How to Scale Relationships with Aaron Weekes
In this week's episode, Lee Murray, Business Growth Strategist of Harvard Murray Consulting sits down with special guest Aaron Weekes, from Proofpoint Marketing.
Listen as they dive into the topic of scaling relationships in business, exploring the ins and outs of how companies can map their relationship-building efforts to revenue. As a seasoned marketer, Aaron brings his unique perspective to the discussion, offering valuable insights on how to build meaningful relationships in business.
This episode is a great resource and will leave you inspired to take your relationships to the next level.
Thank you for watching. If you are enjoying what you hear, please consider sharing it with a colleague or a friend.
Have a guest recommendation, question, or just want to connect?
Go here: https://www.harvardmurray.com/exploring-growth-podcast
Connect on LinkedIn:
Lee - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehmurray
Aaron - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronmichaelweekes
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:29:23
Speaker 1
Welcome back to the Explorer and Growth podcast today. I have a great conversation with Aaron weeks from Proofpoint Marketing and we talk about how to scale relationships. This is a great one. All right. Welcome back, everybody. We've got Aaron weeks here from Proofpoint marketing agency and another LinkedIn relationship. You know, we bounced around LinkedIn. You meet all kinds of cool people and all around the world, really.
00:00:31:02 - 00:00:56:11
Speaker 1
He's totally from Saint Louis. And of course, I'm here from Orlando. And today, you know, we were talking about what are we what are we going to talk about on this podcast? That is kind of like a convergence of our worlds. And we we landed on this topic that I think, you know, is an amazing one for both sales reps, business developer reps and marketers to be talking talking about today.
00:00:57:03 - 00:01:27:19
Speaker 1
I think there's a lot of discussion about the margin on that. I see from B2B marketers on LinkedIn, that's a almost overhyped topic and we can actually get into that a little bit later. But this idea of like building a business with relationships is it's funny, it's not a novel concept. You know, people are relational. I've talked about it a lot on this podcast, actually, but if you're going to build a business on relationships, how do you map that to revenue?
00:01:28:00 - 00:01:51:01
Speaker 1
You know, so and naturally, companies are going to want us to to report on metrics that show we are scaling back those efforts. So I'll just kick us off here by saying that I had Dan Sanchez or Dan Charles. I don't know if you follow him on LinkedIn, but I had him on the podcast probably a month or two ago and it was great.
00:01:51:01 - 00:02:15:02
Speaker 1
We talked about actually what kind of spurred on the conversation was he and I got in this back and forth on DMS where we were talking about how his philosophy is everything sort of built 1 to 1, you know, and, and so it's not really about scaling as much as it is just about building quality 1 to 1 connections and, you know, approaching it as a human.
00:02:16:01 - 00:02:34:19
Speaker 1
And so, you know, we we were in the same thread on some of both. And I was going back and forth. And he put in a link to a loom video that he recorded specifically for me to, to, to expound on his thoughts about that one thing. And I was just like how I went off all of this.
00:02:34:19 - 00:02:58:05
Speaker 1
This is amazing. Like he's actually being a human to me and talking specifically to me in comments. And so we got back and forth about that sort of tactic on in our DMS and that led to the podcast. And then if you go back and listen to the podcast, which I encourage people to do, you know, I kind of walk people through that whole scenario and how we ended up talking about this one.
00:02:58:05 - 00:03:24:00
Speaker 1
For one thing, getting back to just being you, you know, a person to a person. So, you know, an air and I were talking where I think this idea of like relationship building once a11 too few but then like how do you scale that. Right. So I want to kind of throw it to you and and maybe give us your perspective on scaling relationships.
00:03:25:19 - 00:03:46:17
Speaker 2
Love it. First off, thanks for having me. Also, Dan, as a great follow, if you don't follow him on LinkedIn yet, you'll get great insights from him. So when we were talking about this conversation, I was bringing up really the point of view of marketing that I'm going to kind of really help articulate here on this episode, which is if you scale relationships, you're going to scale revenue.
00:03:47:05 - 00:04:12:01
Speaker 2
Yeah. Now why this is an exciting topic for me is a quick anecdote of my background, how I got into marketing, which is when I did not have any marketing experience, I had a philosophy degree. So working at Starbucks didn't know what to do with my life, how I got my first marketing job was going to the networking events like they used to tell you the old days, you put on a suit, you go walk in, get some coffee, shake some hands, talk to some people.
00:04:12:01 - 00:04:39:17
Speaker 2
And that landed me a caterpillar. And that was a big boy job right out of the gate getting into that marketing department. And my first whole year, I was just paired with salespeople writing content for them. Through that experience, I really learned like, okay, this is all based on relationships. Like you go out in the field, you talk to people, you may not sell them now, but because you build that relationship quickly, that's going to cultivate and grow over time.
00:04:39:22 - 00:05:02:17
Speaker 2
And then when they're ready to buy, they're going to come back to you. Yes. So I'm articulating that story because that's why I think we can do as marketers. That's why I try to get my clients to do as well, to really have a process and system, to scale relationships and really scale that digital word of mouth. So when they're ready to buy, they're going to tell their friend to do it or they're going to come back to you again if you change the mindset.
00:05:03:10 - 00:05:24:22
Speaker 2
I think when you're talking about your day and central story is when you change a mindset, you do different things. So if you change, change your mindset to I'm going to focus on relationships and then revenue will follow. Your activities are much different rather than I'm going to focus hyperfocus on revenue and then hopefully those metrics will work their way out and then those relationships will turn into customers.
00:05:25:01 - 00:05:27:13
Speaker 2
I'm trying to flip it on its head. Let's start relationships first.
00:05:28:09 - 00:05:47:16
Speaker 1
Yeah, I like that. And so if you switch your mindset to we're going to build relationships, what does that look like in your activities? Yes, for sure. You're going to change. And then therefore the goalpost of what you're shooting for are going to change. Your objectives are going to change, your tactics are going to change your activities, your behaviors.
00:05:47:16 - 00:06:11:23
Speaker 1
Everything is going to change. I can imagine, I mean, in having given that advice to a lot of clients, you know, in in one way or another, because it's a lot to take in if you're a legion company and you're running ads on Facebook and then, you know, you're told to go relationships. That's a complete culture shift, really, when we get down to it.
00:06:13:04 - 00:06:48:12
Speaker 1
And I think I think ideals like that are or some that CEOs that are listening to this, you know, marketing leaders are listening to this should take in and try to digest and then work maybe slowly over maybe a longer time horizon to to implement, because taking really that's what it's going to end if you don't have a CEO really or because this this podcast mostly for mid-market companies you don't see the CEO C-suite that is relational by nature.
00:06:49:01 - 00:07:11:00
Speaker 1
You're going to be have to change the culture of how the you know, the path of what the company's doing so it can be a big ask to do that. But, you know, that aside, I think if if if it were adopted to whatever degree you a lot of things can be adopted experimentally and say, well, we're going to do these efforts in addition to what we're doing and see what kind of results they make.
00:07:11:13 - 00:07:32:03
Speaker 1
I think what it's going to do is put the conversation on the table about what are we measuring right for what? What result. And then you can start to compare what are our efforts? Look like over here and how do we measure those efforts for what result and what our efforts look like over here? And how do we measure that?
00:07:32:03 - 00:07:37:06
Speaker 1
For what result? Yeah. So tell me more. Tell me more about what you're thinking.
00:07:37:20 - 00:08:00:22
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, what resonates with what you're saying to me is when we tackle these kind of big mindset. So that philosophical changes, there's going to be activities that we do that are either un scalable or unmeasurable. And the reason why I bring this up, because marketing at one time did different things. You know, we were advertising on television, we were mainly print and traditional marketing.
00:08:01:22 - 00:08:27:11
Speaker 2
Some of those ideas worked right. And we've made this huge pivot to digital and we've changed everything we've done. So with this mindset shift, we're trying to get kind of our clients and ourselves to do old school things, right? For instance, personalized gift giving. That's a relationship activity group. Sometimes that's not measurable. I can certainly measure how many, how many gifts I send to our prospects.
00:08:27:18 - 00:08:43:22
Speaker 2
I think that may be worth looking at. But really what I'm trying to measure is what is a meaningful relationship? Is this person going to come back to me one day once they understand the value and they're educated about what a product or service does, but they're going to come back and say, hey, you know, that was such a great conversation with Aaron.
00:08:44:19 - 00:08:46:20
Speaker 2
I really want to work with him in particular.
00:08:46:21 - 00:08:47:15
Speaker 1
Yeah, right.
00:08:47:21 - 00:09:09:04
Speaker 2
Those are the activities that we're trying to do. Just give a little more granularity of like certain things we're actually doing now. As far as measurement, I think this is what I would offer to most marketers as I am a senior performance marketing manager like measurement is part of my function for sure. I think you have to think about how does the measurement work for you.
00:09:09:15 - 00:09:29:02
Speaker 2
I think that's a trap that I've seen just being on LinkedIn and in in communities and whatnot. People asking like, How should I measure this? Like, what should I do for this? I think you use the word experimentation, like, I love that word. What does that imply? Let's go test something. It doesn't work. Let me write it down and then improve upon it.
00:09:29:02 - 00:09:47:02
Speaker 2
And so this relationship mindset, although I'm getting clients and myself to do different activities, I notice and grow over time. If we had this conversation in nine months, I'm probably going to say we're doing different things, but then that mindset shift is what's getting me there. And not just in hyper focusing on revenue as a marketing department.
00:09:47:16 - 00:10:06:04
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I'd say just as an aside, something that popped in my mind about this idea of experimenting, I think marketers are listening in order to get the ear of your leadership team to for more money on something, you know, kind of maybe in your gut works, but you haven't been able to really articulate it fully.
00:10:06:18 - 00:10:36:15
Speaker 1
You have to try things and you have to show leadership even in a reporting cadence, either show them what you're doing and what you're trying to measure for what outcome. Even if it doesn't win, even if it doesn't work, because they can at least see your thinking on paper by doing that, that practical measure, they're going to you're going to get more of their attention as long as, you know, things are not going going down consistently, obviously, they're not going to support that.
00:10:36:15 - 00:11:01:01
Speaker 1
But just as an aside, I thought that would be good to mention. But, you know, kind of getting back to the main topic, I think one major roadblock to relationship type of marketing is Lorelai, right? Because, you know, in a business that you're investing money to make more money, that's when it gets down to it. That's why we're in business.
00:11:01:12 - 00:11:22:04
Speaker 1
We want to sell a product, sell the service. We want to delight our customers. We want to get more customers. We want more good cash flow. We want the money to come back in so we can reinvest it in our people, in our in our business. So ROIC is really difficult, I think, for senior leadership to. Well, let me start here.
00:11:22:23 - 00:11:40:17
Speaker 1
I'm because I'm totally tracking what you're saying, and I guess I'm just saying it in my own way. I think that when you say I have $10 and I want to make $100 out of it, you look for tactics. You look for things that other people have done. You try to deploy your money in those ways, like playing the stock market.
00:11:40:17 - 00:12:09:11
Speaker 1
It's not really a different that behavior, right? But it can't always play out that way because the things that we know work. We may just not know how to articulate how they work. I mean, that's really kind of get into what you're talking about. And I think it's always funny because if I go in there pretty much any company I can, if I were to say, Hey, it's about relationships, we need to ask for referrals, we need to create content, support relationships, we need to do these type of things.
00:12:10:04 - 00:12:28:06
Speaker 1
You're going to get a lot of pushback because they are in their mind thinking, are like, How do I get a return on investment? But if I ask them, Tell me where you got your last ten clients, eight of them are going to come from relationships, right? And they will know how they got to the point of getting the referral or whatever.
00:12:28:06 - 00:12:48:20
Speaker 1
Maybe they can't track that kind of quote unquote darker funnel, but that's just because they don't have that mechanism in place or more of that mechanism in place. You may not have the whole thing ever, but I think it's funny because business people, business leaders won't invest in something that is already working, but you have to like expose that truth for them.
00:12:49:23 - 00:13:10:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think I'm where I want to take this is that's a common refrain like we're going to hear what's the ROI on your activity? And I think there's different answers for that. I would still be in the case, but what I'm kind of saying is you don't need to worry about that. Actually, what you need to worry about is maybe getting that leadership alignment and buying into those relationship activities.
00:13:10:14 - 00:13:32:03
Speaker 2
So the number one thing we're going to do for our clients is make sure leadership is involved in the relationship spaces. So what do we run? We run podcasts for our clients, right? The founders on that, the CEOs on that, sales leaders on these podcasts, they're going to participate in the relationship building. And then once they do that and we start to do these activities like you and I are building relationship right now as we're talking to each other.
00:13:32:12 - 00:13:32:16
Speaker 1
Right.
00:13:33:00 - 00:13:53:06
Speaker 2
There, there, you know, I don't even have to pull the qualitative data. I don't have to make all these slide shows and whatnot to show it is just like they get to experience it. And that's what we already know is, again, professional services like this is a great niche for changing this mindset to building relationships that scale because your whole business is building relationships, right?
00:13:53:06 - 00:14:11:09
Speaker 2
There's no room on the like out of the box, like out of the shelf product that you can sell someone, right? You have to build a relationship, build a customized quote. You have to figure out what value you can find them. Now, there's not an easy, straightforward way to track that right. Each relationship is going to be different.
00:14:11:18 - 00:14:23:08
Speaker 2
And that's why I'm again, just stressing like change the mindset. You'll do different things and measure different things. You'll get different kind of buying and alignment, make it different questions. Right? So I'm going to pause there and see where we want to take that.
00:14:24:04 - 00:14:46:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, no, it's great. Like I love how you very pointedly said, okay, we're here on this podcast right now, kind of forming a relationship as we talk. It's right there. And I would say the aftermath of this is and this applies to anyone that I have on my podcast or you have on yours or or maybe you had coffee with or you know, it doesn't have to be a podcast.
00:14:46:12 - 00:15:09:04
Speaker 1
I don't want to make this like some kind of multi-level marketing thing where we're trying to sell podcast, right? But it's like if the whole point is, where are you converging 1 to 1 or even one to view, and what are you doing afterwards? So after this, you know, if the relationship is good, if if the report is good, if the credibility is good, I could literally pick up the phone or email at any point and reconnect with you.
00:15:09:04 - 00:15:34:03
Speaker 1
As long as I'm not trying to hard sell you on something and ruin it and and get a get a temperature for where you stand on whatever positive motivating thing there could be. Right. So maybe there's a connection between our agencies. Maybe there's a connection in our network, maybe there's some thing to leverage, but maybe not. Maybe there's time that has to to pass too, which is typically the case.
00:15:34:22 - 00:15:59:00
Speaker 1
But I like that because it's it's 1 to 1. And you can do that over coffee. You could do it on a podcast. I think when we get to this idea of scaling relationships, I see current day, the podcast being one of the major levers of doing that because you can interview people and accomplish all these goals because not only do you, you get the 1 to 1.
00:15:59:17 - 00:16:15:20
Speaker 1
I mean, I can tell you, like my own personal experience, I start the podcast about a little over a year ago. I started inviting people on and I know on my post network and then I ask them who else you know that's like you. That would be a good person to interview. And then I get two or three per person, so it starts to split around.
00:16:15:20 - 00:16:39:16
Speaker 1
Now I have ten episodes of ten close people and 30 people to call to interview and or not even to call it. They're invited on by my past interviewee and so on and so forth. As long as I'm there kind of prime the pump, I have plenty of people that are good quality. Next, it's a good, sustainable pipeline and becomes exponential.
00:16:40:03 - 00:17:01:08
Speaker 1
It becomes still. But then on the other side you have distribution. So if I take all of this content and I say, okay, Aaron I think is doing great things, I want to collab with him on something that we're both going to be at HubSpot Convention or whatever. I don't know if we'd ever end up there together, but we're going to be at some convention.
00:17:01:17 - 00:17:29:12
Speaker 1
Well, I mean, you can now leverage the relationship, the network, the content and all the distribution of that on the back end because you had this one instance. So I think it's very powerful personally, and I've actually seen it work for myself and it's going to work in my clients businesses. So I, I'm a big proponent of this idea of building relationships to scale that or relationships that can scale.
00:17:30:10 - 00:17:52:12
Speaker 2
Jeff I want to give a more concrete example of how this all plays out and maybe from a strategic standpoint of why you'd want to make this decision. So some of the clients we work with, they're in biotech. Yeah, they are professional service and they want to build relationships with clients. The clients that they want to build relationships with are in stealth mode.
00:17:52:22 - 00:18:17:16
Speaker 2
They already work at other biotechs. There's no company targeting. There's no of the traditional distribution digital methods we can to reach them. But that doesn't mean we can't serve them as relationships. So that's why we start to again change the mindset. Do different activities. Another general one we do is, you know, just start a live event in a similar podcast format by giving that relationship touchpoint that people can come back to.
00:18:18:09 - 00:18:38:08
Speaker 2
And then over time with a distribution component, just as you said, it's I had this live event, I had this podcast. Maybe I'm at this trade show. I already have a relationship with this individual because I'm doing relationship activity. Those conversations are much easier. How about you come on the podcast now? Now I'm building that rapport, I'm cultivating that and growing that.
00:18:38:16 - 00:18:48:21
Speaker 2
Okay. We know with professional services, too, that I built this relationship. Now they may be locked in a contract for nine, 12, 18 months. They can't even by now if they wanted to.
00:18:49:04 - 00:18:49:11
Speaker 1
Right.
00:18:49:12 - 00:19:06:14
Speaker 2
So I'm going to build this relationship now in 18 months when they're ready to buy. They know me. We've had a good time. They're ready to talk to someone that's helped solve their pain on that person. Right? So that's what we're trying to get our clients to do. And in certain business case, especially if you're in a professional services niche, like I think this is the way to go.
00:19:06:20 - 00:19:09:01
Speaker 2
Like you need to build relationships at scale and then you build revenue.
00:19:09:20 - 00:19:46:09
Speaker 1
I agree 100% on a percent. You know, another practical example, working with a client that is going to be professional services and they were considering starting a podcast again, this doesn't necessarily have to be a podcast, but the podcast is what was in the conversation. And you know, they had some conferences coming up that we had months to prepare for to launch the podcast, kind of get a few guests under our belt and everything smoothly and said, you know, what we should do is just reach out to the executive director of the conference who's well known network.
00:19:46:17 - 00:20:05:06
Speaker 1
It's been in the in the game for a long time have that person on and then let's start going through the guest speaker list. So we kind of host like the pre-game show, you know, for Monday Night Football, like the pregame show for the concert or for the for the conference. And we can also have a post-game show.
00:20:05:06 - 00:20:24:12
Speaker 1
So after the conference is done, we can interview all the people and say, you know, what you said on the main stage was amazing. Here's why. But tell us more. There's so much more that you have to share. So let's let's hear it. I mean, that is a that costs pretty much $0 in advertising. And it's all relationships.
00:20:24:12 - 00:20:42:11
Speaker 1
So let's say you did that for this year. What's going to happen next year? Everybody is going to be listening to that is all about distribution. Of course, you have to get that right. But everybody's going to be listening to the pre-game and they're going to be there for you and you're recording live at the conference and they're going to be listening to the post-game if you make it interesting.
00:20:42:20 - 00:21:10:03
Speaker 1
So you can own the attention of your audience, of your more widely addressable market pretty easily. It really can happen with not a lot of money. So I'm a big fan of this idea of like building relationships. And what's cool about it too is that you can it takes a lot of like once you understand, it goes back to mindset, right?
00:21:10:04 - 00:21:41:16
Speaker 1
What you understand how this can work and how it can completely change organization and growth trajectory. It it really takes the pressure off of that lead gen model. It takes the pressure off of other, you know, performance type marketing. You might be doing it. It makes it fun, which usually equals people wanting to buy from you more because they want to, you know, they want someone that is like not as stressed and tight about the whole thing.
00:21:41:16 - 00:21:47:16
Speaker 1
They want someone that just feels like this is their domain and you know, you're going to buy from us or you're not, but we're going to have fun.
00:21:48:18 - 00:22:03:22
Speaker 2
Definitely. You know. So I'm not going to linger on because we did talk about is is that legion model and I want to explain it as a performance marketer and then go a little high level again, maybe why you want to think about something different. So I do have SAS clients, I have e-commerce clients, I have professional service clients.
00:22:04:16 - 00:22:25:06
Speaker 2
Legion can work for SAS clients. That growth model is a lot different than professional services. Again, Legion, I can lower cost per lead, I can get them to demo, I can track an attribute if they close one as marketing source. Very straightforward, even as I talk about that, if you don't know what that jargon is, that was four bullet points you figured out.
00:22:25:22 - 00:22:40:13
Speaker 2
Fashion services way more complicated to even observe that journey and the talk through it. So on the flip side, besides Legion, there's dimension. This is another very popular topic on LinkedIn. And again, in our marketing spaces, if you listen this podcast.
00:22:40:19 - 00:22:41:13
Speaker 1
Is right.
00:22:41:13 - 00:23:01:16
Speaker 2
There's nothing wrong with demand. I love to mention it's, you know, let's create education and value, distribute it in the feed, just let people know how we can help them. There's something very beautiful in that, right? But essentially that works for SAS quite well because you got to differentiate your product. It's a very competitive field. You have to really show why you have product market fit.
00:23:02:10 - 00:23:20:04
Speaker 2
You have to get people to demo your product, and that's why you're doing dimension in professional services. I had no product to demo like I cannot even run that same playbook. And that's why we're really trying to think about something different. Again, I'm floating these ideas, talking on podcast until I flesh it out, but conversation generally.
00:23:20:04 - 00:23:21:16
Speaker 1
Right, right, right, right.
00:23:22:09 - 00:23:44:06
Speaker 2
That's what we call it. Conversation generation is again, if I'm exceptional services, I'll give you another example. Engineering firm, the medical devices, they help design the data that's needed to get improvement to FDA. They need to have that conversation now with clients even before they hire them. Right now, if if they get the data right now, there's a better case of them wanting to hire that professional service.
00:23:44:21 - 00:24:03:15
Speaker 2
So they need to have a conversation now. They need to build a relationship now. So we can use tactics like legion. We can use tactics like getting people on the podcast, on the live event. But really, again, the mindset is I just want have a conversation with someone right now so I can build that relationship. Maybe later on I send them content.
00:24:04:05 - 00:24:22:00
Speaker 2
Hey, great, we already talked. I did this other podcast, sadly, I'm just going to send down your LinkedIn. I think you're interested. Yeah. Those are the activities that matter, right? Where people buying from people. If we can continue to do the activities that put people first, man that that's, that's a marketing world I wanna live in.
00:24:22:19 - 00:24:43:19
Speaker 1
Yes. And I think to underscore that, I would say it's not one or the other. It's they come in a lot. A lot of times it can be a mix of all three or a mix of two. You know, I think that if if someone's listening to this and I will, where does this fit into my company? I think you have to look at your audience, right?
00:24:43:19 - 00:25:05:11
Speaker 1
Look at how are they buying what is interesting to them? What are other competitors doing in your space? I think there's a there's some people who like to look at competition. Some people don't. But I think what are they what are other competitors doing from a marketing standpoint as far as how they're reaching out to prospective buyers like their strategy?
00:25:05:11 - 00:25:46:23
Speaker 1
Right. It's not necessarily how are they doing, are they growing? But I think thinking about that is helpful because it will give you a bead on how to approach the market, how to approach your buyer and give them actually add value to what it is that they're they're wanting you to do. And you might end up with a mix of educational content that you put together and then maybe separate content with the same content that you use and distribute in a way that can be more ads and it can be for relationship building, you know, a lot of the relationships that happen in midmarket B2B are business development focused.
00:25:46:23 - 00:26:18:20
Speaker 1
It's going to be salespeople. And, you know, like you said, there's a long sales cycle, so maybe it's 6 to 18 months. So they're building relationships in order to get that contract in four months. But I think tapping into marketing team and the marketing mechanisms to help support that, you what you end up doing is you end up building brand, you end up building relationships, end up driving more leads that tell you more things about what they need, influencers, messaging, there's so many things.
00:26:18:20 - 00:26:42:00
Speaker 1
So, you know, I think it depends on the size of their team. The savviness of their lead marketer depends on a lot of factors. So it's not something that you really can just say, let's throw it all the in and start over. But I think experimenting, looking at, you know, what are some of the things that we can do at the same time and see what's working, what's not working?
00:26:42:00 - 00:27:04:20
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's definitely worth pursuing when it comes to we all know this how life gets started through relationships and that's where most impact can happen. I'll give one more sort of example or anecdote to to this idea of conversations. It's funny, you know, this is really the first time that you and I are getting better and talking.
00:27:04:20 - 00:27:23:11
Speaker 1
But we have we're very aligned in this obvious like it's very fluid, very aligned in how we think. We're I think we're both wired as the Y guys. We're looking at it philosophically first, which I think more organizations need. I if I were going to be partial, but I just think that, you know, the bigger picture helps sometimes.
00:27:25:04 - 00:27:50:06
Speaker 1
I think that looking at the marketing for like the traditional way of looking at awareness, engagement, conversion, I've started talking, working with marketing teams and started to help to change their mindset to their awareness activities that we can do. There are engagement like nurturing on email and nurturing and all that. And you know, where they can be relationship oriented.
00:27:50:16 - 00:28:15:12
Speaker 1
And again back to the you know, we always give credit to the is about like balloon videos is very hyper personalized there's ways to dial that up. But when you get to the conversion part, what I've started kind of advising is not think about it as conversions, but think about that tranche of of via prospective buyers as meaningful conversations, right?
00:28:15:18 - 00:28:49:08
Speaker 1
This is how I've been thinking about it. So you go for awareness. This is ideally what we want to do, go from awareness to engagement to a meaningful conversation as quickly as possible and as many people as possible. And in that in those meaningful conversations is where we bring in our PDR Business Development Rep, whatever their title is, and introduce in that can be done seamlessly on a podcast with three or four or five people or, you know, depending on the personality or character of the people that are on your marketing and sales team.
00:28:49:15 - 00:29:12:15
Speaker 1
It could be a salesperson. You know, I have more from dream data on and not too long ago she's a good example of that. She's on a sales team, you know, she's business development. But you would never know. You would think that she's leading their marketing, right? Because she totally gets it. And she's out there doing this. You know, she went into lives like like twice a week or something and doing a podcast and all.
00:29:13:00 - 00:29:22:10
Speaker 1
So, you know that that is the that's the kind of person you want to step over into marketing and take those meaningful conversations generally and pull them into the sales process.
00:29:23:12 - 00:29:45:20
Speaker 2
Love it. You know, I think one activity that we haven't talked about specifically, but we believe it at true point I'll shout out guerilla 76 is I work there too is customer interviews and stakeholder interviews as we should be talking to people about how they sell to people, about how they build content and products for people. And then through that activity, we're going to get so much insights to have those meaningful conversations.
00:29:46:06 - 00:30:02:13
Speaker 2
I think, again, I've worked with SAS too. That mindset was a little different. It was a little hard to get in front of customers. I think if you're in professional services like this should be your bread and butter. Like we should have a customer interview set up all the time. We have that feedback loop, that relationship feedback loop created.
00:30:02:20 - 00:30:21:18
Speaker 2
I can understand just some other things besides awareness, engagement. It's what excites them, you know, what are they skeptical about? What are the things that actually make them feel loyal? We start to pull some of these other things out and that's actually going to help our funnel, right? If you're a big content for our funnel, we really want to know the nitty gritty of like how they feel again.
00:30:22:10 - 00:30:39:03
Speaker 2
So a lot of time when I'm leading the client call it, I think people are like, Why do you do this? I'm like, I just I was like, Hey, how you feeling? Like, let me know. Do you like this? Do you not like this? I think again, change that mindset, asking different questions that seem to be different inputs and in different kind of relationship marketing.
00:30:39:19 - 00:31:07:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's almost like a counseling like half that you put on for whenever it's appropriate, you know. And again, I think about the feel like it doesn't have to be a podcast, it can be on the phone, it can be by email ish, and it can be having coffee with someone like being somebody for breakfast, coffee events, you know, getting people in a one on one or 1 to 2 environment is super beneficial.
00:31:07:12 - 00:31:46:00
Speaker 1
I mean, I don't want to go on and on about all my stories, but I had like lots of experiences of being in those one too few settings and the richness of the feedback is like yours to lose, right? Like they tell you everything and more stuff that you don't want them to tell you, you know, like goes against India is and it goes against like relationships that you're both mutually know and like it gets it's people are people but if you can take that that rich feedback and turn it into something that hits that high point for ten or 20 other people that think just like that, I feel just like that.
00:31:46:14 - 00:31:47:19
Speaker 1
That's where the magic is.
00:31:49:08 - 00:32:12:20
Speaker 2
And there's so much magic in what I'm saying. And I'm kind of probably me. And on the why and shameless plug for the purpose of marketing podcast, I think as marketers we can ask bigger questions. I know in my career as I came up it was you ran Legion campaigns, there was no questions about it, but I started to feel the customer friction and also understand the friction within myself of like this doesn't feel like good marketing.
00:32:13:15 - 00:32:34:06
Speaker 2
So when we take a step back and we ask why, like, why are we doing this? I think that's just going to make us all better. I think we're going to do different things. I think that's a theme that I talk on my show with and it's important, I think, jumping out here with you like I'm I'm energized and excited, right, to ask more why and have more conversations with people to build those relationships.
00:32:34:14 - 00:32:52:15
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's great. Well, it's been awesome having you on and I think the, you know, what we touched on is sort of like maybe a little bit more than the tip of the iceberg. We're going to travel on the surface of the water, but I struggle with that, too. I mean, as a sidebar, I struggle with like, how deep can I take?
00:32:52:15 - 00:33:22:20
Speaker 1
Someone that's just coming into this idea of getting back to relationships are getting back to, you know, 1 to 1, scaling people. But I don't know. I think it'd be cool to have you back on and let's see how we can go deeper. How can we take what we've we've put out there as sort of the the first path and and dove deeper for four companies you know lead marketer see people that are want growth but they want to do it in a way that doesn't break.
00:33:23:09 - 00:33:46:06
Speaker 1
Does it turn their culture into something that they don't want it to be? It doesn't break their culture, you know, because a lot of what we do in marketing it, it either amplifies culture in one way or another. So so I don't know. There's a lot of there's a lot there's a lot more below the surface. So we should get back together and they go for it.
00:33:46:23 - 00:33:55:07
Speaker 2
I'm down to chat any time. The way I would say as we tackle the mindset, maybe with your skill set, next skill set I want to give you. All right. Okay.
00:33:55:15 - 00:33:59:16
Speaker 1
All right. Yeah. You really got the roadmap, man. Okay, so we got two more to go.
00:33:59:16 - 00:34:00:00
Speaker 2
That's right.
00:34:00:00 - 00:34:01:00
Speaker 1
That's right. Mindset.
00:34:01:00 - 00:34:02:02
Speaker 2
Check the truth.
00:34:04:00 - 00:34:13:04
Speaker 1
I like it. I like it. Cool. All right, so I'm going to save people your way once we we put this out there, where should we send them and what should they know about you?
00:34:13:22 - 00:34:21:23
Speaker 2
Definitely. So I would definitely follow the purposeful marketing podcast. My co-host, Mary Keough, is the relationship that got me here on this podcast.
00:34:21:23 - 00:34:22:10
Speaker 1
So yeah.
00:34:22:19 - 00:34:43:22
Speaker 2
Give us both to follow on LinkedIn. I'm more video content. She does a lot of written content and she's fantastic. Follow proof point marketing for more. If you want this relationship mindset, POV and playbooks and all that, that's the stuff we're trying to build this year and we'd be happy to kind of had those conversations with you too, if you want to DMS and just ask us, how can I implement this or my marketing strategy?
00:34:44:04 - 00:34:52:09
Speaker 2
Even if you can't hire us, we want to have that conversation because those are relationships. We want to build. So those would be my plugs there. But thanks for having me, Leah. This is a lot of fun.
00:34:52:20 - 00:34:55:09
Speaker 1
Yeah, for sure. We'll do it again next time.
00:34:55:09 - 00:34:58:04
Speaker 2
Skillset skill set. That's right.
00:34:58:04 - 00:35:28:12
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to this week's podcast episode. I'm so glad you're hopefully getting some value from this and a lot of other people are too, apparently because it's starting to grow. I'm starting to get lots of feedback from all the listeners on LinkedIn and various different platforms. One of the ways that you can engage further with this podcast and with the ideas that are shared here is through our email newsletter, which we've just pretty recently launched and getting some really good traction on.
00:35:29:01 - 00:35:48:04
Speaker 1
And if you go to Harvard Murray Dot com and click on exploring growth at the top, you'll see a little spot right there. You can enter your email to sign up for it. So that's something you want to do. Please do that. Also, if you are getting value from this, please go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, leave a review.
00:35:48:15 - 00:36:01:08
Speaker 1
Hopefully five stars. We've had some spam lately, so that wasn't fun. But hey, it'd be awesome if you guys went and left. Your thoughts on, you know, what kind of value you're getting from this. But I hope you're enjoying it. We'll see you on the next one.