Mastering Modern Selling
At Mastering Modern Selling, our mission is to equip you with the insights, strategies, and tools necessary to excel in the ever-evolving landscape of sales. Traditional sales approaches, marketing tactics, and lead-generation methods are becoming obsolete. In today's market, buyers dictate the buying process and have little patience for cold calls, email blasts, or aggressive sales tactics.
In this new era of sales and marketing, success hinges on building meaningful relationships with prospects and buyers. We believe in leveraging the power of modern strategies, techniques, and technologies to foster these connections. This approach, often referred to as Modern Selling, encompasses leveraging digital and social channels to create demand and cultivate strong relationships with prospects, partners, and customers.
By mastering Modern Selling, you and your team can enhance your visibility in the marketplace, establish yourselves as trusted advisors, accelerate pipeline growth and revenue, and position yourselves as the employer of choice in your industry.
Join us on Mastering Modern Selling as we explore the principles, practices, and innovations driving success in today's sales landscape.
Mastering Modern Selling
SS 2.0 - #53: Advancing the Buyer Journey Through Videos and Events with Morgan J. Ingram
Join us as we chat with Morgan J Ingram, an expert in advancing the buyer journey through innovative techniques such as videos and events. Morgan shares his valuable insights on how documentation can be key in making your brand stand out and stay top of mind with potential buyers.
Morgan emphasizes the synergy between sales and marketing, and how the two can join forces to make the most out of events and reach potential customers. We also uncover the significance of educating buyers, creating demand, and the role of podcasts, videos, and live shows in establishing trust.
In our wrap-up, we explore the concept of community building within sales and marketing, and how virtual environments can be a game changer. How can you offer value and be a reliable source of information? It's not just about giving out swag, but about supplementing marketing messages with structured sales pitches. Lastly, we fast forward into the future, discussing how compelling events and understanding the buyer's journey will become crucial in enhancing the buyer's journey by 2024. Tune in to glean insights from Morgan's wealth of experience in B2B sales strategies and social selling!
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Welcome to Social Selling 2.0 Live Show and Podcast, where each week, we explore the future of B2B sales. Social has changed the B2B and professional services landscape forever. Capturing and keeping buyer attention has never been more challenging. Our mission is to help you discover new strategies, new technologies, new go-to-market systems and stay up-to-date with what is working now in B2B sales. Your hosts are Carson Hedy, the number one social seller at Microsoft, tom Burton, a best-selling author and B2B sales specialist, and Brandon Lee, an entrepreneur with multiple seven and eight figure exits and a leading voice in LinkedIn social selling. Brandon and Tom also leads Social Selling 2.0 Solutions, which offers turnkey consulting, coaching and training to B2B sales leaders. Now let's start the show.
Speaker 2:Everybody, welcome to episode number 53. I had it right this week. Last week I was all messed up because I was in a truck stop and I didn't know what was happening of Social Selling 2.0. I'm Tom Burton here with Brandon Lee and Carson. We have the full team here today and yet another awesome guest, morgan Ingram. Morgan, welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you, happy to be here.
Speaker 2:So we're going to talk today about advancing the buyer journey through videos and events and just different ways of doing the buyer journey. But before we do that, because we have Carson back today and we missed you the last couple of weeks, carson, in fact the show, I just wouldn't even try to replicate the dad joke challenge. So anyway, we're back, we're back.
Speaker 4:We have a really low bar.
Speaker 2:So we have a low bar.
Speaker 4:You have to stick.
Speaker 5:Low bar. Well, hey, Tom, before we get going, Bob Ritten said Aloha, which man? Maybe he's in Hawaii today and not Texas, but everybody else, whether you're on the podcast. Thank you for joining us. If you're on the live show, love to hear in the comments who are you, where are you from, and then just invite you to ask questions like this is the four of us having a conversation, but we want to include you all. So, as you know, any questions you ask, we try to get as many of them up on screen as possible and start talking about them. So you guys make the show. So please, please, please, jump in with the comments.
Speaker 2:Yep, absolutely, and Butch welcome from Atlanta. All right, carson, butch is already betting on Morgan, right yeah.
Speaker 4:But that's the same bet.
Speaker 5:That's his confidence level in us.
Speaker 3:I don't know what we're betting on, but like all right.
Speaker 2:See, we're just better off being silent.
Speaker 4:Morgan, You're betting on Brandon and me right, All right.
Speaker 2:Carson, since you're back and we're happy to have you, go ahead and start.
Speaker 4:I'll lead us off, so I did not ask chat GPT this week because they're kind of on a losing streak. So this week I ran across this one this past week and I thought I'd use it on the show. So why don't people laugh loudly in Hawaii? Because you typically hear a lo-ha.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, what did you do? You teed up Bob for that, did you guys?
Speaker 4:call me. That's totally ironic that Bob is leading off of the lo-ha today, so he's not laughing loudly. I'll tell you that no.
Speaker 5:I don't even know if he has a lo-ha going on with that one. Probably not.
Speaker 4:That's all right.
Speaker 5:Well, I did not ask chat GPT either. I consulted with my library of dad jokes on my phone and I went this route. What do you call potatoes at Duke Yoga? I don't know. Meditators.
Speaker 4:Oh wow, oh my goodness, all right, that's a hair above Tyrae Morgan.
Speaker 3:do you want to vote? Oh, I don't even know. None of them are like inherently ahead of the other. I think they're in the same bucket, which translations mean they both suck. That wasn't it? Let's just get to the meat yeah.
Speaker 4:I'm going to vote.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I brand in by a nose. Oh, interesting. All right, it's like a fourth of inches, it's like an inch.
Speaker 5:It's just a little bit of a little bit of a little bit, of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of, a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit. All right, so that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:That's we may have to rethink the Jo challenge moving into season two. I think so I'm ready to dump.
Speaker 5:That yeah, all right, all right.
Speaker 2:Here we go. Well, welcome, let's get to the good part. I just wanted to welcome Klaus from Toronto, and the fine are the nice words as well, and we also have hey, all hail Missouri, all right. So, morgan, I'm glad you stayed with us this long and didn't just take off after that part there, but tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and kind of how you got into the whole world of social selling.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I mean, we only have one round of dad jokes. If we had a second round maybe we'd gone differently.
Speaker 4:But you know, there we go, there we go you speak it up.
Speaker 3:So I started off as a sales development rep and cold calling, cold emailing, all the things that you all probably know about and when I started that role about five months in, I decided to document that journey and started a YouTube channel called the Esther Chronicles. I did an episode every single day for about seven months and that's what helped elevate my brand on LinkedIn and this was back in like 2016. So there was like no posting at all, and that led me to be a manager of 13 reps on the team and then, from there, I got approached by John Barrows do sales training. I did that for about three and a half years. I trained like Salesforce, slack, google, et cetera all on top of funnel strategies, and I took my love of content creation and just what I learned in that skill set.
Speaker 3:And now, as we're going to talk about today, helping B2B brands advance their buyer journey through videos and also through event activations and how. I believe that, even though I've been in the game a long time, outbound is dying, but not dead. So don't get crazy, but dying, and this is ways that we could get better at it.
Speaker 2:Wow, so you started as an SDR in the tech space.
Speaker 3:Yep started as an SDR, cole Collin Cole emailing, so I know what the grind is like.
Speaker 5:You know what, though? I want to make sure and pause for everybody. You guys know I like to do this. Morgan just said he documented his journey as an SDR and now, morgan, you have what? 155,000 followers on LinkedIn. We talk a lot on the show about the power of content and about being consistent and about being authentic and sharing, and I think I just don't want to jump into the topic at hand without taking a pause and reminding everybody Morgan, you had just started out right. You were young when you started as an SDR and what's helpful to you was just documenting your journey and sharing authentically what you were learning, what you were going through, what challenges you had. Is that right?
Speaker 5:That's accurate, yes, so often we hear people say I don't know what to write, I don't know what to say, I don't know what to comment. And, morgan, what would you say to that, based on your experience?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll give you the advice that I got because I just dove in. So I read an article by Ralph Barsi at I I was showing love on this and it talked about how an SDR should start documenting their journey. I talked to him and he was like look, you're sharing a perspective that's unique because you're in the role and even though you don't have a CRO experience you didn't exit a company, you don't have millions of dollars in revenue or whatever you have the experience of an SDR, which most people may have not had, and also you're coming from that unique point of view because it's your story. So I took that to heart.
Speaker 3:And then what really took it to the next level was when I met Gary V at an event. It was about four or five months into my role and I told him hey, this is what I want to do. And he just was like document, don't create. If you just document it, then it's a credible source that you're coming from. So if you're documenting what's going on in your actual life, there's no one that can take that away from you, because that's what you're actually doing and people resonate with that and it becomes relatable.
Speaker 5:That's really good, thank you. Thank you for indulging me, guys. I just think there's always the opportunity for us to pause. For people that are following the show I know so often it's I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do and imposter syndrome and all those things kick in. And what I heard you say, morgan, is you just you documented your own journey.
Speaker 2:Yep, exactly, and that was it, and I think we should even consider a show on that, and I think that's really really an important point about documenting your own journey, versus we talk a lot about posting. We don't necessarily talk about how do you document that journey and how would you go about it. I think we did that a couple of weeks back Forget who the but anyway, I know a couple of the guests back we talked a little bit about that but I think it's something more that we should. Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and it's amazing to me, there's always and I think as coaches and trainers we got to remember this but they're always like what do I do, what do I do, how do I do it? And I think last week, even with Mandy, we talked a little bit about just documenting what do you think, what do you observe and what do you feel is a good way to start just on everything that's going on in front of you. But I just wanted to highlight Morgan you were tremendously successful at it and what you said. You just simplify. You're like I just documented my journey, that's all.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and a question from Klaus as well. I'd love to hear Morgan's thoughts on Klaus's question because I think it's very poignant when we talk about documenting, how do we do it? And I think there's a litany of ways. I'd love to hear Morgan's thoughts. Obviously he was producing videos, I will tell you, because we talk on the show all the time about how do you get started and the posts and the blogs and the content that I get the most engagement on is when I'm able to tell a story from my past, when lose or draw. That lays an experience and everybody listening. You all have unique vantage point and perspective and valuable experience and if you share it and you welcome feedback, you will get meaningful engagement. But, morgan, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how do you document.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I believe the mechanism of documentation is up to the person and the user. So what I mean by that is there are some people who are really good at writing. So maybe, for example, your documentation is like I don't know, reflection Friday. I'm making up something for you. So every Friday, you reflect on what's happened during the week and you share that with the audience.
Speaker 3:For me, it was the video series, the SDR Chronicles, and I just made videos and talked about what was going on. That was the real key thing across the board. So I just think that when you're thinking about documenting anything, you have to think about the mechanism that you are good at. For me, it's creating videos. I've just seen across the seven years of creating content on the platform. When I make a video, I can just speak to the audience, and that is what I'm the best at. So you just have to figure out what that looks like for you. But also, documenting doesn't even mean that you even have to share it on LinkedIn either. There's other ways to do it right. You can document with your own self and maybe share with a select group of people in a community in a private message on LinkedIn. It doesn't always have to be public as well. So I'm not selling people. You have to go public and go crazy with it.
Speaker 4:I love that. I'll make one last thought on that. I keep a personal journal, which has been helpful when I've written my books. I'll keep a professional journal, which helps me when I'm writing my appraisals, and, frankly, I'll transfuse both of them into posts. And when you talk about posts, the video content you can create can go any variety of places. I put the video content that I create on YouTube, linkedin, Facebook, twitter, instagram, tiktok. And be willing to try new things. Some of them may not speak to you or work for you, but if you're willing to try some of these new things, you'll learn and you'll be exposed to new audiences.
Speaker 5:That's so good, all right. Well, I sidetracked us a little bit. Morgan, thanks for indulging us on a little bit of a path there, but our topic is a good one and, tom, sorry, I don't want to derail us. Let's get back to the topic.
Speaker 2:No, no. So let's go back to and let's dig in more into this whole buyer journey, because I know this is an area. Morgan, you're spending a lot of time with companies and helping companies, no-transcript. When you work with a company or someone hires you, how do you explain to them how the buyer journey has changed? We talk a lot about that on this on the show, but what do you see and how do you explain it from your vantage point?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So there's a study that came out from LinkedIn and this is actually pretty wild. When I saw this, I was like wait, what? 95% of people are not ready to buy what you have. That's pretty crazy. 95% aren't ready. So, okay, you're doing this outbound, you're calling, etc. And again, I'm a massive opponent because I've done all this stuff, but 95% aren't ready. All right. So there's 5% that are ready and you probably are already talking to them or maybe they already working with someone else.
Speaker 3:So what I'm telling people is how are you going to stay top of mind with these 95% of people? Just emailing them and cold calling is not going to cut it. You're going to have to do other things, and our belief at AMP is that it's through videos and it's through events. My take on this you all can check me, the audience. Y'all can be like, oh, I don't believe you, it doesn't really matter, but I'm telling you what I believe is going to happen is that the people are going to realize that, oh, I need to go to events, but I actually don't think people are going to go to the massive events as much as they used to.
Speaker 3:They're going to start doing these mini events. They're going to do their own customer events, they're going to do more dinners, but they're going to be more exclusive, et cetera. That's where the real conversations are going to happen, because you're able to not only build relationships but you're able to build a emotional connection through an event, and I believe event activations and things that nature will be a huge point of advancing people through the buyer journey, and it always has. I just think it'll be more in the forefront and people are going to start being more creative with them. So that's what I'm telling clients is like hey, look, what are you doing for the 95% that, like aren't buying yet? Are you just going to let them go by the wayside? No, you got to get in front of those people.
Speaker 2:No, quick, quick follow up question to that Morgan the 5% that are in market, right, they're serious, they're really, you know, looking for whatever you're selling. When you talk about videos and I know we're going to dig into this more but videos and events, are you trying to then reach sort of within that 95%, the curious or the people that are thinking about it? But aren't, you know, the curious, not the serious, or is it somebody that may have actually no awareness at all of what you're doing or what you're selling, but they may have a problem or a, you know, an opportunity to be able to take advantage of?
Speaker 3:I would say it's all of those components, because each piece of content you're creating covers those different segmentations. So each group of those people will get a different piece of content right. So that's the key right there. That then allows you to then get the most out of it right. And so if I know at the end of the day that, okay, we have people that are, you know, curious about serious, we have content for that. We also have got the content to educate the market on what we're actually trying to accomplish, if they're not educated already. So I believe it's components of all those pieces of content. But the difference becomes what is that company and then what is that market? And then we'll skew which content should be more important, because it is different. Some people are like trying to build a whole new category. Some people are like already in category. So it just depends what you're selling.
Speaker 2:Perfect. So, as sellers, then, and especially an outbound right, which is what you've been, you know we're doing. If you're making cold calls and SDR, or, nonetheless, you're trying to market to a cold audience, what is, I guess, the mindset then that you need to be looking at things differently? Obviously, you have to be looking through the mindset, you know. When you started, did you realize that 95% or more weren't in market, or was that something that you had to kind of get to get to grasp, come to grasp with?
Speaker 3:I mean to be fair, when you start off in sales, it feels like 99.99% of people aren't in market. So I actually increased that percentage because everybody doesn't want to talk to you. But in all seriousness, no, it wasn't something I was thinking about at all, Like I didn't know these stats. I just knew that I had to make calls and go to scheduled meetings and then I just needed to get better and people weren't interested, right? I didn't know that the buyers were continuing to getting more and more educated. As I got more educated, I figured that out.
Speaker 3:So I would say, as a seller, right, I think the things you have to focus on are, like still do your thing right, make sure, right, that you can still do what you need to do at the end of the day as a seller and do these mechanisms. I'm just saying you have to think beyond that. So, as a seller, are you talking to your marketing team on, like, what events are they doing? What virtual events are they doing? How is that important? Are you asking for highlights from those events so you could have timely follow-ups? These are things that are going to be important. I think it's an all-encompassing way to reach out to people you can't just lean on just one mechanism to get that done, and that's what I'm talking about there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that's a great call out because, at the end of the day, as a seller, you've got to look at your playing field and you've got to look at how you're engaging. What are the resources that you're spoiling? And what I love about what Morgan's articulated here is that because everything has changed and because the way that people are educating themselves, how they're educating themselves, why they're educating themselves and what the impact of that education is, means that we've got to show up differently. We've got to meet them smarter, with more value, where they are and in a meaningful way that they're more viable to consume what we're putting in front of them. So having those kind of smaller, intimate, quick gatherings that are hard-hitting, engaging, impactful and meaningful is one element. And then also doing some of these hybrid events.
Speaker 4:I'm seeing a lot of traction right now from doing broader webinars and scale motions, because I have a very large territory and it helps me to reach out to some of these folks that are in the 95% that do what Morgan just pointed out. It helps us stay top of mind. They're not ready to buy right now, but guess what? I'm showing up armed with value and I'm showing them what we're all about and what we're doing, what other customers like them are doing that are help successful, so that they're armed with what's happening and if they want to connect with other customers that are doing it, that helps. But also when they're ready to buy. We're in the sphere and I think that's super important and video has a higher propensity of being consumed by them. Using that in our outreach, using that in our newsletters I think that's the key element is we've got to be ready, willing and able to tinker with how we're showing up with customers, incorporating all the resources, all the tools. It helps us scale, but it also helps us do those focused events better as well.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and you know, I think with that I agree with everything you guys said, and I think there's another layer deeper to it. For teams it doesn't have to be difficult, but I think it gets ignored, Ignored a lot is helping the entire team use this content in the right way, in the right place at the right time. You know, if there's an initiative of, hey, we got all these videos and we have these webinars, that's great, but I think a lot of teams stop there like, okay, we have this webinar, go invite people. Well, there's a better way to build up to the webinar. There are sequences that we can put in place that lead somebody up to that webinar.
Speaker 5:When we understand the 95% are not in market, we speak to them differently. But too often we speak to all 100% of people the same way, which is they're in market right now and let's go capture them. And I think it's just that shift of how do we talk from a place, of how we create demand, instead of talking from a place or word or communicating in a way that is just trying to capture the little tiny bit of demand that might be there right now, exactly, and there's a couple of great questions I want to bring up here.
Speaker 2:I'm going to start with Jeff. I like that question, jeff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so oh, Hoffman, what up man, and you know he's saying, is you know I think he's saying isn't that a marketing motion?
Speaker 2:I believe what he's referring to is what we're talking about is creating demand and doing the things in that 95%. So his question is are you guys advocating that this is now a sales motion, to be out there creating demand, not just a marketing action? Morgan, what's your take on that?
Speaker 3:Well, okay, it's a great question and I think, across the board, it depends on what mechanism you're talking about. Let me give you an example that most people consider a marketing motion, but it actually can be a sales motion. So let's go back to 95%. So, okay, let's decide. We want to create a podcast because we want to stay top of mind. We want people to know who we are, right, cool.
Speaker 3:Here's one thing that, like most people don't do we do it with clients, we talk to people about this. I've done it myself is you have a target list of accounts. Most companies right now have a top 100, top 250, top 500, right, your people are reaching out to those accounts and they're getting nowhere, right, so they probably aren't. They're probably 95%, they probably don't really care. But how do we actually get in front of them so that at some point, when they come 5%, they think of us? You should probably just invite them on the podcast. Because pseudo, if you think about a podcast, is just a discovery conversation at the end of the day, right, and it allows you to get that pieces within that. So what I would do is I'd invite that executive and say, hey, yo, come on the. I mean I wouldn't buy them at this view. Hey, come on the podcast. What's up? Come on Cool.
Speaker 3:We talked for 30, 45 minutes. We built that connection that's a one to one. I reached out to that one person sales right, and now we have that relationship. So, moving forward, if something does come up, they're going to think about us. That is like an example of how that marketing motion of podcasting, which is a one to many action, can become a one to one that most people just don't think about. They just try to get the most popular. People would say we have a big podcast, that's great, but actually the podcast can be a revenue mechanism that most people don't use it for outside of sponsorship, which is most people. That's what I think about. You actually can use it to get business if you think about it appropriately. So that's one example. I mean we could go over a thousand, but I think they work in tandem, depending on how you want to go about it and how you look at it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I got a quick add on, and then I want to get Morgan Stalks on Kathy's question as well in the chat. The short answer, jeff, is yes and yes, because the reality is, yes, marketing needs to be engaged, but also there is an element of it that is squarely in a sales motion, and what I mean that is. For instance, today I work hand in hand with marketing in my organization and I know that I'm a bit of an anomaly when it comes to selling, but we get marketing leads that are funneled to us, people that are engaging today with collateral, downloading white papers, et cetera, and I could go out as a seller and I could call one, two, five, 10 of those people I could completely strike out. Or I could take the people that have opted into marketing and I could build a list and build a community around these folks and I can reach out very strategically to certain people based on what I see happening in the marketplace, what that organization is doing, what their earnings report says, et cetera.
Speaker 4:So that's what I've chosen to do and because of that, I have 7,000 leads within some of these organizations that I support in my territory and I'll use those strategically to invite them to events. I've been doing my own homegrown events for years. I'll use marketing collateral and I'll use marketing resources in order to promote some of these, but it helps sales and marketing work in tandem and hand in hand to have the best of both worlds. I encourage sales to work closely together because, at the end of the day, marketing needs to know what sales needs, but also sales needs to be driving these motions. Because we're in the field, we're on the front lines, we know what the customer needs, or at least we should.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to bring up this other question here from Kathy. Let me back up here. You know Kathy brings up a good point Buyers were never taught to be buyers. Do you feel that this is an outdated mindset now because of videos, podcasts and so forth? In other words, do buyers really need to be taught to be buyers or do buyers really are they doing a good job of being buyers and doing their homework and stuff? I definitely have a take on this but, morgan, I'm interested in your thought on this.
Speaker 3:Now I didn't know where your ticket is. So it's two things. So one is there are educated buyers, right. And then there are like non-educated buyers based on what they're buying, right. So, for example, the seller is selling this product almost every single day. A buyer might buy this maybe once or twice a year. However, they're educated buyers who have been in the space long enough and they actually know what to do. So it's actually up to the due diligence of the sales to understand is this an educated buyer or not? It's been my belief.
Speaker 3:Other people could disagree, but that's like my take on it, I think. The second thing, though, is it's a little bit different. It's like buyers don't know how to be good internal sellers, and you have to actually enable the buyer to be a good, enable to actually help them sell internally. So that's actually what it is Like. If something is too complicated or it doesn't make sense, the buyer has too many things going on, so they're gonna move on. So it's actually up to the sellers to enable their buyer to sell internally so that they can be those champions internally as well, and you have to equip them to do the right things. It's way to do the right process and things of that nature. So that's the way that I personally think about it. People may be different, but now I can hear your take. You feel like I'm more than you're wrong.
Speaker 2:It's very similar because we talk a lot about the buyer being in control of their own journey, which is true, but I have seen over and over and over that buyers can make that journey super complex as complexity starts to go up, risk and perceived risk goes up, and then you get to a point where nothing happens or no decisions made. So I think to your point, morgan, you're right on. We have to help the buyer through that process in a way that doesn't become so complex and go down so many rabbit holes and take forever that it becomes a no decision or such a perceived risky decision that nothing actually happened. So I think our role is not just to educate, but it's to educate on the process, which I think you stated very well.
Speaker 5:And that leads into what we're talking about using video, using shows whether it's a podcast, it's a live show, I mean we've seen this is that the consistency of this type of content being in front of people consistently having conversations around these topics. It creates a trust, it creates an ongoing conversation that they're in, even if we people on the show we don't really know that they're in these conversations because they haven't raised their hand or called us or emailed or said let's talk. Yet these types of shows are so important for laying that foundation, differentiating from your competitors and solidifying that emotional connection and trust that you can't do any other way and it doesn't come quickly. I think that's, for me, the power of video and events and shows like this that companies that aren't doing it are just missing out on huge, huge opportunity.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think buyers are coming at it from a place where they're scared to make the wrong decision, and I loved what Morgan said We've got to put the buy in the position to win. We've got to arm them with what they're going to need to sell internally. We also have to understand that stakeholder map because, ultimately, we need to be to the right buyer and, frankly, there could be five plus influencers that are a part of the ultimate buying decision that we can't rely on the buyer to do our job. That's what I see far too often that we do. Buyers aren't necessarily trained in the right way either trained to be buyers but at the end of the day, often they're not married to status quo, they just won't make a call because we haven't made the risk, we have a de-risk. That isn't enough, and they don't want to be the zero, they want to be the hero.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to go back here real quick to a comment that Bob made, because I think it really sums up everything we've been talking about so far Is traditional outbound motions have been geared toward finding existing demand. Right, you could call it looking for the needle in the haystack, as you said, morgan. Right, because 99.9% may be there. But the new outbound paradigm is to create demand, and I think actually that's everything we talk about on the show. Related to social selling is how do you use social to go out and create demand to the other 95 or 99% that's there, and if you look at it from that mindset, I think outbound becomes a lot more fun. But in addition to being a lot more fun, a lot more effective. I think there's another question here from Alexander and I think Carson. It's related to something you mentioned about community. You want to just touch on that a little bit. Like, when you use the word community, what does it mean in that context?
Speaker 4:No doubt so often there's common threads, right With customers that you work with. I work today with MedDevice, medtech organizations. There are a lot of them that do not compete with one another. There are scenarios where a lot of us may compete with customers that we have or there may be competitive elements, but there may also be elements where it makes sense for partnership, collaboration, consortiums, and if I can be an enabler of organizations that I support working together, it can be to everyone's advantage, and sometimes that's the biggest value that I bring is I may have this relationship.
Speaker 4:You may not be ready to buy from me today. You may not be ready to buy from me today, but if I can put people together and foster collaboration that my organization can be a part of, they can all be a part of. There can be mutual gains, and so it's planting the seed for mutual benefit, but it's really just building community around commonalities. You know, a lot of our organizations have common missions, common things that we want to achieve, and so by putting people together, sharing best practices, sharing what's working and introducing customers to each other, some great results can happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally agree, Brandon. I wanted you to get your take on Klaus's question here, as you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:So I love that book. In fact, my history with influence goes back to 1991. My senior year of college, my thesis, was based on that book and I think reciprocity is really interesting concept in there and it's evolved in the 30 some years since I first dove into it. But look, I think reciprocity gets, as a term and as a strategy, gets used differently. I see a lot of emails that come in that people want to buy me lunch and they'll send me a gift card, and there's a thought that if we buy people lunch, we send them swag, we, you know, buy them a beer, we take them golfing, we go to a ball game, anything like that that there's a reciprocity effect.
Speaker 5:I think, in this more virtual world and as busy as buyers are, that reciprocity can be used more by providing value, being a source, a trusted source, of their research and their information. Carson talks about doing his webinars and he gets a lot of people that show up and, as we've talked about, 95% are in market and art and market. And why are that many people showing up? Well, because they trust Carson, they see him as a guide, they see him as that trusted advisor and they're preparing knowing that sometime in the future I might need to make a decision, and so I'm gonna keep going to Carson to learn. I think that approach to reciprocity is more important now than some of the just the swag stuff. I mean, look, nobody's gonna complain, we take them out and have a drink, or you take them out golfing or whatever it is that they're into. It's gonna be valuable as well. But I think in this time people are so busy that reciprocity has to be much more tactical and has to add much more value than just going out and having fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's your guys take on that?
Speaker 3:I have nothing to add because I think you said it so well, so I don't wanna add more to what y'all would already say. It's the same thing.
Speaker 4:Perfectly said.
Speaker 2:All right, brandon. Thank you, it was a mic drop.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's go All right. One more question I wanted to hit on here and then I really wanna get on to talking about some things as we look into 2024, but just kind of a follow up question from Bob. He says we were talking about marketing and sales. Do you think it's important to coordinate with marketing, to sync up on messaging as you kind of put together your content or your strategy, or is there really different types of messaging? What's your take on that, Morgan? What would you recommend?
Speaker 3:So the answer is yes, but not in the way that you think. So the seller should not go to marketing for the exact messaging. That's gonna be a failure. I've seen it happen way too many times in all the trainings I've done. I just haven't seen it paying out. I'm not like hating on marketing. It just doesn't work. What you need to do, though, is you need to figure out their messaging so that you can compliment it, so whatever messaging that they have going out is your air cover for the sales team. The sales team has to figure out how to contextualize the messaging that you have.
Speaker 3:I actually believe, for most people that create videos, you shouldn't even have really a script. This is just my take on. Even training on this is that it should just be a framework of bullet points, of like how you deliver, you do an intro, you have your value prop, you found a contextual point, you call action right, and then you say how you say it. The videos are really about their personality at the end of the day, and even if you think about social media outreach, you can also send videos on there too, so let's, we can put them in the same bucket, but I do believe that you have to make sure that you train your team on the frameworks how to keep your video concise. You want to keep it to like 45 to 60 seconds and you want to make sure it compliments the messaging that marketing has. If you aren't complimenting each other, that leads to the dissension that you don't want. But I wouldn't say replicate your marketing messaging into your sales messaging Cause, then that's not going to be helpful for you at all.
Speaker 5:You know, marketing tends to broadcast and as sales people we need to communicate, we need to be in a conversation and that's straight marketing content. I mean, I haven't found a team yet not to bash on marketers that really understands the depth of what sales needs to create conversation. Marketing still just comes from that end. Like we broadcast, we tell people who we are and what we do, and those aren't good conversation starters.
Speaker 4:Now I think in a perfect scenario, sales is going to do everything they can to really earn trust from marketing, and the desire to work hand in hand Arm me with what I may need in order to brandish that message that ultimately goes out to the customer or ultimately goes into that post and trust sales in order to go out and kind of create some of that element. But certainly neither party can have card blocking what the other one does. You've got to work hand in hand. I've worked with some great marketing folks over the years and in every scenario there's been times where they've relied on me to do some elements of their job because they know I do it well, and vice versa. So I think that's the kind of harmonious relationship you ultimately want to go after.
Speaker 2:Makes total sense. So I want to touch on one more thing related to events before we kind of look ahead to some strategies for 2024. Morgan, you've found success in your finding success with live events, not just virtual events, and how do you believe that that should kind of fit into a playbook, and can it fit into a sales playbook? I think it ties into what we're just talking about, about marketing. Or does it have to be done with marketing or could it be done in a live event? And what could a live event look like?
Speaker 3:So there's a multitude of different live events, right. So there's one where it's like you bought a booth and you're going there, right so that can live event. The other thing is your own live event, like you do a customer event and then you have like a mini event within a big event as well, right so there's a ton of different events that you can do, but let's just stick to like one that most people can correlate to, which is like the booth. Now, I think the booth is probably one of the biggest waste of money for most organizations because they don't do that much with it. And like I'm just I've been to a lot of conferences. I've seen which I'll do a booth, it's I don't know which, I'll do it. I'll be very transparent. You have your sales are just chilling, hanging out. That's not helpful. Every swag item is pretty much standard, like okay, you got a coffee mug, a shirt and like a pen, like it's nothing special and there's nothing to actually get people excited to go there. And when people do go there and hang out, the questions are very standard and it's not helpful. So the whole thing's typically normally a waste because you didn't really do whole much. And then I'm not going around on this, but like and then people just scan your badge and have no context on why they scan the badge because they have to hit a quota of scan badges. The whole model is messed up. So the thing is, if you look at live events, you should actually be trying to get some ROI from it. People spend 50, 80 to 100,000, 200,000 dollars on these booths and I just seen them just hang out Like I just I do not get it. So the thing is, marketing has to play here and marketing needs to come in and be like like every marketing team should go in every single booth and be like how can we be the most attractive, appealing, explosive booth at this entire conference? You want to be able to, like you are literally have so many people at your booth. The other booths are getting upset. That should be the mindset that marketers should have. I don't know what's going on these meetings I'm not in them, but I see the booths. It's not. That's not the energy, right, but you need to come in and be like we're going to dominate this show, like that should be your mindset. Most people are just like we're just here and we're existing and I just that's not going to win moving forward. So when you do that right, it's like what's that creative thing that's going to help us? Then the second piece is how do we equip our sales reps to be everywhere? I'm going to tell you what we.
Speaker 3:I was in SDR. I was four months into my role. My other friend was three months into his role.
Speaker 3:At that event, we went to every single booth that was a sponsor and we told them what we did and we said if somebody mentions something that we can help around this realm, send them to us. We went to every single booth and talked to every single person I don't, I don't need to give anyone does this anymore, by the way so we did that. And then every single we had we were crazy we had a hit list. So we printed out the pictures of the people we were trying to get in front of. So we'd be like, oh wait, that's that person. We go find them right and talk to them and we would have the pictures ready on hand.
Speaker 3:I just again, I don't think people are going out like this, but my thing is you have to train your team to dominate the event and the live events, because when you meet someone in person. Whatever cold call or cold email or thing that you sent out, they completely forget it. They become a completely different person. And it was eye opening to me because I had to only be making calls and emails. When I met someone I would been talking, trying to talk to, they were like super cool. And I was like why aren't you cool? We got a cold call and you like told me that I should kill myself. Now you're chopping it up with me. We're having a normal conversation.
Speaker 3:So I think people really need to take action on how do they get people to their booths if they amplify the booth right? And then how do you teach your team, your sales team, to acquire those customers in that traffic? And then how do you get people to advocate and say that was the best booth I've ever seen? If you come in with a game plan that every single time that's going to win it and we're working on that right now we'll have a couple of activations to do in next month and that's what we're telling clients Like. This is what we want you to do. We want you to walk out and have the best booth, because if you don't have that mindset, I just don't know why you're going to the conference to be fair, that is exceptionally powerful.
Speaker 4:And I heard three common themes that I align with wholeheartedly. Number one make your booth a destination and kind of one B or two is arrange customer meetings at booth. You know, have people converging on your booth. We did a really successful event earlier in the year and that's exactly what it was. We are very selective in where we invest these events and we did one and we showed up big and our competition showed up really weak. It was actually comical to walk around and see how small of a presence and how ghost townish their presences were and ours was booming. But we had people converging very intentionally. You know we were proactively reaching out in advance of this, inviting people to come to the booth, so it was bustling.
Speaker 4:And then the third element Morgan kind of touched on this have that plan for engagement and follow up. You know, making sure that we are following up on that event and that we're making sure that we get that ROI Coming out of that event. We've got to make sure that. You know, maybe we added them as a LinkedIn connection while we were standing there, you know, talking to each other at the booth. Maybe we follow up with them on something very specific that we discuss at the booth, but I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 4:And the last thing I would say just on events in general, and the reason that live events are so great is because they bring people together. And the more that you can bring multiple customers together, introduce them to each other, you know, be strategic about this. I've got this customer who bought this from me last year and I've got this customer who I want to sell something to last this year and I get them kind of talking. That's got a heck of a lot more viability in working than me just trying to sell something to this person. Try to, you know, have that swarm mentality, put people together, be an enabler, be an orchestrator, be a broker of relationships and dialogue, and those are the events that really win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to. I have a bit of a boot, a boot hack. I guess you would call it the. We have found work really well and I think it ties into everything we've talked about is go and set up, especially if you've got a little bit of a bigger booth, but even if you've got a small 10 by 10, it will work is do interviews in the booth. So set up a tripod and bring in your customers or your prospects or your partners and do interviews right there in the booth and, just like you were just talking about a few minutes ago about interviewing your customer or prospect on your podcast, do it in the booth and you know, as Kathy was just saying, invite your best customers there and let them.
Speaker 2:You know, do that for well. But if you do that now, you have video you can share with those prospects after the show. People love that. And then kind of the boot hack that we found was go ahead and then put them on Facebook or LinkedIn and Geo target the, you know, do a paid media spend on it. And Geo target people who are in the vicinity of the show, like you know, target people within a mile of that. And then people are sitting in line looking at stuff and all of a sudden your video shows up on their Facebook feed or on there and it will drive people to the booth. It's amazing, if done right, the number of people will go. I just had to come over and find out about this because I saw you on Facebook and we found it to be a really, really good way to kind of do a boot hack to get more people there.
Speaker 4:I got a final thought on this that goes back to the community comment earlier. This is why it's important that I cultivate my community and I cultivate my list and I've got my leads that have opted into marketing because, even if they don't respond when I reach out to them the first time or when I send them a newsletter, they're not sending me a request to meet when I'm doing an event that may be important to them or meaningful to them or in their geography. Now I've got them and I can engage them and invite them to this and invite them out. I think that might be what brings them to the table. I had a long sales cycle once and it took me three years to get in and get this deal landed. I invited this customer to multiple things but eventually we met in person at an event and it ended up within six months we had a deal done.
Speaker 2:I love it All right. So final question here for you, morgan, as we look ahead to 2024, what do you think the most important thing a sales and I can, carson I want all of us to answer this, if we can. What do we think the most important thing a sales organization can do and be thinking about? I think we're going to be starting Q4 here in another couple of days between now and 2024. What should we be thinking about and what should we be preparing for to really get the most out of 2024?
Speaker 3:So I think there's a lot of ways to different answers.
Speaker 3:I know even Patricia was talking about, like your plan and depending on the business, you might have different optics. I think the most important thing that you should focus on is, instead of saying, how do we enhance our sales cycle? Then I was talking to like my old CRO about this and like I just love the way that he phrased it. It's just like we should think about the buying stages and how the buyer goes through each stage right in the journey. So it's like how can we get better at the buyer's journey and what are things that we could do to enhance that, remove right whatever that may be? So, from the top to the middle to the bottom, how can we get better at these things? Do we add different experiences? Is there an experiment that we can do? Is there something more advanced that we can be doing? I think, if people go into 2024 and understand that they're going to be able to acquire those net new customers and also acquire people that are on upsells or whatever they may be, Perfect Carson.
Speaker 2:what's your thought?
Speaker 4:There is no 2024.
Speaker 3:That's like looking at next week's onus.
Speaker 4:I'm totally kidding, totally kidding. Here's the interesting thing, and I tell my team this all the time If you're going to be, you know everything that you're going to sell into 2024, those conversations should be starting right now. You know those seeds are being planted right now. So I always ask my team you know what are the relationships that you're going to need in order to do what you want to do next year? Because we need to be going out right now and earning those relationships and starting those conversations because, to Morgan's point, throughout this show, 95% of them aren't going to be necessarily ready to buy today. So we've got to, you know, nurture and onboard them into at least being in our sphere. The other element is what are the mediums that are going to be at our disposal in order to establish leads, earn conversations, build community and these mechanisms for outreach, and so we've touched on a lot of them in here today. You know videos don't happen overnight, events don't happen overnight. You know these things take some element, some degree of planning. You've got to really build a foundation.
Speaker 4:When I prepare for a new year which I just did because our fiscal year started in July I spent a lot of time studying. I studied the past year. What worked that I need to double down on. You know, we realize we're beholden to a lot of built in compelling events. Outside of that, we've got to create new compelling events and we got to figure out the white space and what is, you know, maybe the next viable, consumable workload that we may be able to go after. And that's ultimately how I've got to build my plan.
Speaker 4:But I've also got to be very intentional and look at the things that didn't work and I've got to jettison them, whether I liked them or not, or I've got to tweak them and make them work if there's some merit and validity. But you've got to really understand. Take the time, I always like to say, before you can feast, you've got to set the table. So take the time to really build the foundation for what is going to be meaningful next year. What have you learned? What have you learned from this year? From the wins? What worked? What made those wins? From the losses why did you lose? Are there things that you can tweak in your process? Was there a gotcha or an aha moment where you didn't have the key decision maker or the buyer or the stakeholder, and then change your process accordingly, but it's very intentional discipline and focus around people and process. Do you have the right relationships that you need, do you have the right resources that you need, and can you fine tune your process in a way that will make you better next year? Perfect.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's a lot of stuff for me to follow.
Speaker 4:People will process resources there.
Speaker 5:you go, and what I would add to it is focus on creating a movement, and what I mean by that is let's have a mission that's bigger than just go sell more. And events are a big part of the way of doing that. And people, when our customers, when our community, our perspective community feels like they're more involved in this process and they're learning with us, they're part of something that's moving, not just being passive and waiting for us to ask them if they want to buy something, then it makes our selling job a lot easier because they've got more trust and they're willing to go on a bit of a journey with us. But we've got to create that movement. We've got to create the journey for them to want to go on the journey with us. And I think that leads into the mindset of how do we go about creating demand instead of just capturing demand.
Speaker 5:I agree with what Morgan said at the beginning is those topofunnel outbound activities that are cold email, cold calling and all that.
Speaker 5:I don't like to say they're dead, but they're definitely not as effective as they were and losing efficacy every week. And then I think that the last key thing is and taking this from Tom's book, so kudos to Tom. I found that when we approach that yellow brick road mindset and ask ourselves what are the three things that our buyers truly need to understand and the three things they truly need to believe in order to demand our product when we start there, it's the right change and influence on our content strategy. It changes the way we speak to them, it changes the content we create, it changes the way that we engage them. So I think that mindset of three things they need to understand, three things they need to believe or have to believe to demand my product, changes the game dramatically and I think this is essential as we move into 2024, really anything in the future because the noise is getting louder, ai is going to make the noise even louder and more of it, and we've got to figure out how the heck to stand out.
Speaker 2:I totally agree and I'll answer my take because I want to use Jeff's question to answer for my answer. Jeff's asking what would love to hear what you guys learned. That doesn't work and I think, going back full circle, morgan, the way you started this is most companies now invest most of their marketing dollars and their sales emphasis on that 5% they're all going after. I would say probably 80% of the marketing budget is going after or even the sales budget right, an SDR that's a pretty expensive sales budget is going after that 5% and very little is going into that 95%. That doesn't work. It's not. It doesn't work in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you look at tech companies now and how much money they burned and it's hard to get money if you're a startup or a early stage tech company you've got to be way more efficient with your sales motions. So I think what isn't working is that is, focusing on the capture. What you do need to be thinking about for 2024, which we've all been saying is how do you go about creating the demand? And you do that by understanding that buyer journey, by understanding their three understandings and their three beliefs. I think those are the two things that come together, Carson, anything you want to add on what doesn't work.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and actually I love that you framed it up within the context of what Morgan's talked about here today, because that is crucial and, frankly, that is how an anomalous enterprise seller like me to be successful because I was always focusing on the 95% how can we nurture them along the way, and how I did. That is not talking about what I want to talk about. You know, going up and throwing up with just all the random marketing messages and thinking that that was going to entice somebody to Want to talk to me. No, that doesn't work. What does work is showing up, talking very specifically, very short and succinctly About what they want to talk about and figuring out those key elements and enticing them to the conversation based about what matters to them. I realized for me, that is being able to offer a price, predictive, predictability or Demystifying what my company can do for them, or how do we partner together or sell together in the market, or how can we partner around Generative AI. I can get a lot of conversations based on that.
Speaker 4:Frankly, also not getting caught up in all the fire drills. You know I have to block not intentional, non-negotiable time every morning where I map out my day and I go down my list and that be gets number three, which is going after everything. Where I failed at first was trying to go after absolutely everything. You know, chasing that 20,000 deal, $20,000 deal, the same I was chasing the million dollar deal, and you just can't do that. You've got to find ways to be very focused and disciplined and also to effectively scale.
Speaker 4:A lot of us work with broader teams and that enables us to do that. But finding ways to prioritization around impact and tangible outcomes, and if you do it that way, you can be a lot more successful. And just look at where you're getting paid, where you're not. What are the non revenue generating activities that I did last year that I need to get rid of, and where are the things that I spend a Lot of time? Do they have outcomes? They generated revenue? If they didn't, that's a pretty clear indicator that maybe it's time. Oh yeah great point.
Speaker 2:Well, morgan, it's clear why you're a four-time LinkedIn sales voice. Really great insights today. Thank you very much. We appreciate you joining us. For sure I Assume if people want to learn more about you, they'll find you on LinkedIn, of course, anywhere else you'd like to send them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so gonna start ramping up more Video content. So, if you want to check me out there, it's just Morgan Jane Grim on YouTube. So we're gonna start doing more interactive videos and talking about all the stuff we talked about today, even in more depth and more length, etc. But obviously, linkedin and yeah, I appreciate everybody tuning in with some great questions and, no, maybe we run it back. We'll see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, definitely will. All right, brandon Carson. Any final thoughts?
Speaker 5:No, it was a great show. I think there was. There was. There's a lot there that I encourage people to. You know, grab one thing and kind of run with it if you can and it's hard because we talk across marketing and sales and and maybe you don't have that kind of power in your company. But I mean, if you're, if you're C-suite or your leadership, and you're tired of beating your head on the wall or you're tired of seeing that the, the cold outreach isn't doing what it, what you hope it can do, it's time to get courageous and really make some change Of what you've done over the last 10 to 15 years. It sucks, it is what it is, but it's time to have courage to make change.
Speaker 2:Yep well, thank you for all the kind comments coming through. If you haven't, please go download our podcast. Leave us a rating. We're trying to get to number one on Apple. We keep kind of Back and forth.
Speaker 3:Some days were number one some days were number two not a bad place to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so anyway, please go on, leave us a rating, if you could, or a review. We would love it. And, carson, we've missed it the last few weeks. We haven't had anybody to kind of take us home. But Take us home here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm gonna close with the final thought too, and you know, my biggest take away what would inspires Morgan, frankly is you know this is a several year journey for him. You know he talks about, you know, starting out doing this in 2016 and really taking the initiative. Document what he did. You know the things that he's done. These are things that we can all learn from and do ourselves, and I think that's the great takeaway. He's established a brand and following because he loves craft and he's passionate about it and he's always learning and he puts himself out there, and so I think there's a great takeaway for all of us in that is that document your journey, even if it's for your eyes only. That's my movie reference of the day for the for those.
Speaker 4:Even if it's just for you to go back and learn from where you've been. There is so much value in that, and I love the fact that Morgan is also Pivoted. Throughout his journey, he's realized what has worked, what hasn't worked, what has changed and how can he change his focus in order to really continue to hone his craft, and that's something that we can all learn from. So until next time, everyone, thanks for being on with social selling 2.0. Happy social selling. Thanks everyone.
Speaker 2:Hey, tom Burton here and I wanted to personally Thank you for listening or watching today's episode of social selling 2.0. If you enjoyed or found value in today's show, please share with your friends and colleagues. Also, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast outlet. And please also subscribe to our YouTube channel and join our free online community at socialselling2zerocom. There you'll get free access to the latest social selling resources, training sessions, webinars and can collaborate with other social selling professionals. Thank you again for listening and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode.
