea of product sales support. Here's how it works. If you're on the phone talking to a client, and you get into a place where you simply can't direct the conversation to where you want it to go, the questions are becoming a little bit too deep, and you don't want to get into that line of questioning or that line of discussion because you want to keep it centered around value, then you can call into a product sales support line and bring someone on board who plays a specific role, plays the role of that person who can get into the deeper dive and get into the more technical discussion. Matt: I love the idea of a product specialist doing this rather than the salesperson doing this because of a couple of reasons. First off, two heads are always better than one, right? Two perspectives, two different opinions. It just creates more credibility all the way around. Second, it allows the salesperson to stay focused and specialized into what they're supposed to be doing, and that's talking about value. It allows this other person to get into the weeds a little bit and to vary. Then the salesperson can actually sit back, strategically listen to this conversation, and then reinsert themselves right at the key times when the client is giving buying signals or other types of signals through the course of the discussion with the product specialist. Matt: It works great for a three-legged call on the phone. It also works fantastic if you're sitting face-to-face with someone and you get into this situation to simply say, "You know what, I'm going to call on one of my product specialists because they're going to be able to talk to you about this in a way that I just can't. Matt: The other thing it does is it creates trust and believability because believe it or not, in my years of sales, one of the biggest things that you can say to someone that generates trust in you as an expert, and it's going to sound totally oxymoronic, is to use the phrase, "I don't know." Yeah, because I'm a sales guy. In what world does that make me a digital products expert? To say the words, "I don't know. Let's bring someone on here who is a real true blue expert in this," it's really a cool thing, and it creates a lot of trust. It creates that idea that, hey, this guy really does care about listening to me and answering my questions, that he's not just going to make something up. George: Well, Matt, it brings an enormous amount of value to the conversation. The customer feels that they're considered important because you brought this technical expert in. Now, I'm sure that you've listened to a number of these calls. I just happened to have listened to one about a week ago, and I'd like to talk about something you don't want to do, and that is you've got the product sales support person there, and you don't intro them properly. It's just like, "Oh, here's T-bone now. He's on the call," and I haven't really given any context as to why he's there, nothing about his background. You're missing out on an opportunity to tee this thing up. It's on the salesperson to do that properly. Have you seen any train wrecks where reps have done a bad job of this? Matt: Well, yeah. We've seen the gamut. We've seen to where they give no context as to where they're at in the conversation, or they give no context as to who the person is coming in on the call. It's all a learning process. We've been doing this product sales support line now for I think going on five years. We're in our fifth year of doing it, so I could say we've seen it all. But we've really kind of honed in the process now to where it's super simple. Matt: For instance, the three of us here are representing the sales agent, client and product specialist. If I'm sales agent, George, and you are the potential client and T-bone's the product guy, I'm going to simply say something to the fact of, "George, you know what, this conversation's getting really good, but it's getting to a point where I think it's above my expertise of the product. Do you mind if I place you on a brief hold? I'm going to dial in a product specialist who's going to be able to answer these questions a lot better than I can." I'm going to place you on a brief hold, I'm going to dial in. Matt: In the space in between I get on the call with you, the conversation's going to go something like this. "Hey, T-bone, I have George on the line. We're at this point in the conversation. We're talking about this particular aspect. I'd like you to come in and talk to him about how we budget SEO or what the relevance of this particular task is," whatever the situation is, and then take the conversation from there and help me close this guy. Give him the context he needs, click join call, "George, hey, T-bone's here. I've briefed him on who you are and what you do. I let him know the question that we're pondering here, so T-Bone, please take it away," and then you go. It's generally very smooth. George: I love the way that you teed that up. For all of those sales managers that are out there, make sure that you're listening to those calls and you're watching to see the way that your reps are introducing this enormous resource. It has to be positioned properly so that it shows the prospect or the existing customer the value that it can bring. George: As Matt mentioned, Boostability is an expert at this. I hear from organization after organization that they work with that this product sales support piece is a really important part of their go-to customer model, and it's helped them out in the growth that you folks have been having, so congratulations on nailing that down. George: I really like this. Those four keys to retention again: the point of sales strategy, the post-sales engagement and reselling, sales training, and then that product sales report, bringing in the ninja that is able to speak at a more technical level and to add value to the conversation. George: Matt has been joining us. He is the VP of Business Development. Matt, we could go on for hours and hours. I'm sure we'll probably get you back on a future episode, but I really wanted to get those four steps, the four keys to retention from your lips to our audience's ears because we had a lot of really great feedback from Conquer Local convention on your presentation. I appreciate you joining us today on the podcast. Matt: Thanks, George, I appreciate the invite.   Conclusion George: Well, Matt definitely knows his stuff. Over the past eight years, he has been working with partners all over the planet helping them sell SEO and coming up with that very simple presentation so that you can really, clearly show the value. I love going through his four keys of retention. George: The first is having that strategy that starts right at the point of sale, and then it continues all the way through that sale, from the moment that you bring them on board to the moment that you retain them and you up-sell them or you save them. It's the same language that you're bringing that value against those key value points. George: Next, I love the fact that he says you need to be an expert on your product. You really need to understand it well, but when it gets too technical, it's great to bring in that product sales support because two heads are always better than one. Then, when it comes to that sales training, you need to understand your product well enough to know when you don't want to go too deep in the weeds and when you want to really work on that relationship and having the relationship with the customer. George: Then, the post-sales engagement. How is that going to look? When you've sold it at a certain value prop, how are you going to continue to deliver and show that the value is being delivered for the client and very clearly setting those expectations? I thought it was one of the best presentations of the conference, and we're really happy to have Matt join us again here on the podcast to give us those four key pillars of his retention strategies. Thanks to Matt Tennison, the VP of Business Development from Boostability for joining us this week on the Conquer Local Podcast. George: You can learn more about the show on our website at conquerlocal.com or you can join our new community on Slack at conquerlocal.slack.com or follow us on LinkedIn. George Leith on LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you. You can private message us or reach out to us on the podcast channel in the Slack community. We just love getting that feedback or suggestions for upcoming episodes or maybe potential guests that we could bring and put in the hot seat here as we are planning out those episodes for the last part of ... I can't believe I'm saying this already, the last part of 2019. We're already looking at those Q4 episodes. George: We love getting that feedback from you, the Conquerors around the world. Thanks for joining us this week. We'll see you right back here as we continue to help sales Conquer Local. My name is George Leith. I will see you when I see you.

In our latest episode, we are thrilled to welcome Edward Purmalis, a freelance B2B content strategist who supports B2B brands, coaches and consultants to redefine their content strategy to reach, intrigue, educate and convert their buyers. Edward's career had humble beginnings working at a call centre selling air travel, where he moved up the sales ladder and brought in over $400,000 in revenue in his last year. But when the pandemic hit, he moved away from the industry and started selling B2B SaaS for a California-based VoIP company. He has always been a huge online content consumer and started listening to podcasts when he was 9 years old. As luck would have it, the Founder of the VoIP company he was employed for launched a new company - Salescast, where Edward had the chance to work with B2B content creators helping them build podcast strategies and generate revenue through content. Within a year, Edward became the Director of Revenue Operations and worked with over 100 B2B Podcast Hosts supporting them in launching, managing and growing their podcasts. And his newest passion is building social media strategies that help content creators make the most out of their content and conquer social media. Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners. Learn more about Vendasta and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) are making up to $10,000 off referrals. Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy. The Evolution of B2B Content Marketing Introduction Jeff: Welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast! Our show features successful sales leaders, marketers, thought leaders and entrepreneurs who will inspire you with their success stories. Each episode is packed with practical strategies, as our guests share their secrets to achieving their dreams. Listen in to learn the highlights of their remarkable accomplishments and get tips to revamp, rework, and reimagine your business. Whether you're a small business owner, a marketer, or an aspiring entrepreneur, the Conquer Local Podcast is your ultimate guide to dominating your local market. Tune in now to take your business to the next level. I'm Jeff Tomlin and on this episode, we're pleased to welcome Edward Purmalis. Edward's career had humble beginnings working at a call centre selling air travel where he moved up the sales ladder and brought in over $400,000 in revenue in his last year. But when the pandemic hit, he was forced to move away from the only industry he knew and ended up selling B2B SaaS for a California-based VoIP company. Edward has always been a huge online content consumer and started listening to podcasts at the age of nine. As luck would have it, the founder at the Voigt company that he was at launched a new company, Salescast, where Edward had the chance to work with B2B content creators, helping them build their podcast strategies and generate revenue through content. Now, after a two-year tenure, he's the director of Revenue Operations working with over a hundred B2B podcast hosts, helping them launch, manage, and grow their podcasts. And his newest passion is building social media strategies that help content creators make the most out of their content and conquer social media. Get ready, conquers for Edward Purmalis. Coming up next on this week's episode of the Conquer Local podcast.  Edward, it is a pleasure to have you on the Conquer Local Podcast for this week's episode. How are you doing? Coming all the way to us from Latvia. Edward: A pleasure to be here, Jeff. Yeah, doing very, very well. I actually interviewed your previous host quite a while back, so this is a very interesting turn of events that now I'm here. The Change in B2B Content Marketing Jeff: Hey, well I'm excited to have you on. I'm a big fan of Salescast and all of the work that you guys do, so I'm pumped to hear your perspective on things. And so let me jump into it. Social media, gosh, looking back now, it's like, we've been using it for almost 20 years now, which makes me feel old. And, but that's about the time it came along, user-generated content and social networks and they've changed a lot over the last decade, two decades. Talk a little bit about what the role you think that social media is playing right now and especially in B2B content marketing and from your perspective, how you think it's changed in the more recent years. Edward: Yeah, so to look at the core importance of the role that social media plays in B2B and in how buyers make decisions, we really need to look at the fact that every day that passes is a day that your buyers become the people that have natively grown up sourcing their information through social media and internet sources. And especially with, I would say, millennial and Gen Z generations, there is a lot more trust in peer-reviewed social media than there is in Google searches and in blogs, in kind of one-sided information sources where you can't see somebody you work with or somebody you know and respect, comment, and lay any insights on a particular topic. So it's just becoming more and more prevalent that this is how people want to receive information. And now with algorithm-based social media becoming king of all, of just social media in general, it's becoming a bit more democratized 'cause people have a lot more opportunities to break through and reach even when they don't have a very large core set audience, which is very, very good. It's again, democratizing how this information flow is going. But yeah, the more your buyers, the more people who are younger are becoming your buyers, the more prevalent social media is gonna be in those buying cycles. Dark Social: What is it? Jeff: Yeah, it's no longer an afterthought like everybody is incorporating social media in their go-to-market now and it's not a question of how do we use this? It is sort of one of the key go-to-market strategies. And so it feels like everybody's getting a little smarter in the way that they use it. Let's talk a little bit about, I think, which is maybe a new concept to a lot of people, but a super important one, let's talk about dark social. You guys talk about it quite a bit and I think that you're probably experts on the topic and I think it's pretty fascinating. Edward: So yeah, I mean, dark social as a concept is just everything that you can't really measure and how your content gets distributed and reached by people. And this kind of rise of short-form vertical videos through TikTok and YouTube Shorts has also accelerated the way dark social works. because when the focus was only to release long-form content, 30, 40-minute podcast episodes, informational videos, and long-written blog posts, the content was not as shareable as it is now. And when you're approaching something like TikTok and you're creating a kind of value-driven 50-second video that only really talks on one single topic and it's kind of a micro lesson that is part of a bigger part of a bigger picture, dark social becomes more and more prevalent 'cause it's just easier to share. Like if I'm listening to, let's just say a 40-minute podcast episode and I hear a point that I know somebody else will appreciate the effort that I have to go through to get it over to them is I have to copy a link, I have to provide a timestamp. And even then, that other person from like a user experience perspective has to go in, skip the episode further, maybe listen to the whole thing if they think it's relevant. But again, it just feels a lot more messy than just having this one simple share button for those 50 seconds that you know are super, super relevant to the person that you wanna share it with. So that's how I see dark social as a concept becoming more and more prevalent and more and more important by the day. As the way people are used to consuming content, the way the content consumption habits are changing, it's just becoming a whole different game and being able to articulate and provide value and build trust and rapport within a 50-second window by either having it all relayed during that particular video or clip or having it then lead to that longer form episode to accelerate those efforts and to give more context. All of that is all those are things that you really have to think about whenever you're looking at your content strategy. Jeff: There's so many different ways that people can share content so easily nowadays when they share it through, they text it to a buddy or they shared through email and so, so, so difficult to track. It's so frustrating for me being a marketer because the promise of web-based marketing was that hey, everything can be tracked as opposed to traditional marketing. When people knew that the marketing was probably happening or working half of their marketing was working, they just didn't know which half. And so, the promise of web-based marketing was, we were able to measure everything. And now, with this idea of dark social, there's so much going on and exposure that we're getting and it's not trackable. And so, how do you think about it in terms of your overall marketing portfolio and the impact that you're having? Edward: I mean, you can always look at the engagement metrics that you have. One of the bigger signs that you've gone quote unquote viral on a dark social channel like a community or maybe a company marketing page is if you see a huge spike on a piece of content that wouldn't have been there previously. Now, if somebody makes a LinkedIn post about your episode, it's pretty easy to track, right? You're gonna see it, they're probably gonna tag you and you're gonna know where that traffic is coming from. But if it just happens at seemingly random, then there's a huge, huge chance that you were just a victim of dark social. Jeff: Right. Edward: And that's a good thing. Jeff: Yeah. Edward: You know, we can't really try to measure every single metric when it comes to social media and podcast engagement 'cause it like, there are just not the data sets that are currently available to people are just not good enough to measure all of that. And I don't really see a workaround for it at this point. I don't really see like, once somebody figures this out, they're gonna have a billion-dollar company, right? But until that point, we just have to look at the metrics that actually matter and see if your initiatives are generating interest, brand awareness and leads and those are the metrics that we should be focusing on a 100%. Implementing Self-Reported Attributions Jeff: I guess if you have confidence in the content that you're putting out and you understand your buyer and your audience and you believe in the method in which you're delivering your content, I guess it's a positive thing if you are the happy recipient of extra exposure that you really can't explain and hopefully if your content's right stuff, I guess you'll expect people to share it in all sorts of different ways. Edward: Yeah and one of the ways that you can go about it is to implement self-reported attribution. So whenever somebody signs up for a demo or for a meeting or for a consultation on your web page, they have the opportunity to type in where exactly they found you. And that's gonna be the closest thing you're ever gonna get to seeing that kind of impact. But it's also based on, if this person who reached out to you actually remembers how they found out about you. 'Cause there's a possibility they found out about you six months ago through a private channel and then they followed you for a while and now they decided to reach out when they're in the right spot to have that conversation. Return on Investment via Podcasting Jeff: Yeah, so selfishly, I'm gonna leverage some of your expertise. You guys have a fantastic podcast and more and more people are thinking about podcasts and ways to share their ideas with their audiences. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys measure the ROI of a podcast and your production, the effort that you go into it and the impact that you're having. Edward: Yeah, so for B2B brands that is purely going to be measured based on lead generation closed revenue. And one of the bigger things that I guess some marketers don't end up looking at is the conversion rate of those leads. Because just to give a bit of a backstory, like I come from about four and a half years of like direct-to-consumer inbound sales of luxury air travel. And when I started selling for that type of company, the leads would come in, would be motivated to buy, they would know us. We had a lot of brand awareness. So the sales cycles were much less you trying to sell something and much more, two people trying to figure out like what's the best option here. There was no real friction during that sales process. And then when I joined B2B startups with less brand awareness, I noticed that there's a lot more friction, outbound sales become a longer conglomerate. And I'm not saying I'm the best outbound seller in the world, not by a mile, but I saw that there was a level of friction there. And when I started personally investing into content and doing the Salescast podcast, I noticed that the leads that would come in through there would have these kind of short sales cycles where a lot of those things that you have to do during a sales process, like build rapport, build trust, educate, all of these things, you can, instead of doing them one-to-one through content initiatives like podcasts, you can do them one to many. So that instead of, instead of you having to have a six-month conversation with somebody when they're 10% into their buyer's journey, they have the opportunity to reach out to you when they're 80 to 90% into their buyer's journey. Approval in one hand, and credit card in the other hand just there to discuss and iron out a couple of details. So that's what I see as being kind of the bigger thing you have to measure. Like how efficient is this as a method? How, what are the sales cycles, what are the win rates? All these things typically have much better numbers when it comes to leads generated from podcasts and through content initiatives than they do from cold outbound or campaigns. Challenges in Content Marketing Jeff: Everybody loves a short sales cycle and a lot of marketers that I talk to, they focus a lot, maybe too much on the bottom of the funnel. Maybe talk a little bit about some of the mistakes that you see people making right now with content marketing because content marketing itself is just, it's evolved so much over the last little while and it's competitive space, it's a lot of content out there and so, you're competing for people's attention. So what are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making? Edward: Yeah, so the classic mistake with any content marketing is focusing on your services products and how awesome you are, which nobody frankly cares about. Any and all content strategy should start at how do we educate the marketplace. How do we bring a fresh perspective? How do we reach more people, how do we help them? And ultimately how do we tie it back into our own products and services and how we as a company are evolving and evolving our offering. That's the classic mistake that everybody knows. Now, what I've noticed is especially prevalent at B2B and it's getting much better now. It's getting much better now, but six months ago, it was plain awful. And something that I've taken a really strong stance on is doing the little things that matter. 'Cause more often than not, I'll see content marketers in B2B focus simply on the fact that we have all this great information and these great data sets and all of this value that we bring to the world. So we're just going to kind of spew it out, just information vomit, which again, it's not a strategy that's going to get you a lot of reach if you haven't already built an enormous brand. So start looking at the simple things, things like production quality. If you're doing video first, like a 720P laptop webcam with a microphone from your Apple earbuds is just not gonna be, it's not gonna create content that one would call quality. And this quality is becoming more and more of a prevalent topic as we've entered this like age of TikTok where everything is video first. Like people have grown an expectation to see high-quality video, to hear high-quality audio. So it's very important to make that like a one-time investment into a decent camera, a decent microphone. And from there, post-production and packaging, like if you're going to pursue short-form social media, one of the most efficient plays that you can do is take your podcast and it can be an interview podcast, it can be a solo podcast, it can be internal podcast between you and your business partners. You need to take it and you need to cut it up into clips. But what a lot of people don't think about is how does this clip bring value by itself? Like, is this just a clip that's just a snippet from the podcast or is this a clip that actually brings value within itself? Is there any context, is there a hook? Does this actually move the needle within those 50 seconds or one minute or 30 seconds? And if the answer is no, then you really need to rethink that strategy. The best way to go about it is to try to cut out any type of filler, try to add context, try to start it off with a question. And this is especially important if you're doing, if you're creating short-form social media content from a podcast, this is especially important if you're interviewing people. So you could take any of the things that I've said in the last couple of minutes and within the first five seconds, without knowing the context, it's gonna be very difficult to catch somebody's attention. And ultimately you want to catch the attention of people who don't yet know about you. So without any context, without the question is gonna be very, very difficult to do that. So really think about how does this clip present itself as an independent asset versus as promotional material. Creating Engaging and Educational Content Jeff: I really like that. I remember there's a pretty popular blog post that was made by Rand Fishkin back when he was at SEO Moz and this would've been back in maybe 2015, '16, a little while ago. And his post was on writing content and he said, "If you want your content to be successful, it has to be 10 times better than anything else that's out there." And I like that way of thinking. When you sit down and you create your content, how do you create something that's 10 times better than anything out there? And it probably takes thinking on a number of different axes, like, what is the medium that I'm using? How does my approach to the content and what are the insights like? Tell me a little bit about how you approach creating content to make it both educational and engaging. Because I find that the content that is the best out there. It has, it's engaging in some sort of way. And at the end of the day, you have to have unique insights. So it seems like, and I think HubSpot's proven that the approach to educate an audience is a successful way to approach it. So how do you approach content to make it both educational and engaging? Edward: Yeah, and to your point about being 10 times better than everybody else here in the B2B world, we kind of have our work cut out for us. 'Cause. Jeff: We sure do. Edward: The TikTokers, the B2C people and the thought leaders who are trying to sell $300 courses on how to get rich have very well figured out all of these little things like how to do hooks, and how to create engaging captions. All this work has already been done for us, but just as a sector, B2B is super slow to implement these types of things, but those who have done it now are seeing phenomenal results as long as they're still being value driven. Like if you think like a catchy hook, for example, if you think, oh, you know, it might work on these TikTok simpletons, but it won't work on my super educated buyer. Well, no, I mean we're all humans. We all enjoy a good hook. We all enjoy things that captivate us. And ultimately you need to take those same philosophies that so many people have been doing for so many years and implement them into your B2B strategy and you'll already be miles ahead of most of your competition. So if we're looking at video content, and this isn't, I'm not an expert on written content, but when it comes to video content, a lot of that engaging part, the educational part, I feel like in general, like B2B influencers and brands have a very easy time creating 'cause they're doing the work, they're out there and they have the information they have that educational piece pretty much locked in. Now when it comes to engagement, especially with your first, you have to look at things like production quality. You have to look at things like captions. You have to look at things like hooks you have to look at something as simple as adding emojis or graphics to your short-form videos, captions, like all those things drastically improve the rate that people look through the videos. And this is especially prevalent with short-form videos, and social media because it's frankly just fried everybody's attention span. So there's not something moving around all the time. Then people kind of lose focus. Jeff: Right? Edward: And you need to look at all those things and implement all those things with the content you create. And as long as it's educational, as long as the kind of video piece can keep people's attention, then you'll already be miles ahead of your competition. Creating Valuable Content Jeff: Yeah, because some of those small things make a very big difference in the final outcome of this, the successfulness of the content that you're producing. And it's surprising sometimes of how small a change you can make and make such a big difference. Edward: One of the bigger things that like people, and this isn't as popular now, but people on TikTok were creating loops that were basically like the last couple of seconds of the video tying perfectly with the start of the video. So you could actually start watching it the second time around without really noticing. And all of this is done, engagement obviously, but it's also done to kind of gamify the algorithm. Because like watch-through rate and engagement and all these things are going to heavily dictate if your content is actually gonna be pushed out in front of more people or if you're just gonna get stuck in the 200 or 300 view dead zone. Growing Partnerships Jeff: Lot to think about as you guys, I think at Salescast you guys have done a fantastic job of creating partnerships that has created growth. Talk a little bit about the partnership work that you guys have done and maybe some of the challenges that you see in creating partnerships now. Edward: So, as a podcast production agency that believes in podcast advertising, partnerships have been pretty frictionless so far. I would say the most important thing there is to really look at kind of your own value proposition during a partnership and really, really, really be super honest with yourself about like, what is it that you bring to the table? What is it that the kind of sphere of influence of the person that you're partnering with is bringing to the table? But I would say it's been mostly a pretty frictionless process and we're super thankful and blessed for all the great partners that we do have and all the great shows that we've been able to advertise on as well. But yeah, I mean, partner relationships are always super exciting. I'm always a huge fan of like overextending a little bit ahead of the status quo or maybe ahead of an agreed list of deliverables and processes when it comes to partnerships. Because ultimately partnerships grow together and that's the most important thing. What does Success look like? Jeff: Edward, go and toot your own horn a little bit. You guys have had a lot of successes with the people that you've worked with. Share one or two successes and show people what success looks like in this area. Edward: Yeah, so one of my favourite projects to work on recently has been kind of a niche project that really only targets FinOps, which is kind of a smaller function, but it's becoming more and more prevalent every single day now that we're entering in this recessionary times and whatnot. So seeing that kind of very niche podcast project that is literally the first and only of its kind, seeing that have like stable growth of like 30 to 50%. And then hearing the feedback that like, oh, we did a little bit of LinkedIn outreach and instead of people just ignoring us, we're getting responses like, hey, I've been actually listening to your podcast. And seeing that kind of project growing high sort of highly technical, highly niche industry is always really, really, really cool. And just to give a bit of spoilers on the whole approach there, it's not a long-form interview podcast, it is literally just two co-founders who are experts at this. Having seven to 10-minute conversations highly educational on the topic of the day and seeing that kind of thought leadership elevate from there and seeing them literally create a category has been really, really cool. And when looking at the solopreneur slash consultant space, we're also this thought leadership content is a super, super important way to generate leads and to just a very important part of your whole revenue strategy as a solepreneur, as a consultant. More often than not, they'll have this demand creation cycle through their podcast, where they'll go in and they'll interview all the biggest fish in their industry. They'll have a great time, and they'll see a good amount of views and downloads, but it's not just gonna convert that well at first. And then seeing people take those audiences and then rebrand their show into a solo act. That, and then utilizing that audience to like, do exactly as I described before, elevate their thought leadership, have conversations and educate their audience. Seeing just the super drastic difference in lead generation that comes from that type of effort of having this kind of solo podcast is always an amazing thing to see. The Process of Launching a Podcast Jeff: The guests that we're blessed to have on this show share so many insights and cool stories throughout the length of the podcast and it's hard to bundle 'em all up. If you were gonna sum up one takeaway that you wanted to leave people with, what would it be? Edward: Well, if you haven't started a podcast yet, you should simply because it's a super, super efficient way for you to have a content strategy. You'll have your long form, you'll have your short form clips, you'll have your blogs, all of that can be done and produced by only taking, 30 minutes to an hour from your leadership's time or from the host time or whomever your biggest subject matter expert is. So I would say, if you haven't started yet, then you know TikTok. Jeff: Yeah. Edward: And I would tell people to just set your expectations, set your expectations, not based on vanity metrics, but based on the fact that you're creating something that is evergreen, something that's going to be out there forever. And it does not matter if your super cool, super educational episode blows up today or if it blows up a year from now, either way is gonna be out there and the traction's gonna keep going and it's gonna snowball and you're gonna do great. Jeff: It's been a pleasure and a privilege to spend a few minutes with you and chat about content marketing and how to leverage podcasts. And I hope that we have the chance to do this again. If people have questions and they wanna follow up with you, how do they reach out to you? Edward: Yeah, anybody can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Edward Purmalis, my name will be in the episode, I presume in the link somewhere as well. Jeff: We will. Edward: Yeah, so LinkedIn would be great. Jeff: Edward's been an absolute privilege. I want you to have an amazing week and I hope that we have the chance to chat with you in a not do distant future. Edward: Yeah, it's been a great time, Jeff, very nice. Conclusion Jeff: Dark social is becoming increasingly prevalent in the way that people consume and share content. Short-form social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts have accelerated the way dark social works as content that is long-form isn't as shareable. Therefore, it's important to articulate and establish trust and rapport in a 15-second window to lead into longer form content. To measure engagement metrics, it's necessary to implement self-report attribution, which allows people to type in how they found you. By building rapport, trust, and educating people, you can generate more leads and more engagement. To implement an effective content marketing strategy, it's essential to start with educating the marketplace, bringing details and involving your offerings. It's also crucial to focus on the simple things such as production quality when pursuing short-form and social media content. To catch people's attention, add context, start off with a question and think about how each clip presents itself as an independent asset. It's important to keep people's attention by implementing strategies like captions, hooks, and emojis, and by extending beyond the status quo when it comes to partnerships and targeting niche audiences, you can elevate thought leadership and see dramatic results. Lastly, launching a podcast is an efficient way to start a content strategy that can be converted into short and long-form content. If you enjoyed Edwards's episode Discussing The Evolution of B2B Content Marketing, keep the conversation going and revisit some of our older episodes from the archives. Episode 530, Increasing Revenue With Social Selling, that's with Jamie Shanks, or episode 523 Lead Generation Through Podcasting with Colin Mitchell or episode 522 Monthly Recurring Revenue with Mark Girvan. Until next time, I'm Jeff Tomlin. Get out there and be awesome everyone.

Tune in for an all-new episode of the Conquer Local Podcast to learn about Managed Service Providers with Michelle Ragusa-McBain, a highly-visible thought leader in the global technology channel and serves as Provider Elevate Leader for the Global Partner Organization at Cisco. Michelle's mission is to help MSPs elevate and succeed via a partnership with Cisco solutions and the Provider Elevate community. Entrepreneur Magazine named her as one of the top 4 people to inspire women to pursue a career in Tech, and SMB Magazine recognized her as one of the 150 most influential people in the global IT Business Community. CompTIA named her Advancing Women in Technology Leader 2021, and Channel Futures awarded her the Circle of Excellence for Channel Leadership & Innovation and DE&I 101 award and recipient of the prestigious Cisco Worldwide Innovation and Growth Award. Michelle keynoted at the largest and most influential technology conferences globally including Channel Partners, CRN, CompTIA, IT Nation, and Kaseya. Michelle serves as Chair Emeritus of Advancing Women in Technology for CompTIA, sat on the board of CRN’s Women of the Channel, is Co-Founder of Tech Worlds Half non-profit; a longstanding member of the National Women in Technology Group, and most recently serves as Florida Leader for Alliance of Channel Women.  In her free time, she is a passionate advocate for Women, Diversity, and Inclusion in Technology and enjoys traveling the world with her husband Jay McBain and daughters Brooklyn and Cali with 85 countries and 6 continents to date, or spending time with her fur kids- Husky Auggie Doggy and Calico Kitten Luna Meow. Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners. Learn more about Vendasta and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) are making up to $10,000 off referrals. Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy. Elevate your Business with Managed Service Providers Introduction George: This is the Conquer Local podcast, a show about billion-dollar sales leaders, marketers leading local economic growth, and entrepreneurs that have created their dream organizations. They wanna share their secrets, giving you the distilled version of their extraordinary feats. Our hope is with the tangible takeaways from each episode, you can rewire, rework, and reimagine your business. I'm George Leith, and on this episode, we welcome Michelle Ragusa-McBain. Michelle is a highly visible thought leader in the global technology channel. She serves as Provider Elevate Leader for the global partner organization at Cisco. Her mission is to help MSPs elevate and succeed through partnership with Cisco Solutions and the Provider Elevate community. Entrepreneur Magazine named her as one of the top four people to inspire women to pursue a career in technology. And SMB Magazine recognized her as one of the 150 most influential people in the global IT business community. CompTIA named her advancing woman in technology leader in 2021, and Channel Futures awarded her the circle of excellence for channel leadership and innovation, and DE&I 101 award winner. She's also the recipient of the prestigious Cisco Worldwide Innovation and Growth Award. Michelle is a passionate advocate for women, diversity, and inclusion in technology, and is the co-founder of Tech World's Half nonprofit, a longstanding member of the National Women and Technology Group, and most recently she serves as Florida's Leader for Alliance of Channel Women. I'm super excited to have my friend Michelle on the show this week. Get ready, conquerors. Michelle Ragusa-McBain is coming up next on the Conquer Local podcast.  George: Finally, I get to welcome Michelle Ragusa-McBain to the show. Hello, Michelle, I'm so glad we were finally able to make this work. Michelle: Hi, George. It is absolutely my pleasure. I'm excited to join you today. George: You know, we've known each other for a number of years and excited to be working with you and your role at Cisco, but I'd love to hear from you. We kind of covered it in the intro, but I'd love to hear from you what is the role that you've taken on with Cisco company? Michelle: Absolutely. So it's sort of a coming home, which is interesting for me. I've been at Cisco now for 14 years as a boomerang, I say. So I was there for 13 years, starting in 2005. I began as an engineer, went into sales, did a lot of different things with global distribution and commercial and enterprise and public sector and telco. Pretty much the gamut that you could do at a company like Cisco. And I left for a few years and I've returned to take on a new role called Provider Elevate Leader globally for the global partner routes to market sales organization. And so what that means in simpler terms, I know everybody has acronym soup in the technology channel, is my goal is to help elevate SMB managed service providers around the world with Cisco, make it easier and simpler to do business with us, and help make them more money, more revenue, more enablement and engagement through selling our various architectures in our better together story. George: So I had the pleasure of working with Michelle 3 years ago when we started to enter into the IT channel at Vendasta and started working with managed service providers. And then we were lucky enough to add Andrew Down to the team and he's really taken it to the next level. But I remember in some of those early conversations that you and I were having, as Vendasta's goal was to bring more technology vendors into our ecosystem because we've got that very large group of channel resellers that are servicing businesses all over the world. We have our focus, our slogan of conquering local, that passion for local businesses and helping them get the technology, whether it be software or hardware, that was one of the big dreams and the services needed to make all of that work. And you know, one of those goals was to bring more technology vendors into that ecosystem. So fast forward to today and in your new role, I love that mission of elevating the managed service providers to work with local businesses. It's a pretty noble mission. Michelle: Well, I had the great fortune in my between period of working at Cisco of being a consultant, as you know. And in that time I spent many hours working with some of the distributors that we know and love and many of the key vendors and their MSPs. And I really fell in love with this group of people. Honestly, they're entrepreneurs, they're gritty, they're passionate, they usually start as technicians and their goal is to really put food on their table, to build a company that can support small to medium businesses where they can be trusted advisors to people who don't need to worry about technology. They can keep them up and running, they can keep them secure and connected and they can really give them peace of mind. And so in this virtual CIO world, especially during life-changing instances like the COVID pandemic, for example, the huge cyber attacks that have been happening, the war in Ukraine, there's many, many things that are happening that impact the global economy and the local economy. And these businesses were forced, many of them to do differently how they conducted business. They had to reimagine their people and their process and their technology. And that's where MSPs came in. And so the goal wasn't just let me onboard manage service providers because obviously Cisco's been a very partner-driven company for 38 years. We have very many loyal partners and quality products and solutions, but how do we enable this tier of partners, which is very different than a traditional large enterprise vendor does in any space. So how do we get to know what's important to them, which is what's important to a large company isn't important to Larry or Loretta in a white van. Like I say that as a joke, but it's true. Their needs are different, their competencies are different, their capabilities are different. Who they support, what verticals, is it manufacturing or retail or healthcare or education or professional services, and the local mom-and-pop shops, they are there for all of those local businesses. And the way that we help enable and onboard and engage and accelerate with them has to be very different than how we've traditionally done business as well. So I sort of feel like it's a usually beneficial endeavor. We help enable them, they help enable their end customer, and together we elevate. George: So what would be some of the key components that you've been bringing forward based on all those learnings? Because you're right, it is a different game. Those managed service providers are usually in smaller markets. They're servicing 10, 15, 20, 25 customers. What are some of the strategies that you've been putting in place to make them successful? Michelle: Absolutely, no, great question. And I will say that small to medium business and managed service provider has seen rapid growth at Cisco. In fact, small to medium business is our fastest growing market at 64% year over year, which is amazing. And it's thanks to leaders like Andrew Sage and Alexandra Zagury, and Oliver Tuszik, we've been able to really facilitate and foster and invest in these partners and their success. So some of the things that we're doing is creating new offers exclusively for small to medium businesses. So looking at our architecture counterparts, how do we get them things, bundles in the Meraki space, in the duo umbrella space, in all of those different architectures which help enable their businesses to be successful. The second piece of that is how do we get them to better and build their business? And a lot of the times we do that through MDF dollars and that's where companies like Vendasta comes in handy for us. And we're so thankful for the partnership because we were seeing a lack of traction in MDF utilization. We were at very, very low numbers in the under 10% category. And part of that we had to evaluate, is there an awareness, is there an education? Is there the right process or opportunity or partners in that space that are helping them with knowledge and expertise and the right things to make their business successful? And so we did a pilot with Vendasta, which got us from 8% to 32% utilization of MDF in the first quarter. And by the second quarter, we were rearing closer to 64% utilization of MDF, largely because of Vendasta solutions, helping them with their website and SEO and how they go to market and things that really are very unique and different for partners of this size. And so, when you look at MDF dollars for bigger vendors or bigger managed service providers like CDW and Presidio, they have huge teams invested into their success. But a small MSP, they don't necessarily have the right or the same resources. And so partnering with key strategic vendors like yourself has really helped us facilitate the gaps in where their businesses are today and where we can help take them together. And that's seen tremendous positive feedback. And so we're excited to continue working with companies such as yours. And in addition to that, we also are working on marketing enablement. A lot of our partners, we know that MSPs in my consultant work were not known for marketing. They're really good technicians, they're really good sales leaders, they're really good strategists. But when it comes to marketing their business, which in a digital normal is very important, it really is contingent on how can they leverage those marketing dollars and our marketing strategies, demand generation campaigns, et cetera, to help enable and empower their success. So those are some of the sneak peeks in what we're doing. George: I think it was pretty cool though because one of the things that when you and I were discussing this space in your consulting role was that the playbooks weren't there. It wasn't easy for those folks to be able to run a demand gen campaign, upgrade their website, and I like to go back in the past because sometimes that teaches us, I remember when I started hitting my targets selling radio back 30 some odd years ago was when I became a co-op dollar expert. So for all of our sales professionals on the call that are in the media space, you know that there are providers that have co-op dollars and I'm gonna use John Deere because I happen to have a meeting with the CEO of a John Deere dealer last week. And you know, if you use the right ad copy, if you run the right ad script, if you run the right billboard, John Deere will give you some of that money back. So when you're talking market development funds, that's co-op dollars on the salesperson's side. But correct me if I'm wrong, I think that one of the reasons there's been that level of success is that it's a do-it-for-me. Like everything is done for the managed service provider because those dollars were always there, they just weren't utilizing them. Michelle: Right, yeah, absolutely. There's two types of ways that partners of all sizes wanna receive it. It's do it with me or do in advance and I'll leverage your package and figure it out on my own or do it for me and really help me enable because I have gaps. And just as those MSPs are the people that are guiding their customers on their journey, why not use a specialist who understands it better than they do that can help them and then they don't have to worry about it and spend time out of their day, which is precious. And you're wearing many hats as you're becoming a managed service provider and running a small to medium business that you just don't need one more thing. If there's somebody that can do it, empower the right people with the right tools at the right time. George: And I also think that CFOs of organizations that are putting millions of dollars into marketing budgets are probably happy to see the money being spent on new innovative digital tactics rather than fidget spinners and another T-shirt and another steak dinner. That is where that money was leaning, right? Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. I mean that is, you're spot on. There was this element of people were doing the same things that have always been done. And so I challenged the team and they were very, very wonderful. They came to our advisory council meetings. That's another example. I wanna take a moment to call out any partner and vendor, all the MSPs that have been a part of our advisory council. They volunteer and they give precious time out of their schedule once a month where we meet and we don't just read things at them, but we ask them for their feedback. We don't wanna operate in a vacuum and we say, what's working, what doesn't? How can we help you? What do you need from Cisco to help you improve? And this was one of the things that came out of it was the MDF dollars, the awareness. We need different things because we're different types of partners. And so by result, we were able to put in the right people based upon those conversations. What are their needs? How do they wanna enable their success? And you know, MDF packages are kind of stagnant. It's funny, even in technology we say that the only thing constant is change. And yet people are so hard to change programs that have existed for many, many years, but sometimes, especially when you're building a new route to market, you require new ideas and new companies to partner with. And so we've had tremendous success exploring that option and I look forward to continuing to drive that for many, many partners around the world. George: I'm not sure if you're able to do this, but I have long known Cisco to be one of the most innovative companies on the planet, and I'm a big fan of John Chambers, former CEO, love his book "Connecting the Dots." Roy Pereira, who is now with us through the calendar hero acquisition, worked at Cisco for a number of years. You've been there for 14 years on the Boomerang run. What's the future hold for Cisco? Because you're a very innovative organization and usually a little ahead of the curve. Can you share any of the things that are coming in the future? Michelle: Yeah, I can tell you some of the most important investments we're making from leadership down is very strategically you can see a rise in security in our space. Obviously, that is a huge opportunity for us right now as well. Looking at the landscape, 73% according to CompTIA of managed service providers want to become MSSPs. So managed service security specialists because of the overwhelming opportunity and need that exists, there was a cyber attack every 39 seconds, a ransomware attack every 14 seconds. And so there's this tremendous shift. And so traditionally people think of Cisco as a very large networking company, maybe a collaboration company as well, but they don't always think of us as security. And what's really amazing about that is we're one of the top three security companies in the world. We are ranked very highly according to many of the analysts and research groups, but also we use Talos. And Talos is the center of our threat detection, prevention, intervention, and education. So from governments around the world, down to local, small to medium businesses, all of this technology is embedded and enabled in all of our devices, whether it's Meraki IoT or Networking Gear, or if it's our new secure center, which we've launched through Umbrella and in the future duo, these are very big acquisitions that we've made strategically to get into this space even deeper and help support our partners even more. Another example would be the new secure center, which we launched in November of last year. Very different than a traditional Cisco process. It's almost like a marketplace, credit card only, easy enrollment, rapid speed of deployment, and cancel at any time. So examples like this are ways that we're innovating our software as a service, our subscription consumption model. And really right now, as a $50 billion revenue company, a third of our revenue came through software. So that says a lot about how a 38-year-old company with over 237 acquisitions has kind of blended together this perfect song of different technologies and security and networking and collaboration moving towards subscription consumption, say that three times fast, and enabling growth and acceleration in that space. But I wanna also add that we are double clicking on managed service providers and small to medium business growth. So that is specifically where I sit and I'm very excited. It is our fastest growth area as a company and we're spending a lot of time and investment in that space. George: Michelle, you've been enormously successful in your career. You were named as one of the top four people to inspire women to pursue a career in tech by Entrepreneur Magazine. You also were recognized by a small-medium business magazine as one of the 150 most influential people in the global IT business community. And I know that you are super passionate about women in tech and I've actually watched you speak to a group at one of the conventions. Our audience on this show is global. We've got sales professionals, we've got IT professionals, managed service providers. I'm sure we have lots of women that listen to the show as well. What advice could you give women that are considering moving deeper into a career in tech based upon your longstanding successful career? Michelle: Thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, for me personally, I could not have done it without a support system. My tribe, as I call it, I think women and men supporting each other is very pivotal and relationships are key to this business and the technology channel. And in any business really, I think it's a very important part. So I think there's three things that I would say. One, careers and technology are wonderful opportunities. There's lucrative careers. You have mobility where you can work remotely or telecommute or travel around the world. You have the ability, I mean, we work for a company that sells technology that enables this, right? So I've been working remote long before it was a requirement. And I do think that there's ability, especially as you become, if you become a family or you have work-life balance or integration as I call it, you wanna make sure that you have an employer that supports those things that are important for many women, such as time with your family and philanthropic opportunities or taking care of aging parents. And that's also true for men. It's not just gender specific. So I think everybody needs a culture, especially in what we just went through, the great resignation, the quiet quitting. You wanna make sure that you feel like you're a part of something bigger that helps you succeed. But I do think that mentorship is very pivotal, and I'm gonna call attention to a survey that Sheryl Sandberg did with LeanIn.org, which said, after the me too movement, 73% of men felt uncomfortable mentoring women. And so that is a huge problem because majority of times men are in positions of leadership, venture capital, and angel investment, C-level VPs. And without the right support to grow a diverse bench, you are gonna have a deficit. So I would say mentorship matters, men and women, we need to help enable growth of the next generation. And we need to not only attract women, but we need to retain and support them and help them grow. We still see a gap in pay. So equal pay for equal work, a lot of women tend not to apply for a role because they wanna have 10 out of 10 of the criteria where men will have five of 10 and throw their hat in the ring and get the job. And men tend to require different compensation. They have those hard-hitting conversations. So if you're a mentor, let's have those hard-hitting conversations and enable the success so that we can all rise together. George: You know, the reason why I like to ask a question, and it's a bit of a minefield for an old white guy to ask question like that, but I feel that in our organization when we built Vendasta from the ground up over the last 15 years, where we really started to take off as a company was when there wasn't this massive divide between men and women. And it was tough because software, writing software is a lot of dudes that go into computer science and now we're seeing more and more women in that space. But then we had sales positions and account management positions and onboarding and customer support and marketing. And the minute that those two components where it wasn't so heavy as a boys club, that was when the magic really started to happen because you had that level of diversity. Now I could even go into the global diversity of all the people that we have working here from different countries and you know, but it really builds out an organization that has balance and by the way, our customers are diverse, so if we're going to relate to the customer, we need that level of diversity. So thank you for sharing that. I know it's something that you're very passionate about. Now, you are my favorite McBain and you could tell your husband that because we did have Jay on the show here a while ago. Michelle: I will. George: I do know that you both are a power couple in the IT space and you and I, I don't even know how the hell you do it because you got a family and you guys are very active with your family and you're traveling and you're speaking and you're doing podcasts like this, and how do you guys keep it all on the rails with these two amazing careers that you have, your amazing family, and the giving back that you both do? Like you must be two of the busiest humans on earth. Michelle: Thank you so much. Well, one, we don't sleep much, although Jay sleeps more than I do. But I do think that there's a few things that go into it. One, like any relationship, any partnership, you ebb and flow. There are times where one of us is more busy than the other and you kind of compensate and pick up the slack in challenging times. You have to realize that we have small children, eight and six, and so those children did not ask to be here. So we have requirements to make sure that they're taken care of and fed and they get to school and that we support them and love them and give them everything they need to grow into good humans and adults. So in order to do that, we live by example. We try to always be good people and philanthropic people and take them places when and if we can, another way we do that is to make sure that we do take vacation time because that's something very important to us. So our children will have almost been to all seven continents, which is pretty insane for some people because they're so young. But for us, we want to expose them, because to your point, diversity of thought matters, right? Different people, religion, culture, language, and traditions. We want them to have a sense of how lucky we are, but also how much is important to give back to those in need. And so that's a very big thing that's a kind of the foundation and bedrock of our relationship. And then it's just an ebb and flow. So you sort of tag team and support and cheer each other on. You have to remember that at the end of the day, we're still friends. We may be married and we may be partners, but I think my husband is my best friend and I'm very grateful that he supports me and I can support him in return. George: Well, I always love learning from folks that are doing it right. And it's interesting you bring up the taking the kids on those trips. I was having dinner with a CEO friend of mine in South Africa here a couple of months back and he told me that in his contract negotiations, one of the things that he asked for was the ability to take his family if he was traveling, because he spends a lot of time on the road working with investors and various functions of the business. And it's not something that you think about when you're negotiating a contract is the ability to bring the family. But imagine how that helps the work-life balance. If it's not the one partner is away at a conference and it's not, he said it's not all the time, but the ability to do a little bit of that then makes it easier to have that work-life balance. So it's pretty cool to hear those types of scenarios for folks that may be in the middle of negotiating a new contract or moving to a new position to see that this is starting to become more the norm in progressive organizations. So thank you for sharing that and we really appreciate your time. I know that you guys are super busy and I'm very jealous that you're gonna get to touch Antarctica. Enjoy the trip, be safe. It's a bucket list thing of mine. I'm super jealous. But Michelle, it's taken us a while to get it online here, but I really appreciate finally having you on the show. And we're gonna put all of Michelle's contact information, she produces a ton of great content in the show notes. And Michelle Ragusa-McBain, my favorite McBain finally on the Conquer Local podcast. Thanks for your time. Michelle: Twice! So now it's real. I love it, George, thank you so much. I appreciate you and your time as well and I look forward to continuing the Vendasta-Cisco relationship. Conclusion  George: It was a pleasure speaking with Michelle Ragusa-McBain. She is a true powerhouse in the MSP space. As Michelle mentioned, there's a lot of things happening in business today. It's impacting the local and global economy. Managed service providers step in and their goal isn't to onboard customers, but to continue to be partner driven and deliver products and solutions to their clients. Michelle talked about managed service providers partnering with key strategic vendors and that will help them to expand by fulfilling their clients' products and digital solutions needs. If you liked Michelle Ragusa-McBain's episode, discussing thought Leadership in Global Tech, let's continue this conversation. Check out these episodes, 411, The Channel Software Tech Stack with Jay McBain, 436, Your Tech Stack Increases Valuation by 6 to 7x with James Ciuffetelli. Please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcast. And thanks for joining us this week on the Conquer Local podcast. My name is George Leith. I'll see you when I see you.

Why is systemization important for a company? Let’s find out by chatting with the Founder and Author of SYSTEMology, David Jenyns, to discuss steps to consider for an effective strategy to improve business processes - and why you should start immediately. David’s entrepreneurial journey began in his early twenties when he sold Australia’s most beloved sporting venue, the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Since then, his business experience spanned from franchising retail clothing stores to founding one of Australia’s most trusted digital agencies, Melbourne SEO Services. In 2016, he successfully systemized himself out of that business, hired a CEO, and stepped back from daily operations. Through this process, he became a systems devotee, founding SYSTEMology. Today, his mission is to free all business owners worldwide from the daily operations of running their businesses. To achieve this, Jenyns spends most of his time supporting the growing community of certified SYSTEMologists as they help business owners implement SYSTEMology. He also delivers workshops, keynote addresses and hosts his popular podcast – Business Processes Simplified. Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners. Learn more about Vendasta and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) are making up to $10,000 off referrals. Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy. Make Your Systemization Look Like A Million Bucks Introduction George: This is the Conquer Local Podcast, a show about billion-dollar sales leaders, marketers leading local economic growth, and entrepreneurs that have created their dream organizations. They want to share their secrets, giving you the distilled version of their extraordinary feats. Our hope is with the tangible takeaways from each episode you can rewire, rework, and reimagine your business. I'm George Leith and on this episode, we welcome David Jenyns. In 2016, David successfully systemized himself out of his business, one of Australia's most trusted digital agencies, Melbourne SEO. Through this process, he became a systems devotee, founding systemHUB and SYSTEMology. Today his mission is to free all business owners worldwide from the daily operations of running their business. Get ready conquerors for David Jenyns, coming up next on this week's episode of the Conquer Local Podcast. George: David Jenyns, joining us on the show. I am excited to learn about SYSTEMology. David, welcome all the way from Melbourne, Australia. David: Perfect, thank you for having me. Yes, it's gonna be a great episode George: And you can't really tell, but it's morning there, just the beginning, David is ready, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to go. The Importance of Systemization David: Yep, first interview for the day, 7:00 AM in the morning, ready to go. George: Well, I wanna talk about the book first. We kind of discussed it in the intro, I'm a big fan of systems, and you got 20 some odd years of business experience, and I'd love to get, what I'd like to start off with is just give us the overview of why systems are so important in your view and then let's get into the book and what led you to put the book together. David: Systems are such a key piece of business and they really are required to grow and scale your business. A lot of business owners, especially when they get started, they become the bottleneck, they train their clients, and their staff that whenever there's a problem, you come to me, I'll be the knight in shining armor who solves that problem, and then it builds up this real dependency. It often starts with the business owner but then can grow to other team members as well where the business becomes keepers dependent and then this really inhibits growing and scaling. You reach this ceiling that you can't break through. And the secret to breakthrough is to get systems, processes, how-to documents, and use those to delegate down responsibility to team members that might be less skilled or lower cost, which in turn frees up your more skilled team members to focus on the tasks only they can work on. So that's like a big part of it. There's many different reasons and ways that systems help to improve business though. Another common one that people have, when they look to SYSTEMology, is if you're thinking about exiting. Because the potential acquirer of your business is going to be thinking I wanna make sure this business continues to operate when the business owner or those key team members leave. And making sure that you're well set up and so that the risk is reduced for the the buyer, ultimately ends up increasing your valuation. Create Time, Reduce Errors & Scale Profits George: No, and what a carrot to dangle to a business owner when they're thinking about why they need to adopt systems that one day you might want to do something with this thing you're building and your chances of exiting with a higher multiple when you have those systems in place are quite important. But I also, I think we should dangle the carrot that you're just gonna run a better business and you're gonna have a lot happier customers and a lot happier staff members if there are some frameworks there. David: 100%. It's all about increasing time for those key team members, reducing errors and waste by taking away the need for double work or double checking. And then obviously it sets you up for delivering a better product or service through to your end clients, which basically impacts everything. It impacts how referable you are, it impacts how often those clients are gonna come back, and continue to use your products and services. It makes it easier for your team to do things as simple as take holidays. Sometimes team members struggle to take holidays because you are always on the phone as the business owner saying, "Oh, where's this up to? Or we need to chase that client up." Or maybe they take one week off, but then they have to spend the next three weeks trying to catch up on all of the work that didn't get done while they took their week holiday off because you don't have systems and processes in place for other team members to be able to step in and take some of that work over. So oftentimes people don't know how much it's costing them to not systemize. Systemization Starts With a Checklist George: You know, for our audience where we have sales professionals, sales leaders, I'm sure we got a lot of entrepreneurs out there because I think if you're a sales professional or a sales leader, you have an entrepreneurial mindset. But you know, I like to say that if you're a sales professional it's like you're running your own small business. I've said that a lot on this show over the last five years. So even as an individual contributor, there are systems that we could put in place to get some freedom. And there was a book I read a couple years ago called "Discipline equals Freedom." And I'm like, whoa, that, how does that add up? It's by Jocko Willink and he's a famous motivational speaker, he had that book, "Extreme Ownership" and I read it, it's a light read, it's pretty cool. But when I first saw the title, I'm like, okay, come on, so if I have discipline, how do I have freedom? And then when I read through it, just by putting some systems in place and some habit stacks in place, it actually does open up more freedom I found. David: Yeah, it's a little bit counterintuitive and one of the reasons why a lot of business owners, and founders, and certain team members, creative types, might avoid systems. I remember when I had the breakthrough moment, I used to own a digital agency, in part of that we had a video production business. And in that particular business I didn't really know how to hop on the tools. I'm not a video guy, I don't know how to edit in Premiere, I don't know how to use the equipment inside and out. But when we launched that business, I remember going out on a shoot with one of our videographers, and on the car ride to visit the client we spent about 30 minutes of a 35 minute trip with him going, "Oh, did I pack the spare battery? Did I email the client to make sure they aren't wearing checkered shirts because that doesn't look great on camera. Did we email the script? Have I got that spare battery? Where's the second lens?" We spent the entire time talking about things that just should have been handled by a good system. And at the end of that shoot I said, "Right, we're putting a shoot checklist in place so next time we go on a shoot we know exactly what we need and we're going to do that while we're in the studio before we leave." We put that into place. And then I went on another shoot about nine months later and I remember the discussion that we had in the car was infinitely different. We talked about, "Oh, what shot did he want to get and what emotion did he want to get across and what was the story he was planning on telling?" And I remember for me at that time that was that light bulb moment to realize that systems create space for creativity. It gives you a chance to think about those most important things. Rather than where's that second battery, he was having space to think about how he was going to do the creative side of the video. And that's when I realized that systems actually increase your creativity, not decrease it. SystemHUB - A SaaS Platform George: Well I love the story because it definitely helps us, I'm sure our listeners are right now going through their own stories of how they've, you know, maybe went to accomplish a goal and just kind of pulled the system outta their ass, and that trial and error and then you don't really get a great job, but at the end of the day when you've got a a system in place and you iterate on that, get a chance to pull off way better work at the end of the day.. And the other thing that I like about it, and we've been noticing this and it's interesting you brought up that you had a digital agency. But what I've been noticing is when we sell a client, let's say we sell 'em a website, the definition of success is, is the website on or off? But yet in the background, you know that there's probably 100 different things that are happening to bring that website across the line. And by being able to articulate that journey you actually are able to capture the idea of more value with the customer where they go, oh, that's why your website's $7,000 and the others online are like 400 bucks because you have all of these checks and balances and the things that you're doing to make sure that the product is better. So, I find that also if we have a really good system, and we can show that system presale, we might even be able to get a larger value from the customer when it comes to an economic reward for the fact that we're just doing more work in order to bring across that project. So SYSTEMology is the book I love the the subtitle, create time, reduce errors, scale your profits with proven business systems, and then we have this systemHUB company that you've created which is a sister organization, tell us about that. David: Yeah, so systemHUB is a SaaS platform to store businesses' systems and processes in the cloud. So when I first got interested in systems, I actually launched that company first and then we started to work with companies as they would document their process, like their how-to documents. And after doing that for a number of years, that's what made me realize the software on its own is not enough. To build a systems driven company, you need to build a culture of systems and you need to get the staff to buy in and you need simple tools and it's this ecosystem of having that level of support and the right methodology to introduce it to your clients and your team to then get it to stick. So that was really what SYSTEMology ended up doing. It was kind of to fill that gap and that void that I saw so many of our clients having, some got it, but most of them needed some level of guidance because a lot of them just didn't naturally gravitate towards systems and they didn't just get it. So we kind of created a framework for them to follow. Business Processes Simplified Podcast George: And it's a great website, systemHUB.com and inside there there's all sorts of blog posts where you talk about best practices when it comes to building out systems. And I did happen to notice that you have your own podcast. David: Yes, so it's been a little bit of a hiatus with COVID, but it's called "Business Processes Simplified." And typically what I do is I'll interview business owners and business leaders and just have them share a system or a process that they use in their business. So it's a bit different from some of the traditional podcasts where we are literally just going through step one, I do this, step two, I do that, step three, I do this, and then my team takes the recording and then documents that. So it's a great way to kind of build out just starting points. I feel like lot of business owners and people in different departments, department heads, they just need starting points when it comes to systems and then they can customize that final bit and tailor it to their business and that's really what the podcast's about. How to Implement A Remote Work Environment with Systemization George: One thing that I was thinking about when I was reading through the notes and getting ready to speak to you David, is a lot of businesses right now are struggling with this remote, hybrid, back in person. You see very famous CEOs mandating that everybody comes back to work and then you see the barrage of comments afterwards of I'm quitting if I have to come back into the office. In the last couple of years our organization went remote 100% during COVID and then we struggled to bring people back in 'cause they kind of got used to it. But also we found that remote work without systems, it's a nightmare. So it's kind of the perfect storm where you have to build systems and you gave us the carrot to exit and get a good multiple, you're gonna have happier staff. But I don't know how the hell you would do remote work without systems. How do you feel about that? David: 100%. I think COVID has revealed a lot of businesses and where some of the risks are and the dependencies on team members and what happened when certain team members got sick and couldn't come in, would work continue? And if they're working from home, how would team members know where to find certain things and how to track what they're doing and report on where client work is up to. Systems and processes are really required for running a virtual team. And the good thing about it is, once you get it right, it actually opens up then a global workforce. It's much easier for you to tap into emerging economies or economies where... The aim of the game in business really is really to find the best talent at the best possible rate. So depending on what the task is you go to where the great people are and with the right systems and processes in how you are getting work done, assigning tasks, ensuring people that remain productive, and they have what they need to do a great output then you'll run an infinitely better virtual team. Like yeah, like you, I don't know how you could do it without great systems and processes. There'd be a huge loss in productivity without it for sure. Getting in Touch with David Jenyns George: Well, you know, one of the things is we built out our sales organization here at Vendasta, and this is one of the scars that I wear and actually I wear it quite proudly. I wish that we would've moved to documentation process building earlier, because when we finally realized that that was going to be an important component, I think we probably overprocessed to make up for it, over-egged on it. Whereas if we would've done it as we moved down the road, it wouldn't have been this mountain of work that needed to be accomplished. and one of the, I've got a carrot that I'll dangle for folks. One of the learnings that I've had is how many times have we said, when did we make that decision? You're doing something, and you're sitting here going, when did we make that decision, and who made that decision, and why did we make that decision? But if you document those items with a decision log, now you can go back and say, oh yeah, that's when that number changed. We made that decision, here were the parameters around it. And then you can make a decision, if that decision still holds or if you wanna make a change to it. So I'm sitting here with hindsight which is always, you know, it's amazing, but I look back at it, documentation earlier, then you don't have to do the heavy lifting, find folks like David that are experts at systems and learn from them because it really helps you to scale and to grow your business and to have that repeatable process. And at the end of the day, I think you're just gonna have happier staff. So if we want more David Jenyns and we're not able to come to Melbourne to see you for a pint, how do we find you online, David? And we're gonna make sure we put all the notes so that people can hook up with you and learn more about your company. David: Perfect, yeah, best to, like, if you're listening to this you're probably an audio person. So if you head over to Audible, there's a copy of my book, "SYSTEMology" on Audible. And Michael Gerber, the author of "The E-Myth," reads the foreword in that, and I read the book, so it's a really great listen, or you can head over to Amazon to grab the book. And then if you want to go a little bit further, just systemology.com and that will link to things like the YouTube channel and the podcast. And if you need extra help, it's there. That said though, the book, it's most definitely useful and complete like it's the full methodology outlined, and it'll take you from no systems to starting to build that systems culture and getting some systems in place. Why You Don't Need to Systematize Like McDonalds George: So one final thing, and I read this before I read the book, it's in the list of notes and it says, why you don't need and shouldn't try to systematize like McDonald's. David: Yes, so a lot of people when they think about, well what's a systemized business look like? In their brain they'll think of companies like McDonald's or Amazon or Google, and they have a picture in their head of what they think a systemized business looks like. But if we take McDonald's for example McDonald's has been doing this for 60 years. So you don't wanna look at where McDonald's is today and then say, ooh, that's what a systemized business looks like. I need to have these big thick manuals that mean that I can take a 15 year old kid off the street and have him flipping hamburgers because he follows this very detailed process. And I tell him exactly how to do everything down to the point of how he takes out the trash. That works because McDonald's has been doing it for 60 years, they're a hamburger business, and they're recruiting a certain type of team member to fulfill that role. But oftentimes a lot of the business owners and team members that are listening to this they recruit great, skilled staff, and their business is already running. So the process is a little bit different, like we might not need to tell that person how to suck eggs, they just need enough of a process, a checklist to achieve the outcome. But it doesn't need to be over-documented. And similarly, McDonald's didn't start out like they are today. If you watch the movie, there's a great movie called "The Founder," and it tells the McDonald's story. And one of the early scenes is they go out onto a basketball court and they chalk out what a store looks like and the fryer's here, and the milkshake machine's here, and the registers are here, and then they move it round, and that's how systems start. They start raw and rough around the edges and as you said numerous times through the interview, then you iterate and that's the key. You need to start to build the systems culture, then you get the output. But don't start trying to build like McDonald's is today. George: So Australian folks and Canadian folks, we're connected. It's interesting, I've been to Australia a few times, I have a lot of Australian friends and we're connected. Now the interesting thing is you talked about systemized like McDonald's, but I know that in Australia it's not called McDonald's. David: You are thinking Burger King. George: No, I'm thinking Maccas. David: Hungry. Oh Maccas, yeah, yeah, fair call, fair call. George: Because I've been to Melbourne, I'm like I need to find a McDonald's to have a Big Mac and my colleague from Australia said, "No, it's called Maccas." And I learnt that very early. But I noticed that you went right to McDonald's. David: You've definitely got your Australian slang down, G'day mate. I should have opened with that at the start of the show. George: Well, and I could open with G'day eh?. Yet most Canadians don't say eh that much. David, it's great having you on the show and I'm a big fan of systems. I wish that I would've adopted systems a hell of a lot earlier in my long career, and I learned a lot from reading the book, and you got a great website there for your online company with a lot of great tips and it's been great getting to know you here and welcome to being alumni of "The Conquer Local Podcast." It's been a pleasure. David: Perfect, thank you for having me. Conclusion George: It was a pleasure having David Jenyns join us on The Conquer Local Podcast this week. Here's some valuable takeaways from this episode. Systems help improve businesses. I wish that I would've learned that sooner in my career, but we've all gotta start somewhere. David mentioned that systemization is crucial so that businesses continue to operate when key members leave and it's well set up so that there's no risk to the buyer. In turn, it increases time for team members and reduces waste. It also sets you up for delivering a better product or service to your customers. Having a system in place will make you more referable to clients. And lastly, systems and processes are required to run a virtual team. It opens up a global workforce and benefits the economy. If you like David Jenyn's episode discussing systemization in business, let's continue the conversation and check out two of our episodes. Number 527: Scaling Your Business with Jason Herman, or episode 537: The Roadmap to Achieving Sales Success with Wayne Maloney. Please subscribe and leave us a review. And thanks for joining us this week on The Conquer Local podcast. My name is George Leith, I’ll see you when I see you. 

On October 2022, Vendasta announced the acquisition of Yesware, a product assisting sales professionals in delivering positive buying experiences and building valuable relationships that customers deserve – making the process easier and more effective. Join us to kick off the new season with Vendasta’s acquisition of Yesware. In this exclusive interview, George Leith chats with the former CEO of Yesware, and Vendasta’s Vice President of Growth, Joel Stevenson, to discuss the history of Yesware, the acquisition, the Hard Sell Podcast, and Yesware’s tool for driving sales growth.  Joel Stevenson is VP of Growth at Vendasta which acquired Yesware in 2022 where Joel was CEO. Prior to Yesware, Joel built Wayfair’s B2B business from scratch to $400 Million in annual revenue. He also ran Wayfair’s UK business and oversaw the FP&A function as Wayfair transitioned into a publicly traded company. Before Wayfair, Joel worked as a consultant at ZS Associates and spent the early part of his career in various sales roles. Joel has an MBA from Yale, attended the University of Illinois for undergrad, and has a goal of being #1 for humor endorsements on Linkedin.   Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners. Learn more about Vendasta and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) are making up to $10,000 off referrals. Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy. Vendasta Acquires Yesware Introduction George: This is the Conquer Local Podcast, a show about billion-dollar sales leaders, marketers leading local economic growth, and entrepreneurs that have created their dream organizations. They want to share their secrets, giving you the distilled version of their extraordinary feats. Our hope is with the tangible takeaways from each episode, you could rewire, rework, and reimagine your business. I'm George Leith, and on this special edition, we welcome Joel Stevenson. Joel is the former CEO of Yesware, a leader in sales productivity software. Yesware was acquired by Vendasta and Joel is now our VP of Growth. He has over 20 years of experience in building businesses, and prior to Yesware, Joel was the general manager and founder of Wayfair's B2B division, which grew to a 100 million in revenue. He began his Wayfair career by leading the company's home improvement products division, followed by his role as managing director of Wayfair UK, where he drove the growth of the company's international presence. Joel then served as vice president of FP&A, while Wayfair was making the transition to a public company. He earned an MBA from the Yale School of Management, a BS in Business Administration from the University of Illinois, and he studied Chinese at Harvard's Beijing Academy. Get ready Conquerors for Joel Stevenson, coming up next on this week's episode of the Conquer Local Podcast. George: It's a pleasure to have Joel Stevenson here in studio for the Conquer Local Podcast. Welcome, Joel. Joel: Glad to be here, thanks for having me. Yesware’s Backstory George: So Joel, you were the CEO of Yesware, and recently Vendasta announced an acquisition of Yesware, and now you've moved into a role as VP of Growth. So congratulations and welcome to the rocket ship known as Vendasta. We have a bit of a tradition here at the Conquer Local Podcast when we bring on senior folks that have been doing it for a while, we like to have them as guests. So we're gonna spend hopefully the next 20 minutes just talking about Yesware because I need a bit of a refresher. I remember when the sales team, and we were just a couple of sales reps, we started building inside sales, came to me and said, "Can we sign up for Yesware?" And that was nine years ago that we met the Yesware organization. So I'd love to hear from you, where'd Yesware come from? How long has it been around? Just get a bit of the backstory. Joel: Yeah, well, you were pretty early there 'cause the company is only a little more than 10 years old, I suppose. And the original founding idea of the company, just so you know, I came in about five years ago, so I'm not one of the founders, but Cashman, our CTO and co-founder still with the company, and Matthew Bells was the other founder and CEO, and at the time, there wasn't really such a thing as sales software built for salespeople, though there was plenty of sales software, but it was more the traditional CRM, which I always think of as like built for the sales manager. You know, like when I did some CRM installations many, many years ago, the whole thing was just like Orum and Siebel back in those days, the whole thing was, well, you don't want the salesperson to leave with a Rolodex, right? So it was always a bit of a control and what's the forecast? It was never really about, well, how are we gonna make salespeople more productive? It was really about like, how are we gonna get information, control information from the sales team? And so the idea behind Yesware was like, well, what is a set of tech that would just make salespeople more productive and make their lives better and make them actually earn more money or be more successful in their career? And so that was the idea. And it started with actually a mobile sort of template keyboard, and then eventually sort of got to this idea of taking some of these marketing automation principles around email and applying 'em to the salesperson. So instead of just like getting a report of like, oh, here's your email campaigns and here was the open rate and the reply rate, you know, bringing that to a salesperson, but then giving them a notification as soon as somebody opens the email was sort of the original, kind of innovation of Yesware. Joel’s Skills and Expertise George: Well, it's interesting that you talk about that magic moment because I'll never forget the morning that Justin Babiy, who is one of our top sales reps walked into my office. We actually weren't even in our old building or the new building that you and I are in today, we were in another building they kind of put inside sales and he said, "I've cracked the code." I used this Yesware thing and I phoned the client as soon as they opened the email. Now think, that's pretty normal today, but think back nine years ago, it was quite revolutionary. And that was where Yesware really started to ride the wave. We'll get back to a little bit more of the history, but let's talk about you and your history. So five years at Yesware, where were you before that? Joel: Yeah, before that, I spent seven and a half years at Wayfair and I started when it was a company called csnstores.com that had three or 400 individual microsites, things like as extreme is allroosterdecor.com. It was very much of sort of an SEO, SEM driven, sort of almost an advertising management combined with supply chain management. There wasn't much of a brand or much of a retail story there. And over time, as we built that business, we eventually realized that we need to build a brand and bring it all together. So we then became wayfair.com. I ran originally a bunch of websites that had to do with home improvement, you know, plumbing, lighting, that sort of stuff. And it sort of incubated a little B2B team while I was there. Then I went and ran our UK business for a couple of years, came back, and actually ran our financial planning and analysis group while we were going public, which was fascinating and super interesting. And then had a chance to go back to the B2B division, which I'd sort of started and sort of grew while I was away. And that was about, around about a 100 people when I sort of took it back over, and then in two years, we took it to about 500 people and 400 million in revenue, and now it's a one and a half billion dollar plus division of the company. So it was fun. Boosting Sales Productivity George: Yeah, it's exciting growth. You don't do too many searches online and not find Wayfair if you're trying to buy some products for your house. So I'm sure it was thrilling. So now let's talk about Yesware and in the five years that you've been there and we were talking off-camera about all of the sales organizations that use the tool for this phenomenon of inside sales and there's a lot of tech that's being deployed there to help make this thing more efficient and help sales professionals communicate with potential customers and existing customers better. If you were to look at some of the highlights over the last few years, what would those be in the five years that you've been in the space? Joel: Yeah, well, we've sort of moved from where this was very much a sort of a single-player type of phenomenon where you got some benefit as an individual rep to really the teams that have gotten the most benefit out of Yesware and there's a whole litany of companies that have started with Yesware when they were small and became public companies, Yelp comes to mind, Flywire, Jfrog. I mean, the list sort of goes on, especially in tech. And what you see these companies do is they have this very interesting sort of test and iterate approach where they sort of see what's working across the team, they allow for some amount of experimentation and then they take the things that are working and they apply that to the rest of the team. And so if you think about you've got one rep that somehow figured out, oh, well, here's a better way to go from the discovery meeting to the demo meeting. Like, we get more people to show up or we get, drive better discovery that leads to better, that can all then be applied to the rest of the team. And so now if you've got a step where you used to go, 8% of the people made it from this step to this step, and now it's 10%, well, one rep figures that out, and then if you can do that across your whole team, well, now you've got a much better funnel, you can spend more on acquisition, you're gonna get, drive more to the bottom line. So that's really what we've started to see is people taking, individual productivity and then sort of turning that into team productivity. George: The one dream that I've always had over the years, there's probably podcasts where I talked about it, really excited to put it in place, was a test team and having that test team not be a junior rep because junior reps have gotten the building and they're learning what they're doing. Having it be somebody who's been there for a while, kind of knows how to run the plays. Is that something that you've saw over the years in this experimentation where there's a team that tests these new things? Or is it in general population where you pull a couple of reps out and you get them to run the test? What would be the best practice there? Joel: Yeah, I think it, I don't know that I've ever seen somebody say that this is sort of the experimentation team. I think sometimes what happens is they just emerge because you've got some senior people that are good and they get bored, you know, just kind of running the same playbooks and you can't just have 'em like do the same thing over and over again. And I think that group ends up sort of becoming like the defacto testers and then they tend to be the pace setters for the rest of the sales organization. And so whether or not there's an explicit sharing, people are sort of watching what they're doing. And one of the things about making your sales process more tech-enabled is it does make it more possible for the rest of the team to see what's going on. And so if you see that somebody, oh man, like this person is killing it, like what templates are they using or what campaigns are they using or like how are they following up? You can start to get a lot of that information as a rep versus before you maybe couldn't get that sort of thing. The Hard Sell Podcast George: Yeah, that collaboration and sharing of information is so important. So I also have been doing some listening recently to the Hard Sell Podcast, which is a show that you've created and let's talk a little bit about that podcast show, and what was the, you know, I remember the day that I opened my big mouth and said, "We're gonna do this podcast and it's gonna be every week." And then probably had PTSD for the next year afterwards going, "What have I got myself into? It's a lot of work." Now of course the team does all the work, and I just show up here and talk. But what would you say are some of the highlights and maybe the things you learned in developing that podcast? Joel: Yeah, well, we're not as high budget as this one I would say, we're definitely in that early sort of scrappy phase, but it's been fun. I mean, the way we approach it is we're trying to bring people on that have something interesting to say about selling, and in some cases, it's the CEO of a tech company that serves sales, in some cases, it's the sales leader, in other cases, it might be somebody that's like somewhat adjacent to sales like I had Jerry Colonna who wrote this book called "Reboot", who's my executive coach and I had him talk about like rejection and so we try to bring in people that are broadly interesting across a number of areas. And mostly I think the way that I keep it interesting is I just bring on people that I find interesting and we just talk about interesting stuff. And so that part of it feels quite easy, and then we've got some folks that help get it produced and edited and out in the world. So I don't know, I couldn't do that actually, so. George: Well, absolutely, I couldn't do that either. The other thing that I've noticed over the years, I'd love to see if your learnings line up with this, but the first couple of years always answering the question of where's the value from this? And you're producing episodes on a regular basis. And then it felt like in year three, we'd be at a conference and someone come up and say, "I listen to the show every week", or we go on a cold call and the client would be like, "I listened to that show." Is that kind of what you're seeing as well, having that consistency, and what were some of the things that you noticed where it really started to pick up traction? Joel: Yeah, I would say we're still pretty early. One thing that's happened recently is I'm starting to get inbound from other people saying like, oh, we heard about the Hard Sell Podcast or this one episode? So I think there's something there. Certainly, I think the Vendasta acquisition helped 'cause now we're like, it's sort of a joke, that it's like 150 in entrepreneurship in Canada or something on one of the iTunes charts or something like that. So the way I think about it is there's probably some exponential where if we keep building good content over a long period of time, eventually someone's gonna find one of 'em, and then they're gonna say, "Oh, I like that one. Like, let me listen to the other 30 or 40 or, you know, you have 250", we're nowhere near that. But if we keep making every episode good, eventually there's a sort of a catalog of content that becomes available to people whether they discover it now or they discover it three or four years from now, they can go back, and hopefully we're doing stuff that's relevant to folks for that whole period. Trends in Sales George: Yeah, what we've found is actually episodes from season one and season two are getting as many listens as brand new episodes for that very reason when somebody finds the content. But I always like asking that question of other podcast creators and hosts because it was a little lonely there for the first 24 months. You're trying to justify the investment in your own head as much as to the organization. And I think really where we saw the magic start to happen was sometime in season three where people were, now they're starting to be a little bit more forward on it. So we like to share that with our listeners because it is still one of the fastest-growing content mechanisms out there for businesses of all sizes. So in sales, as we look to the new year, not sure when people are listening to the show, but we're recording this late 2022. What are some of the trends that you're seeing in sales? 'Cause you work with some of the biggest and best inside sales organizations on the planet through the Yesware group. I always like to ask that question, what are some of the trends and how could our listeners learn from what you're learning? Joel: Yeah, well one thing that we see is the bar continues to go up for personalization. So we talked earlier about the experience nine years ago, sending out an email and getting it open and I think you maybe as much as three to four years ago, you maybe could have gotten away with sending out a relatively half-baked campaign and some people would've thought it was really, like it was really meant just for you type of thing without a lot of personalization. I think now there's been so much more sort of automated or structured emails put out into the world that like you really can't get away with that as much as you can anymore. Now you still wanna get the benefit of the tech, but you really have to spend more time personalizing those messages and making sure that the person that's receiving it gets the sense that it's not from a machine or it's not automated. 'Cause I think now like that is the, yeah, that's sort of the kiss of death I think. And what's interesting is that if you actually do the work and do the personalization, like actually add some value into those emails, they really stand out because we see a lot of people using tech, like yesware or other tech as a crutch, but it's really meant to assist, it's not meant to do your job for you. And so if you can use that tech to be more productive, but then you can also sort of remember the craft of selling and like who are you selling to and what do they want and what's the value and how can you solve a business problem for them. Like I think there's actually better chances to stand out than maybe there was three or four years ago because so many people just think they can just hit send and their job is done. Artificial Intelligence Technology George: No, if our audience picks up one thing, there is no silver bullet. There are components that can make it a hell of a lot better. So I appreciate you bringing that up. As we look into AI, I noticed in Slack yesterday, you were sending a note around AI. We were just recently at a conference where pretty much every presenter was talking about AI. What do you see in the crystal ball as we look forward? Joel: Yeah, well, the ChatGPT thing, which OpenAI just launched is really a stunning, in my mind, a really stunning lead forward. And it sounds like they're even got sort of, this is like an interim model and they've got another bigger one that's sort of coming. And two things that I find interesting about that, one is that they've taken this massive corpus of internet data and trained this model on it and you could just ask it the craziest stuff and it's sort of a bullshit artist in some sense, but like it's pretty believable and the fact that it can take so many just random unstructured queries and get you part of the way there is really interesting to me. And I think folks that are not really adding value from a creative standpoint, even in selling, like if you're not really understanding what the customer really wants and rank something personal, like, your job is probably in danger from models like this that are just sort of like wash, rinse, repeat, taking information that's broadly available and synthesizing it. And so I think this is a real change. And the other thing that's interesting about the ChatGPT to me is that it's a much more accessible way to get at it. So it's like a very comfortable interface where you're just sort of typing questions, like you're not coding an API, you're not sort of getting data back and having to parse it and do something else, whether you're not writing Json, you're just like writing free language text and getting interesting responses back. So I think a lot of people through means like this are going to start to understand what the power of some of these models are. And again, it's not a cure-all, but it's indicative of where the tech is going. And if you could take a model like that and then train it on very specific data that maybe you have proprietary to you, like people are gonna start doing some very interesting stuff with this, I think. George: What I found last year when it was called here in Canada where we live, that's my content time. I was using Writer at that moment and I just found that it helped me to be even more productive, but you've gotta go through it and make sure that it makes sense, especially if you're sending it to a high-value customer. You don't want it, I don't think we want it to look like a form letter, but it's amazing to see the advancements even in the last 12 months. Joel: Yeah, I forget who said this, I don't know, Hazimov or somebody was this idea that humans are very good at extrapolating things linearly, but we're very bad at extrapolating things exponentially. And so you tend to overestimate what something can accomplish in the short run, but underestimate it in the long run. I think we're definitely starting to get on the steep part of the curve with some of these AI technologies now. Vendasta’s Acquisition of Yesware George: Yeah, Amara’s law is at play for sure. So let's talk about the acquisition and yes, we're coming together with Vendasta. You've got an enormous amount of customers that love the product. We got an enormous amount of customers that love Vendasta. We put the two organizations together. It's not gonna happen overnight as much as a salesperson, I'd love for it to happen overnight. But how are we lining up as companies in your opinion? Joel: Yeah, well, there's, I mean, I think there's some really interesting stuff, I mean, one great part of the acquisition was Vendasta is a long-standing customer so you understood the tech and what we're doing and what we're trying to do. And one thing that people love about Yesware is that we allow you to work in context, like mostly in the inbox, but we show up in some other places like Calendar as well. But that's where we allow you to work. And I think for reps that are busy in constantly contact switching, like there's a high cost to go into this screen, then into that screen, then into that screen. And so to the extent that we can sort of keep you in context, people really like that. And so what we've done with things like our Salesforce integration is we basically bring Salesforce into the inbox, we take all of that activity, we passively sync it into the right place inside of Salesforce. And so without doing all the work, you get all the value of those systems of record. And so if you look at the Vendasta system, we can do something very similar there where over time we're gonna bring Vendasta into the inbox and all of that data that you're gathering from communications with customers like that's gonna end up in Vendasta now as a system of record versus in some other system of record and all the power of, sort of one to one communications that Yesware powers, we're gonna bring that in and combine that with automation. So you might maybe, might get a lead in and be able to immediately route it to a person, immediately put them into a campaign which then goes outbound and you start. So there's some pretty interesting stuff I think that's possible. George: Oh, really exciting stuff. And culturally, the two organizations playing well in the first couple of months? Joel: Yeah, I think so. I think we're all setting new records on our phones for temperature. I think it feels like negative 50 is a new thing. So we're having to up our winter clothes even being from Boston, we're having to up our winter clothes game I think a little bit here. But yeah, it's been great. Everybody here has been very welcoming and you can tell that there's a real desire to win here and a lot of energy and excitement and yeah, I mean, to me it feels a little bit like Wayfair was a few years before we went public. George: So in the five years that you've been at Yesware, you've been working in one of my favorite cities on earth, Boston is one of my favorite places. You can feel the buzz in that community from tech. What are some of your takeaways from being in the Boston area just to share with our listeners? 'Cause I know that it's a very popular place for people to go visit. Joel: Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's got a lot of history. I think it's a relatively compact city so you can sort of get, I mean, it's hard to get around 'cause it was built for carriages, not cars, so the roads are terrible, and the transit system isn't particularly good, but it's pretty small, so you could, it's a very walkable city. We sort of, I think punch above our weight in restaurants and there's, the North End is a bunch of Italian food. Like there's a lot of interesting stuff there. And what makes the city pretty interesting at the moment is there's something like 50 universities in and around the Boston area. So you have, obviously Harvard, MIT, you have Boston College, MBU, and Emerson, like the list goes on. And so there's an interesting thing that happens in Boston is like, it gets a lot quieter in the summer actually while the tourists start to show up, but a lot of the people that you see around that are younger are gone. But it does make the city feel young because it has such an influx of college students. And then you have all the innovation that's coming out of the likes of MIT MBU and Harvard. And that sort of drives an interesting culture. And on the tech side, you have not only tech, but biotech is very big in Boston and so it makes for quite an interesting set of dynamics for the city. George: Well, Joel, we welcome you to the Vendasta rocketship. It's been a pleasure getting to know you and the team over the last month or so and we're looking forward to some great things coming in the new year as we start to bring these two platforms together. And thanks for joining us in the Conquer Local Podcast. Joel: Yeah, thanks for having me, and glad to be here as a part of Vendasta. Conclusion George: Great episode from Joel. And as you could tell, we probably could have went on for quite some time talking about sales and how the Yesware platform has benefited some of those logos that he was speaking of, like the very large Yelp sales team that calls on local businesses all over North America. It's all about efficiency, it's about a product stack that allows sales organizations to be more efficient. And it's not about replacing sales, it was interesting to hear him talk about that. The automations that can be put in place, the workflow models that can be put in place drive more efficiency so that the salespeople are able to be more productive with the time that they have. If you liked Joel Stevenson's episode discussing Vendasta and their acquisition of Yesware, let's continue the conversation. Check out episode 508. Vendasta acquires Matchcraft with Sandy Lohr and Brendan King. Please subscribe and leave us a review, and thanks for joining us on this week's episode of the Conquer Local Podcast. My name is George Leith, I'll see you when I see you. 

Going beyond product peddling by proving performance. This week, George chats with Jed Williams, Chief Innovation Officer of the Local Media Association to discuss how personalized, business-specific data can help you drive sales in 2018. Tune in to hear them discuss how to execute a better customer needs assessment, the post-sale quarterback strategy... and something about a #blowything. If you don't want to miss an episode, subscribe now. Join in the discussion on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter! Guest: Jed Williams Jed Williams is the Chief Innovation Officer at the Local Media Association, where he leads industry wide digital revenue and business transformation initiatives for newspapers, radio and TV broadcasters, digital publishers, and R&D partners. These programs include Innovation Missions, Chief Digital Club executive networking groups, and LMA’s strategic consulting practice. Previously, Williams was a Senior Analyst and Vice President of Strategic Consulting at BIA/Kelsey, where he managed the company’s consulting division. He has led projects for AT&T, Constant Contact, Google, Time-Warner Cable, and Yahoo!. He has also advised local media companies such as GateHouse Media, Advance Digital, CNHI, Raycom, and Valpak. He previously also helped lead business development and strategy for two venture-backed technology companies, Vendasta and Main Street Hub. Williams’ insights have been cited by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Digiday, Bloomberg, FOX Business, and the BBC, among others. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and corporate meetings. He has written extensively on creative destruction and disruptive media and his work has been published and taught by the Columbia Journalism School and the Yale School of Management. > Connect with Jed Williams on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for more industry insights. — Coming up on this week's edition of the Conquer Local Podcast, we speak to Jed Williams, the Chief Innovation Officer of the Local Media Association, working with media organizations all over North America. You'll learn why you need to be thinking about a CNA 2.0, and what is it. If you're going to do this job, you've got to get really serious about consultive selling. And Jed will talk about process, structure, and data from his work with hundreds of media organizations. It's all coming up next on the Conquer Local Podcast. George: Jed Williams is the Chief Innovation Officer for the Local Media Association. He's joining us today on the Conquer Local Podcast. My friend, thanks for coming on board. Jed: Mighty George Leith, it's a delight and pleasure to be on your podcast and I'm so excited that you guys have launched us. George: Well, it's been a long time in the making, and it's a huge commitment when you say you're gonna do a podcast every week. I'm not regretting it yet because I get to talk to fantastic people like you. And when I was looking at the list of who I'm going to talk to first, Jed Williams was on that list. You and I had the privilege of working together for a period of time and then you went off to your calling at the LMA. Can you fill people in a little bit about what you do on a day-to-day basis? Jed: I'm happy to do it. And actually the time I spent in Vendasta with you is one of the best times in my career. You know, as you know, I'm very passionate about the cause of local media and the challenges of local media and what they need to do to forge sustainable and profitable paths forward, and that's what the Local Media Association is all about. So our mission statement at a high level, and I think it's worth underscoring this, is we work with local media companies of every shape and size, color, and dimension, whether it's radio, TV, newspaper, digital peer play, whatever it might be, to help them discover and develop new and sustainable business models. So it's a very heavy and important charge. And my task there, you know, I like to joke, the Chief Innovation Officer sounds on a business card. It's fancy and pretentious, but what the heck does it mean day-to-day? What it means is I've got to work with these members day-to-day at an executive level and on the ground floor with sales managers, sales teams, product managers, etc., to figure out what are they investing in to transform their businesses? Where are the new digital business models? How do they build more effective sales structures? So my job, my charge, is to design programs, initiatives, strategies for them that help them achieve exactly that. George: I like to think that... I talk to a lot of salespeople and sales managers and chief revenue offices in my travels, but I think that hands down, Jed, you talk to more. So we're looking to get some of those insights back from some of those discussions to us so that we can start to understand what an account executive needs to do when they're dealing with their customers to provide the most value and to make sure that they're that trusted local expert. So, you know, first thing I wanna dig into is some of the things that you're seeing in the last 24 months, and what's that pace of change? What's it like right now out there in the street? Jed: I mean, in a word, it's unbelievable. Maybe another word would be dramatic, would be existential. I mean, I know I'm using big words here, George, but I'm using them on purpose. I mean, that's the culture of change and disruption that we're in in media and particularly in sales. What's happening with advertisers, what's happening with digital advertising, what's happening with digital marketing services, who are the competitors, the flattening of the space. I mean, let me give you a number to put these into context, because we all here this number about the number of phone calls that a local business and SMB gets on a weekly basis or a monthly basis, right? And you and I, you know, we've seen the stat, oh, it's 39 or it's 40, it's something like that, which, by the way, is a ton. So I was talking to "The Dallas Morning News" not that long ago. Pretty successful local media company transforming itself, big digital agency presence. And they were talking to several of their auto partners, and they asked them, "How many phone calls about marketing and advertising do you get in a month?" You know what that answer was George? George: I'm interested to find out. Jed: Eighty nine, 89 phone calls in one month about advertising and marketing. That is... Now, granted this is Dallas, fifth biggest market in the country. I get it. It's not Dubuque, Iowa or Tucson, Arizon, but this is what our sales forces are up against. And I don't mean that as a fear tactic, I just mean that to say, if we're not rethinking every part of the operation, every part of the organization from the talent that we're bringing in, the professional development and the training and education that we're giving them, the support that we're providing them and fulfillment on the backend, the cultural buy-in in an executive level around the important of what they're doing in digital sales, data, and systems to help them have smarter conversations from the very first moment that they touched that client or prospect, and, by the way, sales manager and coach that really gets them and is there to promote them and help their path forward, then you don't have a chance in digital. It takes all of those things, and it now takes all of those things to breakthrough, because of the number of competitors that are out there, whether it's SaaS companies, whether it's vertical providers, whether it's the dominant platforms like Facebook and Google, whether it's Pure Play digital agencies. If you're a media company, you are up against all of that. You need to be reexamining every part of sales infrastructure. George: You know, and I will say to you that there's always been a lot of calls happening on the prospect, especially if you're an auto dealer, you're low hanging fruit for every sales organization out there that's trying to sell even the blowy thing that goes on in the parking lot that attracts people that are driving by or the guy in the gorilla suit. But the difference being today, and I'd like you to really dig into that, is the quality of the sales rep that is on those 89 calls, they're top shelf. Jed: They are, and I think they are for a couple of reasons. One is you're dealing with a different generation and a different sort of quality of salesperson that was raised digitally, that is very fluent digitally. Like this is all they know and all they do. You're not teaching that 25-year-old about digital platforms and digital tools, like this is how they were raised. It's innate to their DNA. So a lot of traditional media companies have that challenge. They're trying to reeducate or educate from scratch a traditional seller versus, you know, that very savvy 25-year-old coming out of the school, whatever the case might be, that really knows digital. I think the other thing is when you look at so many of these organizations, so I'll give you example. And I know we're gonna talk more about this in a little bit. But at LMA we lead these trips called innovation missions, and we'll go see progressive media companies but we'll also go and meet with disruptive technology companies. Those might be platforms, those might be software providers, etc. An example of one that we went to visit last year is HubSpot, up in Boston. You know, a fascinating company. They've had a great story. They had their public IPO. They're incredibly, as you know, George, I mean, incredibly metrics driven. Everything about that organization is fueled by data. I mean, it dictates every single decision that every sales reps and every person in that organization makes in every minute of every day. And so data is fuel. Data is oxygen. Data is power in your sales force, in understanding what the key sales activity should be, who you should be calling on, why, what you should be offering them, where they are in the journey and in the sales process. And I think that is something that media companies are up against more than ever, is not just thinking through your talent, but really thinking through how data-driven and how metrics-driven are you as an organization. And the answer is you better not just be driven, you better be obsessed by that. George: So I've got a great relationship. I'm the rep that's been calling on a client for 20-some odd years of knowing the owner of the business, now I might dealing with the son or daughter that's taken over the business on a day-to-day operations. I've been relying on my relationship. I haven't really been training myself too much on new products and services, although my organization is starting to sell new products and services. These are the sales reps that are really being disrupted by these data-driven organizations that get it, because the client is starting to look really deep into the offering saying, "Am I really getting the value that, you know, Old George has been professing that he's been giving me?" So that's where we're seeing that disruption, isn't it? Jed: That's exactly, yeah. I mean, I think at the end of the day, look, if you're a traditional media rep, you're a tea seller, you're a newspaper seller, you have a relationship with that furniture store, auto dealer, hospital, whatever it might be for 10 years or 15 years. That's nice. Maybe that gets you the first conversation. But if you can't actually solve specific problems for them, I mean, I always come back to, in any part of our business, but particularly in sales, the jobs to be done framework, if you don't really understand their jobs to be done as a business and you can't deliver on those with absolutely clear discernible ROI and attribution on what they're spending and why and what they're getting back in return, in the long term, you're going to lose because you're going up against organizations that understand products and understand solutions that can do that and have data and have trained their sales people to be able to have that conversation. So, you know, that all... just handshake and "I'll be back next month," I mean, none of that stuff works anymore, and so I think that there's such a focus on ROI with the SMB, with the advertiser... Look, they are, as you know, George, like they are as lost as the traditional media salesperson that I'm talking about. So they're looking for an advisor more than ever, and I think they're pretty ruthless and pretty objective about the person that walks through that door and truly understands their jobs to be done, gives them elegant, great customer service, and then delivers on that promise with products and services that deliver clear ROI. They're going to be the winners. And they aren't just the traditional advertising products that we've all known about for 50 years and they aren't even traditional digital advertising products. If you look at the digital advertising market, George, it's growing, but a lot of that growth is gobbled up by Google and Facebook. The digital marketing services opportunity, that is twice the size of digital advertising. According to Burrell, that's a $1 billion market and, you know...or, you know, excuse me, it's a $700 billion market and digital advertising opportunities are $350 billion market. So you've really got to understand all the options that are out there for a business and where the money is moving and be able to move in these directions. George: So then previous episodes of the podcasts we talked about the proof-of-performance layer to the sales process. And you've just touched right there with some really good data that you better be showing ROI. When do you think in the sales process should we be setting the stage for looking at the proof of performance and "Did the things that I sold to the customer start to work or not?" When do you set that stage? Jed: I think you set it pretty early. I don't think you set in the first touch point because I think you're learning in that first touch point. But I also want to talk about that for a second, George, before we get into reporting and managing client expectations, and that is sort of the era of the customer needs analysis. I really believe we're moving from CNA 1.0 to CAN 2.0. CNA 1.0 was "I got my little form and I wanna walk in there and take 30 minutes of your time and ask you a bunch of questions about your business." Well, here is the challenge. Every one of those 39 or 89 or whatever the number is you wanna believe, every one of those people that's making the phone call and asking to come in there wants to do the exact same thing. How much time does the business have to explain themselves and answer the same set of CNA questions for every single person knocking on their door? It is really much more about do you have data and information about them where you can come in from the first touch point and be helpful to them and provide information that they didn't know and help further their business as a result. So that, you know, that old era of "Let me come in and do a capabilities assessment," I think we're moving way beyond that. So I think there's a different kind of CNA required upfront to be a truly effective multi-platform seller. But then I think after you do that, to answer your question directly, pretty early in that process, when you're coming back and you're putting in solutions, and notice I don't say products, I say solutions, when you're putting solutions in front of that business, you need to be framing expectations around that early on. You know, "Here's what happens first and next, and after that, here's how we're gonna tell you about that, here's typically how long it takes for something to take effect and for you to see results, here's what the first results might be, here's the second results. We're gonna come back and calibrate with you on those on a recurring basis." I think you've got to be upfront with people. If not, particularly with products that are new to them and they don't know... Let's take something like SEO, search engine optimization, if you don't set those kind of expectations on strategy, tactics, and what they can expect to see by when, they will draw their own conclusions. And if you allow the business to draw their own conclusions, you are asking for trouble. And so I think it starts very early, but I think it also gets back to this notion of customer success as important as sales is and data in informing sales, customer success and service are a real differentiator for media companies or any successful sales organization. And that means that you're constantly coming back and delivering results. But you're not just showing them a dashboard, you're not sending them a 20-page report, you're doing real analysis, putting it in context, creating prescription on what's happening next or what you encourage next and why, and you're doing that on human touch point. You're not sending them an email with the PowerPoint saying, "Take a look. We'll see you next month." Like that, in this era, none of that is good enough. So I believe, to, you know, kind of tie it together, I believe that that expectation setting happens early, George, but it doesn't happen once. You are constantly calibrating with the customer on that. George: You know, what you're leading me to believe here and you're making very compelling point, it is that an annual sales cadence where I go see the customer once a year just isn't gonna cut it. And even that I'm going to have to see that customer on a regular basis. So we go back to a couple of episodes ago, we were talking about the monthly cadence but not just sending the report in an email, not expecting them to log into your multi-million dollar dashboard that you built, you're going to have to sit down with the customer and relate it back to that original presentation and start to adapt the tactics that you're using because the change is there and I don't know if everybody knows 100% when they set out on a marketing strategy if it's gonna work or not. You've got to see what's happened over the last month and make that adjustment, and that's what the prospect is actually looking for. If, you know, you've got 89 people calling on them, what is going to put you into the top three or the top two that they think about when it comes solving these problems? Jed: Amen. And also, to your point, what's gonna get you there and what's gonna keep you there, right? How are you constantly aligned with them where they know, "Hey, this guy is in communication with me. If something is not working, he's telling me that. If something is working, he or she is telling me that." Like we are always building and refining this strategy. And I think what's interesting about it is, if you think about it, you know, George, in the first part of this podcast we talked a lot about the role that technology can play in economizing and improving the sales process, you know, using data to figure out your key selling activities or learn more about your prospects and build digital audience and snapshots and things like that. And all of that is great. But in some ways, what we're talking about here is as manual as you can get or it's certainly more manual. We're talking about old fashioned...you know, I mean, sweat equity, building and maintain rapport with the customer, getting in front of them, taking the time, walking them through them, this taking the time to build an executive summary for them to give them context to build prescription. You know, these are old-fashioned things. But I think in this competitive flattened environment, they're more important than ever. And I'll give you an anecdote here to make this a little more specific. George: Sure. Jed: There's a company that we work with that's a midsized radio group. And I think, you know, they built their own digital agency,, it's got its own brand, I think it's done really well overall for the market that they're running and who they're up against, and they have a really...they have done a great job of saying, "Okay, we wanna be in front of the client this way in this very..." you know, how do I wanna put it, "...sort of customer touchpoint, you know, in front of them, at least once a month. And for the clients that we do that with and we do it in a sort of standardized form with certain guidelines, our retention on them is X. And if we don't do that, if we go see them every six weeks instead of every four weeks or every eight weeks instead of every four weeks, our retention on them is Y." And I don't know exactly what the difference is, but I can tell you there is a delta. And they have found that four weeks or under, George, is their inflection point. They've got to be in front of the client every four weeks at minimum or less. If they go beyond that, that churn, you'll hear the leaky bucket problem starts picking up for them. George: Jed, I've got an interesting stat for you from 20-some years ago when I actually started hitting budget as a rookie salesperson. It was when I started seeing my customer more than once every eight weeks. You know, it hasn't changed. But there are organizations that think you can just go in once a year and make the sale and then send them a report and you're gonna be fine. Those are the people that we will gobble up, 'we' being the greater 'we' on this call, we'll gobble up because we're going to start to adopt a monthly sales cadence and that's where you're going to talk about what you've delivered to the customer. What I found when you have that monthly cadence is also where you identify all sorts of cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Jed: Absolutely. And I think, you know, one of the bigger points here is when you say 'the collective we'...and I really like that. We as an organization are a company, we're going to do this. It's going to be a standard. If you're gonna be on our sales team and you're gonna win on our sales team, you're gonna do this, you know, by gosh and there are no ifs, ands, or buts, there no exceptions to it. And you know what that comes back to, that means the managers have to be bought in, and that means the executives of that media company have to champion this. And there can't be exceptions or it can't be, "Well, that guy or gal has been in my organization for 10 years and they're really good at selling TV or they've only missed one month." When you start doing that, you start bending rules, you start making exceptions. You gotta have buy-in at manager level on this. You gotta have buy-in and championing of this at the executive level, and then you have to have process around it. And the process means, "Okay, who's doing what here? Is the sales rep doing everything after the sale to go in and look at results and build that report?" Probably not because we want to focus on selling. But we also want them to be the one that has the touch point with the client out in the field. But if they don't have the time to do all of this, then who is? Well, you better have some sort of dedicated role that does this. Maybe it's a digital specialist for each product, maybe it's an account manager, maybe there's some sort of streamlined quarterback roll on the back end in your sales organization that brings all this together and then builds that report and then sits down with the rep to explain to the rep what's happening so that the rep is communicating this the right way, because you know there is a break in the chain there too, George. If you leave the reps to their own devices, you can have some mismanaged expectations and miscommunication. George: Jed, I wanna jump in there, though, let's talk about the crutch, because what we've noticed, and there's a lot of media people at that are listening to the podcast, what we've noticed in these media organizations is if you bring in a digital specialist, that doesn't mean that the legacy sales reps starts to learn digital, it's just, "I'm gonna bring Brent along in the call because he's my digital specialist." Jed: Yeah. Well, I'm with you. I totally agree with that and we can't buy into those crutches because at best, it's incremental improvement. But it's not transformative improvement in sales forces. What I'm really talking about, George, is on the back end. After the sale, who owns the customer after the sale or at least who owns the reporting? Who's building that report? Who's making sure that's put together in a consistent fashion that everybody is meeting their responsibilities? I mean, if you're the social media specialist and you're the SEM specialists, and you're the website specialist, how are we making sure that all that data is brought together in the right way? And then who is sitting down with the sales rep and going, "Okay, you know, you don't gonna get a 'get out of jail free' card. Like you got to go out and talk to your customer about this." You know, you're responsible for their results and that includes their digital results. But we need to make sure that you're telling the story the right way and here's what we found and here's what to focus on. I'm really getting it. What is that dedicated post-sale role that brings all this together and then gets it back in the hands of the sales people with that expectation of they're going to go back out and touch the client? George: Jed, we can go on for days and days and days I'm sure on this and we will get a chance to do that as we head into the convention season and the conference circuit. And you do more of that speaking than anybody I've met and I'm looking forward to spending some time face to face. I'm gonna ask you the question that I ask all of our guests. How do you see in the next 12 months is sales transitioning away from a guy or a gal with a bag? Jed: Well, I mean, we've hit on a little bit of this. I think if you are a product peddler and a product pusher in 2019, a year from now, you're more in danger than ever. So I think, you know, one of the things we talked about, you know, as to how do you get beyond pedaling products and particularly pedaling your own, you know, traditional products or your sales blitz and we're gonna focus on this this month? I think the answer is you gotta be really serious about consultative selling, and I know that gets talked about a lot. But what I mean is... Let's talk about that CNA 2.0 that I mentioned a little while ago, George. Are organizations doing that? Are you training relentlessly to that? Are you holding your reps to account for the fact that that is a standard part of their sales process now the minute that they touched that customer or that prospect? Are you actually tracking? How many of those sort of new age CNAs are being done to make sure that the right questions are being asked and the right inputs are being gleaned to then build the right solutions? I think it starts right there with the redefining the CNA, holding the reps accountable, tracking their every single activity, and then to the other point we made, then being absolutely consistent and present about how you're, you know, maintaining that cadence with that customer, how you're calibrating on their needs, how you're managing their expectations, and then, obviously, how you're adapting the campaign or the solution to continue to drive the best results for them. It's the whole sales continuum. And if you're not doing all of those things, there are people out there that are putting process, and structure, and data, and talent, and leadership in place to do it in your place. So that's the challenge you're up against. George: Jed Williams, Chief Innovation Officer from the LMA, and we're gonna put all of your links for your LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile. Jed produces a ton of content throughout the year, and we'll give you some links if you wanna learn more from the awesomeness that is Jed Williams. I really appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us from Austin, Texas. Look forward to seeing you out on the conference circuits this spring.   – I've worked with Jed for about a year or so and he always says some really good insights, and I actually think his insights are getting even better because you can tell that he's spending a lot of time in the field working with sales organizations. But let's just go over what Jed covered here in the last 20 or so minutes. CNA 2.0. You don't just take out a questionnaire and ask the client questions because everybody is doing that. You've got to come up with a better way to do the customer needs analysis. Inside media organizations, you really need to understand what jobs need to be done because after that sale is made, there needs to be somebody that fulfills the sale and then prepares the report to show the client that proof of performance. So who is on the backend of the sale? Who is the person doing the work to make sure that all the things that the account executive talked about come true? And then we've got this 89 number, the 89 people that are calling trying to eat your lunch. It's way bigger than the number I gave you back in the day when we started the podcast on how many, but it just...I don't really care what the number is, it's just there is a lot of people out there that are trying to do the same thing that you're doing and what's going to set you apart. So that's what all this thing is all about. That's what the podcast is all about is to give you the skills and to dig deep into that what that sales process looks like so you can stand apart. I did also mention about a blowy thing that does come out of your marketing budget, by the way. Anything that you do to promote a business comes out of the marketing budget, and I love the blowy thing. I always throw that... Put that in a hashtag, that'll be great. More coming up in the Conquer Local Podcast next week as we continue to make sales great again. I'll see you when I see you.

Print is alive and thriving at the Seattle Times. In this episode, George talks with Gary Smith, VP of Advertising at the historic newspaper, about how they are evolving to serve businesses in their market by adopting the mentality of a 121-year-old startup. Listen now! Attend VendastaCon April 3-5, 2018 in Banff Canada to turn your company into a 'recurring revenue machine'. More info at vendastacon.com. VendastaCon 2018 What are you gonna do to hit your agency's revenue goals this year? Are we just going to go in and do transactional sales or is there a real plan to turn your agency into a monthly recurring revenue machine? I bet you that sounds pretty interesting if you're in the agency business. And that's what VendastaCon 2018 is all about. It's the must-attend digital marketing convention, happening April 3rd to 5th in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Our mission from that event is to turn your organization into a monthly recurring revenue machine. Sales leaders, strategists from agencies, newspaper, television, radio, web, and brand, SEO, and even online advertising companies will be in attendance. And it's all happening on one of the most beautiful places in the world—the Canadian Rockies in springtime and at the Banff Springs Fairmont Hotel. It's absolutely amazing, and I'm looking forward to seeing you there. You know, outside of the sessions that we're going to host, some of the mixers where we get to go one-on-one and discuss things, and beat up ideas, and speak to people that are doing it on a daily basis and find out what they're learning, those are some of the most powerful moments at any convention, and we've got a whole bunch of them lined up at Vendasta. We're going to be doing one evening in a gondola ride to the top of Sulphur Mountain. It's all happening as part of VendastaCon 2018. This is it! The must-attend digital marketing conference, April 3rd to 5th, in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Here's what you can do to get your tickets. Go online right now, www.vendastacon.com, and buy today. Introduction George: For the past six years, I've been traveling all over the world helping traditional media reps transition to selling digital marketing solutions to their customers. And I've had the privilege of working with sales managers, vice-presidents of advertising, chief revenue officers, and I get a shot this week in the Conquer Local podcast to go back to somebody that I've been working with for almost all of those six years. I met Gary Smith when he was the VP of Advertising at The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. Gary has now moved on to be the Vice-President of Advertising at The Seattle Times. And it's interesting to see how Gary's approach to selling digital has changed over those years. He'll talk about why he invented the position "field sales coach." He'll also tell us about how they're positioning The Seattle Times as a 121-year-old startup company and why that's important. And he's building on the brand "Seattle Times" rather than killing it, and there are other organizations that have decided to get rid of the legacy brand and just move in a new direction. We're gonna talk to Gary Smith. He's been doing it for a long time and we're gonna find out how he is transitioning to make salespeople into sales professionals, all coming up on this episode of the Conquer Local podcast next: – George: Well, it's a beautiful day. We are on location today here at the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce offices. We happen to be in the Microsoft lounge. Gary Smith is the Vice-President of Advertising at The Seattle Times, and I really appreciate the invite. I'm up here doing a seminar, a sold-out seminar, I might add, with your clients and your sales team helping them conquer local. So, I thought it was a great idea to get you on microphone and on video here with us on the Conquer Local podcast. And you and I met, I believe, it was about three and a half or four years ago in Raleigh, at your former position. And then, you moved up here to Seattle and you've had an interesting run. Let's talk a little bit about The Seattle Times company, first, just to give everybody a little bit of background. Or maybe even before we do that, let's get a little bit of background on you and how long you've been at this as vice-president of advertising, and your career in helping local businesses. Gary: So, I'm in my 20...working on my 29th year in the industry. I spent 27 years in two markets with McClatchy. From the northwest originally, spent 14 years in Tacoma, and in 2003, moved to Raleigh, and had been on the internet sites since the beginning in Tacoma and all through my career in Raleigh. Went to Raleigh to run the internet division. Internet became internet and classifieds, and internet and classifieds became all of advertising. And The Seattle Times came knocking on my door at the end of 2016 and said, "We've got a great opportunity for you." And the northwest is my home, and so decided to make the career move and come to the northwest. And so, just on one year anniversary here with The Seattle Times. But I love to be back in the northwest and love to be at the, you know, the northwest premier media company and really take what I'd learned in those first 27 years and apply it here to The Seattle Times. George: So, how many people in your department? you know, the "Conquer Local" podcast is all about helping salespeople become sales professionals. How many people in your sales division? Gary: So, there's about 75 total in the sales division and roughly half of those are front line salespeople. And then, it's sales leadership, but also a significant investment on the execution on the ops side, especially when you look at digital. And, you know, we've got a significant investment in, you know, personnel talent to be able to execute on these complex digital buys for our customers, and then to be able to help our sales staff report and make adjustments to those buys because digital media is not a "set it and forget it" media. George: That's absolutely right. So, there's been...when I was here, I think it was six or eight months ago when you first had taken over and you recognized that you needed to add some solutions to your stack and get some training in place. There's been quite a few changes in the organization, I understand. Tell me a little bit about that, the reps that when you walked into the building, there's been a change in that org. Gary: Yeah. So, there's probably been, you know, since when I got here a year ago till now, roughly 50% turnover. And we knew that coming in, and I was very clear with the executives that that was probably gonna be the case, that we really need to transition from being a newspaper company to a media company that is really product-agnostic, and that we'd be adding a lot of digital components to our stack, to our solution for advertisers, and that not all the reps are gonna be able to make that transition. I'm very happy to report that none of that transition... you know, during that whole time period, we didn't terminate anybody. But we changed the expectations, changed the commission plan. And so, we're gonna put lots of training around it. But you have to sell these products. You have to learn these products. And we have a lot of people self-select and say, "You know, this isn't for me. I don't like the vision where we're going or I don't feel like I can make that transition from selling legacy products into selling both legacy and digital." And so, a lot of folks made that transition. And I'm really happy to report that, you know, as folks decided to make that move and as we backfilled their position with new folks, that I am extremely bullish on our future with the talent we've hired, and the energy that we're putting into growing that team, educating that team, and making sure that they understand the values of The Seattle Times company and what it means to be a part of our new brand in the marketplace, Seattle Times Media Solutions, which is really what we're all about, is providing solutions four our advertisers. George: You know, you brought up something very interesting there. People self-selected because you changed the expectations. And, you know, that's a tactic that a manager can use as they transition a sales organization. But I believe there was one thing that kinda helped you with that expectation, and that is the fact that you have a culture of constant learning. Tell us a little bit about that Gary: Yeah. So, when I got here, there are several things we did. You know, certainly, bringing everybody's knowledge level up to where they feel confident that they can talk about these different solutions that are brand new to them. We knew we had to put a lot of energy into education. The 'Sales Field Coach' Gary: So, first off, we created a brand new position called the 'field sales coach', and their job was to coach on sales process, some product training, sure, but coach on process. Coupled with that, we instituted every Friday, from 9:00 to 11:00, a digital training seminar with various topics. Fifty-two weeks out of the year, we're committed to it. We have a schedule that goes out six to eight weeks in advance of what are the topics coming up that we need to talk about. And it's a way where we know, once a week, for sure, we've got dedicated time with our staff to go over products. Sometimes, you know, we have tiered sessions. Role-playing is certainly big in that. You know, we'll roll out a product. We'll do follow-up a couple of weeks later. We'll ask them to come back and share, you know, successes or struggles. And then we'll do role plays and making sure that they get it. And this constant learning and dedication to the success of the salespeople has really changed the culture as well. They're excited about these new products. They're excited to take these products to market. And they're excited to be a part of our company. And I think the commitment with the field coach position and these trainings have really added to that kinda culture change from the sales side. George: Well, it's interesting to me. You know, I've known a couple of your senior people in other roles that you have in the company. And I met some of the reps when I was here six, eight months ago. It's interesting to me that, you know, they're not just happy to be doing what they're doing. They're not motivated because you're pushing them. They're motivated because they love what they're doing. I had some conversations beforehand and, you know, your reps feel confident. And they're confident because they have that learning. That's a...you know, we're learning as we talk to more and more sales leaders. The ones that are being successful are the ones that have instituted that, by putting those learning sessions in place. So, I guess my question is this, did that help some people self-select? They look at that calendar two, three months out and they're like, "There's just no way that I'm gonna be able to go that direction." Gary: So, it's beyond just the training sessions. The training sessions allow my leadership team to then set tangible KPIs for the reps of actions that they need to do. And so, it really wasn't the training sessions that got them, but it's "Okay. Now, I've gotta go put this into action. I've gotta do it and I don't wanna do it," you know, or it's not...you know, "I'm not behind this." And so, if you're not committed to it and you don't wanna be here, I was very blunt that you've gotta learn to sell digital. We used to have four-legged sales calls when I got here, digital specialist, and I stood up in front of everybody at my first meeting and said, "They're are crutch and they're gonna go away." I'd had a plan on taking all of 2017 to get to the point before we would redeploy those people into other positions. And our leadership team came to me midyear and said, "We're ready to do it now." And so, we fast-tracked that and did that at the beginning of July last year. And so, all these trainings and everything is about, "This is the direction we're going," and it's allowed the folks that are left to have the confidence. The ones that aren't, it made it easy for them. But it was really the KPIs around the follow-up that was probably the bigger driver, not so much, you know, participating in the training. Print is Alive in Seattle George: So, a couple of things about the Seattle market number one, and I have a prop here. So, those of you on the podcast that are listening are not able to see it, but I am holding The Seattle Times newspaper. Those of you watching the video could see it. And not like other newspapers on a Thursday that I've seen, it's still a robust print product. Also, you may be able to hear in the background, there's probably five or six cranes operating within a block of us. This is the fastest growing market in North America. And so, you've got a tiger by the tail when it comes to an economy that's very strong. Could that be part of the reason why the reps are motivated as well? Gary: I would certainly hope so. You know, there are reps that are here that are doing really well. They're paid well. They do well commission-wise, so that helps. But the family commitment, the Blethen Family that's owned the paper for 121 years is steadfastly committed to this community. This metro paper has stronger editorial page count, seven days a week, than any metro I've seen in the country. And it gives us a very robust product to sell advertising in. And print advertising is not dead. It's evolving. It's changing. But there's still a marketplace there for us, and it opens the door and provides huge credibility for the sales staff. When we were evaluating earlier in 2017, how do we wanna go to market from a digital perspective? And some companies have dropped their legacy brand. As I look at this market, talked to advertisers, talked to the community about The Seattle Times and the perception in the marketplace, I very quickly came to a realization, we gotta build on this brand, not throw away everything that's been done over the previous 121 years. So, we now go to market as Seattle Times Media Solutions. And that we're not just about a seven-day-a-week print product. It's still very strong and it opens a door for us and has huge credibility in the marketplace. And so, that's a confidence that I am very vocal with my sales staff, is you got something here that doesn't happen across the country. Other newspaper and media companies, sales reps don't have the luxury that you have to have as robust a product behind them as we have here in this marketplace. You then add there's, I think, 65 cranes in Seattle right now, not just five or six, around here. There's one directly across the street. With what used to be our parking lot, there's about 100-foot hole right now, and there'll be in a 42-story high-rise in a year and a half there. That growth gives us huge opportunity and our staff sees that. They see that there's huge opportunity there. And so, we've got to equip them to be successful. Give them the tools. Give them the training. Give them great products like the products your team, you know, helps us with so that we can go to market and be successful. And at the end of the day, part of the reason our staff structure is the way it is, is we didn't have to be able to report on that and be able to communicate back to the advertiser what's working, what's not working, how do we adjust your budget so that we can give you the best return on your investment. If the advertiser's KPIs changed, then we have to then adjust their media plan. And so, it's really about this 360-degree focus on getting them into the products, but then evaluating how it's working, and adjusting so that our clients, ultimately, are successful. George: So, you were on a conference call when everything kicked off today and I got to spend some time with your reps, and it wasn't one. I talked to about five of them and all of them talked about needs-based selling. So, you've done a good job of driving that into the organization. I wanna go back. You've been doing this 27 years. You've been a sales manager for a long time. You've been vice-president of advertising for a long time. When was the moment that you recognized that you weren't in the print business, you were in the digital business? Did it happen? Did you decide? Or did it just occur? Gary: Well, personally, for me it happened years ago. I came up on the digital side. I've got a computer science degree from an education standpoint and ended up in the newspaper business, and so...but my first job out of college was sales. And so, when this weird thing called the internet came around, they're like, "Oh, we need people that understand the technology but also understand the business side." I happened to be in a unique position, so it's allowed me to grow in my career and end up where I am. You know, 15 years ago, almost 17 years ago, in the early '90s, when I first started dealing with building the first websites for newspapers, that's when I realized, you know, for us, it's about audience. It's about having products. Whether it's our own products or whether it's other digital related products, whether it's our own digital products or it's third-party vendor solution products that we can bring to the marketplace, our customers are gonna be successful if we do what we've always done for 121 years, which is connect the consumer audience with our merchants. And for 110 years, that was primarily done with print ads in our newspaper. Now, it's done with audio. It's done with video ads. It's done with email marketing. It's done with native advertising. There's lots of different ways we can connect our advertisers, helping them with their website and all the SEO solutions. But at the end of the day, our job is to help connect that consumer base with what they're looking for which is, a lot of times, not only our content that we have, but also the advertising messages that our merchants have. 121-Year Old Startup George: So, you come up with the famous saying and it's now been beat into the organization, I think you called it a slam line earlier or a slogan. Let's hear what that slogan is for The Seattle Times. Gary: Well, so The Seattle Times is 121-year-old company, but we really have the mentality of a digital startup. And so, we came up with the tagline "121-year-old startup company." The Seattle Times is 121-year-old startup company. We have the legacy and rich history of being in the community and providing a great product and services for our advertisers for 121 years. But the digital landscape is changing so rapidly and so fast that we have the mentality of a startup company, that we're building a whole new channel to support our advertisers with their solutions. And so, that became a tagline. Our publisher heard me mention it at one of our staff meetings and liked it so much that he had our marketing group build a whole campaign around it. And so, we have a lot of internal marketing go in the paper and on our website promoting that we are this new media solutions company and that we're 121 years old but we've got the mentality of a startup. George: I noticed the news released here recently that you've joined a board. And you wanna talk about the LMC and your board position there and what that means, you know, on a day-to-day basis for you. You know, it's quite a robust organization. It's pretty much all of media in the United States. Gary: Yes. So, I've been a part of the LMC for a while in my days working at McClatchy when I was in Raleigh, but became even more apparent when you join a family-owned independent newspaper. How do you stay connected in the industry? How do you stay connected with what's going on? What our peers are dealing with? And so being an active member of the LMC became very apparent. And so, when I came to The Seattle Times last year, I stepped up my activity with the organization. The end of the year, they had a roll call for folks that would wanna be on the board. And so, I threw my name in a hat. It's a voted position, so the collective membership had to vote. And they voted me in, so I'm starting beginning of a two-year stint of being on the board. But for me, personally, being at a single into the family-owned operation, it was a key way to stay connected with my industry peers. A lot of which I've known over my previous, you know, 27 years at McClatchy, and now my, you know, year at The Seattle Times. So, it's a way to stay connected. It is a commitment. You know, it's an "active working board", they like to call it. But the group is really meant to help further media, not just newspaper, but TV, radio, media. And collectively, we, as an organization, have the power to deal with the folks like Google and Facebook, and Apple at a group level as an organization better than The Seattle Times ever would as a standalone entity. So, for me, it was a way to stay connected in the industry, keep my professional knowledge of the industry and what's going on, and the issues we're running up against, continue my networking of folks to bounce ideas off of or "how are you dealing with this challenge or that challenge?" So, I'm happy to do it and it's a great organization. George: So, you would say that that role then is a big part of your personal development outside of the LMC, which I know is major commitment. What other things does Gary Smith do on a daily basis to keep you connected and keep you on the cutting edge and make sure that you're driving your career forward and, ultimately, that impacts the 75 people who work with you? Gary: Well, I would first say, personally, I'm not concerned about my career. I plan on spending the rest of my career at The Seattle Times and hanging it up in 10 or 15 years. So, from that perspective, I'm very content. But at the same time, you gotta stay connected. So, certainly, things like LinkedIn is a big one for me. I've got a pretty big network of professional folks and as they post things that keeps me updated. Reading the number or the trade digital pubs that are out there is another. And then, you know, going to conferences and interacting with, you know, the vendors that are there like yourself as well as my peers. Those are kind of the main areas that I try to do to stay connected. George: Say one of your young salespeople come into your office and they're looking for advice, what some advice you would give somebody starting out today with, you know, everything that you saw, and especially, with your very unique start in the business and the fact that you've been on the digital side? Well, you know, you've been involved in everything. But what...you know, they walk in and they're looking for advice. What would you give them for advice? Gary: Well, I think about...to me, it comes down to a couple of things, where are they in their career at that point and what can I do to help them over really the next, you know, 6 months to 12 months, but then also, you talk to them about how it can put them on a longer path. Depending on who the person is, if it's a millennial, they typically have a shorter cycle that they're concerned about. So, you may be talking about the next three months or six months what they can do to grow in the organization locally. If it's a veteran, that's a little older and been in the career longer, then it's different conversations about do they have aspirations to go down the management track or not. And you don't have to to be successful in this industry. So, I don't think there's a cookie cut answer to that. I think it depends who the rep is and where they are in their career. But you certainly need to be able to read your staff and know where they are, and certainly, age and professional level of where they are. Maybe they just need help on figuring out how to conquer hitting their numbers every month. Maybe there's a different perspective there, different customer base to look at to try to go after. Maybe they've only been focused on two, or three, or four key industries, and maybe there's a couple of other industries that we can help them with. So, I think it depends on who the rep is. George: Well, we really appreciate the time and having you join us here on the Conquer Local podcast. And wish you all the best as you continue with the 121-year-old startup that is The Seattle Times. Thanks, Gary, for coming on board. Gary: Thank you, George. And I really wanna thank you for taking time out of your week to come to the beautiful northwest and present to our customers because I know they gained a lot from it and I know our event wouldn't have been as successful if you weren't here. So, thank you for coming to Seattle. – It's interesting to see how Gary's approach has changed over the years. He's introduced this field sales coach, and that person is really starting to drive the digital conversation with his customers. And we're gonna get back on the podcast here in a year or so, mark my words, with Gary Smith, and see how this whole 121-year-old startup thing is working for The Seattle Times. Now, the ownership group is behind it and the publisher is behind it, and it'll be interesting to see if Gary is able to execute on his vision. We appreciate having them on this week's edition. It's the Conquer Local podcast. My name is George Leith. I'll see you when I see you.

Rand Fishkin, the Wizard of Moz—recently turned Sorcerer of SparkToro—joins George to talk about his new start-up and the release of his upcoming book, Lost and Founder. From his personal and professional struggles in entrepreneurship to his advice for sales and marketing leaders, learn how to avoid the most common start-up mistakes and conquer your challenges with hard-won insights. Lost and Founder is available for preorder on Amazon. Clip: Does Rand Fishkin think the 'local business' is dying? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFbk4Suq034   This week on the podcast... Welcome to the next edition of the Conquer Local Podcast. This week, I'm excited to sit down with Rand Fishkin. We're talking about his experience growing his startup turned multi-million dollar company Moz and what he learned as an entrepreneur and CEO. And it's not just the happy stuff. We're also going to find out what Rand's view of local is in the future of local business. And I'm really looking forward to talking with him about his recent exit from Moz and his new company SparkToro. He's got a bunch of advice he's going to give our listeners as they improve their sales strategies. All this and more coming up next with Rand Fishkin on the Conquer Local Podcast. Lost and Founder George: Rand Fishkin joining me on the podcast this week, SEO legend, founder of Moz, and now the CEO of SparkToro, and he is the author of the new book "Lost and Founder." It comes out on April 24th. And I'm thrilled to have Rand on the podcast today. Rand, we've got some tough questions for you, so get ready. Rand: Awesome. I love it, George. Thank you for having me. George: Let's talk about the book "Lost and Founder," and I have it right here. It's a great read. What was the catalyst to writing that book? Rand: Yeah. So the book is coming out April 24th as you pointed out. It's in pre-orders now. And the catalyst for the book was really all these experiences, which I'm sure you've had too, right, where you go out for a coffee, or beer, or breakfast with another founder of a company, and you have that heart to heart talk about how hard this stuff really is, and how everything that you hear as, you know, sort of common wisdom and what's, you know, a best practice turns out to be immensely misleading and frustrating. You know, the classic Silicon Valley tale of Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, you know, Salesforce, what we're supposed to be building, what we're supposed to be doing, the footsteps that we're supposed to be following in, those really frustrate folks. And so this book is a let's go out for a beer together, you know, you and I, and granted in this particular session of beer, I'm gonna be doing most of the talking, but hopefully, these are the same questions that you've got. George: You know, it's interesting you mentioned that there are, you know, the Facebooks, and the Googles, and the Ubers, and we could list out another 10 or 15 of them. There's only so many unicorns, there's all these other companies that have challenges. So if you're gonna follow what the unicorns did, there's probably a lot of luck, there was a lot of timing, you should question all those things. Rand: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean it's basically a I made all these mistakes. Please don't make exactly these same ones. The myth of the growth hack George: What I've been fighting against since I arrived at a tech company six years ago and became the chief revenue officer, is that everybody's looking for this magic pill and this silver bullet that we can put into the gun, and we could train thousands of people to follow. And there is no silver bullet, and there is no magic potion at the end of the day. Rand: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this is the Silicon Valley idea of the growth hack, right? You find the one growth hack and suddenly your, you know, user acquisition funnel will widen, and, you know, growth will follow and numbers go crazy and up to the right. And not only is that mythology incorrect for most companies, in fact even some of the most... George: I love that you use mythology. Thank you. Rand: Yeah, yeah. Even some of the most famous examples of growth hacks didn't actually work the way we think they do or that they did. But it's also the case that a hack finding culture around marketing can take a lot of the wind out of the sails of an organization that if they focused on building a flywheel, right, and getting each revolution right and optimizing each little piece or remove some friction from that flywheel so that it gets going faster and faster, they would actually have vastly more success than the, you know, four-year journey to find that one growth hack that works for six months and then doesn't work at all. George: Well, you led me to a question that I have, and that is around the $1. So there's a point in your book where you talk about you offered Moz for $1 to the first 5,000 people, but that didn't turn out the way that you expected it to. Can you elaborate on that? Rand: Yeah. So in a way, right, one part of it worked very well. And that was we did get a tremendous number of people, I think almost exactly 5,000 people, signing up for that one try Moz for a dollar offer. What sucked about it and what I talked about in the book is that that offer did not improve the product. It didn't make it a better match for customers. It wasn't doing a better job of targeting right customers. It was just broadening the audience and getting a bunch of people into our funnel who over the next, you know, year and a half had much worse churn characteristics, much worse lifetime value, and didn't find the product as compelling as the people who signed up for it organically. And worse still, we didn't realize that until probably a year or two in. And so after seeing that, you know, the success of that growth hack, we kept chasing another hack, another hack. "Oh, what kind of discount can we offer? What kind of promotion can we offer? What can we do to get another 5,000 people to give Moz a try? Oh, what about this? We'll do...we'll make a free trial, you know, for 30 days." A lot of stuff that did not end up having positive impacts on our marketing, and certainly didn't help make the product a better fit for the customers who were trying it. George: Well, when I read that, it was really interesting because I believe this to be a challenge for all organizations. I've fallen into it a number of times myself. I actually have done it in the last 12 months. But you have to hit plan. Businesses have a tendency to pour morphine on a problem. So they go out and they run ads and they sell stuff at discounted prices. You should really look deeper than just putting the morphine on the problem. Rand: Well, and I like your analogy of morphine because you do grow an addiction to it as a marketing organization, right? And then you need another hit of it next time, another hit of it next time as opposed to, you know, finding true, consistent improvement. Goodbye Moz George: You said in your blog that if leaving Moz was on a scale of 1 to 10, a 10 being a limo came and picked you up and they took you off and fireworks and that, and then a 1 was escorted out by the police, this was like a 4. So can we talk about that a little bit? Rand: I said escorted out by security. George: Okay, security. Sorry. I wanna make sure that I get the quote right. Rand: That's even worse. That must be a negative one. George: Well, that was actually one of my exits was the police, but we won't get into that on this episode. Rand: All right. Well, I look forward to hearing about that. I would say that the departure, you know, I'm not going to get into a ton of details. I actually love to be very transparent about this kind of stuff, but this is one of those few times when I don't...let's see. I would say, I don't feel comfortable, and also, you know, leadership at Moz asked me not to be and I said that I would. So the basic story is just a lot of professional conflict that I had with the, you know, with leadership there over the last few years intensified, that turned into some personal conflict, which turned into more professional conflict, which meant that I was leaving. And you know, I still have a ton of friends there that I absolutely love. In fact, right before our podcast, I was on a meeting with a team that's working on a new very exciting product there, you know, that I've been advising and helping on. I ran an acquisition process to acquire the team that's building that. And so, you know, love that team. My wife and I own 24% of Moz still, I'm still the chairman of the board. So there's lots of positives things that still go on between me and Moz, but this particular departure, not fun, you know, not a great experience. George: Yeah. You know, most of the time they're departures for a reason and sometimes they're just not right. I will tell you, I am a subscriber, and I utilized the service on an ongoing basis and find a lot of value from it. So we wish you well with your 24% and hope that it continues to pay you nice dividends. Hello SparkToro! George: Can you give me the elevator pitch for SparkToro? Rand: Sure. Yeah. I think it's insanely infuriatingly hard for marketers, and entrepreneurs, and organizations of all kinds to identify the publications and people that actually influence their audience and earn engagement. That's a process that takes oftentimes weeks or months of work and tens of thousands of dollars from a PR company to do a survey, and you know, do a bunch of manual research. I don't think it should work that way. I think you should be able to go to a search engine, type in interior decorators and see all the publications, and podcasts, and YouTube channels, and people, and events that they follow and engage with, and filter that data by the things that you need and build a list of those folks so that you can go out and do the right kinds of marketing to them. George: Wow. So where do we sign up? Asking for money George: We have a bunch of people that subscribe to the podcast all over the world. We're very happy with the growth that we're having to this. The reason why we got into starting Conquer Local was myself working with sales organizations and helping them to understand that you need to become a sales professional rather than a salesperson in 2018. You did say something in the book though that I have to call out being a salesperson. And I'm not quoting verbatim, but you said here on page 102 that you loathe the direct sales. Can we get into that a little bit? Rand: Yeah, absolutely. So let me give you an example. Right now I'm in the process of doing an Angel fundraising round for my new company and it's like the... it's the worst feeling in the world that I have. I absolutely despise the awkwardness and the embarrassingness of reaching out to the folks that I know who, you know, who like me and trust me, we've had a relationship for a long time and saying like, "Hey, will you back my next thing?" It is all about my discomfort, right, and my bias against that. And I have actually found something, I bet you have to, which is oftentimes the most shameless salespeople are not the best ones. It's often the ones who are self-aware, and humble, and feel the discomfort of the awkward relationship that happens when one person is trying to sell another person something else that actually those folks do very, very well because there's an authenticity, a humanity, an emotional connection that bridges the temporary awkwardness of the reason the relationship exists to form a deeper kind of connection. And I think that that's not necessarily a bad thing. George: Well, I got to tell you, I've been selling for a long time, and I remember in my early days one of my sales managers taught me a technique. He called it the Columbo close. And the Columbo close is where you, you know, you're on your way out the door and you've said you're not gonna, and then you come back and you say, "Well, why didn't we get that done?" And what I've found is when I have young salespeople and we're training them and they say, "I've made the presentation, I showed the value proposition, and the customer says it's not a fit for them, what do I do?" And I'm like, "Walk away. Go find somebody else that it is a fit for." Because it should never be a hard close. It shouldn't have to be one of these techniques, puppy dog, Columbo, takeaway. It shouldn't be any of those things. It should be a relationship that's built at the end where two people say, "We can move forward and reach our goals together in that relationship." But I do wanna go back. So it's the Angel round, you're trying to get the funding, you talk a lot about getting funding in here, which, you know, you were successful in arranging funding, which is never easy. I'm wondering how do you deal with the rejection? Because the rejection is the thing in sales, it's the hardest thing to get over. And I bet you it's happening right now. Rand: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. The two or three biggest things that I've learned on the Angel side, for example, when I get nos are, well, oftentimes I assumed someone had income or wealth that they did not actually have. The second big one was that there was some, you know, some structure, some reason why it wasn't a match. And that helped me identify who are wrong customers in the future and who are right customers now. CEO Depression George: Let's get into the entrepreneurial struggle portion of the book. It was the one piece that really spoke to me because I've been an entrepreneur. You know, and you get into the, you know, the dark moments. There were moments where I was like, "Oh, wow, what is it, 2007 where I was feeling exactly." You even talked about depression, and I was like, "Wow, finally someone is calling this out." Because it's not always a bed of roses, it's not always having Ashton Kutcher be you in a movie of Steve Jobs. It's not like that. And it's not just this hockey stick growth up into the right. It is a struggle and a battle. And some people have called it the long slow ramp of death. Rand: I think that one of the problems that I have in...I think maybe this is less true in Canada, but I think certainly in the United States there is a hyper-masculinity centric culture in the startup world, especially the tech startup world, and the venture-backed startup world that says, "You are only ever strong, aggressive, you know, crushing it," which I despise. There is no room for weakness. There is no room for vulnerability. There is no room for anxiety, for mental and emotional struggles, for depression. These things are considered unacceptable for leaders to have. Considered not the qualities that, you know, a startup or a funded entrepreneur is allowed to talk about, to be open about. And I think that's crap. I think that actually makes it harder for folks who do experience these issues, which is almost everyone, which is almost everyone to be able to do their job well. I hate that. The death of the local business? George: We have a lot of people that listen to the podcast that call on local businesses. And you know, some people are writing in blogs and stories that the local businessperson is an endangered species, that we're being Starbucked and Amazoned to death and...you know, I think there's always gonna be this local thing that we need. Amazon's not going to deliver a dog groomer to you with a drone. That's just not gonna happen. I'm gonna wanna go to a dog groomer. There's going to be a local business component. I don't see that going away in our lifetime. But I guess where I want to go with this is, you know, you built a company that helps local businesses with one of their biggest problems. Give me some suggestions that you would have for all of the entrepreneurs and the local business people out there of maybe just some things that they could do to make the marketing of their business better. Rand: Yeah, sure. So I want to address the first thing, that macroeconomic issue that you brought up. Obviously at Moz, at the board level, we pay a lot of attention to that. And one of the things that we uncovered in our research is that essentially it is not the case that small local businesses are dying. It is very much the case that local-centric, national and regional chains are struggling and many of them are closing. So when you see like, you know, the death of the local business, think "Man, Sears is having it rough. Boy, Macy's is having it rough." Those are the kinds of businesses who are...Toys "R" Us, right? Those are the kinds of local businesses that are really struggling. I don't see in the macroeconomic data, you know, the dog groomer, the car repair shop, the yoga studio. Those seem to actually be doing just fine. I would say, you know, if we wanna get to the tactical side, right, how would I think strategically about that? And you know, we saw this at Moz, but I think that the ability to target businesses in one size fits all format, that fails really fast when you have, well, we have four local bookstores in our area, but the Barnes & Noble is out of business. Well, there's three hobby and toy shops around town, but the Toys "R" Us is gone. And one size fits all much less for those individuals. And that's where I think that crafting a strategy that takes into account the differences and the uniquenesses of those businesses, and you know, treats them as individuals, has some degree of research into those individuals and those individual businesses before you reach out and sort of put them into your singular funnel that's designed to scale tends to work much better. Becoming known as an expert George: You know, when we look at that becoming a trusted local expert, people would say, "Rand Fishkin is an expert." And you've done a heck of a job of building a brand around your name. And I've noticed you spend time responding to strangers on Twitter and you've built this community. Can we talk about that because I think there's an incredible lesson here for the thousands of digital marketing experts, sales professionals that are tuned into this edition of the Conquer Local Podcasts? What advice could you give them as they move down that quest to be the trusted local experts? Rand: Yeah. Very early in my career, I struggled immensely with SEO. I was a web designer, right? I was building websites for local small businesses here in the Seattle region, and we were sub-contracting SEO and then we couldn't afford to pay our subcontractors. Like we were literally on the edge of bankruptcy. And so I had to learn the practice myself and do it for our clients. And learning SEO was so painful and so hard that I started my own website, SEOmoz, where I sort of recorded my struggles, my failures, my attempts, what I was hearing from community folks so that I could basically share what I was learning and hopefully help other people to avoid some of those mistakes. Not dissimilar to what "Lost and Founder" is, just in a blog form around a different topic. And that desire to help people I think resonated. I think if anything built Moz's community and my community, it's this "Gosh, I'm struggling with this thing, other people must be struggling too. If I can help them, I bet I can help myself as well." And that turned out to absolutely be the case. So my best advice is to find people who are experiencing pain and to help them with it. George: I have an analogy for you that one of my mentors back in the day when I was struggling as a salesperson because I didn't know anything, sales training in 1987, '88, '89, early '90s was "Here's the Yellow Pages. That's your account. Let's go get them." "What am I selling?" "It doesn't matter. Here's a one sheeter, go get them." But there was one sales trainer that reached out to me and he said, "You know, you've got to focus on..." It's like landing a plane. And he was a pilot. He learned to be a pilot himself. He says, "You know, when you land a plane, they teach out of the gate that you have to focus on the horizon because if you look at the ground, you're going to crash every time." And what I took from that analogy was I needed to focus on the horizon of helping the customer because then if that was the goal, I was going to help the customer regardless of whether it was maybe I was recommending the other radio station in town because that was what the customer needed to reach their goal. You're right, the Karma will come back. So it's phenomenal advice. And what I love about it is it still holds true today. In fact, it's probably more true today than it has ever been. Rand: Yeah. It works at scale in a different fashion than it ever has, right? Because when you help one person, but you help them publicly to your point, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, with a blog post, through an email, that can be amplified so much more. It can be seen by so many more people than it ever could. And when things are truly helpful, they tend to resonate. George: Now, there is two ways that we can learn and one of them is is you can learn by trial and error, or you can learn by finding people who've been there and learn from their struggles and their challenges. And I really appreciate you putting some of those words into this book. I also really appreciate you joining us today here on the Conquer Local Podcast, and I hope that people go out and get a copy of your book and read through it and read through some of those very hard earned lessons. You know, the school of hard knocks has a lot of graduates. And I find that you and I definitely are two of those people and I appreciate you joining us today, Rand. Thank you. Rand: Thanks for having me, George. Take care. Summary Well, it's a great chat we had today with Rand Fishkin. I really enjoyed speaking with him. It's refreshing to hear his point of view as a marketer and an entrepreneur, and how his advice really aligns exactly with what we're discovering here week after week on the podcast. And that is, you have to be honest and open to build that trust with your customers. You know, I really liked the fact that he was very candid about the building of his company, and that it wasn't all roses, that there were a few thorns in there along the way, and how you deal with that and how you deal with the ups and downs. I think there's some important takeaways. We're excited to see what Rand is cooking up with SparkToro. We're going to keep a real close eye on his new company, and we'll keep covering that as we move forward on the weeks to come with the Conquer Local podcast. What did you think of today's conversation? You can tweet me @GeoLeith or you can drop me a message on LinkedIn. Just search for Conquer Local. I'm looking forward to hearing from you each and every week with your feedback from the podcast. And make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcast app. The podcast does come out weekly to salespeople, managers, and entrepreneurs around the globe. We do it every week now except for last week because we were tearing it up at our conference for Conquering Local in Banff, Alberta, Canada. It was VendastaCon 2018. If you were there, you will know that it was a fantastic event. You definitely missed out. And I will make sure to bring you the date for VendastaCon 2019 as soon as it's made available to me. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. We are having some unbelievable guests coming up in the coming weeks. I'm really excited for the future episodes. Have a great week as always. My name is George Leith. I'll see you when I see you.

She was named one of the Most Influential Women in Radio in 2017. 30 days later, she was fired from her role as Chief Revenue Officer. The sudden and unexpected termination forced Heather to reinvent herself and build her brand from scratch. Now, Heather has authored her first book, Confidence Creator, has been featured on the Elvis Duran show, and was named a Brand Ambassador for Perry Ellis International. Find out how she climbed her way back to the top, how you can become a better salesperson and leader, and so much more in this week’s Conquer Local episode with George Leith. Heather’s book, Confidence Creator, is available now on Amazon. – Introduction It's another edition of the Conquer Local podcast. About five years ago, I was at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention in Vegas and I had booked an appointment over LinkedIn. So, it was a cold, LinkedIn reach-out to a woman named Heather Monahan, and she was the Chief Revenue Officer at Beasley Broadcast. It was a group that...they had radio stations all over the U.S. I wanted to get a meeting with her to pitch her on the Vendasta platform. And she said, "By all means, I would love to meet with you. We're looking at new digital solutions. Where would you like to meet?" And I was told by consultants that we were using at the time, "The place that you meet is at the Wynn." And so, there we are, we're meeting at the bar at the Wynn, at 11:30 on a Wednesday morning. And in walks Heather Monahan and her VP of sales in Las Vegas, Cory Cuddeback. And we sit down at this table, and they ask me to give my presentation. And usually, I'm used to giving a presentation with a laptop but I thought, "Well, I only get one shot at this and I have 25 minutes apparently, to make this presentation." And halfway through the presentation, Heather looks up at me, and I don't really think she was paying attention to me at that time because she was on her phone and she says, "What's the reason we should work with you and not with your competitors?" And I said to her, "Because you get me!" And both of them looked at me and said, "That's good enough for us, come on over to our station and let's get started." And that's how our five-year relationship was born. And about a year and a half ago, Heather left her position at Beasley Broadcast and she had embarked upon building this brand, the Boss in Heels. So, we're gonna bring a boss in heels on to the podcast in a few minutes' time and talk about how she's building her personal brand, how she's rebounded from being fired from her job of 14 years. And some things that you can do if you are faced with adversity, and some suggestions for you as a local sales rep. All that's coming up next with Heather Monahan, author of "Confidence Creator," on the Conquer Local Podcast. Bringing Her Game Every Day George: What a great pleasure to have Heather Monahan, an old friend of mine from Miami, Florida joining me. Author of "Confidence Creator" and the Boss in Heels on the line. Heather, hello, welcome to the podcast. Heather: Hi George, thank you so much for having me. George: Heather and I have known each other over the past five years and we've worked together when she was involved in the radio business. And Heather, let's talk about that first. When you and I met you were Chief Revenue Officer of Beasley Broadcast Group, and I wanna talk about what it was like leading a team of high-performing sales professionals. You know, what sort of a game did you have to bring on a daily basis when you were in that role? Heather: You know, it's challenging because, you know, media is so competitive these days, so it was really challenging to ensure that I was able to retain my top talent and those really high-level performers, as well as continue to help them grow and advance, and stay close to the ground and close to their day-to-day fighting local so that I never got too detached and wasn't aware of what they were really dealing with. So, it's definitely not an easy job. George: You know, my buddy, Cory Cuddeback, who is leading sales in Las Vegas told me one day, I know we were going out to see a customer, he said, "You know, I really appreciate Heather's leadership because I can just phone her with any problem that I have and she always had a bit of advice for me." And Corey is a top-performer. You've really got to be in touch and have a lot of respect from that group to get the kind of feedback, I found. Heather: For sure. And so, I think that the key there is making sure you stay close to that hand-to-hand combat on the streets because when you become detached from that, and I've seen it happen with a lot of leaders over the years in various industries and companies that I've worked with, you really can't relate to your team. And when your team is no longer relating to you and feeling that, you know, you really understand and have empathy for their situation and can help, advise, and coach them through the challenges, you really don't bring a lot of worth anymore. Advice for salespeople in today's competitive environment George: Do you have any advice for local media salespeople or digital salespeople on things that they should maybe, be doing a little bit different in this competitive environment that we're in today? Heather: For sure. You need to define a unique value proposition, and you need to define that about yourself and who you are as well as the products and services that you are approaching a client with. And when you've really fine-tuned that pitch, you've got to practice, practice, and practice it over, and over again, so that you can seamlessly explain that to someone in a very quick and introductory fashion so that they can see your value. When people are being bombarded with salespeople from 20 different organizations in a day, what is gonna set you apart? And you need to be able to answer that question. That's really critical. The other critical piece of advice I would give anyone, and this goes for, just in life, in general, or selling and media, you need to be able to get to the ultimate decision-maker. And there are a lot of ways to do that, but one of the best ways, I've found, is through connecting through a common link, a common person, a common thread, so that you're almost getting advice through somebody else or recommended through someone else. Then, typically, that person will take your phone call and will be willing to meet with you. Building her personal brand George: Yeah, that warm intro. You know, you are a social media expert because you've been building your new brand. Tell us about the new brand and, you know, where your career has taken you because when I was going through the book, it talks about your departure, and we'll get to that in a moment, but let's talk a little bit about how you've built that brand and some of the tactics that you've been using to build your brand online? Heather: So, a few years ago, I realized that my biggest challenge as a chief revenue officer in radio was I could not attract good talent. And you're only as good as your people. So, if you're struggling to get amazing people in the organization, you've got a big struggle. Well, it came down to this for me. I figured out that once I met people and created a relationship with them, they would want to be a part of my team and a part of what I was doing. But it took so much time to make that happen. It was me going out and chasing down 20, 50,100 people. I needed to flip that script and get a platform and a situation where people were coming to me and I was able to show them who I was so we could have that connection point and that interest in one another. And I realized it was really the advice that I had been giving all of my clients which was, "If you wanna target a different demographic, a different audience, and scale it, you need to be on digital platforms, you need to have a social presence, you need to have a website that's optimized, and you need to have SEO and SEM, and you need to have reputation management." So, all of these things I was selling to my clients, I never thought about implementing for myself. So, when I decided to flip that script and instead pull people towards me, I launched my personal brand so that people could get a chance to know who I was and get to know me before I was chasing them down and trying to get to know them. And that was really the start of Boss in Heels. On stage George: So, that brand continued to grow. And I remember seeing you speak at Gordon Borrell's convention two years ago. You've always been a great public speaker, give us some tips as to what, you know, you recommend to those presenters that are gonna stand on stage or stand in front of a group of clients or a Chamber of Commerce to make a presentation. What are some tips that you can give them? Heather: Sure. So, one of the most important things is you wanna be authentic and real. And, as long as you can tap into who you are and what's unique about you, you're going to be more confident when you're speaking. So, really, you know, getting to know yourself. And if you're a funny person, you've got to incorporate humor when you're speaking. If you're someone who's very empathetic and understanding, you wanna share personal stories around those topics. So, creating an intro or a beginning to a presentation where you share a personal story, no matter who you are, you know, around you and your unique personality, that's really gonna connect the audience to you and catch their attention. So often, people present and they are forced, and cold, and detached. It doesn't matter what material you're presenting, as long as when you intro you make it personal and relatable. And by being yourself and sharing a personal story that is a phenomenal way to begin any type of a presentation. Another technique that I use, especially when you're in a dry material environment or, you know, full-day meetings and seminars, is to call people out occasionally, in the presentation. So, I might say, you know, I'll give a personal story intro and talk about why something is meaningful or why I'm there today. And then, during the presentation, I'll say, "Jim, you know, you remember when this happened to you," or "Am I the only person in the room that's ever struggled with this topic?" And I'll raise my hand and so that I'm trying to get everybody else to engage and raise their hands. So, really having that back and forth with the audience is helpful and it gets their attention. Most people are looking at their phones and not necessarily, engaged with you the way you need them to be. So this is a way to re-engage them and make it more exciting and fun for the audience. George: Well, I appreciate that. That is 4 of what is 10 items inside the book on giving a great presentation. So, thank you for that. it's actually, like, Chapter 29 if my memory is correct. Fired Now, let's really dig into some of the meat and potatoes of this book, "Confidence Creator," because, you know, you ended up getting fired from your job as chief revenue officer, you'd had that job for quite some time. And you're very transparent about what that meant to you and how it felt. Can we talk a little bit about that? Heather: Sure. That was terrible. I definitely am a Type A, overachiever. I've won a ton of awards, a lot of accolades over my career, and I've never been fired, I always get promoted, So, for me, to get fired once I had reached the C-suite, as a woman, and a successful woman who was really achieving so much. I had just been recognized as one of the most influential women in radio literally, 30 days before I was terminated. So, to say it was shocking and mind-blowing is an understatement. I was beside myself. I didn't know what to do. I had been there for 14 years, and that was the work that I knew, the team that I had built, and I didn't want to leave. I was pushed out. I was told that my position was no longer needed in the company, which was very hard for me to swallow. So, you know, those first few days after being terminated were devastating and a lot of tears, a lot of Chardonnay. And eventually, I decided to, kind of, take a step back. And it was my fiance that really helped me to do it. He said, "So, what do you wanna do? Let's think about it. You can do anything in the world. You're such a capable person, what do you wanna do?" And immediately, like everyone, I thought about the world I know. So, "Oh, I should probably go to a competitor and go right back to what I was doing." And he asked me a great question. He said, "Is that what you really wanna do?" And I had to think about it for about a minute and said, "No, it's not. I've been doing this for 20 years and I've reached the highest levels. I know exactly what it's like and about, I'm not growing anymore. Why don't I take this chance in my life to go out and just jump off that ledge and try something completely different and just really, believe in myself and believe in, you know, my network, and my skill set, and my talents, and just go for it." And that's what I ended up doing. Reinventing herself George: Well, you know, it's a very inspiring story. Inside the book, you really go through a number of different challenges that you had throughout your career, and then you rose to the pinnacle, and then you had to make that decision to try something new. And we've got author in there, you're a brand ambassador for Perry Ellis. What other things is Heather Monahan up to today, as part of this new path that you've taken? Heather: Oh my gosh, it's crazy, and I can't keep up with myself. It's so intense and fast-moving, but so many opportunities have come to me since I made the decision to go out on my own, and it's really been overwhelming and encouraging. And I really hope people who are listening to this can remember that when you start taking steps towards doing something new and doors keep opening, I'm not saying they'll all open, because they don't, I've gotten plenty of rejection in this space, just like I did in the radio space, but I started noticing really, unbelievable, opportunities presenting themselves and finding solutions that I didn't know existed. Because while I might have been a senior-level leader or a high-level accomplished leader in my old life, in this new life, I'm a beginner. I've never owned my own company, this is a first. I've never written my own book. So, all of this is really new and, you know, with anything you don't have a lot of experience in, you're gonna have failures and you need to overcome those failures. So, along this way, I didn't have a very clear path. I had a vision in my mind what I wanted to accomplish, which ultimately, is I want to give everyone out there the power to create their own confidence and elevate themselves and know they are not alone, because I've been in almost all of the ditches that are possible, and that's why I was so transparent in my book. But, you know, along the way, writing the book, which was my first step, a consumer packaged good company came to me and wanted to partner with me to develop products for women that were empowering, and around my messaging, and affordable, so that everyone can have access to a number of different quality products to elevate them. Then came an opportunity from a video company who taught me the business of video teaching, and technology, and the opportunity with taking what I was teaching in my book in advancing it even further and creating courses. So, I've been working on so many different products, so many different concepts. And, you know, again, the road is not clear to me moving forward, but it continues to appear as long as I keep taking actionable steps forward. Elvis Duran; Ivanka Trump George: Well, as somebody who is also working on my personal brand, I got to ask a question. I just don't understand how the hell you're getting all this amazing press. Because I go to Instagram or I go to LinkedIn one day, and here you are on the Z100 morning show with Elvis Duran. How the heck did you get that interview? That's incredible publicity. Heather: That was crazy. And, you know, that really came out of being transparent and asking for help. So, one of the key things that I did when I was terminated was I put it out on social media. And so many people told me that, that was an epic fail and that I shouldn't do that, and it made me look bad. But the reality was, it was the smartest thing I ever did in that moment. It created an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of people to see I was available and I was asking them to help me. One of the people that responded to that post was Froggy from Elvis Duran. And he saw the post and sent me a DM and said, "Hey, if there's anything I can do to help you, I'm here for you." And I responded and said, "Yeah, I'd love to come on the show." And he said, "Okay." George: So, if that's not enough, I see you on the CW, I see you on a number of other programs, but let's talk about Ivanka Trump and how you ended up getting that Twitter message and involved with her. How did that come about? Heather: That's funny. So, I had someone representing me for PR to promote my personal brand. And she had reached out to Ivanka, had women who work website and community, supporting women and trying to help them advance in the workplace. So, the PR woman reached out on my behalf, pitched me as a potential interview. They liked what I represented and they interviewed me. Not with Ivanka, but with one of her team members. And the interview went up, and the day the interview went up, I got an email from Ivanka Trump. And it was so sweet, but it was very apparent to me that it was a form email that she would send. And the reason why I knew that is because, somehow, there was a glitch, and instead of being my name it either had a blank or, you know, it was like, "put a name here," kind of a thing. So, it was one of those moments I thought, "Oh, do I let this go, I mean, this is Ivanka Trump, or do I say something?" Well, in my typical fashion, I said something. I definitely said something. I responded back to her and I thanked her and told her how grateful I was to have her support and exposure but I did want to let her know so that she wouldn't make that mistake again, moving forward, that somehow there had been a glitch and that it did not come through as personalized, and that I didn't want her to send any more emails out like that again. She sent me back a real, personal email, and thanked me so much for, you know, being honest with her and letting her know what happened. And then she said, "If there's ever anything in the future that I can do for you, please let me know." So, again, when that door opened and someone was inviting, you know, they're here to help you. You know, are you gonna do anything? I jumped right on it and I responded immediately, and I said, "It would mean the world to me if you would tweet about the interview that I did on your site. I'd really appreciate it." And she did. Balancing personal and professional George: So, as a working mom, and your young lad just turned 10, and we just celebrated Mother's Day. There is a very interesting title to one of your chapters which is Balance is... Can you talk a little bit about that, please? Heather: Yeah. I think, in our society, you know, sometimes we believe, because there's so much fake news and fake social and everyone appears perfect and happy on the weekends with their family, and happy at work during the week, and they always look perfect, that I really wanted to shine a light that, that's not true, that is far from true in my life. And really, it's far from true in everyone's, regardless of who you are. So, you're always gonna feel, as a parent, at some point, that you're letting one area of your life down. Whether it's your personal health and development and taking care of yourself or it's your sleep or it's your work, and you're just not putting in the hours that you need to or it's your children and you're not there for games, and tournaments, and doing homework. You're always gonna feel that it's not working out perfectly because there is no perfect solution. And what, instead, I tried to look to to ease that challenge for myself is the hidden blessings that come out. And one time I was on a work trip, last year, and my son had a soccer game and I wasn't there. And he was injured in the game. And his father had to be working as well, so neither one of us were there. And he was alone and hurt bad enough that he was crying on the sideline. And another mother saw him in that moment and ran and sat with him and helped him. And it was heartbreaking when I first heard it, but what I realized was it taught him there's not just your mom and dad in your life, in fact, there are other people, just in the world, good people, that will rise up when you need them. And he got through it, and I got through it. And those experiences and taking, you know, those positive messages that you can receive from difficult situations really helped me to realize that balance is bullshit, and it doesn't exist, but there's always something good that you can learn from any situation. Building confidence George: Well, the title of the book is called "Confidence Creator." It really is a great 45 chapter-read that has all sorts of benefit to help people conquer local, I found. There is the stories of the struggles that you've had and the things that you've had to overcome. I really appreciate your transparency there. I think some people might have a look at you and say, "Oh, that's a fairy tale thing going on there. And everything has been great for Heather, she's never had any struggles." So it's great to see that. And, you know, we're hearing that from more and more of our guests that, you know, success isn't a straight line. It's actually, this all over the place, kind of destination thing that you're trying to go to. But the other piece that I really like is just hearing these items around personal branding. I think that everybody could take that from the various pieces of the book. Tell us about when the book will be coming out and how people can get copies. Heather: One of the reasons why I wrote this book is because I didn't have confidence in my earlier years, and it took me a lifetime to figure out how to build confidence and create confidence. And I want everyone in the world to have that same blueprint. You know, each one of these chapters are very small, they are personal examples of my low moments, in my life, and how I was able to figure out how to build confidence and how you can too. I'm so excited to tell you that, "Confidence Creator" is live on Amazon right now, and I have a limited number of hardbacks that were produced for the initial run because I self-published. It's not a traditional publishing route, which is a whole other story and challenge. But going through, what I've done and created, everything has been a personal investment. So, I pre-ordered thousands of books but not 100,000, like Eden [SP] publishing might do. So, I guess, we're getting to the point now we're going to sell out on our hardcovers. So, please, pre-order that book. It's on Amazon right now, "Confidence Creator," and it's by Heather Monahan. George: Well, it's fantastic, Heather, having you on the show. It's been a while since you and I saw each other face to face but congratulations, on all the new success that you're having. And I appreciate you jumping on the podcast. We're having a lot of fun putting this show together every week. We get listeners from all over the world and I'm sure that they are going to benefit from the content you've shared today. So, thank you so much. Heather: Well, George, I mean, again, you have been such a great partner in business and a friend, reaching out and giving me this opportunity, I appreciate it immensely. So, best to you, and thank you so much for having me. Summary Well, what a great episode. You know, I respect Heather a lot. When she was fired, she absolutely is right in what she said, she went right online and she talked about it. And that's where we live nowadays, in 2018. You've got to be transparent, you've got to call it the way that it's happening, and guess what happens? All of these people reached out to help her elevate the next level of her career. She definitely, had built some brand equity over the years, 14 years of doing what she is doing. And you can see that in the growth that she's having in her career today. The book, it's fantastic. As she said, it's an easy read, but it reminds you of things that you need to be doing on a day-to-day basis. Plus, it talks about failure, how to deal with failure and that we should embrace it, and we should learn from it, and we should move to the next level. As we continue to roll these episodes out, we're thinking about you and the things that will help you. I've got some great teaching episodes on the way, in the next month, and we've been working on these over the past couple of months. We look forward to having your feedback, look forward to you getting your friends to subscribe. And please, reach out to me on LinkedIn If you'd like to speak more. I'm getting in-mails on a daily basis. I try to answer all of them as quickly as I can. And thanks to everyone around the world who's listening to the Conquer Local podcast. My name is George Leith, I'll see you when I see you.

Inside sales is evolving, and we’ve been given keys to the kingdom. Greg Ryan, Senior Vice President of Sales at ThriveHive, joins us to discuss how he helped build a powerful inside sales team from recruitment all the way to the President’s Club. He’s got a wealth of strategies to help you build a highly effective sales team – from recruiting the right people, training them properly, motivating them successfully, and retaining them in the long-run. If you’re looking for ways to manage your sales team, you’ve come to the right place. Listen now! Intro It is the latest edition of the "Conquer Local" podcast, coming to you from Boston. And my good friend Greg Ryan is joining me. He's the senior vice president of sales for ThriveHive. I'm gonna wind the clock back about four and a half years. I'm in Canton, Ohio. I'm on a speaking tour across about nine states working for Gatehouse Media and Propel at the time and I run into Greg Ryan. He is one of the top salespeople in the space. He's running a high performance sales organization out of Massachusetts in the Boston area. They've got a number of different locations, Gatehouse is one of the biggest newspaper publishers in the world and ThriveHive is their digital arm. So Greg and I had a chance to sit down and dig into everything when it comes to delivering sales over the phone. Because he is running a high performance sales organization that's dealing with customers all over the U.S. and they're primarily doing it with telesales. They do have some sales people that go face to face, but he's got this telesales team and we're gonna dig into it. So we're gonna talk about some of the challenges, we're gonna talk about some of the ways that you can win on a regular basis, and I find out how they pull off their President's Club. For sales managers and VPs of sales that are looking to do a President's Club, Greg will give you some insight into that coming up. All that and much, much more, the latest edition of the "Conquer Local" podcast with Greg Ryan from ThriveHive next. What's changed in four years George: Greg, really good to be here in Quincy, Massachusetts with you. And let's start with what really has changed in the last four years and if you could just boil it down into one sentence. Greg: I would say over the past four years, what's really changed when meeting with customers is that it's no longer a one solution sale. There's two, three, or four things that you really need to get on the plate, for that, you know, digital plan to work for that business. It's not just a search campaign, it's just not an SEO campaign, it's not a display campaign. It's a combination of many, many things that get to the expectations that you and the customer are getting to. George: And when it comes to proving that result for the client, where, you know, we're always talking about proof of performance, there's always new tools to show proof of performance, you know, is it more important today? Greg: It is much more important today because, you know, there's a lot of competition out there and everyone will say they're the best at it. But you need to really be transparent in what you do. If you need to say, you know, the X, Y, and Z, this was from us and whether that's from Google Analytics, whether that's from dashboard access, but you really have to be 100% transparent. George: Let's talk about your inside sales organization. Can you give us the keys to the kingdom and take us out of the hood? And tell us about it. Greg: So what I do on a daily basis is I look over the direct sales team. So anything that is direct is considered you know, it's our direct inside sales team. It's located up in Manchester, New Hampshire and it's also our field sales consultants out there all over the country. We're tripling the size of our inside sales office this year, currently, right now we have a training going on, we have five or six individuals in there, it's very much harder to find that inside sales person because of, you have to look for that motivation. We can train on digital, we can train you how to speak to, how the results page works on Google or other search engines, we can show you how the social works. What I need is someone that can pick up the phone, they can dial, they can not, you know, feel bad if someone hangs up or says, "I'm all set," or something like that. But I need someone that comes into the office, has a plan, we train every single morning. That's something that's key up there is our sales reps, if you're working for us in the inside sales, you are made to train every single morning for 15 to 20 minutes. And we break that down to three different sessions. Because we firmly believe on that, you know, a lot of people when I said this a year ago, didn't agree with me, but we proved it out in 2017 that there's no difference in contract sales of what you should see from an inside sales team to a field sales team. George: That's a powerful statement. You're saying that we send a rep out in a car to call on a client or we put them on the phone to call on a client and they're gonna bring back the same size order? Greg: Yep. Just about...we see, maybe a $1500 difference in contract sales from a field sales to an inside sales person. George: So it doesn't surprise me because I work inside a sales organization where we extract very large contract values over the phone. But I think that what it points to is that the clients, they're actually used to this type of sales approach. Greg: They are and, you know, it just, it never changes. Time is money so they can do it on their schedule. We also taken, you know, I don't want to give all the keys to the castle out. But we take video into this a lot. We utilize video in almost every single call because we can see that person on the other side that they're paying attention to us. They're not just doing anything. They know that they're looking in the camera, they're looking at the demo that's on the screen, and they like the back and forth. They know there's a real person that's here speaking to them. And that they really enjoy that we see our close rate, you know, is really 7 to 10 business days is really our close rate the same as outside sales. George: Yeah, I really liked the video conference. I remember when we first launched in our organization the reps were a little bit reluctant. But, you know, what it gets you away from is the presenting to the Polycom or in a headset is like presenting to a Sphinx. You can't really get any feedback or read on the prospect on the other end. You don't know if what you're saying is resonating. So video definitely has been a game changer. The other thing that you mentioned was the training cadence. And is it training? Or at the same time is it motivation? Keeping them motivated if they've had a bad couple of days? Greg: Yeah. It's a little bit of both. We have a morning huddle-up in our inside sales office every day where we'll go wins and things like that, which is great. Everyone talks about wins, but we actually talk about non-wins also of, "Hey, what really brought you down yesterday? What did you say? What could have happened? How can you change it?" You know, we look at every single problem as actually as an opportunity. And a lot of sales organizations don't do that. They problem is a problem, but we actually like problems. We have problems just for us, equal opportunity. George: Yeah, I think that, you know, when I remember going on the road with reps and where you did the one-on-one where you're in the car, and you finish the call and you got back in the car and you beat them up over the things that they did wrong. It's the same thing, you're just doing it in the phone room. Let's talk about spiffs. I was with an organization a couple weeks ago in Austin, Texas that said, "You know, we spend a ridiculous amount of money on spiffs to get to our targets." How about you folks? Greg: We probably don't do as many spiffs as you're talking about. We do them here and there, depending upon if we have a certain objective that we want to hit maybe for a specific product or something like that. But we'll do spiffs more around activity, you know, especially if we're still talking about the inside. We'll do more of it around activity and not just simple activity where most places will talk about, you know, outbound calls or talk time. No, we look more for connected calls, we consider connected calls anything over two minutes. We'll do more kind of things like that for spiffs, where we're spiffing the right things and not specifically just doing for phone calls or talk time. George: You know, again, you don't have to give me all the keys to the kingdom but I'm just thinking around technology that you're utilizing. When it comes to call recordings, are you doing any sort of an algorithm against a script? Where you say, you know, the rep was... We've ran across some organizations where they've got a full-on algorithm against a script. What sort of technology are you utilizing in that group? Greg: Yeah. So we do have that. We do have call recordings and things like that where we can take tones and things like that over the phone of what's going on. We do...going back to scripting we do have multiple different, you know, combat cards if you wanna call them. Different for each kind of vertical you're speaking to and who that person is. Is that person an owner, is it the marketing person, you know, there's different scripts you need to have. So we do record, we do those for our one-on-ones. We'll go through, "Okay, let's listen to what you said," and they really like it. You know, a lot of people will think that, you know, "I don't wanna hear myself on the phone." Actually our group is a lot different I think than other sales teams where they wanna go through their phone calls and learn of, you know, "I just heard myself say that. I said 'uhmm' 10 times." There you go right there. So it really, you know, they really take advantage of it and really learn from listening to their selves on the phone but then having their sales manager with them and say, "Oh, at this point you should have said this." So they really like it. George: The other thing I wanted to dig into, one thing I've been learning in talking to sales leaders is how much R&D are you doing in your leadership team to find those levers that you can turn or find those best practices other people are using, to improve the performance of that group? Are you doing a lot of that? Greg: Yeah. It's a constant thing. You know, we firmly believe that if you don't train every single day that you're falling behind, especially we all work in a digital world here that is changing constantly. Also, sales is evolved, it's changed. So if you're not changing the way that you train, you're using the same people that you used to train, you know, 10, 15 years ago that you're consulting out again, these people will need to look at too is, "Is this the way that things are actually sold these days?" A lot of times, you know, in old school selling, they'll say everything is objection when it's not. It's just a response to something. So you have to train and you constantly have to keep looking for, "Okay, how are we gonna keep ourselves competitive? Or that top dog in the place?" George: So on-boarding a new crop of reps...and I think you used the word cluster. So let's say a new cluster of inside sales reps. You mentioned that you had six of them that were starting right away. Of those six how many will make it through the training and will, you know, will perform? Greg: You know, so each person is...we've gotten a lot better with our hiring of, again, finding that specific profile of the person. So it's gotten better of, you know, we're looking at hopefully 60 or 70 people, 60% or 70% of those people are with us, you know, a year from now. We also changed the way we bring them aboard of, you know, these new people again, especially on the inside sales, you know, they're not digital savvy, they haven't been selling digital for 4 or 5, 10 years, like the more of the field sales team is. Is that these people, you need to really train them and not give them the stress of carrying a goal right out of training. So we actually created almost like a consultant or strategist in training for the first two months where they're calling, they're setting appointments for their team lead, that person that's on their team. And they'll go with those appointments, they'll get spiffed on those setting those appointments that hold not just setting appointments but ones that hold and also the ones that close by their team lead. Now after 60 days, it'll be looked at, they'll start testing themselves on closing their own business so then they graduate at that point. So we know we really have changed our method from, you know, a year ago when a new person was brought in. Right at training they were given a goal, a sales goal and a revenue goal where it really stressed them out. We noticed much, much better over the past six months of doing this, has really put them in the position to succeed. George: And what about when somebody hits a slump? You throw him back into training? Do they work with the...you know, what is the approach that you're using? Because as we all know, in sales, it's not just always up to the right. There's always going to be some challenges. Greg: Yeah, and, you know, everything's a law of averages. And it's again going back to what they're doing on a day-to-day basis. Our leadership will get with that person whether it's a field sales, they're gonna go out actually out there and they're gonna go for a three-day ride along up of them getting back going. We also look the marketing team of what can we do to get this person out of the slump? So we'll do anything it takes with inside, you know, we'll jump on their calls with them. We'll get them specific leads, you know, that might be grading higher than others, so we know that we can get them out of the slump sooner than later. George: I've been talking to sales leaders about the end of the month. And I'm wondering if we can find some bloody way to get closes earlier in the, you know, is that a challenge for you? I wanna understand that. Is there that end of the month rush that you have to get business in before the books close? Greg: Yeah. And, you know, we see it, you know, anywhere of, you know, whether it be the end of the month, or end of the quarter. They do, we do see, you know, 50% to 60% of our business come through, you know, that last 5 or 6 days. The key is creating that sense of urgency with your sales reps, again. But also you have to be careful about it though because, you know, a lot of times sales reps will come to you at the end of the month, or at the end of the quarter. And they really look for you to discount and things like that, where you really have to take a stand and not do that. Because you're just devaluing the products and services that you're offered. So, you know, our end of the month really, it ends at the end of the second week of the month. That's where we're really saying, "We're closing." You know, we hold them accountable of, you know, "This is halfway to your goal for the month. Here it is." So that hopefully by the end of the month, we're not in that full out rush and end up discounting products and things like that. George: I think that there is that natural cadence of monthly pushes. And what I'm reading into this...and correct me if I'm wrong by having that accountability session on Thursdays, you're looking for a weekly cadence. Greg: No, that's exactly right. So they have their weekly, monthly goals. We're also, you know, our commission, our comp plan is not just wrapped around sales, but it's also then wrapped around revenue as well. So just because you sell something that's great, well, the majority of their compensation plan is revenue of getting things in and getting as live as possible. So they don't wanna wait to the end of the month because then they won't have a chance to get it live during that same billing period. But we also will do incentives getting to goal halfway through the month that we'll put an incentive in place of, you know, "Mr. Salesperson, if you can get to goal by the end of that second week you get X or Y." So that really pushes them and then also we'll put in a plan for them from there if they double goal for that that period as well. George: Well, I wanna get into, you know, I don't know if you've been tanning, but you're getting ready to go to Aruba because it's President's Club. I'm really intrigued by President's Club. I know that one of the sales organizations that subscribe to our group is the For Rent sales organization under the leadership of Paige and Terry Slattery and, you know, a great group there and they just got back from their President's Club. I was lamenting because I was watching all the pictures online. They were having a great time. You guys been doing this for a while now? Is it a really important part of the culture of your organization, the President's Club? Greg: No. It really is, you know, sales, it's a competition of everyone wants to be number one. And we give these badges that they're really able to attach to their signatures and their emails. And it's something they take pride on when they know that they win, they ask our sales coordinator for that updated version for that thing, that badge to add on to their signature, you know, it's the best of the best. If they wanna prove to themselves that they're the best of the best, you know, they basically, promised their significant other that they're gonna get it. And once you go to President's Club, you do not wanna miss one. George: Well, the one thing that I made a mistake a couple years ago, we did a trip. That we were going to award and everybody had a chance to win the trip if they did enough revenue, but we didn't invite the significant other. And I think that that would be very, very powerful if you had a dinner to launch the thing. Is that the way that you guys do the launch? Greg: Well, it's just that you can take, you know, we can give you enough motivation to, you win the contest, you wanna win it. But we also want that person when they go home, they're also motivated by their significant other, "Are you hitting goal? Are you hitting goal? Are you bringing it in? Are we gonna go to Aruba this year or not?" So it works both ways. George: It's brilliant. I love it. I was, you know, I was expecting that you would say that. And, you know, I respect the organization that you built here. Let's talk about, you know, when we went for dinner a little over a year ago, you said you were having a lot of fun. Are you still having a lot of fun? Greg: If I didn't have fun, I wouldn't be here. You know, a couple years ago, before I was promoted I said in front of the entire sales team of, you know, "Life's too short." I learned at an early age that life's too short. That if, you know, yes everyone gets in a slump, they might not like going to work every day. But if that turns into a thing, well, I'm just not gonna be here. And everyone that I work for knows that. So, you know, I love coming to work every day. I look forward to it. Sometimes I can't sleep because I'm excited to get to work. I'm constantly thinking about what I can change to make people more money on the sales side of things, and the company, bring it to the next level. But yeah, I like coming to work every single day. George: Well, there's no organization in North America and I may be able to say in the world that is growing faster than this news organization in acquisitions. And then on the other side, the ThriveHive organization, yeah, it just keeps growing. I'm here in the Quincy headquarters, I remember when you guys were only half of one floor and now you're two entire floors. Plus a building in downtown Boston, plus a building upstate where you have your inside sales team, plus all these reps spread all across the country. So congratulations on your success. And thanks for joining us on the "Conquer Local" podcast. Greg: Thank you very much, George. George: Before we dig into the key takeaways from this edition, make sure you're asking your friends and make sure that you are subscribing to the podcast. We really are building this incredible audience and we're getting some great feedback. I appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. The best place to reach out to me is on LinkedIn. It's George Leith, L-E-I-T-H on LinkedIn, love to add you to my networks, almost 14,000 members in my LinkedIn profile now. And I read every single comment that is sent my way. And actually we've booked some great guests in the months to come from that audience. So thanks to everybody that's been reaching out. Well, I like to put people on the podcast that are walking the walk and talking the talk. And Greg isn't some guy sitting in an ivory tower. He's on the floor, working with the sales people on a day-to-day basis and you can see that. The interesting thing, there was one big takeaway before I get to the President's Club stuff because I'm obsessed with this thing. I wanna understand it inside and out. But the one big thing that he's talking about, they are now getting the same transactional sale over the phone with a screen share as they're getting with a salesperson face-to-face. And that's how the industry is changing where buyers are just saying, "Yeah, you know, I'm used to buying things over the phone, I'm used to a screen share, and I will spend the top dollars. I'm not buying in that you have to be face-to-face for all purchases nowadays. It's because our prospect's time is valuable." And they really are appreciating the telesales type model where you have the screen share, because we're able to articulate the value proposition even over the phone and with the screen share. So that was one of the big takeaways from that. The second one was this President's Club thing. And Greg really talks about how it is one of the drivers, it's part of that competitive nature of sales. How do you pull it off? Where are some of the places to do it? How do you set the budget so you can run it by the CFO and get their buy in on it? And it really is driving top performance for the ThriveHive Organization and other organizations that I've run across over the past six months or so. We are looking for your feedback and we've got some great additions of the "Conquer Local" podcast planned as we move into Q2 and Q3. Connect with us on LinkedIn and also reach out to us even by email at gleith@vendasta.com. I look forward to your feedback, good, bad, and ugly. We wanna hear it. It's how we make the editions more and more popular and more and more valuable for sales reps. My name is George Leith. I'll see you when I see you.

Is demand gen more than just a buzzword? Demand gen is a term describing tactics that are aimed at driving increased awareness, interest, and sales of a product or service offering. These tactics begin in the awareness phase, but continue to affect the buyer's journey all the way through to conversion and advocacy. This week, we are joined by Vendasta's very own marketing mastermind, and VP of Demand Generation: Devon Hennig. Devon shares his insights on demand and sales alignment, the importance of quick wins, and the keys to building an ROI fueled marketing machine. — Introduction George: It is "The Conquer Local Podcast," and we're talking about how to get demand for your brand today. And that is for your customer's brand. I am going to be joined by our Vice President of Demand Gen at Vendasta Technologies, Devon Hennig. I've had the privilege of working with Devon over the past six-and-a-half years. You know, it's interesting, when we started working together, one of the things that I saw happen was sales and marketing became a team. And I laugh about that because I don't actually see that in a lot of organizations that we work with today. When we go in and help sales teams launch on the platform, it's one of the pieces is the marketing department needs to be at the table. Devon and I have had a great relationship over the years in having that combined discussion. And I wanted to bring him in because he's working on some new tactics around developing demand for brand and it all ties back to that customer journey that we are lamenting over in this series of "The Conquer Local Podcast." So, we're going to find out what part, you know, it is a buzzword, demand gen. What part does that play when we're discussing the customer journey? And what are some tactics that Devon saw that are effective in discussing this with a local business? We'll go back to my hardware store example, which I always use as my default local business, the hardware store, the coffee shop. What are the things that we can do as a sales rep to communicate with that customer? And then we just kind of go upstream from there when we see where the customer is in their knowledge of marketing and how to create that demand. So, that's all coming up in a moment when we have this week's edition of "The Conquer Local Podcast." And it happens next. — It is the latest edition of "The Conquer Local Podcast. It's George Leith, along with Devon Hennig. Devon Hennig, the Vice President of Demand Gen for Vendasta Technologies. Devon, I was trying to figure out as we were prepping for the show, how long you and I worked together. It's got to be getting on six years. Devon: Well, when did you join Vendasta? I remember when you were bright-eyed and fresh-faced around the... George: I was younger, is what you're trying to say. Devon: Well, you know, I was trying to come up with a nice way of saying it, but no, it must be like 2014, something like that. George: Yeah. It was 2012 actually. Devon: 2012. George: And, you know, we worked together a long time because I really truly believed that, you know, if you're going to win today, sales and marketing need to be very closely aligned. I don't necessarily know that that is the case in a lot of organizations though. And it's one of the things that we preach when we go into market and work with organizations, is you need that alignment in messaging from marketing to sales and there needs to be some give and take between, you know, the two groups. I'm not saying that Devon and I have always got along. That's probably a good thing, where we're having some healthy debate around solutions. But I think, that you know, by and large, when I go to conventions, I see sales and marketing need to be aligned. I think that, you know, you and I have pretty much been on the same page over the years. Devon: What's this, we haven't always gotten along? George? George: See, look, and I'm cleaning up some of the skeletons in the closet. The Philosophy of Demand Gen George: We have a theme this month for the month of December, where we're talking about email. And I know that having that conversation with a local customer around the value of email marketing is somewhat of a challenge. And, we call it demand gen. And Devon, I'd like you...you know, you're one of the foremost experts on this space on creating and generating that demand through marketing. Can you talk a little bit about your philosophy behind demand gen and where it might fall in that customer journey that we're putting out there in front of businesses and trying to help them? Devon: Sure. So, just philosophy on demand gen spends all of the marketing channels, not just email, although we can talk about that specifically today. But across the entire customer journey from awareness all the way through to advocacy, which is something you talk a lot about on the podcast. And, from our perspective here, we do a lot of email and we do a lot of social advertising. We do a lot of organic reach and blogging, but fundamentally, it's back to your strategy. And when I think about demand gen and when I create demand gen content, I think about strategy, tactics, tools, and teams. So, do you have the right strategy and foundation in place? Can you execute it with the right tactics? Are you using the right tools, most affordable or cost-effective tools that you can find? And do you have the right team in place to execute it properly? So, those are sort of the high-level pieces, but when you're a new demand gen person stepping into a role or stepping into a new marketing team and feeling out a new sales dynamic, I think it's important to establish a few things upfront. And, this comes from some companies I've worked with before and from some of my favorite strategies from the past, but I think you really want to work immediately at getting some quick wins on the board. You want to put a machine in place so that it's predictable and it's working on its own every month. And then you want to take big swings and leapfrog from your current position. So, I would bring it back to that, if I'm stepping into a new company or thinking about the strategy at the high level, it's get quick wins, put a machine in place, and take big swings. George: So, as a salesperson, I'm sitting out talking to the local hardware store owner, we're basically just taking that concept that you just spoke about and laying that out as our strategy. Now, what would be a quick win for that local hardware store owner? And I like using that example because, you know, that's a small business in its very essence, and they need to be deploying some of these tactics in order to win with their answers, run an ad in the local newspaper anymore and be successful. Devon: Right. So, how I think about it, quick wins can be tough to nail down because every company is different. I think you have to start with the high-level view of your customer journey. Are there bottlenecks or blockers at any of the following stages that can be resolved or get immediate results? So, you know, those stages like awareness, findability, reputation, conversion. For example, you know, is there a bad review on Yelp that's lying there, like a dead dog on your doorstep? You talked about that quite a bit. If you remove it by making things right with the reviewer, you could get an instance of a measurable lift in traffic. Or, you know, maybe your reviews are great, but your listings are wrong and people can't find you. Or maybe there are broken links in your ads. Or maybe you don't have good lead magnets on your blog. I think quick wins could be really anything. You just have to look at what is my business like right now, where are the biggest bottlenecks, and attack those. Key Challenges in the Customer Journey George: So, you know, what I like about what you're saying, Devon, and to our audience, when we're presenting the value that we bring to the customer, and I don't care what the product is or the tactic is that you're going to use in the in the back end, I think sometimes where sales reps are really struggling today to discuss digital with the client is they're in there, showing them the tool, and they're showing features and benefits of the tool, and the client really doesn't care. They want the outcome. And what Devon just highlighted is we're going to get demand for our product, which is really what demand generation is all about. We need to look at that whole customer journey. Where are you finding, Devon some of the...I know that you work with a number of SMBs in order to articulate the story to Vendasta customers. Where are you finding, you know, some of the biggest challenges around that customer journey, local businesses included? Devon: Again, very, very specific to the SMB or the type of SMB, whether it's restaurant or legal or dentist or vets or funeral homes. But back to your point, it's what creates the result, usually the fastest and most affordably. So, can you double appointment bookings by just adding a scheduler to your website? Can you triple your blog traffic just by updating your blog's URL structure? I mean, I like to go through each of these phases of the customer journey and find the quick wins right off the bat to build trust and political capital for later if you're in a larger company or whatnot. Reputation George: Yeah. And I think that you're building that trust and political capital, even if it's a one-person shop by, you know, coming in with an honest look at it. And, you know, keep in mind for our audience, you know, we found that businesses don't really know as much about the structure of their website or how it needs to be structured to get that blog traffic. So, when you're pointing out these items, make sure you explain it in a way that they can understand. And also make sure that you bring it up because that is the value that you bring to the discussion if you are the trusted expert that we're shooting for. Devon: I would say across the board, the reputation piece probably resonates the most off the hop, like as a news conversation, because it's often the biggest pain point. It's the ugly review that's really nagging at them. It's the ability to contact people who left those bad reviews and resolve the situation or turn good reviews into testimonials to publish and promote on social or to solicit new reviews from satisfied customers. So, that usually gains trust the fastest, but there are other quick win areas you can definitely go after. Email George: So, in other areas of this customer journey, and I specifically brought up email marketing because it's our theme for the month, but it also is the thing that Bill's people say that business people have their hardest time putting their head around. And, you know, I know that you and I both know this, we couldn't run our business without email marketing. It's a way that we teach. It's the way that we nurture. How would you, sitting across from a local businessperson, present the value proposition to marketing via email? Devon: Well, email is still extraordinarily important because it's a channel that you own. It's not your audience on Facebook or on Medium or on LinkedIn or on Twitter or on a platform that owns "those customers and all their contact information." It's a personal relationship where you can get directly to their inbox and to their phone, which drives the economy right now. So, I mean, it's old school, but it's still a potent powerful part of your strategy. And that's how a lot of people think about it. But unfortunately, a lot of people also think about it in terms of the shortest path to the customer. And that leads down dangerous paths like spamming and unsuccessful outbound strategies, one might say. And those aren't part of a healthy marketing mix. So, I'm sure we'll dig into maybe some of that right now, but overall, it's still an extremely, extremely effective channel and should be part of your marketing mix. George: You're sitting across from a customer and they say to you, "Yeah, okay, I'm looking at this dashboard." What are the things I should be looking at in this dashboard to see the effectiveness of my email marketing? Devon: The effectiveness should always be judged on the ROI of any channel. So, can you tie it all the way to the end, all the way to revenue? I sent out this campaign and I made this many sales. There are going to be more vanity metrics along the way, whether that's opens and click-through rates, and you should look at those to make sure that your numbers are healthy compared to your industry averages. But if you're not able to tie it to the dollar at the end of the day, then it's not really a measurable channel for you. The Marketing Mix & Quick Wins George: So, you talked about a healthy mix. What do you think is a healthy mix? And let's not talk about a large business at this point. Let's get to that in a minute. Let's talk about for a small business, I have a small budget. What would be a healthy marketing mix that you would put in front of them? Devon: In terms of products across the stack? George: Not even products. Just, you know, when you look at that customer journey, here's the areas where I would focus first. Here's my quickest wins. I know you mentioned reputation. I think that that just makes sense. I think that if you've got a negative reputation online, it's like a nonstarter. Devon: Yeah. Yeah. George: But, you know, what are other quick wins that you see? Devon: So, the quick wins running through the customer journey, I mean, in awareness, it's about getting campaigns up and running on social platforms. We've seen the biggest ROI at Vendasta. So, having Facebook Lead Ad campaigns are really good quick wins. You know, you could host a webinar or write up a case study from successful customers and promote that. Dennis Yu has this whole Dollar-a-Day thing that I know he's talked about on your program before. So, there are affordable ways to do it. You don't have to go drop $10,000 on a Facebook campaign. You can find your Unicorn Posts and your winners for pretty cheap. In the findability category, there are some quick SEO wins you could make. In our world, a lot of the time that's listing. So, correcting wrong listings on directories like Google, Bing, Yelp, looking for missing or incorrect listings. You know, you could go after Google snippets. There's a lot of SEO stuff you can do. We talked about the reputation piece, of course. In the conversion aspect of the customer journey, there's a lot right on your website, if your website is a main marketing channel for you, that you can do with tools within WordPress, like plugins, to add, you know, Welcome Mats and popups to your website. Vendasta uses this instant demo feature on a website, which has really improved conversions for us because we offer demos. And then the last piece, I mean, advocacy, if you do have customers that are raving about you, I mean, you should be asking those customers for referrals, implementing maybe an affiliate or referral program, maybe just surveying your customers to see if upsells or cross-sells are on their mind. So, all of that stuff is how I think about the quick wins in each area of the customer journey. But, in terms of the right marketing mix, your original question, I would lay those things out on a table and pick at least one from each category to say, "This is the most impactful thing I can do for awareness, for findability, for reputation, for conversion, and for advocacy." And then just keep building on those. Proof of Performance George: So, you know, the interesting thing, you brought up a tactic, which is instant demos. That's something that you added to the mix here recently. So, the thing about it is we need to constantly be measuring the effectiveness. And you mentioned earlier, I liked the fact that we tie it back to ROI. That creates an enormous challenge for us as salespeople to articulate that value in ROI. How important is it in the beginning when you were signing a new customer to lay out the foundation of how we're gonna measure success? Devon: That's, one of the biggest tenets at Vendasta is to always have proof of performance or else, you know, you can't improve what you can't measure. So, it's a day one type item where you have to sit down and establish that this is where you are right now and you can revisit that down the road when you've made some change to show how far you've come. It's an incredible effect on lowering churn, and improving customer retention, and overall developing more satisfied customers. George: So it's something that we over communicate to the salesperson, account manager, business development rep, whatever we're calling ourselves, to the advertising consultants? Devon: Now, some things might not be as measurable, which I still think are very important. Here's an example that specifically relates to email actually. So, what is email? It's a channel to communicate a message. Right? Such as all our marketing channels are. And the message is the really important part and what people tend to gloss over a lot of the time. And that is something I would spend a decent amount of time upfront investing in, in getting your message right, which a lot of people don't necessarily do because they don't have a story building framework, or they don't necessarily know how they'll jump straight to selling or, you know, skip over the relationship building part, or the really key unique selling propositions of their business. Messaging George: You know, it's interesting you bring this up because this isn't a new thing. I remember in my early days in my radio career, the person that controlled the creative for the client was the one that actually controlled the customer. What I loved is when I would have our ads that we created at our radio stations sent to other radio stations, where the client had spent some money because it showed that I was controlling the creative conversation. So, what you're saying is, we need to really be on top of that. Now, for a lot of business people that you're dealing with, that's why they're dealing with you, as the trusted local expert is to come up with that. So, inside Marketplace, in the platform, there are a number of different places that you can go to get assistance with that. But I think it's also a really good skill as a marketing consultant to learn on how to...you don't need to be the most creative person, you just need to know how to craft the overall strategy and what the messaging is as interpreted from the customers' needs and what they're trying to accomplish, through the various tactics that you're using. So, you know, I'm glad that you brought that up. The creative is a really important piece. Devon: Well, it's the foundation starts with the message. That will bleed into every marketing initiative you do, and you want to make sure your story is dialed in. So, this is fascinating. The last VendastaCon that we did, which will now be Conquer Local, and we had an amazing speaker, Tim Riesterer, come on stage and laid out a framework for effective storytelling that is actually proven to improve ROI. So, he went through this model called "The Why Change Model" and I encourage everybody who's listening right now to look it up. And, the research that they did with Stanford showed the ROI would be up to 300% higher if you follow the storytelling formula. And it's amazing. It was the most engaging session that I've seen probably at our conference and other conferences that I've seen him speak at. George: Yeah. You know, I really enjoyed this conversation. And I think that, that we should make a very good point here. The key to presenting a compelling story to the customer is just that, to use a story. So, when, you know, you're talking to the client, you need to present it in a way that solves their need and presents a compelling reason for them to change, where there may be a place over here that's improved, and then that you're going to, you know, have that level of accountability. So, thanks for bringing that up. That was one of the better sessions at that convention. You know, you've got your finger on the pulse. The Future of Demand Gen George: Devon, you're always looking ahead. Where do you see marketing going in the next 12 months? Devon: I see marketing becoming much more value-based, and you can sense it in the air. Seth Godin just published a new book that really sums this up very well. A lot of the influencers and marketers I follow online who have really dug into this idea that marketing is about creating change and about helping people. And, the more that we do that, the more successful we'll be as a whole in terms of demand generation and marketing at large. So, I really see a further movement away from mass blasting, and mass messaging, and spamming, and the lowest common denominator toward helping a greater, grander group of people. George: Well, I really appreciate getting the mastermind of marketing at Vendasta on the podcast. It's probably long overdue. I understand that you have some case studies in the works and we're looking forward to seeing some of those results in the months to come. I get asked for case studies all the time. How important do you think a case study is today for a sales rep to be effective? Devon: Well, case studies are important. We're aiming to do one better even right now. So, we had a lot of our partners come to us and say they have problems with lead generation, which is understandable. A lot of people do. So, we are working on a framework for agencies, for enterprise clients, TVs, radios, newspapers, Yellow Pages, anybody who sells to local should be able to use a similar framework. So, that's the piece that we're putting together. And it ties into my last answer. We're trying to be helpful in our marketing and give people not only research or a story that makes them feel good and makes sense, but the templates and tools to put into place and get going with it. George: Well, thanks for joining us, Devon. And have yourself a great holiday season and we look forward to joining you in the New Year to get some more insights here on "The Conquer Local Podcast." That's Devon Hennig, Vice President of Demand Gen at Vendasta Technologies. Devon: Take care. Thanks, George. Conclusion George: Probably could talk to Devon about marketing for ours. We actually do that from time to time. A few times a year, we get together and just talk about, you know, making sure that we're aligned and making sure that we're on the same page as to the message that we're communicating to our teams and customers. You know, when you sit across the table from your clients, in a lot of cases you are sales and marketing, you are helping that business person with both of those components. You are selling them a solution that's gonna solve their problem, but you are articulating how they're going to master this marketing journey that they're on. So, understanding that marketing piece to the equation is as important as understanding how to deal with objection, how to build a presentation, how to tell a compelling story. I think it all is very closely tied together. You know, Devon talked about getting those quick wins. I'm a big believer in quick wins. I think that getting quick wins with your customer, things that you've agreed to in the original discussions to enter into a business relationship, you agree to some certain things. And if you get some of those quick wins in the first 30 days, the first 60 days, then we all know that there's this point at 90 days, where there's a chance that you could get some sort of churn in that monthly recurring revenue, and the data that we have and the research we have shows that. So, I always recommend being in front of the customer between 60 and 90 days to, you know, reset expectations, deal with any issues that have come up, and then to present some other ways that you can help the customer. And that's, you know, where we talked about those quick wins. He also talked about building a machine. And, this is the tactics that you're going to use. These are the tools that you're going to use. And each one of those should have a measurement against it. And sometimes, you're going to turn off pieces of the machine that aren't working and you'll know that Devon pointed out during his discussion about the Vendasta funnel, which is the one he's very much involved in our day-to-day basis, we just found a tool that we should be using. So, we always need to be evolving that because there's new technology coming along all the time and it enables us to give an improved program for our customer. It also helps us block and tackle against competitors that are coming in, "Hey, you should deal with me. I have this next new thing," if you have that at your fingertips. That's why working with somebody that has some sort of a marketplace of ever-evolving products that have already been vetted, you can go in and you can just pull something out if you need it when you're dealing with the client. And then to have that ROI discussion and, you know, this is the piece, where you rip the thing apart and you go, "We were expecting X at the end of the month. We didn't get it. What's broken?" And this is also the piece that most people don't do. Most businesses don't do it. Most marketing consultants are reluctant to have that conversation because, you know, you never know what might be behind that door if I open it up. So, making sure that you are involved in the data that's coming back from the various reports that you have, you know how to speak to those reports, you know how to go back to the product side of the organization and say, "Hey, this thing over here isn't working. We expected this," and make sure that that is all together so that when you sit across from your customer and they say, "Okay, what the hell happened over the last 90 days?" We call it a quarterly business review. When you have that quarterly business review, you're able to demonstrate that ROI because it's all the business cares about at the end of the day. "I gave you $500. How much did I get back in return? We have more issues of "The Conquer Local Podcast" coming up in the coming weeks as we continue to investigate this customer journey. We've got some great guests lined up. We have experts in the website space, experts in the data space. We have experts around email marketing and we're going to be speaking to all of those folks in the coming weeks. I also very much appreciate the comments that we're getting on LinkedIn. We got a ton of comments here over the last couple of weeks from LinkedIn, from the Master Sales Series that we put up. And we're very appreciative of those comments. It helps us to craft where we're going to go in 2019. And also welcome to all of our subscribers in South Africa. I just completed a two-week journey through various cities in South Africa, working with hundreds of salespeople and helping them to figure out how to conquer local. And it's always a pleasure to meet people in countries that I haven't spent a lot of time in before. I just started going to South Africa this year. It's a glorious place, some beautiful vistas, and some fantastic people. And some businesses that face the exact same challenges that we've seen in other markets. "The Conquer Local Podcast" is here on iTunes, Google Play, and SoundCloud. And you can always check us out on our website at conquerlocal.com. My name is George Leith, your host. I'll see you when I see you.

Winter is coming to the marketing landscape, and change is inevitable. So, what will tomorrow hold? This episode is a special one as we reflect on the first full year of the Conquer Local podcast. We bring back the big guy, CEO of Vendasta, Brendan King. We address everything from why we branded the show "Conquer Local," to our formula for giving agencies and enterprises the tools they need to turn themselves into recurring revenue machines. We also discuss the DIY and DIWM models and why it's beneficial to get your clients engaged in the process of digital marketing. And lastly, we explain why SMBs demand more performance from digital marketing compared to more traditional ways of marketing channels. __ Introduction George: It's another edition of the Conquer Local podcast starring our CEO Brendan King. We're gonna get Mr. King in here to talk about the year in review. 2018 is in our rearview mirror. 2019, 2020 right around the corner and Brendan always seems to be thinking a couple of years down the road so we're gonna dig in to that head of his and see what he sees coming down the road and some of the things that worked and some of the things that didn't work in 2018. We're trying to think of what guest could we get to do a wrap up of the year of conquering. No better person than the guy who's paying the bill for this and that's CEO of Vendasta Technologies, Brendan King, joining me on the line. Mr. King, let's dig into the year in review. It's been a little over a year since the brand Conquer Local was created. You know we've 45 episodes of the Concord Local podcasts. We've had guests from all over the world. We now have listeners from 19 different countries. We are in the top-five ranked business podcasts on iTunes. We really appreciate all the feedback. We're getting tons of comments. I just got one today, this morning on LinkedIn about an idea for a future episode and I wanted to look back and I wanted to...when we had the vision of coming up with Conquer Local little over a year ago, did this thing reach where you thought it could go in the first year? Brendan: You know what, I think it's exceeded expectations and I'm really excited about the Conquer Local brand and I think our partners are excited about the Conquer Local brand also.   Conquer Local: Bringing us all Together George: Why another brand? I think we should get that out there so people can... Like why do we have to create another brand? We already have a brand called Vendasta Technologies, but this has all been done out of the Conquer Local brand. Brendan: Well, you know, Vendasta is the brand behind the brand. We're a white label company. You know, that's one of our key differentiators. We don't promote our own brand. We promote our customer's brand. That's why around Vendasta you often hear the phrase, we don't succeed unless our partners succeed. And that's why we don't call them customers. We call them partners because truly unless our partners are building their brand and selling products, you know, we're not going to succeed. So we didn't wanna promote the Vendasta brand directly. And I'll give you a good example of how this manifested itself. At the last VendastaCon, which is now gonna be Conquer Local... But at the last VendastaCon, you know, we have a lot of our vendors there and our partners love our vendors' products. You know, their best of breed products. But our partners wanna promote their own brand. They're used to dealing with Vendasta products and they want to white label, you know, all the other products, whether it's a website or SEO or whatever other products that we have. But our vendors, they were partaking in the VendastaCon conference. We had it in Banff, as you recall, it was a fantastic conference. I was climbing the mountain with a group of vendors. We're looking at the streams that had turned to ice and they were saying, ''You know, this is a fantastic conference.'' They said, ''We've always have wanted to have our own conference, but, you know, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of effort and we feel like as a vendor of yours that this is our conference too." And it really took that to heart and said, you know, why don't we create a brand that we can share, you know, with our partners and with our vendors that we can use together? And Conquer Local came to be. And so now, you know, when our vendors come, they can be part of the Conquer Local and it can be their conference too and the same with our partners. And I think, you know, that's really what you've done here, George, with the Conquer Local brand, is you've taken it to the sales world and provided them with a forum and an area where they can really learn and discuss sales. George: Well, one of the things that we ran across when we were doing webinars in the early days was I would always get a request, "Hey, can you put my branding and my logo on that webinar?" So then we'd have to record a new webinar. And what we've tried to do with Conquer Local is to give a piece of content that doesn't give away the brand. So it protects the white label that could be used from start to finish in a sales meeting for a salesperson. That's also one of the reasons why I've tried to keep them around 15, 20 minutes because that's about as long as the sales person's attention span is, is about 15 to 20 minutes. Those of you who know salespeople, or might be involved with salespeople, would know that we just don't have that long of an attention span. Brendan: Well, I mean, I think as soon as a salesperson hears a good idea...and if it really resonates with them, they're pretty much done. They wanna go give it a shot. George: No person easier to sell than a salesperson. What are some things this year that you don't quite think that you got to that are important? Like, you know, we always talk about we're winning here and we're winning there. What are some things that turned out to be a challenge of getting across the line that you wanted to accomplish when it comes to the Conquer Local branding and helping people conquer local? Brendan: I think we need to get more prescriptive on how we can help our partners' salespeople succeed. So, you know, we're working very hard with the vendors and with our own products to be able to package them together and give a really proper go to the market. And I think everyone, wherever there's a change of behavior, it's tough. So we go out to sales forces and we sign up new partners, and they have the best intentions to change their behavior and do different things. But whenever you try to do that, it's super hard. So I think we really need to get better at helping our partners understand what their salespeople are selling, how they're selling it, you know, what metrics are around it, including, you know, lifetime value and churn and really turning them into recurring revenue machines. We didn't quite get there. And in 2019 I'm confident that we're really gonna put together a sales machine platform, where we'll be more prescriptive to help salespeople really pull their company and change the revenue trajectory.   The Shifting World of Agencies George: Two customers that I want to talk about, and let's start with what we call at Vendasta an agency. We'll get to the enterprise organizations in a moment or two, but you have this agency, customer and partner I guess is the term that we're going to use. They have a different set of challenges than maybe those large enterprises. Can we talk specifically about the agency? And I'm sure you've got a couple of stories about really successful agencies that you've heard about in the last year. Brendan: Yeah, sure. So mostly when agencies come to us, you know, they're smart people, they're trying to help local businesses succeed. And the way that they're doing that is they're looking at all the problems the local business has and they're trying to turn them into “A” players across all aspects of that digital area. So whether it is their website or you know, their online presence or whether it's their reputation or whether it's their advertising or their, you know, their loyalty programs, these agencies are trying to do that. And how they do it is they try to find the best products they can, and they sell those products to the local business. There's a challenge there. And the local business has three or four different products. They don't tie together very well, and the agency then ultimately runs into a scale problem. So they also, you know, they try to prove performance. So they're knitting together all these different reports, and they're spending a lot of time with those customers reporting on what they're doing and trying to prove performance. And so they always hit a scale wall. You know, that is really the problem that we're solving. And I've had, you know, I do have a couple of guys. I'm gonna call out Joe. I was going down to meet a vendor, which is Zenreach. And I thought I was just meeting the vendor for dinner, but as I walked up, I saw that Joe was there and I've never met Joe. And Joe's going, ''Is this Vendasta, is this Vendasta?" And, he's saying, ''You know, my girlfriend won't even let me say the words Vendasta anymore because you know, she wants me to stop talking about you guys.'' The point was, is he actually said to me, he goes, "You guys saved my life." He said, ''I had an agency, and I had 12 or 13 people working for me. I couldn't scale it and eventually, I almost lost the business. And I was gonna quit and walk away.'' And then he goes, ''But then I found you guys.'' And I'll tell you the feeling you get when you realize you've actually really helped somebody, nothing can be better than that. Nothing. And you know, he was truly grateful that he had a way that he can actually run his business. He knew the names of four or five people at Vendasta on a personal basis that basically, you know, when he sells a customer, you know, we're doing, we're building the website, we're doing the blog posting. We're responding to reviews, we're doing the social posts and Joe's using our agency to do that and he's scaling and he's able to stay in business and make money, and he's happy as ever because he's running around the country just selling. It was an amazing story. I was humbled. George: You know, when you talk about agencies, sometimes old school media people are thinking ad agencies where you know, they make 15% on every ad that they place and they come up with some sort of strategy. But this whole idea of being a digital marketing agency, this is an exploding industry around the world Brendan: And there's so many different kinds. You know, we have all our personas here, like you know, website Wanda and you know, Shelly's Social and you name the different sort of personas that we have. But there are many kinds, like Joe, his work starts as an Instagram influencer. So he goes to his small business customers and says, ''You know, hey, you're selling hiking and mountain gear.'' And then he says, ''When we place an ad, we're gonna amplify it by having people who are experts. So he'll go find Instagram people who have a following for outdoors posting about outdoors and equipment and stuff. And he has them sort of endorse the ads that he runs for those customers, and he amplifies them. And so there's that. There's a new type of agency springing up all the time that, you know, website is still growing and growing. You've got social, you've got, you know, some that are doing just reputation, others that are doing, you know, Facebook and Google ads. There's so many kinds. When I think about agency, I don't even think about the traditional agency really all that much anymore.   All Systems Go for Enterprise Partners George: Let's move to the enterprise type of partner because we do have a lot of listeners that work for enterprise organizations that are making this switch from selling the newspaper ad or the online banner or the radio ad or the television ad into selling the full stack. We've seen a lot of challenges in that space over the last seven years. What do you think is... are they winning? Are they starting to get this thing moving in the right direction? Brendan: I think they are. I think it's a tough job. I mean to switch your product mix from a few products to thousands of products, get them right and then be able to have the knowledge that the salespeople need to be able to deliver those, whole different problems. So when you have a large salesforce, they used to all be on-premise mostly, and you know, the ticket sizes of a yellow page ad, newspaper ad, radio or TV spot is large enough to support that, probably still is for some of those larger advertisers. But as you move into the smaller companies, you really need to change to what I like to call SaaS whenever Software as a Service. But it's a recurring revenue thing. It's like what insurance agents sell when they sell insurance, they don't make any money the first year until they built up a base where they get those renewals. And that's much the same in today's world of digital solutions. Even if they're low ticket, they build up over time and provide a lot of opportunity. In order to be able to sell that, and win and be cost effective and efficient and make money, you need to have a system in place. That's what Vendasta does. We use data about the local business in that snapshot report to actually mine the entire customer base and look for opportunity. When a small business is interested in something, then you're able to contact them at that time, in that moment. And that is when you can, you know, solve a big problem for them, write a solution, which in turn will lead to more opportunity down the road and will, in turn, turn those little companies into the advertisers that do spend big bucks on even traditional advertising. So in order to do that, you need a really integrated, scalable platform that a sales manager can see the pipelines and understand where the dollars are and understand where the opportunities are and be able to help their sales teams find that and deliver over it.   Local Businesses and Their Digital Expectations George: I wanna ask you a question that I've never asked, but I'm interested to get your take on this. Why do local businesses grade digital so harshly? Meaning you give them the report and you show them that there's been some value there and, unless it's 100% done, it seems that they have a problem with it. I'm wondering if you have a take on why this has happened. Brendan: You've never asked me this. So this is interesting because look, let's face it, I was an advertiser in the old days back in my previous life; I had a retail computer store. And I spent a lot of money, you know, newspaper and radio and TV and bus boards and I never knew which of that advertising worked. You know, I knew 50% of it worked, I just didn't know which 50%. With digital, you can actually see the results, but people then demand even more performance from that. It's a really weird.... it's really ironic actually. Look, when you can measure something, you're gonna wanna expect the results from it. Whereas if you're used to spending money and you know it, some of it works you just don't know which, but you have to spend that money anyway. So the truth of the matter is that, you know, I don't really have an answer for you, but I think it's because you can measure it. That's why they expect that measurement and that's what they need. George: Do you think that salespeople are leaning on the fact that you can get that measurement to help close the deal and to really deal with the elephant in the room with the prospect because they've been buying this stuff as you mentioned, and I've sold a lot of it? T bone has produced a lot of it where we're like, I don't know if that ad's really gonna work for the customer, but that's what they want. So we'll run it and we'll take their thousands of dollars and then we'll deal with it after the fact. And now the fact that I can measure it to kind of lean on it during the sale, so now it's really important at the end of the month. Could that be it? Brendan: Well, no, I think some of it's it, but I think I want to make a really big distinction. What's happened is that people have in the past used to spend on advertising because that's what there was to drive people into their store. But as this sort of access to information has changed things, you've gotta worry about a reputation that can spread super fast. You have to worry about all these other platforms. What's happened is that the money that goes into pure advertising is, you know, it's still growing but at a really reduced rate. The money that people spend on marketing solutions like on a website, on a Facebook page, you know, on in-store Wi-Fi or any of those SEO, those things have grown dramatically. As a salesperson selling advertising, you've got two problems. One, you know, you're selling things you're not used to selling. They're a lower price point. They're recurring, so they do build over time, and you have to come to grips with that and understand how to do that and how to compensate on it as a company. And that's what these big enterprise companies are struggling with, right, switching to this, to these other products. But you also have this transition to this digital medium, which is whether it's AdWords or Facebook. In the past you, when you couldn't measure it, you didn't know. And now the creative is really important. It's really important that it actually works because it can be measured. So it's not an easy game.   Online to Offline - The Holy Grail George: How important is offline attribution going to be? You and I have run into people over the last seven years that, we've figured out offline attribution and we kind of look at it and go, okay, have you really, because we've heard it so many times. Do you think we're gonna get there anytime soon? Brendan: Look, you know Google's doing it right now, but only at huge scale. Look, O2O, online to offline attribution is the Holy Grail. I mean if I could spend a dollar and I knew I was getting back four dollars that's my perpetual money machine I spend... you know I like I say to our marketing department if you can prove that ROI, you have an unlimited budget. You know the same thing is with local businesses. If you could actually prove it and prove that attribution, you know, of course, you just spend more. The problem there is if everybody can do it, the effectiveness goes away because everybody will do it, right? It still comes down to the offer. It still comes down to what is it you're offering and what value you're providing your customer not just...not straight advertising. I mean if you advertise a crappy business and people know it's crappy and it's not worth anything, I don't care how much you spend on advertising, it's not gonna help you out. If we step back rate to ONO there are technologies moving forward, but you know, so are privacy laws. So it's always gonna be, you know, if I can connect you to a credit card transaction, I can get that sort of online to offline attribution. I can see you saw the ad; I can use your phone to track you into the store, so I know you went there. And then I can use your credit card or your phone to track the purchase. You know, I don't know where we're going necessarily with that. I think there's privacy concerns, but boy, it certainly is the Holy Grail. You know, we're working to be able to help our partners help their businesses track that as best they can. If you're putting money into advertising, you really wanna make sure you're getting the return and you know, like you said, George, we've got people coming in every day telling us they can do it. I've yet to, you know, to see it to be 100% accurate, but it's getting better.   From DIY to “DIWM” George: You have a famous statement that every piece of software that touches a small business' hands, we build in a DIY format and then put a do it with me layer over top of it. Why have you been so adamant that the company from its inception builds DIY first? Brendan: People don't give small businesses credit. They say, oh, they'll never do this. They won't do that. They don't know what they're doing. They need our help. Well, it's true they need your help, but small businesses are a lot smarter than people think. I think today, oftentimes a salesperson walking into the business is walking into a trap because you never... you know, he's walking into a guy who's spending his cold hard money on, you know, whatever it is Instagram ad say, he's gonna know quite a lot about that. And why it's important to me is that businesses invest their time where they get a return. Now, if there are things that they can say, I can offload that and have somebody else do, they will. No business wants to sit there and fix all their listings online. They're gonna hire somebody to do that. Whether it's automated through a product like Yext or you know, Uberall, or whether you actually wanna go above and beyond to do some actual claiming. They're gonna find that out because they can because it makes sense. So, and I'll give you a perfect example. I book all my flights. You know, I am old enough to remember a time when the only way you could get a flight was to call a travel agent. There was no online, it was super hard and they took a very long time. Well no business person in their right mind would do that themselves; it just didn't make sense. So you outsourced it and you went to a travel agent through your secretary. The next sort of step was as soon as it became easier for me to do it online myself than to explain to somebody else to do, it was the day that I was gonna do it. And I have to this day. And I believe that that's the same with all of the tools directionally we're providing these local businesses. They're gonna look at it and they're going to say, ''Oh, the guy's asking if I have, you know, a pet-friendly environment,'' whatever it might be. For me to then explain to my marketing agency how to respond to those things doesn't make any sense. In fact, I want that connection with the consumer. So there has to be that do-it-yourself connection built into the product and then the small business is gonna say, ''You know what, you guys figured me out. You're running these ads. I'm not gonna build these ads and run these ads. I want you to do it.'' So there always has to be that different component too. So that's why we coined and trademark the term, do it with me. We believe that there's this do-it-yourself aspect and you have to have it. There is permission to play. Small businesses want to log in, go see, check and see what their.... you know, what their agency is doing and that's great. And they should be able to do that. And then there's the do it for me aspect where they're saying, “Hey, you're the expert. I want you to do these things for me. Go ahead and do them.” And then there's the things in the middle where it says, you know, I'll write the review but I need you to approve it. I need you to make sure it's right. And so that's the do it with me. And so we have all three of those aspects covered. George: The thing I really like about DIY, do-it-yourself as a, as a sales tactic. Here's what I find. You sell to a customer; you've got them running; you're six to eight months into the contract. Things are going well; they have zero clue what you're doing. You just bring them a report at the end of the month and do your song and dance as to why it's working, and here's the metrics that we're measuring. If that customer starts to log in and do some of the things and take some of the ownership, they're way more engaged. Brendan: You got it, you got it. And they're going to see the value. A lot of our partners in the early days were saying, ''Geez, we don't even want the small business to do it.'' They were scared they were gonna lose their value. No. Exposing them to what you actually do just increases your value. George: Well, it's been a heck of a year in conquering local in 2018. Is there anything that you want to touch on that you see happening in the future? I always like to ask this question of our guests. What if we were to put you in front of a crystal ball, where do you think we're gonna be in 24 months? Brendan: We're a white label platform and our goal is to turn our partners into recurring revenue machines, turn them into a sales growth engine. I think that as we bring products in, we're going to allow our partners to provide an end-to-end solution at scale and the ability to make money as they do it. It doesn't sound like a big change, but it's a fantastic thing that we're gonna do in the new year.   Conclusion George: Really appreciate you joining us on this year in review edition of the Conquer Local podcasts. We've been speaking to CEO and founder of Vendasta Technologies, Mr. Brendan King. Brendan: Thanks George. George: The Conquer Local conference coming your way, June 10th through 13th and Mr. Brendan King will be there as always kicking off our conference and wrapping it up, and he usually likes to look in the future and that's what we tried to do here in this episode. It's interesting, the DIY thing, he loves to use that analogy and just think about this for a moment. We did use to go to a travel agent to book all of our travel. The moment that it became easier to go online and book your travel, we stopped going to travel agents. So I think that's gonna happen to marketing. I think it's going to happen to online marketing at least pieces of it, and we can start to see that today where we have a group of millennials that are starting to take over their parents' businesses and they're looking at... they don't look at social media like, "Oh my God, social media. I don't know." They look at it like, "I understand this thing inside and out and I wanna participate." So we need to continue to learn as salespeople and we need to continue to meet the needs of our customers. And what I've been finding in the last few months when I'm out on four-legged calls with reps, I always try to get them to log into something while I'm on the call. And I always show them the value proposition of digital marketing on my phone. I very rarely bring the laptop out. Now sometimes I will bring the laptop out, but I always start the conversation on the phone because the minute that we can get our clients to start consuming this information on the phone, we've got them hooked. We know that they're going to start to rely on that information on a day-to-day basis. So I thought it was really interesting to get Brendan in here talking about it because he's been talking about it for a couple of years now and to actually see it start coming true is really, really valuable. Conquer Local, the conference is coming your way on June 10th through 13th where we'll talk more about these tactics of how to present digital marketing solutions in front of your customers. You can get details at conquerlocal2019.com. Buy your tickets today. It's right around the corner. I can't wait to see you on the sunny beaches of San Diego, California for the 2019 edition of the Conquer Local conference. My name is George Leith. I'll see you when I see you.

Equip your clients for battle against the Amazons of the world with the new digital marketing stack. Our very own Brendan King, CEO of Vendasta, is passionate about local businesses and ensuring they have the tools to succeed. In this week's episode Brendan shares his knowledge on how to equip the local sales teams with the new marketing stack and provides insight on how to compete with the top dogs like Walmart and Starbucks. Brendan explains how local businesses have an advantage by giving a different kind of experience, a personal experience. With a well-rounded digital marketing stack from an agency, it allows local business to do what they do best: focus on their customers and develop relationships. — Introduction George: We are going to take a complete look this week at the entire digital marketing stack. Mr. Brendan King, CEO of Vendasta Technologies, joining me on the Conquer Local Podcast. We're 45 episodes into the Conquer Local Podcast. Recently ranked in the top five business podcasts on iTunes. And we'd like to ask Mr. King about this digital marketing stack. I don't know if he invented the phrase, but he definitely has made it popular in the last couple of years. And we're gonna dig into it each and every piece of it, and give you some new ways to articulate the value of the local digital marketing stack. It's all coming up next, here on the Conquer Local Podcast. It is the Conquer Local Podcast, and I learned a long time ago that if you're gonna ask for budget to do something, you damn well better get the person involved in giving you the budget as a part of the project. So, my guest this week, with that in mind is my boss, the CEO of Vendasta Technologies, Mr. Brendan King. Welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast, it only took us a year to get you on. Brendan: Thanks for having me, George. George: Seeing that you've been paying for it, I thought it'd be a good idea to have you on the podcast. But more importantly, what I wanted to do, Brendan, was talk about the local marketing stack. So we have had a series of guests from Sandy Lohr, to Christian Ward, to Dennis Yu, Will Scott, all talking about the various pieces of the local marketing stack. And I remember the first time that you put on a screen, the graphic around the local marketing stack, it really helped to explain those pieces that a business needs to be involved in. So I'd like you to talk a little bit about what was the culmination of you creating the story around the local marketing stack? Understanding Your Local Market Brendan: Local marketing is a hard thing to understand. The changes that have embraced the...that have happened to the industry over the past while, you know, in the short term, were sort of overestimated, but in the long run, they were underestimated actually. People didn't really realize how dramatic those changes were, you know, Google everywhere, mobile phones, access to information anytime you need it, has really changed the way that consumers shop and buy. We needed to build out some kind of paradigm to explain that to folks. And so in the past, you wanted to buy something and all you could do is phone the company or go visit them, and it just isn't that way anymore. So we wanted to redefine that sort of marketing stack that needed to happen. So we talked about, you know, do they know about you advertising? Can they find you, listings and SEO? And after they find you, will they trust you? And that's, you know, what your website looks like, your reputation, and then can you convert them, whether it's in-store or whether it's online? And then lastly, can you keep them, CRM loyalty? And sorry, and then maybe lastly would be the social stack, will they advocate for you and tell others about you? So really, we wanted to redefine it in a really simple way. But there's 6,000 products out there, and we wanted to have a really simple way to explain what the marketing stack looks like. And it's important because small businesses, you know, they need help. Starbucks, for instance, my wife and child though, love Starbucks, so I end up going there once in a while, you know, to get her a steamer. And as I stand in line at Starbucks, we got a lot of millennials that are running by me because they've ordered online. You know, Starbucks is able to provide that kind of an experience to their customers. And we need the local businesses to be able to provide the same kind of experience. So we need to provide them with that marketing stack. And we needed a way to explain it, and that's really how we came up with that sort of simplified stack. George: So when you talk about...I like the Starbucks example because when I think of Starbucks, it's a pretty good experience, although, I'm not necessarily that sold on the coffee, but I am sold on the experience. And they also have the...I think what you're referring to is they have the ability and the wherewithal to have the latest and greatest marketing technology at their avail. So what you're saying is, you see an opportunity to help everybody that's competing against these larger organizations that have the access to that technology. Brendan: Yeah, I don't want Starbucks to be the only place, you know, that I can get a cup of coffee. I really wanna help local businesses. And it's not just in a coffee shop, if you look across the spectrum, you've got Amazon is replacing a lot of local retailers and, you know, we're not gonna be able to stop Amazon from selling goods. But what we can do is democratize technology and help those local businesses compete. And I think local businesses have a ton of advantages. You know, they can give a different kind of experience than a Starbucks or any online retailer could ever give, and they can win. George: So you sound very passionate about helping the local business. The Importance of Local Business Brendan: Yeah, I mean, you know, local business is important. There's a whole set of local businesses that are gonna be around forever. All the service type businesses, you know, they're gonna be there, and places where you get fresh goods, and things you just have to show up to get. You can see the strain happening across the board to goods and commoditized goods. The big boxes are giving way to the online retailers. There's a lot of changes happening. George: There's 19 different countries where salespeople are subscribed to the podcast, and it's actually an interesting list when you look at it. In some of those countries, the SME, the small and medium enterprise, is the driving force. And so you know exactly where I'm going with this. You were there in the latter part of last year. Tell us about your experiences in Southeast Asia, and what you saw those business people struggling with, and the challenges they have. Brendan: The challenges are really all the same as they're running into this technology. It's interesting. In the rest of the world, small business is a bigger deal than it is in North America. There, people hang in their shingle everywhere. And there's a lot...you know, it's just such a chaotic environment everywhere in the rest of the world. The addresses aren't the same, it's hard to find things, but they need the same types of technology. I mean, they need websites; they need to be able to advertise; they need to be able to attract customers; they need to be able to keep customers; they need salespeople too. And I always like to go back for salespeople, they're always going to be needed because small businesses are...it's really overwhelming when you look at that spectrum out there of what it is they need. When you're a small business, if you need help with legal, you turn to a lawyer. If you want accounting software, you'll likely turn to an accountant. But if you need help in advertising and marketing, you turn to a media company or an agency that's done that in the past. And so, the salespeople at these companies, they're under pressure too because they used to have a smaller set of products to sell, and it's just ballooned. So, salespeople, they're the hope for these local businesses to survive. So we need salespeople to go in as real experts with solutions and look at the environment and understand it. In Southeast Asia, it's way different than it is in, you know, New York, and it's way different than it is in, you know, Fairfield, Iowa or, you know, wherever it is you wanna go. So there are many, many differences and the salespeople have to be able to be that point of contact. Looking Back George: Let's talk about your past and what brought you to be the CEO and found Vendasta Technologies 10 years ago. I think it's really interesting for you to talk a little bit about your retail experience because I think that really crafted problems you're trying to solve today. Brendan: It's funny, I've always been a bit of an entrepreneur. Well, you know, even when I was in university, I was selling these long sort of board shorts to all Student Associations, and I had a pretty good second-year university, made quite a lot of money. When I graduated, and my degree is in physics, so it's really got nothing to do with commerce or retail. But when I graduated, I opened a clothing store and promptly lost all the money I made in university there, learned a lot of lessons about retail. I did work for a while in the geophysical side of the business in a Uranium Company, in Northern Saskatchewan. The call of entrepreneurship came to me and I opened a business called Dell Ron, which was a computer retailer. So from 1989 to 1999, I had a store, we had two stores, so I could call it a chain of computer stores. And in that time frame, you know, the internet was just starting to change the behavior of how things happen. So, we still had yellow pages in the newspaper, and the bus boards, and the radio, and the TV were the main ways that we drove customers into our stores, and sold computers, personally, face-to-face. By 1999, I could see the change coming in and I wanted to get out of retail because retail's really hard. And I went into software and was at a company called Point 2. And we made a platform, before Software as a Service really was a platform, to provide websites for real estate agents, and allow them to send their listings to the MLS's, and the Trulia, and Zillow. And from 1999 until 2007, you know, we had about 150,000 realtors on that platform, you know, it really wasn't much different. You know, we were servicing...it was a particular vertical, real estate agents, to help them market online. And so that saw the changes, that's when we went and built out those foundational products and started Vendasta. George: So 10 years is a long time, especially, in Software as a Service. Where do you see this local marketing stack going in the coming years because, you know, we sit here today, we've got awareness, we've got, can I find you? Can I trust you? Do I like you? The conversion point, and when we look at that customer journey, we've got, can I turn you into an advocate? Meaning, can I get you as a fan that will talk about my brand? Where do you see this going as we move forward in the coming years? Because the rate of change and the rate of innovation are, you know, 10-fold to 100-fold year over year. Brendan: Yeah. So, we like to think that...you know, when we think of other small business, we look across everything they need. Marketing and advertising, call it the martech stack, is one small part of what they need. Of course, they need that, but they also as a business, they need, you know, productivity. You know, they need to have email; they need to have an HR system; they need to have things to make their people more productive. They also need an operation stack, you know, they need accounting software; they need legal, so they need protection stacks; they need connectivity. There's a whole bunch of different stacks they need. We kind of wrap it up into, you know, sort of five stacks, so we say the martech stack, the productivity stack, the are-you-productive/operation stack. Can you operate connectivity stack? You have telephone, and internet, and protection stacks, you know, legal security alarms. As we see small businesses looking for help in those areas, we're looking to bring that into our platform, and we're looking to build the trust for whoever our reseller is across all of those stacks. So today, if you're a media company or a web company and you sell someone a website, they're gonna say, "Geez, you know, I'd really like a branded domain." And so, you know, now we have G Suite so they can move into the productivity stack. We've just added, you know, GoDaddy so they can buy a domain, Constant Contact so they can, you know, give them an email marketing system. And then, you know, the next thing might be an accounting package, or maybe HR, or will they be able to sell internet connectivity, you know, business telephone service through things like Legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer. So we're looking to allow our partners to really service the small business from one place, with one login, one UX UI, and one way to scale or trust. What's Next? George: So as the CEO of Vendasta Technologies, you made some big bets over the last 10 years, what's your next big bet? Can you let it out of the bag or do you wanna keep it under wraps? Or what's the next big bet for Vendasta as we look forward? Brendan: You know, we keep changing the landscape. So in 2011 to 2013, we provided point solutions, reputation, listings, and social. In '14 and '15, we realized that marketing and sales automation was really the biggest problems that our partners had, so we built out our marketing and sales automation. As we did that, in 2016, '17, '18, we realized, "Wait a second, this sales and marketing automation could sell any products." So we started to build out our marketplace and we did it in the martech stack first. And now in 2019 to '21, we realize we have to be a complete digital business automation platform for our partners. So they need to be able to market, sell, fulfill, bill, and deliver proof performance to every product to their local business. And we're allowing them to be a recurring revenue machine. So we like to call it a recurring revenue engine. And so that, for us, is really this whole idea of a digital business automation platform is our next step. George: Well, we really appreciate you joining us to kinda put the wraps on our digital marketing stack series. We've had a number of great guests talking about specific areas and nobody puts it all together in a complete package like you, Mr. King. So we appreciate your time today and joining us here on the Conquer Local Podcast. Brendan: Thank you, Mr. Leith. Conclusion George: There are very few phrases that I've heard in the last seven years that resonate with a potential customer as well as the Local Digital Marketing Stack. It is a great way to tell your client about the things that they need to be considering that maps directly to their customer journey. And that's probably why it's so powerful. There is a customer journey that consumers are going through, that has been adapted by our availability to have technology at our fingertips. And that's really what's changed for those local businesses is marketing is super hard. And the local marketing stack explains the various tactics that help solve the problems and reduce the friction inside the consumer journey. I don't want that to get lost as we talk about listings, and reputation, and various tools, and the 7,000 pieces of bloody technology you could use to work around the local marketing stack. We have to put it into buckets that very clearly articulate to the client the value and how that maps to their customer journey. Really important pieces and thanks to Mr. Brendan King for helping to explain it today. Conquer Local 2019 is coming soon. It's just around the corner actually, June 10 through 13th. I know we're in the middle of winter right now, but I'm thinking about the beach. And I love San Diego, it's one of my favorite cities in the world, and I can't believe that we're actually going there. So Conquer Local will be on the beaches of San Diego, California, June 10th through 13th, and you can get your tickets today at conquerlocal.com. My name is George Leith, I'll see you when I see you.

The logical thing is when everyone in an organization supports sales—everyone wins, right? The challenges may surprise you. Special guest all the way from Czech Republic, CEO of Mediatel, Luboš Čipera! Mediatel transitioned from the traditional directory print side to a digital organization in a quick and efficient way. Luboš gives us the dirty details on what it really takes to transition a company successfully under the ever changing landscape of sales and marketing. He shares how he increased revenue by 12% year over year by focusing on profitability. Introduction George: It's the latest edition of the "Conquer Local Podcast" with a special guest in studio all the way from Prague, it is my friend Lubos Cipera. And how did I do? Am I getting better at pronouncing Czech names? Lubos: You're almost there. George: Not bad? Lubos: Yeah. George: Okay, well, we really appreciate you joining us and thanks for flying halfway around the world here to the frozen tundra of Canada. We appreciate your hospitality the last time that we were there and we'll talk more about your sales organization here in a moment. But let's talk about Mediatel and how you arrived in the CEO chair at this organization. Tell us a little bit about Mediatel and how you serve the businesses at Czech Republic? Lubos: Well actually, it started 15 years ago I think, when I was asked or addressed by the original CEO which was joining the company and she asked me to help her with the building strategy because I came from the Telco and online business in the past and Mediatel was at the time was really printed oriented old fashion company. So, she asked me if I could help her to build a strategy and change the Mediatel from the print house to digital company. So, I started in that position. I was responsible for strategy, for marketing, and product management. And in 15 years, I changed to different positions in Mediatel and I became CEO of the company in 2013 when it was acquired by FCR Media Group and I spent that position two-three years and I was asked, or I was offered by FCR Media last year to acquire the company. So, now I'm not just a CEO, but I'm also owner of the company. And now I run my business, I like it. What is nice when I had joined the company, Mediatel had something like 300, maybe 350 employees, and now we have 60, 65, 70 employees. And of course, the reason is that we had to move from print business to digital. We lost a lot of customers, of course, we talked about it in the past because there's huge competition on the market, which was not when we were just one incumbent print directory and we had to really focus on efficiency, focus on changing all the processes, products, etc., in the company. And now I try to build a family business out of Mediatel and I like it. George: So, when I was in Prague here a couple of months ago and had the privilege of working with your sales team...but let's talk about that sales organization and how many businesses they serve in Czech Republic right now? Lubos: To explain the size of the market, we have something like 450,000 companies in our database. I would say that 350,000 of them are real-life companies. And we have somewhere between 12,000 and 13,000 paying customers. So, that's the scope of the organization should they care about. George: What's the market like as far as business climate? Is there a lot of big box stores or is it small and medium enterprises? Lubos: Well, actually we focus mainly on SMBs, so small, medium. Of course, we have some large accounts, large customers, we offer them some kind of marketing services in PPC, SEO, social engagement but the major focus of Mediatel is to SMBs. George: So, Vlad is your head of sales, who I had the privilege of meeting a couple of times. Tell us about some of the challenges that Vlad and the team are having as you've made this transition to being a digital organization? Lubos: I think the most difficult part of the transition was that the sales organization in five, six years ago was not the real sales organization. These guys went to our customers, they didn't sell, they just renewed the contract on annual basis because that was the current or standard situation in all directory businesses. So, they didn't sell, they just really went to the customer, they said, "Okay, I would like to give you the same contract as you had last year." So, that was the most tough situation. You know, last year or in 2017, we had I think 35, 40 sales reps in the field, only 10 or 12 of them were real sales guys. We decided to change entire sales organization, we really had to fire two-thirds of our sales force and we kept just 12 or 13 best sales reps. What is nice, these 12 or 13 sales reps were able to manage better revenue than three times sales. George: They were more efficient? Lubos: Definitely. Definitely, they were focusing...they listen to the needs of our customers. So, they did good sales pitch. George: So, you actually had that talent in the building, you transitioned the others back to society, and then that group was able to build the core around how you're gonna go to market so when you add new people they follow that system you have? Lubos: Exactly. I will say that I think we add just one or two guys to our sales organization last year. So, we are quite lucky with the staff which we had in the past I think two years ago. But as you said, we try to stabilize the current customer portfolio. We were able to increase the revenue which they were responsible for by 12% year-over-year. We want to continue on that. So, what we see right now our sales force is very strong and good in upsell and keeping the current revenue. So, retention of the revenue is quite good. We are still losing some customers, some small customers but in revenue point of view, we are growing, I mean in that part which is covered by this staff. Trimming the Fat George: You know, I love all customers, I wanna help everybody that I can, but there are some customers that the spend just doesn't warrant the sale, where it's not a profitable sale. Are you finding that the sales that you're continuing to drive are a more profitable chunk of business than some of those small ones? Lubos: Yes, it is. That's also what we were working on last year, we focused on profitability. So, we really did a huge analysis, a lot of analysis on the profitability of different customers and of the different product lines and we also removed some not profitable customers and not profitable products which we had in our portfolio. So, that was one of the reasons why we were more successful last year in growing revenue because we really focused on the profitable part of the business. George: So, you know, you went through a pretty interesting transition from the traditional directory print side to being a digital organization. What were some of the things that really stick out in your mind as you did that transition? If you could do it over again, are there some things you might do differently or what were some things that really worked well? Lubos: I think one of the most important part of the transition was that we already decided to switch off the print. I had a huge discussion also with guys from social media, they said, "Okay, you shouldn't do it so fast." We did it quite fast and I think that was the way which helped us to transition in let's say one or two years because what I saw our sales reps were really focusing on print and they sell the digital product just on top of, as addition product. So, the decision to switch off the print, get out from this was one of the best decisions we did three or four years ago, I think it was 2015. It was the last book which we published. So, I think that was the most important part until the second that we decided to build a huge company in the last 11 months. And we visited every single customer which we had in our portfolio and we offered some specific package which we prepared for them before we started the company. And during those 11 months, we were able to transfer all the customers from print to any of the digital services which we had. George: And that's pretty impressive. There's been other organizations that have tripped on that. So, congratulations on making that switch. If you were to advertise for a salesperson today, what would be your ideal sales rep? What type of sales rep are you looking for? Because I'm sure it's way different than it was 15 years ago when you got into the space? Lubos: Well, actually, I think the most important thing is that it must be somebody who fits to our organization. Because I have experience, we had two very good sales reps who killed the rest of the team. So, I think this is the most important part that these guys don't kill the rest of the team because they don't cover results of 10 other guys. So, this is the most important part for me. Then we need somebody who would like to learn. We don't need the sales reps and we are not currently looking for the sales reps who are ready to go to the market and sell what we can sell. So, we need somebody who would like to learn, somebody who can listen and understand the customer needs. Then you can build a successful sales rep from the guy. George: So, when I was in your offices I noticed that it really felt like a tech company. You had the lunch room and you got the water cooler and you got the free pop and you got the lunches and it seems like part of transitioning one of those traditional companies also means having a very collaborative environment from an office standpoint. Lubos: That's true. We moved to our new offices so two years ago and we are really focusing on open area and it helped. We mixed the back office or concierge part with the sales, product management with tech guys, and now they've started to work together. So, you can see that if they have any issue, any problem, they can start to talk immediately because they are sitting in the next table and they don't need to go to to different floor for the answer or for the help. So, we focused on that corporate kind of cooperation in the company. Everybody in Mediatel has to support sales. So, that's how we build the culture in the company. George: Now, it's interesting that you brought that up. So, what you're saying then is every single person understands that it's a sales engine? Lubos: Yes. George: That's a big switch, though. Lubos: Yeah. George: From what you were doing before in the directory business and that it is a very sales focused organization. You did mention another thing, I just want to bring this up. How important is it to sell something that solves the customers' problem? Understanding Your Customers Lubos: Well, it is the only way how we can sell I think because if you don't do that, then you can convince the customer for one year but then the customer will quit. So, this is something that we try to educate our sales reps that they don't do sales just for one year, they have to build the relationship with the customer. So, they really have to understand the customer needs. Otherwise, the relationship with the customer will be very short. George: What's in your stack? What are you offering to solve those problems? What are some of the solutions that you bring to market? Lubos: Well, actually, if I look at the customer life, we start with solving content part. So, we try to explain them that the content they want to show to the customer must be correct. We help them with the listing part and we help them with very simple advertisement which they can show to the customers. So, that's where we start with a simple stuff which we can fix for our customers. Then when we get them, they're here to that position and we start to explain to them to also focus on reputation, social management and if we have some large customers, of course, we offer them also the performance kind of advertisement like PPC and this stuff. So, we do almost everything but step-by-step. George: I'm not good at math but you did use the term 12% growth. So, 12% more digital revenue this year than last year? Is that the growth rate? Lubos: Yes, but only in the part of the customers which are covered by our sales force. What is important what I have to say we split our customer base to two parts. One is managed somehow by our customer care. So, it means that these are customers on subscription kind of contract and here we have to improve a lot. We don't do that too much and we are not very good in that. So, we are losing customers and revenue in that part of our customer portfolio. But the customer portfolio which is assigned to our sales reps, then here we grow by 12%. George: You said to me when we were in Prague that day, that your top part of your team, so, the group that really understands digital marketing, were doing some special sessions with businesses and sitting down with organizations where they knew they were businesses that needed help. So, you were actually going in and you were teaching and then you had the solutions that could help with that. You found that to be a good approach to grow that base? Lubos: Yes, we like that. We do some training for our customers. So, what is nice is we do that as a paid product. George: I'd say I'd love to know how you get away with that. That's interesting. Lubos: For example, I will use example of social media engagement or social media at all. So, we make some advertisement and we invite I will say 15, 20 potential or our customers for training which is done or which is managed by our social media manager. He does this training which last four, five hours. He explain everything about the social media, what they should do, how they should do that, etc. At the end, usually, I would say 70% of those customers understand it's very difficult, it's tough, it's time-consuming so they sign a contract with us. So, they pay for this training and then at the end, we can have contact with them. So, that's how we do that. Now, we would like to also do some kind of webinars because on webinars you can get more customers and you like to use this kind of training and webinars to get our customers to the services, to the concierge marketing services which we would like to offer to them. George: I'm glad you brought that up. So, by webinar, you're saying you're gonna use the technology so you don't have to go face-to face-with the customer. How many of your calls right now are being done over the phone as compared to what used to be done on a face-to-face call? Lubos: Due to the fact that we have very limited call center, we closed the call center which we had in North Moravia last year or two years ago. Now, we are launching new call center, we'll incorporate it with external call center. So, currently we have more face-to-face calls than calls via phone but we would like to change it because our goal is to get 10,000 new customers in Mediatel or to Mediatel next year and you can't do that face-to-face. So, the idea or strategy will be to use call center and some kind of e-shopper solution so our customers can also buy the product in some kind of e-shop which we are launching right now. George: Well, I want to congratulate you on the transition because a lot of groups have stumbled on this and it seems like you have had a lot of success in making that move. And, you know, you just have to spend a couple of days inside your organization and see you got some really great people inside that organization. I think a number of your top people have been with you for quite some time. Lubos: Yes, that's true. I will say that 65, 70 employees that we have right now, half of them are with Mediatel more than 6, 7 years, and this really is a team which I wanted to keep. So, I'm happy to have them there. Conclusion George: Well, I really appreciate you making your way to our headquarters here in Canada in the middle of bloody winter and I appreciate you giving us that feedback. So, for those of you that are going to Czech Republic, you wanna have a proper Pilsner. You wanna give any tips on places where they should go? Because there's a few places they do it right. Lubos: Well, actually, I think there is just one place which is been doing right and this is the chain which is called Lokal. Anybody who would like to go to Pilsner in Prague, they have to go to Lokal. I think there are five different pubs called Lokal in Czech Republic and they do. George: Thanks for your feedback. Congratulations on the success of making that transition. As I mentioned off the top there's lots of organizations that have tried this that have not been as successful as you, congratulations on acquiring the company. It's all on you now my friend which I know you like. Lubos: Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much for invitation. That was pleasure for me. George: Thanks for joining us on the podcast. George: I will tell you that the transition from Mediatel, from traditional directory organization into fully transformed digital organization may not quite be as easy as Lubos made it out to seem inside the podcast, but it's really interesting when CEOs always give you the high-level view and everything's great. But when you get in and you start talking to the staff in these organizations, you can actually hear the truth. And I had the privilege of attending an entire day with Lubos' staff back a few months ago in Czech Republic and sat down with the people who were doing fulfillment, sat down with sales leadership, sat down with some of the sales reps. And they talked about this culture that has been created inside the organization where, "We're gonna solve the problem, we're gonna solve our customers' problem." And that's been one of the reasons why these legacy organizations have not been able to transition from what really was a binary sale, "Will you buy my shit or not?" To, "How do I solve your problem and here's some insights as to what the problems are that you're having and now I'm here to help you solve that problem." That's been a really important piece to success that Mediatel has had in transitioning that business. Now, as you heard Lubos say, there's still a lot of work left to be done but to see that growth double digit month over month growth, that's really what we're shooting for inside our organizations to grow that digital revenue and to get that monthly recurring revenue. Well, that's the Holy Grail if we can get the gift that keeps on giving. Don't forget about Conquer Local the conference. It's coming your way, June 10th through 13th in San Diego, California at the beautiful Hotel Coronado. So, don't miss out on the conference of the year to help you be a conqueror. conquerlocal2019.com is where you can get your tickets and I look forward to seeing you face-to-face for a few days in beautiful Southern California. My name is George Leith, thanks for joining us on the podcast this week. I'll see you when I see you.