Sales and Cigars | Matt Anderson | Think Differently About Marketing | Episode 156

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, Walter Crosby with Healy Sales Development, your host of Sales and Cigars. Today's episode is How to Think Differently About Marketing with my buddy Matt Anderson. And Matt and I have been talking for probably nine, ten months about marketing facilitations

[00:00:16] and the things that we need to think about. And during that time he started to work on a book and he completed the book and he's got it out on Amazon. Here it is, first fixture message.

[00:00:29] In the show notes we'll have all the details on it but you can go find it on Amazon. First fixture message. So today we kind of tee it up like why he wrote the book,

[00:00:38] how it's more of a manual for a CEO than it is a marketing book. It really helps us understand the things that we need to do to fix marketing as a business owner. We can hire professionals, we can hire people that are going to execute on tactics

[00:00:55] and run campaigns and run great ads but if we don't have this part fixed it's not going to work well. And so he created this graph, this image and that's what we talk about here and it really breaks down everything we need to do going forward.

[00:01:11] So go grab a cocktail, grab a cigar, strap in for another fun episode of Sales and Cigars. So Matt welcome back to Sales and Cigars. Glad to be back Walter, happy 2024.

[00:01:45] Yeah we're recording this in the middle of January and Matt and I haven't had a lot of chance to chat since the New Year. So I don't say happy new year after the 5th of January, it's just sort of my personal rule.

[00:02:00] Yeah, that's my mom's birthday, that's usually my cutoff too but I'm making a special exception for you. Happy new year. So we've been having conversations about how to think differently about marketing, trying to help that business owner, entrepreneur, that CEO

[00:02:18] understand what is important in marketing from their perspective and what they need to understand.

[00:02:26] And we've been having fun with those conversations, we've been trying to keep them at a level that allows people to really start to pivot a little bit and think about what they need to do. And you went ahead and wrote a book, right?

[00:02:40] And I have a copy over here, first fix your message, which I'm going to hold up there. And you can see I've got a bunch of little post-it notes along the side.

[00:02:52] And congratulations, it's a big deal because your book is about three times the size of the one I wrote. And it really gets into some meaty things so congratulations. I appreciate that, it's been a fun thing and partly inspired by our conversations.

[00:03:10] That's nice because one of the things that, I mean I'm looking at this, maybe you can tee this up for the audience but I'm looking at this as almost a manual. It's not a textbook boring and dry, it's not a novel.

[00:03:27] It's really, like here's what you need to do, here's what you need to go think about to be ready to go do your own marketing or hire some knucklehead to come help you with your marketing. But I mean is that a good description?

[00:03:42] That's the kind of book I was trying to write. You know, like I said this is partly inspired by the conversations we've been having over the last year and thinking about your audience and what they might need to know about marketing to be successful with the professional market.

[00:03:56] The professional marketers that they work with. At the same time, I had a friend reach out after a number of years and he has a small business that's been pretty successful for about 10 years but he's been kind of stuck in place for the last five.

[00:04:10] And he was starting to read a bunch of marketing books and when I reached out and spoke with him, I realized none of the books that he was reading is good at books as they were.

[00:04:22] You know, famous authors really well regarded marketing books were actually going to help him do what he needed to do to push through this growth plateau, right because he's not a professional marketer. He's a business owner.

[00:04:34] And that got me thinking about the clients I've served over the years hundreds of them. And I've worked in a variety of ad agencies and I've freelanced and I've been on the other side of the table. I've run marketing departments at $100 million companies.

[00:04:52] And when I look back at all the different campaigns that we've had, you know, the professional marketers I've worked with are all really talented. I've worked with some just incredible creative directors and designers and copywriters.

[00:05:05] But, you know, when I was in ad agencies we had clients that we would just hit it out of the park for the campaigns that we ran one national awards they garnered millions, tens of millions in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars in new sales for the client over a number of years.

[00:05:23] And, you know, the clients were really happy. It made in, you know, for some of them it made the difference between going bankrupt and being able to retire wealthy. It made, you know, other companies that made shareholders a ridiculous return on their investment.

[00:05:41] It meant that they could hire more people, you know, when our clients found the right message and inspired their workers and gave them new meaning in their work and created workplace culture and all sorts of amazing things.

[00:05:54] But these very same agencies, these very same creative directors and these very same designers on the other hand sometimes no matter how hard they tried and no matter how creative they felt for some clients it just didn't work.

[00:06:08] And, you know, we had campaigns that would squander tens of thousands of dollars even hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment and have very little to show for it.

[00:06:18] And so when I started thinking about and looking at, excuse me, all those examples, I kept returning to one underlying reason that separated the kind of raging successes from those that kind of crashed and burned.

[00:06:34] And that difference was what I would describe as the marketing skills of our clients.

[00:06:41] It was the information that the client brought to us, what they asked us to do, how they interacted with us and, you know, the overall vision that they had for their business, which we were trying to market that didn't really connect with their audience.

[00:06:58] And at that point, it didn't matter how creative we were or how professional we were in developing the marketing for these clients, the clients that didn't have the right message to start with. Ultimately their marketing didn't do what they wanted it to do for them.

[00:07:18] You know, it's sort of like the old computer adage, garbage equals garbage out.

[00:07:24] And so, you know, what I realized partly through talking to you partly through talking to this friend of mine is that there really isn't a book out there written that tells the business owner what they need to know to be successful with their marketing.

[00:07:37] So I put on the shelf something else I was writing at the time that was maybe more a little bit like a textbook that you might that you were describing and I decided to write this book instead and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

[00:07:51] Well, I'm about halfway through. And I'm taking my time because what you just described is exactly what I've experienced. It's the and what I have experienced where if if we're, let's just say we're in Iowa. Right. And we want to go to Mexico.

[00:08:19] And we decide to go north from Iowa. It's going to take a long fucking time to get to Mexico. Yeah, you're going to go through a lot of ice and snow on the way to.

[00:08:33] Some water and then come back up right it's we're going to have to circumnavigate longitudinally the if the audience doesn't understand go get a map because I was right in the middle of the country.

[00:08:47] We need to go south. And if we start off that direction, which is, it's not going to work. And it's really, it's really important for that business owner to not have to worry about the tactics part of it.

[00:09:02] The design part of it, but at least figure out if I want to go to Canada or do I want to go to Mexico? Right. Is it which way am I going or do I want to go to California right maybe that's the right way.

[00:09:14] Maybe we're thinking about it the whole wrong way. And you know when I was sitting on the plane and I was reading this, this the first part of the book I got the page 40.

[00:09:26] And you have that pyramid that explains the various aspects of, you know, we'll have the pyramid up and we'll put it in the show notes so people can find it.

[00:09:39] Preferably go by the damn book and really start to navigate this for yourself, especially if you're struggling with with marketing, but it's a pyramid that's broken into sections. And the foundational elements are critically important, you know, and then you have that that messaging component in the center.

[00:10:01] And then, you know, and then you have that the assets that what everybody thinks about is marketing. So, yeah, if I could interrupt you in a second before we kind of show this pyramid. I think your analogy of the map right is a really good one.

[00:10:18] And just to extend like a squirrel man. Exactly. It just just to kind of extend the analogy for a second and close the loop on what we were talking about in the introduction here. If you say I want to go to Mexico, and I want to head north.

[00:10:35] And you hire a professional guide to take you. The professional guide is probably thinking, oh, he's looking for an adventure. You know, so yeah, I can take you to Mexico by going north we can circumnavigate that way.

[00:10:48] And they'll probably outfit you with best snow, snow machines in the world and the right clothing and, you know, they'll bring weapons to fend off the polar bears and, you know, Arctic tents. And you'll have a grand adventure and you'll spend a ton of money doing there.

[00:11:05] And if it's a really great professional guide, they might actually get you to Mexico that way. And that's sort of the position that professional marketers are often put in, right? They know you want to go to Mexico and they know you want to go north.

[00:11:20] And so they figure out the way to get you there. It may not be the way the best way to go to Mexico. And it may not be cost effective. It may not be the most successful, but that's what you wanted to do. And that's what you asked.

[00:11:35] So that's what I'm going to give you. And I'm going to interrupt you. So where is that? To me, that person who's running the marketing component, whether that's a business development person for the agency or somebody in a creative role or whatever.

[00:11:54] Shouldn't somebody say, why do you want to go this way? Yeah. They should know that that's not necessarily the role, but it just seems like if you're looking at this and you understand the company at some point, you should be able to say, really north.

[00:12:16] I really want to go north to get to Mexico from Iowa. If you're in Ecuador, okay, maybe. Yeah, totally. And that's, you know, this is where analogies start to break down a little bit.

[00:12:31] But it's, I've had that conversation with a lot of clients and I'm often because I'm hired as a strategist able to persuade them. No, no, no, no, it's a lot easier to go this way. Just trust me.

[00:12:44] But, you know, a lot of marketers won't do that because, you know, they may have snow machines they have to sell. Right? Yeah. You know, people that they need to be busy, right?

[00:12:55] And so if you come to me and you say, my business is broken, my marketing isn't doing what I needed to, I think I need a new logo. And I have a designer who's not busy right now, who's really good in creating logos.

[00:13:08] And so if you're like, oh, this logo isn't very good and your business would be better if you had a good logo. I'm going to probably sell you a logo because it's easy to sell a logo to you. And you already want it.

[00:13:19] And I might have learned that if I try to convince you you don't need a logo, you need a website instead. You're probably not going to hire me to do anything because, you know, you just want the damn logo.

[00:13:30] And so marketers often learn that it's easier to go along with the client. And I think it's easier than that because it's never really as clear as looking for directions on a map. Right?

[00:13:43] And so say a lot of your friends have places in Ecuador and every time they go to Mexico, they go north. And you know that they got to Mexico by going north. It was successful for them. Now it might be you have a completely different business.

[00:13:58] It's located in Canada. And going north isn't going to get you to Mexico. You find it really hard to believe because you have all these brilliant case studies and these successful companies got all this amazing news coverage.

[00:14:10] And every time they needed to go to Mexico, they went north. So you're convinced you should go north too. And so this book is sort of an attempt to try to educate business owners and entrepreneurs who may not have as much experience with marketing.

[00:14:27] And so we haven't worked with hundreds of clients to see what works and doesn't work and to really kind of figure out how to connect with customers in a variety of industries and sell them stuff.

[00:14:38] If you don't have that experience, and this is your first business or your second business, and you need to figure out your marketing, I wanted to give you a map so that the answers are a lot more clear.

[00:14:50] And so the diagram that you started describing is really kind of step one of that map that is designed to try to highlight. Here's what really matters. Here's how, here's what contributes to marketing success. And these are the things that the entrepreneur needs to take responsibility for.

[00:15:09] But in that, in the analogy that we use, you know, I'm saying isn't the marketing is that the marketing firm responsibility to say hey why we're going this way. And for all the reasons that you've described, they still might try and get too much pushback.

[00:15:30] But I think it makes the perfect point for the foundational element of the pyramid is that it's our responsibility as a business owner to be clear about which direction we want to go.

[00:15:42] And, and most of us don't know that most of us haven't thought that through to the degree necessary. We just see a product, or we see a element of a vertical that we want to get to.

[00:15:59] And it, we might be directionally correct, but we still could be looking at the wrong element. And I think, you know, that pyramid sort of crystallized in my mind that before we even get to, you know, where we're going, we should really figure out who we are.

[00:16:20] What we do well, but we do better than anybody else. And you know why we want to what's our passion to be able to get this through and if we can't come up with that. We're not given the marketing people some tools that they really, really need.

[00:16:34] Jem on them for not asking the right questions and get all that. But at the end of the day, responsibility falls where it usually falls at our feet as a business owner. We have to go get it done.

[00:16:47] We got to be clear about what it is we want to do. Right. And you might be a business owner or you might be a sales manager, right, who has some responsibility for marketing.

[00:16:56] But when you hire a marketing firm or work with an internal marketing department, you often don't even realize that the information you're giving to your marketers is steering them in the wrong direction. Right.

[00:17:09] And so that's partly why we created this diagram and partly why I wrote this book is to kind of help people who aren't marketers understand how marketing works and understand kind of the levers that marketers have to pull.

[00:17:25] So that you can identify the type of information and feedback your marketers need to be successful. Now, part of the problem is that the marketing industry hasn't done a very good job of figuring out these things either. Right.

[00:17:40] Because of how marketing developed in radio and TV and to sell consumer packaged goods that were in retail stores, that requirement requires a very different kind of knowledge than most businesses need to market themselves today.

[00:17:57] The BDC model is how it all started and many of us are in the B2B space and we're using old tools and old mindsets to change. And I think if we go back to the… Marketers might not be able to realize they're using the wrong tools. Yeah.

[00:18:17] So, you know, that's another reason for this book is to kind of help you recognize when that's the case.

[00:18:23] So I really think when you pick up the book and read it, you know, anybody in the audience that goes and does that, you know, go through the book but look at the book as you're reviewing it in relation to that pyramid on page 40.

[00:18:41] Because it will… if you keep coming back to that and thinking about it, it's like, okay, this is where I need to go because you build on it through the book. You're layering this up. You're building a foundation and you're starting from the ground up.

[00:18:55] You're not talking about the shiny little website in the cool brand and the great campaign and the nice ad. You're starting with like, what do I want to be? How am I going to talk about… like who gives a crap about what I do?

[00:19:11] And then what… what about, can I say about my thing or service or product that's going to resonate with them to draw them in and lean in. And I, you know, I almost want that…

[00:19:25] I want to have that pyramid kind of sitting on the side as I'm reading through the book as a reference point, right? It's the North Star to help me navigate this to make sure I never get lost. So… Right. You want to pull that up?

[00:19:39] It can be helpful for me to share that diagram now and we can kind of talk to those elephants and maybe I'll just shoot with this. Yeah. We've been talking about it for 18 minutes. Okay, sounds good.

[00:19:51] Hey, just want to do a quick reminder that if you're listening to this, there is a downloadable PDF that references the pyramid that Matt and I are talking about.

[00:20:02] And if you're watching this, you'll be able to see it on the screen, but you can also go to the show notes and download the PDF. It's really important. It's a big part of what we're going to be talking about. So go take a peek.

[00:20:12] What Matt's got up on the screen is a nice wide based… That's not an isosceles triangle. That's a equal size. What is that called? An equilateral triangle? There you go. Somebody remembered some ultramarine. Right, right. Or geometry maybe. Maybe geometry because it's all inside the triangle. Yeah, yeah.

[00:20:35] Pay attention in high school. Yeah. So would it be helpful to kind of talk through these elements for the people who are listening in and not watching the video feed?

[00:20:43] So this diagram is really a different way to conceptualize what we've been talking about for the last, I don't know. And this is a way to maybe visualize how the pieces fit together.

[00:20:56] So at the top of this pyramid here, what we're calling marketing assets are really what 95% of the marketing industry and marketing… And virtually every marketing book talks about. Right? This is the sexy stuff. This is the Super Bowl ad. It's the brochure.

[00:21:12] It's the trade show graphics, trade show booth. It's your website. It's the ads that you run on Facebook and LinkedIn and every other channel that you have available to you. Right? It's the expression of your message that you actually show to your customer. It's your sales page.

[00:21:36] It's your, you know, you get the idea. These are the things that you're going to spend most of your marketing budget creating. You're going to pay people to write blog posts for you and to post it on social media.

[00:21:49] You're going to create a Facebook page or an Instagram page. You're going to have a website. You're going to, you know, have sales presentation that your sales team uses with your customers. These are all, you know, marketing assets that you have to communicate to your customer.

[00:22:06] And yes, those creative tactics will embed a message in them that your customer is going to understand. And ultimately it's that message that is going to persuade your customer to become a lead and persuade your lead to become a prospect and your prospect to become a customer, right?

[00:22:24] To actually buy something from you. So that's the part of marketing that's above the surface that we really focus on, that we spend our money on, that we optimize to the nth degree, all of it is that top of the pyramid.

[00:22:41] And that's often what we just think of as marketing. You know, as Boss of Mine once said, well, you know, you're the marketing person. Your job is to make it pretty, right? Not really understanding that most of what I do as a marketing strategist

[00:23:00] or to help people figure out how to make their marketing work takes place below the surface. So then if we go down to this second layer, that's what I call your message. And admittedly that's not the best word for it. I just haven't found a better one.

[00:23:18] But your message in my mind is the core set of stories that you tell in your marketing assets. It's what your customer comes to understand about who you are, what your product is, what you do, why you do it well, what makes you special and different.

[00:23:37] It's those things that they take away from your marketing assets that ultimately influence how they feel about you. And it influences what they think about your product. It's the thing, your message is the part, the meaning in what your marketing assets communicate

[00:23:55] that ultimately persuades your customers to change their mind and actually just go from sitting on the fence, being curious about your product to leaping off and actually deciding, yes, I'm going to buy it because I believe your product is going to make my life better.

[00:24:12] And for most companies and most products, there's really only a handful of core stories that make up their message. Ideas that they have about their world that explain why the customer has the problem they have or why they can't fulfill the desire they want to fulfill.

[00:24:29] So for example, we're just a couple of weeks after the new year, a lot of people have made new years resolutions, they want to lose 10 or 15 or 30 pounds this year. And a weight loss provider is going to have a story that explains to the customer

[00:24:45] why they haven't been able to do it in the past and why if they only sign up for this plan or buy this book or do this exercise program, they're going to succeed this time. That's a core part of their marketing message

[00:24:58] and there's a story that explains that. There might be stories about case studies that you repeat pretty often that explain how your solution works and why the next customer is going to be successful with the solution to or you might have testimonials

[00:25:18] or you might have explanations about the features and benefits of your product. For example, your product has these six features that make it different from every other weight loss shake on the, you know, it has these six ingredients that other weight loss shakes don't have

[00:25:39] and these six ingredients are crucial to helping you lose weight and feel good and making the shake taste good. Right? Those are examples of what your marketing message are

[00:25:49] and so you can see on this graphic, you know, it's the problem frame is one of the big parts of pillars of a message that almost every company has. It's what the problem is that the customer has and why they have that problem.

[00:26:02] The solution, the description of what you do, why you do it and why it works and the proof that you offer to it. So problem and solution is very important and, you know, crucial to any marketing message for any type of product

[00:26:15] whether it's B2C or B2B or, you know, in, you know, whatever industry I've ever worked with every client I've ever had has almost always, has always had a story about the problem and a story about the solution and some kind of proof

[00:26:30] and then the last pillar of your message is your brand character. It's how you communicate it, what your, the personality and the culture of your company is. You know, you may have read a book by Donald Miller called Story Brand, right?

[00:26:45] And I've had a lot of companies coming to me saying, you know, well, I just need to figure out what my brand story is and what I need to help them understand every time is that their brand isn't really a story.

[00:26:56] Their brand has a story and it's these problem and solution frames, but their brand is really a character that their customers need to feel like they know, like and trust. And so we need to design into your marketing elements

[00:27:10] and really every marketing asset has to have elements that help prospects, leads and customers feel like your company is a living and breathing person that they can know, like and trust. And so that's the third kind of vital pillar of what your message is.

[00:27:28] That's partly the archetype of your brand, right? Starbucks is a good archetype than Dunkin' Donuts but they still sell coffee. Yeah, one of the most powerful tools I know to quickly help people feel like they know like and trust your brand character is to give it an archetype,

[00:27:46] which comes from union personality based psychology, which is a fascinating thing that would take us maybe an hour to unpack. We should do that sometime, but if you can give your brand an archetype, kind of this primitive personality type that everyone can kind of quickly resonate with,

[00:28:05] that's a surefire way to quickly build momentum around your brand character. Because it lets people know who you are and if they can relate to your stories and, you know, Yeah, and it gives your marketers a way to engineer that into your marketing assets.

[00:28:24] So that most usually that your customers can feel and intuit who your brand character is without you actually needing to tell them, which just makes it all that much more authentic and believable and, you know, it's always easier to persuade someone to trust you

[00:28:43] when they make that decision themselves rather than kind of feel you trying to convince them to convince them to trust you. If I'm twisting your arm trying to get you to trust me, it might work in the other direction. Yeah, it's like it works.

[00:28:58] So and then so the foundational elements are like let's you dive into those and give us the same sort of scenario there because I interrupted you. Yeah, no totally. So your message isn't created in the abstract.

[00:29:15] It's built on a foundation and that foundation is something that I call your your insights. It's the kind of prototype of what your message is going to be. So and this is really the core work that every entrepreneur does anytime they create a product or start a business.

[00:29:38] They start with a foundation and a hypothesis about what that foundation is. And so, you know, one of the first decisions you make when you start a business is well, what market am I going into?

[00:29:51] You know, what kind of business or what kind of product am I designing? You know, am I going to help people with weight loss or am I going to help them become bodybuilders?

[00:30:01] Right. You know those are two different types of solutions or two different markets in a general health and wellness industry. You know, I'm a marketer.

[00:30:12] I had to decide am I going to create a design agency or am I going to work with entrepreneurs to help them make marketing work for their business? You know, so I'm in more of the strategy space of the marketing industry.

[00:30:27] And that decision is going to influence every other decision that I make in my business. And you know kind of the good thing is that there's no wrong decision.

[00:30:36] You can make a decision, you know, in virtually any way you make that decision in virtually any way and still build a successful business. But you know, once you've made that decision it starts to determine other decisions that you make in order to be successful.

[00:30:52] Then you decide who, what's the customer I'm going to serve? Who am I designing this business for? And you need to have an ideal customer in mind to build a successful business. Now, you know, I mean you maybe you're running an ice cream store, for example, right?

[00:31:12] And you just say, well I'm going to serve ice cream to whoever wants it. You know, in that case, yeah, you may not have a very clear, a very specific ideal customer, right?

[00:31:25] It might be, you know, you might be serving ice cream to six year olds and you might be serving ice cream to 86 year olds, right? But you are making your decision of where you want to put that ice cream shop.

[00:31:35] Is it going to be in the inner city or is it going to be in a wealthy summer? Is it going to be in a high end mall or is it going to be in a mini mall that people drive past?

[00:31:45] Right, and that's going to, you know, that decision is going to determine who your customer is. And you need to understand who that customer is and what they want from your ice cream store in order to make sure your ice cream store gives them what they want.

[00:31:59] You know, if you're in a high end luxury mall, you probably need fittings and fixtures and flooring and colors and design that feels that makes that kind of customer feel like they're in the right place.

[00:32:13] And if you had an ice cream store that looked like it was on its last legs with ripped ups, cushions and stuff like that, well, you might not entice the customer that is in that location to walk into your ice cream store.

[00:32:29] Now, I'm just giving really broad examples here to demonstrate, you know, the way these decisions begin to influence what your business is and ultimately what your message is. I'm sorry, I interrupted you, Walter. Hey, thanks for being part of the sales and cigar community.

[00:32:46] I wanted to share that I wrote a book, The Seven Critical Mistakes CEOs Make with Their Sales Organization. The CEOs who've read it tell me I cut to the chase, quickly get to the point, explain exactly what they're experiencing, why they're experiencing it and how to fix it.

[00:33:02] So if you want a free copy, go check out the link in the show notes. Now let's get back to the interview. No, no, those decisions build on, and if we're not clear about what path we're walking down and we really haven't thought it through,

[00:33:17] we could put the wrong ice cream store, you know, it might not, we might not realize our vision if we want something that's X and we go down a path that's Y.

[00:33:32] We really need to make sure there's some congruency there and those that market, these foundational elements are what helped me see that as a business owner this is where we can go wrong. I interrupted. No, totally. This is good. Yeah, no, this is great.

[00:33:49] And once you've decided who your customer is and who you're serving, then you need to know, okay, well, what problem do they have and that I want to solve for them? What unmet desire do they have? What are they trying to achieve that I can help them achieve?

[00:34:04] Right. That's the decision that you make every time you design a product. You know, when Steve Jobs sat down and said, I want to build an, I want to build a phone Apple should be in the phone business.

[00:34:15] He then had decide the jobs he wanted that phone to do for his customers.

[00:34:20] What things could the iPhone do that other phones didn't they would make customers want an iPhone instead of the Motorola razor which was the most popular phone at the time or instead of a Blackberry which was the most popular smartphone at the time.

[00:34:35] How was he going to build a better product that was going to, you know, do well for his customers and make them want to buy the product? You know, you can't you can't design the iPhone without making those types of decisions.

[00:34:49] And you also need to know what does your customer believe about your product in your product category, right? What what what do customers believe about their cell phone or about their smartphone that the iPhone is going to have to convince them of.

[00:35:03] Or that, you know, works in favor of the things that you're designing into the iPhone or will create objections that you need to overcome. Right? It's only by studying your customer that you can build a great product.

[00:35:15] And likewise it's only by studying your customer that you can create the right message and it's only by having the right message that you can create marketing assets from that message that will actually do what you needed to do to create that customer for you.

[00:35:30] And I think once people really start to think about their customer, who they think their customer is and then and then have some conversations and do some of that research that we've talked about in past episodes.

[00:35:44] Those first assumptions might not be what what in reality what what we really want. We might as agged or when we should have zipped right so I think this is where it's really really critically important to get whatever you call that your customer, your dot your avatar.

[00:36:04] Yeah, your profile is another one I've heard. Yeah, and I think they all mean something different as long as we define them for who we are.

[00:36:15] But as a business owner, those are the places where we need to start the pyramid, the book talks about, you know, that's our responsibility as a business owner to come up with that. You can do it alone. No, right.

[00:36:33] You can you can get a facilitation you can you can you know but you need to think through it. And you want to think about I know Seth Godin talks about the smallest viable audience.

[00:36:45] Yeah, who's your people who's who's the ones you really want to care about because if you're if you're a $5 million business and you know you've got less than 100 customers. Maybe that's perfectly fine. Sure. And but maybe you want to become a $500 million business. Is it still fine?

[00:37:07] Do you need to map out more products do you need to map out broader reach. You know, I don't know I'm not a marketing guy but I think as the business owner we need to decide what it is that we're looking for what those steps look like.

[00:37:21] Because when I started my business. I'm doing I was doing something that is still part of my business. But it's not a part of the business that I want to grow.

[00:37:33] Right, not part of what I do it as a as sort of a stop gap for a client to help them get through six nine months. But I helped them solve the real problem.

[00:37:47] So, I mean I think these things there's some fluidity to this from times of time but you know I kind of want to wrap on a wrap in this point and we can dive into these sections of this pyramid as we as we go as we go through some further conversations.

[00:38:06] But if you have a B2B business because most of the folks that are part of this audience or B2B. Yeah. Is there a timeframe.

[00:38:17] I'm thinking it's probably not a hard and fast rule, but how often should your, your customer be evaluated as to like are we reaching. Has our business changed as our philosophy changes or vision change that we need to broaden or narrow our focus.

[00:38:39] Well, yeah, so that's a great question. And there's I actually have a couple of different answers to it. As a good marketer would. Yeah, well let's let's unpack that for a second.

[00:38:53] So, one word you might have noticed me using when I was talking about this pyramid is I said the, yeah, and especially about your insights I called them a hypothesis. And that's usually what they are.

[00:39:07] There are it's our best guess when we're starting out about who our customer is going to be and why they want to buy.

[00:39:14] And so one thing that I've often seen is that, you know, as you go to market you start getting your first few customers and then maybe you grow to a certain point.

[00:39:25] Very often the business owner especially has never gone back and said, okay, that was my hypothesis but is it actually true. Is it why people are buying from me five years later.

[00:39:39] And very often it's not very often who your ideal customer actually turns out to be because of quirks that you've designed into your product is somewhat somewhat diff is someone somewhat different than you actually built the business for.

[00:39:55] So like for example and ad agency I worked for a while ago that you're familiar with Walter is their ideal customer profile for their first 10 years in business was a small business making less than a million up to about maybe $5 million a year.

[00:40:15] Generally a sole proprietor with one location and serving a consumer audience. And they kept that profile for many years.

[00:40:26] And then when I started working with them, I challenged them to reconsider if that's the direction of their business ought to grow in and if that's actually who their customer is. And when you looked at the clients who had the most success with what they did for them.

[00:40:40] They were actually somewhat larger businesses. And today their ideal customer profile is someone who spends up to half a million you know a half a million dollars a year on marketing that you know somewhere between 10 and 50 upwards of $100 million in revenue.

[00:40:57] And they're just killing it in that space. It turned out that the business they built was much better oriented to serving that that kind of customer than who they always thought and always marketed toward. And some of that was who they really emotionally wanted to help.

[00:41:14] Exactly. And that's the that's the thing that that entrepreneurs often do right there's so emotionally invested in what the business means to them and who it would be meaningful to them to serve that you know that's that's true but the other the other side of that

[00:41:31] coin maybe is they see it as an underserved piece of the right of an industry or underserved part of the market that that deserves the same. Yes, quality.

[00:41:46] But you if you're going to do that, you have to have a different level of service and expectation that for that group, then you do the group that's going to spend a quarter or half a million dollars a year. Because there's different tactics, different structure.

[00:42:05] And then you can layer that up as things are successful. So that that small business might need a marketing course instead or a book which they can go get, which we haven't talked about Matt, where the hell do people get the book.

[00:42:22] So we can get it on Amazon and in another day or two I'll have a dedicated website to sell it as well so I can send you those links.

[00:42:30] So we'll put all of that in in the show notes, but definitely go out to Amazon first fix your message by Matthew Anderson. I think let's land it there.

[00:42:43] Yeah, because we each one of those little sections deserve some attention. And we've given most of them attention in our previous episodes, but not all of not all of them as well as I think we could.

[00:42:58] So, I think this series is going to it's going to flow really well with what I'm going to be doing to change my delivery of this platform.

[00:43:10] So we'll talk about that as we move forward but this is all going to plug directly into that it's going to be awesome. So Matt, any last words on the the the manual that you have written for the business owner.

[00:43:25] You know, I just encourage people to go out and get a copy. You can download on a Kindle you can get a soft cover.

[00:43:33] I tried to make it as kind of quick to read and fun to read as possible while you know really having the, you know covering the key topics that if you're a business owner or sales manager that has some responsibility of marketing.

[00:43:51] This is kind of the insider secrets that most marketers don't talk about and many of them don't even realize that will really determine your eventual success with the money that you invest in advertising and marketing. So, you know, I wrote this book to be helpful.

[00:44:11] I actually had some early readers tell me I should be taking a bunch of this stuff out because I should be charging money for it instead. So, you know, I take that as an indication that hopefully it will actually be helpful for the people that it's intended for.

[00:44:25] So, but those those people that are DDIY, you know do it yourselfers. You've given them that you've given them the information to go do it. But most of us are going to look at this and go holy crap.

[00:44:38] I need to think about my customer. I need to think about what their real problems are, and that's going to help them change their their structure and change their approach so that when they do hire a marketing person, whether it be you or somebody that's going to drive tactics,

[00:44:57] they're going to be more, more on target and land the type of leads that they're looking for it's going to bring them the ideal customer that they're really looking for because they're speaking to the right group.

[00:45:13] Yeah, I mean, my not so secret goal and writing the book was to encourage people who get it and read it to look for the kind of service I described.

[00:45:23] Because, you know, if we talk about this graphic that we we've spent this this episode talking about. I have had so many clients over the years where when they kind of fix their insights update their customer profile and then update their message in accordance with that.

[00:45:40] And they they fixed their message first. All of a sudden, all the other marketing assets that they've invested money into building over the years start to work so much better.

[00:45:50] You know, it's we just need to update a few few words on your website and you know one client. So, yeah, exactly. Sometimes it's simplifying it sometimes it's Oh hey, you know once we did this exercise we realized that your sales page doesn't answer these three key questions.

[00:46:06] Let's put you know 25 new words on the website that remove that confusion and I had a client that increased their sales by 20% on their website, which was an extra $10 million a year, just by you know not redesigning the website not doing anything fancy just changing a few words.

[00:46:24] $10 million a year for for a small investment is a and not having to change anything else I mean that's just right but they and they had spent. Tens of thousands of dollars with professional people who do website optimization.

[00:46:40] And until they went through this exercise, none of that worked right they were, they were changing the marketing asset part of that pyramid but until you actually change the message part it's it's not going to change how customers respond to your marketing.

[00:46:55] And so, yeah, you know I hope this is good. You know this encourages some people to work with me because you know I not to be too vocal but I have an act for helping people turn their marketing around quickly but if you don't work with me I hope it causes you to focus on the right things.

[00:47:12] So that marketing is less of a frustration and can really become the engine that drives your business to wherever you want it to go.

[00:47:20] I think we just cut to the chase if you hire higher Matt to help you strategize the right things it's all going to go faster. There we go. I always appreciate a bit of confidence. All right man thank you. We'll see you.

[00:47:35] It's always a pleasure Walter talk to you. I love sharing secrets when I figured them out. That's why I created this program called sales hire in secrets. Earlier my sales management career, I was terrible at hiring sales people. They failed more often than not.

[00:47:51] Then I discovered the secret that you can't hire sales people the same way you hire everyone else. That's why everyone fails. In sales hire and secrets I'm going to teach you all of the secrets. The secrets to understanding what you really need your sales person to do.

[00:48:07] I'm going to attract an ideal candidate with a unique job posting. I'll teach you how to save time and money by only interviewing candidates that are a good fit. I'll share the secrets to an interviewing process that ensures success.

[00:48:23] And the one big secret that everybody gets wrong is how to onboard a good sales person so they ramp up quickly and stick around. I'm doing the sales hiring secrets program on a monthly basis.

[00:48:36] You can click the link below to figure out when the next sales hiring secrets program is scheduled. And you can sign up, click the link below and you get all the details.

[00:48:48] And it's designed for you to bring your entire team so you can get everybody up to speed quickly. Thanks. Look forward to seeing you on the other side.