The Bacon Podcast with Brian Basilico | CURE Your Sales & Marketing with Ideas That Make It SIZZLE!

I was listening to a podcast interview with comedian Mike Birbiglia. I was not familiar with him, but I found his take on comedy interesting.

He believes that comedians have a one-on-one relationship with their audiences. Social media and podcasts can help to create a more intimate relationship with fans. Some influencers lose that connection because they become an outsized version of themselves. They get lost in the audience’s abyss and lose the connection with individuals. They become unapproachable.

I find the same thing with marketing. We tend to lose sight of that one-on-one relationship and get lost in the abyss of the avatar.

A comedian is selling entertainment with jokes. You, on the other hand, are selling profits or solutions through hardware, software, and services.

As a sales and marketing organization, you need to craft a story around your products and services that will resonate with individual buyers.

Getting potential customers to know, like, and trust you is a journey. Each has a unique place in the Customer Journey.

I want to do something a little different today. I want to share with you my why. If you can figure out your why, I believe you are halfway to success. Simon Sinek tells us to start with why. But I believe that why is not all-encompassing and as simple as finding one why on your way to the top.

I believe there are a series of whys. Why are you in or running a business? Why are you in the niche or market that you serve? Why do you offer the specific products or services you sell?

The other thing I have found is that, over time, your why can change and evolve as you change and evolve.

I believe that understanding the “why” questions and how others may perceive you is not only useful but critical in business. It can help you get a peek into how clients, prospects, and vendors may perceive you before you start to interact. Then, the rest is up to you to collect data from interactions.

How do you define success? Success is not measured like temperature with a static scale or counting system. It is an abstract system that is different for every person and business.

With today’s Attention Economy, you may think that likes and clicks are the most important metric. But I am here to tell you that profits are the main thing to measure in business. Profits come from sales.

In this Attention Economy, companies are trying different tools and techniques to stand out. You have two invaluable assets that others don’t have: relationships with your current and past customers and their contact information. In other words, you already have their attention!

Creating USP messages and thought leadership content that is focused on those who already know you is faster, cheaper, and better than trying to snag the attention of people who don’t already know, like, and trust you.

AI is machine learning. It’s great for repetitive tasks. It collects knowledge and synthesizes it into useful compilations. AI machine learning can be predictable.

“I” learning is what we do when we interact with people. It’s as unpredictable as an amateur golf swing. Interacting with humans requires empathy, psychology, self-awareness, and patience. It is time-consuming and can have different results on different days.

Interacting with people is how we do business. People do business with people, and although AI can help, it cannot replace human-to-human interaction.

In the world of generating leads, social networks, and business in the post-pandemic economy, it’s not just connections that matter. It’s who you are connecting with and who they have in their networks that matter. It’s your job to stay connected and keep you, your business, and your content and concepts top of mind with them. Active connections create relationships, businesses, and referrals.

In business, we need to embrace systems to align people with processes. Companies spend time and money on systems to speed up or simplify processes. The one thing that stands in the way of business systems being effective is people.

You are working with a group of people with different life experiences, goals, and beliefs. As much as we try, we can’t dig deep into each individual and try to align them based on their unique perspective, so we try to find a middle ground with the expectation of varying degrees of adaptation.

We then create documents and training to help the alignment process. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) help us to set expectations, give instructions, and align expectations. Then, just like a kindergarten recital, you have some who fidget, adlib, or move to the beat of their own drum.

With marketing, we often utilize systems and SOPs to reach our current, past, and prospective customers. We would all love it if one system (law, scripture, or proclamation) reached all three audiences because it would simplify and reduce time and expense.

Yet, when you define success as a sale, it’s one person with a team of decision-makers that you ultimately must convince to buy from you rather than your competition.

Businesses, especially ones that have well-established systems and methodologies, tend to ebb and flow. It’s pretty common for a business to slow in the dog days of summer and pick up in the fall, but I hear frustrations from some and jubilation from others.

I was conversing with a client about how business has changed since COVID-19 (2021-2022). Before that time, you could meet people in person at networking events, conferences, and more. Marketing and connection emails were being sent and opened (albeit at a 20-30% open rate). Phone calls were being received and returned. In most ways, it was not easy, but it was feasible to create leads through standard means that have worked for years.

More recently, ads and content have flooded Google and social media. That worked well for a while, but Google Search is being replaced with AI and greater ad competition (and cost).

Organic marketing starts with gathering data about your current customer base and reaching them with thought leadership content that focuses on what is top of mind with them. Then, you can find out what topics or slants on solutions are available and focus on them briefly.

I can guarantee you one thing: Doing more of the same or spending more money on the problem will probably not create a solution.

I had the opportunity to travel to the South Carolina Coast for my son’s wedding. However, I dreaded the idea that renting a house or condo was the only way to stay on Edisto Island. I had visions of Florida or Myrtle Beach, where the coast has huge hotels and condos.

When it comes to marketing a B2b business online, it’s more like Edisto than Myrtle Beach. Edisto is trying to reach a niche audience that is harder to find and communicate with. Yet, it can only serve a limited number of customers. They would love more sales, but scaling takes time and resources.

When it comes to using LinkedIn to grow sales, many thoughts, techniques, and tools are being pushed, sold, and pontificated on. The problem is that LinkedIn users are not on the platform to be sold. They are there to build networks, learn new things, and, frankly, find opportunities (like jobs).

When I was a kid, I did not have to walk to school uphill, both ways, in the snow! But it was before you could buy calculators and computers in the dollar store.

I am trying to remember any algebra, trig, or calculus that I actually use today. Much of it was based on formulas and principles. I know it’s used in science and computing, but I’m in sales, marketing, and advertising.

Most of the math I do today is primarily in accounting and spreadsheets. There is a bit of geometry involved in creating art in Photoshop. Art and music use geometry, math, and formulas.

Business is about math. Income minus expenses equals profits. Advertising is not any different. You want to spend as little as possible to increase sales to make more profit.

Let’s look at relationship marketing as MATH. Or better yet, and an acronym. MATH = Meet Audiences (with)Targeted Help.

To sum up, MATH is HARD. But if you want to add more customers and multiply your profits, you should subtract some old processes and then divide and conquer to help the right people at the right time.

.In this episode… We will discuss how MATH = Meet Audiences (with)Targeted Help and could help lead to future success.

Growing old means having another day to learn, live, love, and grow. If you choose to continue to learn every day, you acquire wisdom. That wisdom may or may not help you become more successful, but I find that to stay relevant in business, you have to continue to follow trends and learn from experts who may be both younger and older than you!

When it comes to marketing, I think we need a team of specialists to help us deal with what ails our business pain. Often, what is diagnosed as a lack of traffic to a website is actually caused by a process associated with the end goal… producing more sales.

One issue with healthcare is you see a bunch of doctors. They take notes and fill them into a database. Then, the other doctors can read the notes and do their best to interpret the meaning behind the entries. Rarely do they ever get on the phone or an online meeting to collaborate. Each acts like an informed silo.

Marketing (like healthcare) may become disconnected and even redundant if you work with multiple individuals (or only one or two). Just as sales rely on good marketing, your website visitors rely on quality information that is easy to find and navigate. Finally, you want to capture as much data about who is visiting and where they are going as possible.

One big difference between Chicago and Raleigh is traffic. Chicago has basic north-south east-west routes and a lake that stops you from going east at one point. Raleigh has roads that can go east-west-north-south within a few miles, and you cannot live without a GPS. Also, Chicago has many 8-12 lane roads while Raleigh has 2-6 at most points. Yet, it takes almost twice the time to go the same distance in Chicago as it does here in Raleigh.

I like to think of Chicago traffic as consumer traffic on the internet. It takes a fairly direct route from searching for a product or service to getting people to that exit ramp (right before the shopping cart). It’s a 12-lane road that gives consumers fairly direct choices based on price or website authority (think Amazon).

I like to think of Raleigh traffic as business-to-business traffic on the internet. There are fewer lanes and roads. It’s more scenic because most B2b sales don’t go directly from search to shopping cart. It’s harder to get Google to serve up your content because chances are your company is smaller and has less authority than, say, a big Fortune 500 that offers what you do on a bigger scale to a larger audience.

You have to find out where your prospects are and give them a free GPS to end up and interact with your website.