Todd Hockenberry – Leveraging Sales in Marketing
In this inaugural seventh episode, Lee interviews Todd Hockenberry, a marketing consultant in the manufacturing space. They discuss the role marketing plays for an industrial business and maintaining client relationships. Todd brings a wealth of knowledge over his time being a professor in the sales department and his perspective on inbound marketing.
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00:00:00:04 - 00:00:18:11
Lee Murray
Welcome back to the Exploring Growth podcast. Today my guest is marketing consultant Todd Hockenberry, where we discuss sales influence on marketing and inbound marketing for manufacturers. Stick around. All right, Todd, welcome on.
00:00:18:23 - 00:00:20:22
Todd Hockenberry
Thanks for having me, Lee. Looking forward to this.
00:00:21:24 - 00:00:41:08
Lee Murray
Let me quickly introduce you and then we'll jump into our discussion I think is going to be a good one. So, Todd and I, we met through a mutual colleague about when I was like two or three years ago and we hit it off right away. I think we're at a sushi restaurant or something. And Todd is a marketing consultant in the industrial and manufacturing space.
00:00:41:19 - 00:01:03:10
Lee Murray
Just super interesting. I love unsexy businesses. Right. It's it's awesome. Part of the reason why I'm attracted to him and his his insights, he has written a great book called Inbound Organizations. So if you are looking at inbound strategy and you're doing some of that and need some guidance, there's a great book to pick up. I've read a good bit of it.
00:01:04:08 - 00:01:22:19
Lee Murray
I don't ever read all my books, by the way. I just use them as reference. Let's see, he has been featured on too many podcasts to count. So I will try and actually has had his own podcast for a long time and is reimagining what that's going to look like. We were talking about that earlier and he's got a lot of great insights for growing businesses.
00:01:22:20 - 00:01:34:08
Lee Murray
So one other thing, he was also an adjunct professor at my alma mater, Stetson University, which is really cool in the sales department. So I'm honored to have Todd on today. Welcome, Todd.
00:01:35:13 - 00:01:45:22
Todd Hockenberry
Thanks, Lee. The I think we may have the most facial hair of any podcast combined per capita or something like that. I think if we win that we're going to win that.
00:01:46:04 - 00:01:51:09
Lee Murray
That's a good goal to have, you know, and the fact that we're already winning, that is pretty amazing.
00:01:52:08 - 00:02:12:04
Todd Hockenberry
Yeah, we met. We met at Stetson. I was I was an adjunct professor in the sales department there. And what a great school and what a great department. And the idea of teaching sales to two young people in college was really a fun environment. It was a lot of it was the kids were amazing and they really learned and they were getting great jobs coming out of school.
00:02:12:05 - 00:02:18:00
Todd Hockenberry
So there are some professional sales programs out there and their Stetson has a great one.
00:02:18:18 - 00:02:38:19
Lee Murray
Yeah, actually, no, that reminds me, I was just over there last week and the sales professor there and we both who actually introduced us to Professor Riggs. Dr. Riggs had me in kind of on a whim to talk to his senior exec sales team or sales class. And I actually recorded I'm going to post that as one of my episodes here.
00:02:39:00 - 00:03:10:22
Lee Murray
So if anybody's listening, they can click over, watch nine, enough of this. But we talked about a lot of things. You know, these are seniors that are graduating, going on to get sales positions, SDR roles primarily at a you know, they're shooting for the enterprise level some mid-tier. We talked about a lot of like what is what is sales and marketing look like today, which is super interesting conversation and how everything's changing, you know, like the traditional way of marketing being a brand and not having a personalized face to it.
00:03:11:14 - 00:03:30:15
Lee Murray
Whereas today you have a lot of like brand ambassadors if you want to call them that or, you know, companies that are, you know, putting the personal brands out there, but they work for companies. So there's a face now to marketing past the logo and it's embedded in all the content. And then sales really is starting to become part of the marketing team.
00:03:31:10 - 00:03:44:10
Lee Murray
So that whole conversation was super interesting and in fact, I'd love to have you back and do a roundtable with us three because I think that you have a lot to add to that conversation now. I'm like, Man, I wish I would have said, Let's talk about that today.
00:03:45:08 - 00:04:01:24
Todd Hockenberry
I would have I would love to do that. I'd be happy to come back and talk about that. You know, I enjoyed teaching the class because the the students came in with so many preconceptions about what sales was. And and then even the textbooks, we would we would see they were almost outdated as soon as they were printed.
00:04:02:08 - 00:04:19:16
Todd Hockenberry
And it was just fun to really talk to them and get them thinking about how important sales is to virtually any job. I can remember had a kid in the class. He was an I.T. major and I asked him, I said, Well, what do you want to do with your you know, once you get out of school? And he said, I will want to be an i.t manager or CIO somewhere.
00:04:20:02 - 00:04:32:18
Todd Hockenberry
He's like, this is an elective for me and it's kind of a filler class. And I said, Well, I said, You don't think you're ever going to use sales? He said, Probably not. I said, Really? I said, You think you're going to have to convince a board of directors to give you a budget or to spend money on a big project?
00:04:32:18 - 00:04:40:23
Todd Hockenberry
Or you have to convince the CEO to invest in new technology. And he said, Yeah. I said, Well, that's sales. And, and he was one of our best students.
00:04:41:04 - 00:05:17:06
Lee Murray
So but you forget that the people, they hold the keys to the kingdom, right? And they get to do whatever they want to do. And they ask you, why are you asking me this question? You know, what if I had to like go back and kind of repurpose the sales program, I would say, or even marketing, really like, okay, here are the major tenets to be thinking about now for the rest of this quarter or the rest of the semester, all we're going to do is every week we're going to sit down in live chat with someone who's on the front lines of sales at an organization.
00:05:17:12 - 00:05:36:05
Lee Murray
And we're going to ask them all our questions and they're going to give us the answers, and then they're going to have some little, you know, 15, 20 minute presentation for us. I think that'd be super valuable as we sit today. Now, maybe in two or three years, things will kind of form again and they'll be a little bit more formalized approach to it.
00:05:36:05 - 00:05:46:08
Lee Murray
But I think we're in such a weird space right now that that's how that's how everybody's getting their information is from people who are doing and experiencing and then giving that feedback.
00:05:46:11 - 00:06:02:18
Todd Hockenberry
Yeah, I remember when I very social channels. Yeah, when I did the class I actually brought in sales people that were friends of mine and had them to do a class and just talk about their experience or what they did and then ask questions. Because at the end of the day, I mean, sales is there's some core things that don't won't ever change about sales.
00:06:02:18 - 00:06:25:17
Todd Hockenberry
But but it's so different than it was when I started. I mean, I started out driving around with Midwest automotive plants and knocking on doors and doing lunch and learns and bringing catalogs. And, you know, there's no Internet. And and they were happy to see me. They wanted me to show up. And because I was bringing the new information and I was telling them what was going on, and they they that's not the way it is now.
00:06:25:17 - 00:06:47:04
Todd Hockenberry
So. Yeah. And competition so much greater today that your competition comes from every corner of the globe. And and again, sales is just a different animal now. And but again, some things don't change. I'm going to sign on my desk in my office it's just selling is helping and I never forget that right that it's the end of the day regardless of all this other stuff.
00:06:47:04 - 00:07:09:09
Todd Hockenberry
Stripping away your goal as a salesperson is to help the other person achieve their goals, achieve their outcomes, manage the process of change in their organization to get their team and their organization to move in the direction you know, they need to go in and again, deliver the results they're looking for. It's about helping them and it's not techniques or tricks or anything like that.
00:07:09:09 - 00:07:24:15
Todd Hockenberry
And it's about really understanding business, being an interesting person, being well read, being correct as good a business person as the, as the as the leaders are. Right. You have to understand their business like they understand it. So that's right. That's why I always love sales.
00:07:24:16 - 00:07:46:20
Lee Murray
Yeah, you're right about all of that. And I think the way that you do that is being able to synthesize all of that information so you can help. So thinking critically, right, being able to piece two pieces of information together that actually can help someone. I think that's a lot of what I don't see out there with sales people is that they think it's a 1 to 1, Hey, okay, I'm going to help people.
00:07:46:20 - 00:08:07:16
Lee Murray
I have this blog article. I'll send it to them and somehow magically that's going to change their opinion on something or their approach. But it's like, no, how does this actually apply to their business? Right. I mean, you got to think critically about how that actually plays out. So yeah, you're totally right about that. And I would say, you know, we're kind of talking more sales in our marketing, which is fine.
00:08:07:23 - 00:08:24:20
Lee Murray
It's all growth related. But I do want to talk about marketing with you because that's what you do, right? Can you give the listeners just a brief background on how you got to helping manufacturing companies with marketing just so they have context to the ideas that you're going to have?
00:08:25:02 - 00:08:56:11
Todd Hockenberry
Yes, sure, sure. My my my background is I started out in automotive industry, came out of college. I have a chemistry degree of all things and sort of working with an automotive supplier and and within a couple of years got into the sales side. I just really like the relationship piece of it. And, and so I've been in manufacturing and sales since the beginning of my career to many years ago, but so I've kind of grown up in that and I've been involved with companies that have seen rapid growth.
00:08:56:11 - 00:09:12:12
Todd Hockenberry
I've been involved with turnarounds. We took a company first when I was ever a senior executive in and part owner of, we actually took one that was dead and buried. The bank was out of the assets. They're going to break it up and we turned it around and resurrected it and it's very successful company today, so that's awesome.
00:09:12:22 - 00:09:32:17
Todd Hockenberry
I was able to see that kind of on the ground level on how that works. And then I started working with some high tech companies, was in the laser business for a while and then 28 hit the recession of 2008 and I found myself in a sales team of 100 people when I was running sales and marketing for this laser company.
00:09:32:17 - 00:09:50:22
Todd Hockenberry
And the recession hit in the my last job there was to fire half the team and then I got fired. So so I said, that's it. I'm done. Never working for anybody else again. I'm going to have my own thing. And that's when I started my own business as I've been consulting and advising ever since.
00:09:51:03 - 00:10:09:15
Lee Murray
So that's awesome. I mean, that's a such a difficult position to be put in, you know, to fire the entire team and then, then, then let you go. Like it's just seems like from a human level, it just seems so cowardice to do that. Like, you know, yeah, I can let one person go you, but I can't let everybody go.
00:10:09:15 - 00:10:15:01
Lee Murray
So I'm going to have you do that. Like, that's just dirty.
00:10:15:01 - 00:10:36:01
Todd Hockenberry
Yeah, it was brutal. And and that's why I said I'm just. I'm done. I'm going to pick and choose who I work with. I can I've had enough experience and expertize. I knew how to grow businesses and I knew how to market and sell. And I knew how to even probably more importantly, I understood how to create an organization that was primed for growth that could grow because they're not the same things.
00:10:36:01 - 00:10:55:10
Todd Hockenberry
Marketing. That's right. There's marketing expertize and their sales expertize. But putting it together in a way strategically that the organization can handle that that is ready for growth is really what I do. And and I go into companies now and we companies that have been around for a while been successful but want to kind of go to the next level.
00:10:55:10 - 00:11:02:16
Todd Hockenberry
They've hit a plateau and we help them kind of think about how the organization set up and how to create a strategy for growth. So that's really what we do.
00:11:02:16 - 00:11:31:17
Lee Murray
You know, I think that the most dangerous marketer today is one with a robust sales background, especially for the B2B side, if you know how to sell and especially if you've had I mean, and again, it's I think the younger generations can do this to post Internet, but pre Internet. I mean, I'm old, I'm dating myself, but I'm proud to say that I did sell pre-Internet.
00:11:31:17 - 00:11:49:23
Lee Murray
And if you can do that, you have that sales acumen. Like for me, for example, I'm not a sales person. Like I don't love getting up and chasing a number every day. Like, I'm not I wasn't born and bred to sell and convince someone and do all this. And I think there's an element of of, you know, you're in big numbers.
00:11:49:23 - 00:12:15:00
Lee Murray
You got to have tenacity to go after these numbers. But I understand it and I've done it and I've won at it to the degree that I now see marketing from a sales lens. And I think that's that's why you're having success, too, is because you're able to sit in the middle and say, you know, this is not a marketing, you know, it's not an end or an oral conversation, marketing or sales.
00:12:15:00 - 00:12:37:03
Lee Murray
It's an end conversation that we should be having here and working together to to produce revenue right. And I, I just see I know, you know, we're both out there in the in the consulting world and you see lots of people doing lots of different things and using lots of different terms. And always I was talking to someone about this earlier today.
00:12:37:04 - 00:12:59:22
Lee Murray
I feel like a lot of marketers do this, just sit around and confirm that they're all using the same terms. You know, it's like, do we all are we all on the same page? Like ABM means a company? Mark Okay. And what does that mean? That seems like all the podcasts I listen to. All we're talking about are these terms and we're not really getting to where I think it can be dangerous.
00:12:59:22 - 00:13:12:20
Lee Murray
And that is having marketing sales operate in the same the same space. So, you know, I'm sure when you walk through the door with with clients, they're like, yes, please, let's go.
00:13:12:20 - 00:13:36:17
Todd Hockenberry
Well, the the issue is oftentimes companies and again, I deal with a lot of B2B companies. Right. That the idea is that marketing and sales are separate. They're they're these different things. And there's this handoff or, you know, sales doesn't like marketing. They say they give them junk leads. Marketing says sales is no. What they're doing right is the kind of disconnect.
00:13:36:17 - 00:13:55:14
Todd Hockenberry
And at the end of the day, I come in with the perspective of their client and I said, Well, what is your client want? What does your customer want? They don't care about your marketing department, don't care about your sales department. They really don't care about you a whole lot. So what they care about is themselves and are you built in a way that takes care of what their issues are and their needs are that serves them.
00:13:56:04 - 00:14:16:23
Todd Hockenberry
And too often, you know, this is where I see a lot of companies get it wrong. There's especially in the manufacturing and industrial space, there's this overreliance on sales and an under appreciation of marketing. Correct? There's this for the marketing is a cost and sales is investment, right? Oh, we want to grow. Let's just hire another salesperson, right?
00:14:17:04 - 00:14:32:14
Todd Hockenberry
Oh, we want to grow. Let's go to another trade show. Right. And the marketing people, will they they take care of the details. They're kind of the tactical people. Sure. They run our email campaigns. They can take baby take care of the website. They set up the trade shows, but they're really not a strategic.
00:14:32:14 - 00:14:32:22
Lee Murray
No.
00:14:33:06 - 00:14:56:10
Todd Hockenberry
Voice at the table. And I see too many technical companies driven by the technical side. Right. It's the engineers most more often than not, the founders or the leaders or technical people, they understand the technology and the space. They're not salespeople or they're not marketing people. So too often I see the CEOs and owners of these companies not appreciating marketing.
00:14:57:06 - 00:15:23:16
Todd Hockenberry
And the key is that that, again, I hate to even say this because it's so cliche at this point, but buyers have changed because of the Internet, right? Yeah. But I still see too many companies that don't get it, that they don't create content on their website. That's not that's helpful. They don't recognize that the kind of self-serve aspect of buying today, they they do not go much beyond their catalog and what they put online.
00:15:24:02 - 00:15:47:19
Todd Hockenberry
And they they totally under appreciate this idea of inbound and they miss that early part of the process where where they're they're not getting in front of people when they're kind of researching and considering it, considering things. But they all say the same thing to me. They say some version of this. They say, you know, if we get in front of qualified prospects, we do great.
00:15:47:19 - 00:16:14:04
Todd Hockenberry
Yes. Well, well, no kidding. Okay. I hope you would I hope you would do well if you're in front of qualified process prospects. But, you know, they're not making the leap from that to. But we're not getting in front of enough qualified prospects. Why is that? And it's it's usually because they they think they haven't, you know, maybe gone to enough shows or they haven't, you know, it's very rarely that they haven't done a good job of telling their story and content.
00:16:14:16 - 00:16:31:05
Todd Hockenberry
It's very rarely that they'll very rare that they're going to say that. Now, they may say, well, we don't get a lot of people on our website or we don't get many leads. Her website, that's the symptom, right? The problem is they're not thinking content and they're not sharing it and creating anything that's valuable that attracts people to them.
00:16:31:23 - 00:16:44:13
Todd Hockenberry
That's that's the difference, right? You've got to attract people to you to get them to be interested in you. Because I believe me, I don't need to be interested in you if I don't want to be. I don't have to take your call. I don't have to take your visit. I don't have to take your email. I don't have to go to your booth.
00:16:45:19 - 00:17:01:20
Todd Hockenberry
You know, I have I have control. I do not have to pay attention. You got to give me a reason to pay attention to you. And I think to make people, companies just kind of miss that. Yeah. And they think about instead of investing, if they want growth, instead of investing in that front end piece, they typically try to invest in the back end on the sales side.
00:17:02:21 - 00:17:23:09
Lee Murray
Yeah, I agree. And you know what? It makes me think of the way I think about them in my mind are they're focused on what they've always done, which is sales have their focus on preservation, preservation, not a proactive approach to feel more fully understand who it is that they are serving and how they can serve them better.
00:17:23:16 - 00:17:47:13
Lee Murray
So this whole idea of land and expand, right? They're not even generally if they have the mentality of not even expanding the accounts they have. And I've seen that they're not even doing a great job on retention. It's just sort of preservation. I think that's how a lot of businesses operate.
00:17:47:13 - 00:18:05:24
Todd Hockenberry
Well, that the kind of cut out there at the end there. Secondly, I think you're talking about retention. The issue is the big issue. What's another big issue I see is that the ideas of marketing are not extended through the entire life of the client and that the relationship is often left to the sales team or, heaven forbid, the service organization.
00:18:05:24 - 00:18:23:16
Todd Hockenberry
Well, they need something. They'll call us, right? That's right. And there's not this proactive marketing. Right. You need to continue to market to your your audience and your customers. And I think there's a huge opportunity there to improve your communication with and build community around your customers.
00:18:24:05 - 00:18:26:05
Lee Murray
I agree. And you know, the way I look at it, I think.
00:18:26:05 - 00:18:41:01
Todd Hockenberry
It's a big opportunity and one that too many companies miss and, you know, somebody told me recently, they said, if you don't listen to your customers, your competitors will. Something along those lines. Right. So you better be listening to them.
00:18:41:22 - 00:19:09:21
Lee Murray
Well, to that point, I agree 100%. And, you know, I I think that there's the way I look at it as everything is dying, it's just at rate. Right. And us as people, we're dying, right? Companies are dying, but they're going to put themselves out of business if they continue down that path. And I don't think they really realized the severity of the way they're operating.
00:19:09:21 - 00:19:30:01
Lee Murray
So having someone come in from the outside and wake them up to the, you know, the sort of smelling salt of consulting and say, hey, you know, you kind of headed down this path and you're not paying attention to any of these things. And you got where you are doing certain things. But those things are fine, but you got to do a lot of other things too, and you got to do things a lot differently.
00:19:31:00 - 00:19:51:19
Lee Murray
I think that's step baby step number one right on the Dave Ramsey program. But it's like, who are you serving right now? Do they even like you? Are they are they loving your service? Probably not. Let's understand why. How can we make that better? Right. What else do they have needs for that? Your competitors are probably already serving you.
00:19:51:19 - 00:20:11:04
Lee Murray
Just waiting. You know the lions that are sitting there on the edge of the the carcass that's been killed and they're just waiting to take over the whole account. You're about to lose these accounts, right? Like, there's so many aspects that I uncover when I when I meet with companies that generally they're they're they're missing out on all of these things.
00:20:11:04 - 00:20:42:07
Lee Murray
It's not just one thing. On the flip side, I if I meet a company that that gets to a large degree, but they're trying I would say in their terms, they're trying to optimize their growth generally. You're going to see that at some degree they have tried to to focus on these areas of retention and expansion and and and new growth, you know, maybe not even new market share, but, you know, new products to current customers and that kind of thing.
00:20:42:18 - 00:21:04:01
Lee Murray
And that's where I love I love meeting with those clients because they're they're they're they're they're working, they're attentive. You know, they have insights. It's just about okay, well, I don't know how to go from here to there. And so with a, you know, a few questions of pulling those insights out, it becomes clear to them because they're already down that path that, oh, I see.
00:21:04:01 - 00:21:35:20
Lee Murray
Okay, well, this is how we can deploy those insights, right? This is how we take what we've learned from our current customers and what we're seeing in the market and deploy it. And then you start to work towards that. Okay. Well, yeah, we've been doing trade shows every year and this is how we feel like it's going. But maybe we could do something more with what we're doing at the trade show to create content that can now be scaled on other platforms or, you know, just from a social standpoint or be utilized from an inbound standpoint.
00:21:35:20 - 00:21:53:02
Lee Murray
Again, you know, proactively going out there and trying to capture more of the market that are that are looking for stuff. That's where it's like building the bridge for them to say, okay, here are all the aspects of how you grow. You know, where where are you? Where's the gap? Let's try this.
00:21:53:07 - 00:22:14:12
Todd Hockenberry
There's again, there's there's a kind of a culture of growth. I talk about it and I talk about like an operating system for growth and the putting the customer at the center of that and then taking those insights and acting on them across the organization. That is the reason marketing should be central to the strategy. They should be in that boardroom.
00:22:14:12 - 00:22:37:06
Todd Hockenberry
They should be in those big meetings. Right. That's why the CEO needs understand what's going on, because it's not marketing as a tactic. It's marketing as this is what our customers are seeing, experiencing and living, and how do we impact that? That's the purpose of the business. So it's it's a shame if products are driving that and not not marketing, but that's unfortunate the way it is in too many places.
00:22:38:11 - 00:23:07:04
Lee Murray
I want to shift gears really quick to specifically talk about inbound marketing. Where do you feel like inbound is at right now? Kind of state of inbound marketing from John Hockenberry right. Like first of all, describe I think more broadly because I think a lot of people listening this may not know what inbound marketing really means and then where do you feel like we're at and where it's going?
00:23:07:04 - 00:23:34:15
Todd Hockenberry
Yeah, inbound marketing in high level general sense is, is the idea that you need to be attractive as opposed to interruptive in your outreach to the market. You you pull people towards you because you're creating such interesting content, helpful content or helpful community or resources. And whether it's social media or the internet or websites or even it could be live events, right.
00:23:34:15 - 00:23:52:02
Todd Hockenberry
You're you're the idea of inbound is that you're attractive and you're you're kind of it's about them coming to you as opposed to you banging them on the head and interrupting that. It's that's essentially the long and short of it. I will talk about like you could do a cold call. Well, what could be more interruptive than a cold call?
00:23:52:02 - 00:24:07:19
Todd Hockenberry
Right. Well, guess what? There's a way to do that in an inbound way where you can call somebody. I look at cold calls is if I do my homework and I really have a good message and I've targeted you and I focus and I really know how to help you. And I know you have these issues and I know how to help you.
00:24:07:19 - 00:24:27:22
Todd Hockenberry
I owe you the buyout, my effort to reach out to you. And it may include a call. Right. There's a right and wrong way to do that. Right. So inbound is about being attractive and want, you know, creating marketing in a culture that attracts people to you. And again, it's starting to include sales and service and customer success.
00:24:28:06 - 00:24:51:22
Todd Hockenberry
And our book was inbound organization where we were taking these ideas and applying them to the entire organization and including things like a legal department and accounting and finance and and there's ways to be inbound. So ultimately, to me, inbound is about tailoring your outreach and your business to your customers. It's kind of that simple as opposed to saying, this is what we want to be.
00:24:52:05 - 00:25:26:09
Todd Hockenberry
You, you do or buy what we want to sell you and or act the way we want you to act or or or or else. So and again, inbound to the state of inbound to me is it's mainstream. It's it's kind of marketing. Now, who doesn't? You know, there are people that don't focus on it. But at the end of the day, if you think about influencer marketing, I always tell CEOs, you know, ask CEOs, you know, if you're going to learn about what's going to come in your market eventually if you're B2B and look at consumer marketing, really talk to your kids.
00:25:26:11 - 00:25:48:24
Todd Hockenberry
Yeah. Talk about what your kids are doing right there on TikTok. Right. Who's doing manufacturing on TikTok? It's probably somebody. Yeah, but I guarantee you, in ten years, that's where many people will be posting manufacturing industrial videos on TikTok. They're going to be there. Yeah. Yeah. Because remember, these young people today are your buyers of tomorrow, right? So they're not going to change to the way you want to buy.
00:25:48:24 - 00:26:22:05
Todd Hockenberry
They're going to buy the way they want to buy. So, you know, study. You know, I look at, you know, inbound as as as part of the marketing mix. It's the traditional inbound was really about content and marketing and or website that's expanded. But the idea, the mindset of inbound is to me is the most important piece because regardless of the tactics, how you attract people, if you have that mindset, you're going to create things that are attractive, that people want to be part of that's inbound to me, right?
00:26:22:11 - 00:26:36:19
Todd Hockenberry
So to me, it's strong to me that that mindset is the winning mindset for the future and the companies that get it right are going to be the ones that win. The companies that think they can just continue to hammer people over the head with the same old messages. They're the ones are going to lose.
00:26:38:01 - 00:27:02:11
Lee Murray
Yeah. And you know, I think as you extrapolate that into from the mindset into practice, from my perspective, it's all about creating a strategy of how you're going to deploy that mindset. Right? And I'm saying it like that because I, I, people are listening to this. They're running companies and they're like, you know, it's just stale. We get it.
00:27:02:11 - 00:27:18:17
Lee Murray
We need to grow. We want to do things we have money to spend or, you know, we need a small team, whatever it may be. How do we do it? Right. Well, first, it does start with a mindset, like you said, and if if they say, okay, well, we could get there quickly or we're there now, how do we do that?
00:27:18:17 - 00:27:49:14
Lee Murray
I think it's it's not about all the the latest tactic that they may hear, because I think what happens and I'm cognizant of this like as I'm launching this podcast, Arms the World, being a consumer of information myself and an A business owner and all that, I think you can easily get caught up in the latest tactic. Everybody's on Tik Tok, you've got to be on TikTok or you know, you need to do Google ads or you need to Facebook guys, whatever.
00:27:49:14 - 00:28:15:08
Lee Murray
The latest thing is, you can get caught up in it. And I think what you're saying here is it's not as much about the tactic as it is about the high level thinking about how you're sort of authentically taking your company and your team and your brand to your market, to your audience. And if you've got that as a focus, then you can start putting in the tactical part of it that forms that initial strategy.
00:28:15:09 - 00:28:33:01
Lee Murray
You don't have to be perfect, you know. But I think people get caught up in a silver bullet, like, what can we do that will get us more, like you said, more qualified people that we can close? Well, that's going to put you out of business eventually, or you're going to run yourself so ragged that you're, you know, it's not worth it for you.
00:28:34:16 - 00:28:37:23
Lee Murray
So I love that. I think the mindset is is is key.
00:28:39:18 - 00:28:43:04
Todd Hockenberry
I mean, we call that chasing the shiny thing.
00:28:43:18 - 00:28:43:24
Lee Murray
Yeah.
00:28:44:12 - 00:28:46:08
Todd Hockenberry
So we call that chasing the shiny thing.
00:28:46:10 - 00:29:09:07
Lee Murray
That's right. That's right. You know, all the time now. And I'm I'm a you know, I'm a victim of it as well. I mean, we've all done it to some degree in some at some form. But it's it's stepping back and it being objective about where you're going and saying, what are we doing with our company and how how do we how do we actually take the insights we have and do something with them?
00:29:10:11 - 00:29:27:04
Lee Murray
You know, that's that's getting you down the road to to more of an inbound method. And we're kind of getting close to the end here. So I want to wrap it up with some questions for you, but I definitely want to have you back because I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you about a lot of things, actually.
00:29:27:04 - 00:29:57:03
Lee Murray
But I think our next thing needs to be us and John getting together in a roundtable and talking about sales and marketing. Because you've got the sales side. We've both kind of got a sales background. I think that'd be such an interesting conversation to have. But as we as we wrap up for this session, if you could change the mind of a small growing businesses owner, CEO marketing, you know, VP marketing about anything, it would have to be marketing or sales about growth.
00:29:57:03 - 00:29:57:17
Lee Murray
What would it be?
00:29:59:10 - 00:30:25:22
Todd Hockenberry
I would say invest in the customer experience, right? The entire experience of working with you and invest as much effort and intellectual rigor into that as you do into lean manufacturing or your business processes, your for your financial system or your your product quality or if you're in software, you're DevOps and how you manage software development, right? Put as much thought into the experience of working with you as you possibly can.
00:30:26:07 - 00:30:46:05
Todd Hockenberry
I can't tell you how many people I'm so tired of, like great companies and I try to call a human being and I get stuck in the phone tree. Press one. Do this. Oh, my goodness. Do you realize I called you? I want to talk to a human being. Don't give me a machine. Right? If I want a self-serve, I'll self-serve on your website, right?
00:30:46:05 - 00:31:02:10
Todd Hockenberry
Yeah. So I tell CEOs all this, this all the time, like, have you seen your website lately? Have you tried it? You've used it. Is it good? Yeah. Do you like it or does it just look pretty? And they just they just gave you a nice, pretty thing to make you happy. But it's. I can't get what I need, right?
00:31:02:10 - 00:31:21:15
Todd Hockenberry
It's not helpful. So I mean, to me, look at your entire experience. Look at how you ship things. Look at your what happens when the phone rings, look at look at what happens when an invoice goes out or all of it. Right? Make it so good and so easy to use and so wonderful to work with you that I just I'm so happy to be part of this.
00:31:21:15 - 00:31:42:18
Todd Hockenberry
Right. I want to work with you, not just the product, not just the software, the whole experience. Right? Just focus on it. Obsess over that's the right word. Obsess over it. Yeah. Because that in the end of the days, that's your only competitive advantage. There are very few products out there that you can say on the product level, on the quality level, on the features level, I can't get pretty doggone close to what you have.
00:31:42:23 - 00:31:44:07
Todd Hockenberry
Yeah. Somewhere else, right.
00:31:44:07 - 00:32:09:07
Lee Murray
Yeah. It's very hard. You know I, I think I agree 100% like thousand percent. That is, that is lacking for a lot of companies. And to tie all this together with the inbound mindset we're talking about, if you were to just do that and you increase that experience and you did one thing a month, you say, we're going to increase how people, you know, hit our website and interact with us.
00:32:10:01 - 00:32:35:00
Lee Murray
There is the marketing content. If you document that and then put that out there wherever and say, Hey, we're getting better for you. It's just a simple as this we're getting better for you. Here's a video and what we did to improve for you. And there you go. I mean it that that's so simple to do. But I think it's lost because again, it goes back to that mentality.
00:32:35:00 - 00:32:42:09
Lee Murray
They're not thinking about the user experience, so therefore they're not really thinking about the customer. And it all kind of goes together.
00:32:44:23 - 00:33:05:02
Todd Hockenberry
Yeah, one of my favorite things is chat, right? That's pretty common on B2B site or B2C sites, but I have been you've actually clients and I begged them to use chat and I've done this with so many clients and every time they do it, they get so many leads. I had one client that was getting they were getting something like 50 contact us filled out a month.
00:33:05:16 - 00:33:05:19
Lee Murray
And.
00:33:05:19 - 00:33:30:02
Todd Hockenberry
We talked, we turned on chat and the first month they got over 200 chats plus the same. It was like they got five times as many outreach as through their contact as mate. I had another client actually sold a $20,000 piece of equipment over a chat. The first day they turned it on, the marketing department sold a $20,000 piece of equipment and then they'd have turning chat off because the sales department was mad that the marketing people sold a machine.
00:33:30:03 - 00:33:32:12
Todd Hockenberry
Oh, God, that's that. That's the whole mindset.
00:33:32:22 - 00:33:37:01
Lee Murray
It's just that mindset. If there ever was a story to to explain mindset.
00:33:38:01 - 00:33:59:17
Todd Hockenberry
Yeah. So there's again, I like to think of the 1% improvement rate, improve 1% every day or every week and just keep stacking those improvements up and make that experience better than your competitors and better than because at the end of the day, you're not just competing with your actual competitors, you're competing with Amazon, right? Yes, I use Amazon every day.
00:33:59:23 - 00:34:06:06
Todd Hockenberry
Yeah, I love it. And that's what I want. I want my buying experience to be something like that. That's what people expect.
00:34:06:06 - 00:34:26:22
Lee Murray
So give it to him. Yeah. I mean, when you say your competitor competing with Amazon, I think people could think, well, I'm not competing with Amazon. Well, no, not literally. But if you if someone is your customer that also buys from Amazon, they're expecting you. I mean, your act naturally have to be like Amazon. Unfortunately, you have to keep up.
00:34:27:04 - 00:34:36:06
Lee Murray
And if you're not anywhere close to that, they're going to say, well, this is what I'm used to. Your website, right? Okay.
00:34:36:09 - 00:34:50:05
Todd Hockenberry
So again, I don't mean literally competing with Amazon, right? You know, I mean, what I mean is, you know, sending me recommendations based on my history and yes, communicating with me regularly and making the you know, getting things quickly, that kind of stuff.
00:34:50:09 - 00:35:05:22
Lee Murray
Right. Okay. Let's wrap this up with a final well, actually, two questions. Where can manufacturers find you?
00:35:05:22 - 00:35:12:02
Todd Hockenberry
They their you cut out. I didn't hear the question.
00:35:12:17 - 00:35:30:06
Lee Murray
I said I. Okay. My back. Can you hear me now? You're back. Okay, cool. All right. So I took those manufacturers that are listening to this and they want to find you. Where can they find you?
00:35:30:06 - 00:35:49:08
Todd Hockenberry
I'm not hard to find my name. Todd Hockenberry, dot coms, my website check me out on LinkedIn. They're just search dot Hockenberry You'll find me and I've got a new newsletter. We launched an industrial executive. Now I would love you to sign up there. We send it out every week. So it's just my name. Todd. I can Broadcom and then LinkedIn the same thing.
00:35:49:08 - 00:35:51:15
Todd Hockenberry
Those are the two best ways to go.
00:35:51:24 - 00:36:04:12
Lee Murray
And then lastly, resources. What resources do you go to to, you know, when you're trying to learn about growth, podcasts, books, people, you know, whatever.
00:36:04:12 - 00:36:23:04
Todd Hockenberry
You know, I try to get out of my comfort zone and try to think about and not just read sales and marketing things. I'm a big biography and history guy. I love to read real stories about real companies, and so I'm looking for books like that for people that have been successful not only in business but also in other fields.
00:36:23:15 - 00:36:44:05
Todd Hockenberry
I love history, right? So like I'm, I'm looking for for success and looking for people the way people win in other places, not just in my lane, because kind of us arts marketing people can kind of get into a mindset where we're talking about the buzzwords and all those things. I want to kind of get out of my comfort zone.
00:36:44:18 - 00:37:08:19
Todd Hockenberry
So if you're B2B, I would say look at what B2C marketing is doing today. Look at what we, you know, ask your kids, right? Ask your kids what's influencing them and what are they paying attention to and why and get out of your comfort zone. But if nothing else, I would say CEOs and executives, you know, pick a couple of marketing leaders and pay attention to them.
00:37:09:05 - 00:37:20:02
Todd Hockenberry
And, you know, just try to kind of understand where where, where some new ideas are coming from. And don't just assume, you know, that because you haven't done it, it's not worth doing.
00:37:21:12 - 00:37:34:20
Lee Murray
That's great. Thanks again, Todd, very much. Enjoyed it and definitely good to have you back for that roundtable. But anything else you want to you want to say before we go?
00:37:34:20 - 00:37:55:14
Todd Hockenberry
Keep doing this, Lee. I love it. I love talking about growth and all you leaders out there. It's a great time to be running a company of great opportunities to do amazing things. And and the people that I work with in that make things that are manufacturing, industrials are super smart people that have great products and really know how to help people.
00:37:55:14 - 00:38:04:23
Todd Hockenberry
And I love working with them. And again, just get out of your head. Think about the experience and you'll be just fine.
00:38:05:15 - 00:38:31:12
Lee Murray
That's great. All right. Thanks again, Todd. And we'll I'll be talking to you soon here. Really appreciate you tuning into this episode of Exploring Growth. I'm trying to get this in the hands of as many growing businesses as possible so they can take this practical wisdom in deployed in their companies or with their teams. If you're getting some value out of this show and know someone who should listen as well, would you consider sharing with them or leave a positive review on the platform which you're listening are watching?
00:38:31:23 - 00:38:40:16
Lee Murray
YouTube audience leave a comment below something you liked or your perspective on what we discussed. I'm grateful for everyone that tunes in every week. Let's keep exploring.