EntreLeadership - #138: How to Market Without Everyone Hating You

Episode Date: March 14, 2016

EntreLeader Ryan Deiss, CEO of Digital Marketer, joins us for an in-depth conversation on small-business marketing. Ryan discusses how to avoid the trap of wearing out your customers and the balance between branding and selling. Ryan includes great takeaways that you can use today. To add to the conversation, former Yahoo Chief Solutions Officer and best-selling author Tim Sanders joins us to talk about what it takes to sell and how to get unstuck. entreleadership.com/podcast MarketingMap Tool Infusionsoft: Kick Procrastination to the Curb   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. Broadcasting from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. So thankful that you're joining the conversation. Here's what we've got coming to you. Two great conversations today. First up will be Ryan Dice.

He's the CEO of Digital Marketer, and we're going to really dive deep on small business marketing. There's some amazingly practical takeaways from Ryan. This guy really understands what he's doing. His entire reason for existence with his business, digital marketer, is to help small businesses double in size. We'll tell you more about that. So that's coming up. Also, Tim Sanders. Longtime friend, New York Times bestselling author's got a brand new book out called Deal Storming, the secret weapon that can solve your toughest sales challenges. So you're going to love that. And we're going to give you some Dave Ramsey reading from his number one New York Times bestselling book, Entree Leadership, specifically from Chapter 5 on marketing.

And don't forget, our Infusion Soft giveaway for March is all about fighting procrastination. I'll tell you more about that as we move along. So let's get right to it. Our feature conversation with Ryan Dice is so perfect as we focus in on marketing this month. Ryan's a entree leader. He's a member of the tribe. That's how we found out about him. He digest what we teach.

but this guy is making it happen and he's helping small business people like you. Started his first business in 1999 with the sole purpose of making some extra cash to buy an engagement ring. Now that business employs over 200 team members. His state admission at Digital Marker is to double the size of 10,000 businesses over the next five years. I like big goals. That's a big one. You know what's great? He's actually on track, really helping people.

He understands what he's talking about. His organization really gets it. So how do we balance branding and selling? Two very different things. Two very different operations. Equally important. But you've got to get it right. How do you balance branding and selling with your marketing?

That is the crux of our conversation with Ryan Dice. Here it is. Well, Ryan, it's good to have you with us. Such an important topic. And it's fun. I was looking over all the details in preparation. for the conversation and a lot of the stuff you gave me, it just jumps off the page.

And one of the things that you wrote that I decided to kind of start our conversation with is this idea of how to market without making everybody hate you. I mean, the bottom line is we live in an age where it's just noisier than it's ever been. And so we've got to cut through that clutter. Yet we've got to do it in a way that doesn't make us maybe look as though we're responsible for half the clutter. So this is a great idea. So I want you to set that up, set up that reality. Why is that so important? Yeah, so there's two things at play here. The first thing was just, I know, for me personally, I'm a marketer. This is kind of what I've always done, and it's what I'm really

good at. And as marketers, we can get very focused on conversion, right? How do I increase our conversion? How do we increase our sales? And I remember one day, I just, I looked up, and I realized I started looking at some of our stuff. way that we were selling and I thought, you know, I'm a jerk. Like, this is not good. This is, this is not nice. And I remember what really solidified that. And I think all business owners should do this. Put your mom or someone you love, someone who will call you out on your stuff on your list, whether it's a mailing list or an email list or put them on it and just find out like what do they think about it. And what I found is that it was really starting to tick people off. And the realization that marketing, if you optimize purely for the conversion, you're going to make sales

today. If you optimize for the relationship, you're going to be far more likely to make sales today, but also in the future. And that realization that we had really has transformed our business completely. And frankly, it's allowed us to build a brand that we don't have to sell quite as hard as we used to. I think anybody listening to this says that makes total sense. I get that. How do we fight the temptation to fall into the trap of the immediate conversion? Because let's just be honest, Ryan, the immediate conversion solves some problems. It meets some needs for business owners. They may not have a ramp up time. They feel pressure. Maybe that's real pressure. Maybe it's not. But that's a huge temptation is to focus on the conversion only and not do the

relationship part right. How do you avoid falling into that? Yeah. So, I mean, obviously we've got to eat. I've been a small business owner my whole life. So if I didn't make a sale, I didn't eat. But the problem is that the companies that only sell, sell, sell, that never figure out how to brand themselves appropriate, that never figure out how to give value in advance. And we've seen this, right? There's been spots that they'll work and they're very Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. And, you know, they're yelling at you trying to get you to buy and it gets your attention. But it doesn't really engender, you know, the buyer to the brand.

So I think the key is to balance it, right? It's to balance it. It's to acknowledge that, you know, yes, we do need to ask for the order. But we also need to figure out ways strategically, give as much thought to thinking about how are we going to give value in advance as we give to how are we going to extract, you know, revenue from our customers. All right, Ryan, you talk about a new definition. You've come out and been, you know, definitive on, I think there's a new definition of selling, a new definition of branding. and I think this would be helpful to all of us. So lay that out for us.

Yes. I think when most people think about branding, they think about, oh, I've got a logo. You know, I'm running image ads and things like that, right? But a definition of branding that I would like to propose as anything that makes a deposit into a customer's relational equity account. Okay? Anything that makes a deposit into a customer's relational equity account.

So when I think about my customers, I think this is like tactically speaking going to be really helpful for all the business owners out there to approach how do you achieve this balance. When you think about your customers, think about a bank account. But don't think about a bank account that's filled with money, filled with gold that's there for you to extract. You go to the bank and say, hey, I want to open a bank account. It's not just sitting there with money, right? It's at zero. You know, you have to put the money in.

And so when we're branding the right way, what we're doing is we're making these relational equity deposits. We're saying, okay, here you go, and we're loving on them, and we're giving them value in advance. Now, what selling is, is selling is making a withdrawal from the relational equity account, right? So when we sell, we're making a withdrawal. Now, there's nothing wrong with making a withdrawal from the relational equity account, just like there's nothing wrong with making a withdrawal from your personal bank account if you have adequate deposits. And so I think far too often what we're doing is we're trying to make withdrawals before we've made a deposit.

We're going to people that don't really know us and saying, hey, can I have some money? And they're looking at us like, we're crazy. And they're complaining to their friends and complaining about our ads and complained about everything. We wonder, why? What's the problem? Well, they don't know us that well. And so I think if we can think about branding in that way, right? Branding is not just a logo.

Branding is something that really does make that deposit of relational equity. It makes people feel like warm about you, your brand, your product, your service. And then selling is not this harsh thing. Selling is simply making withdrawal on deposits previously made. Yeah, I love this because what you've just done here is I think you've really illustrated that balance that you were talking about previously. I get this, but let's go a little bit more practical into this. So what is that, and again, if it's not formulaic, let me know. But is there a nice rhythm there on that deposit withdrawal?

What's the time frame between that balance? Yeah, the nice thing is, is it is kind of formulaic. So I'll give you four ways that we can do it. And the fourth one is actually extremely formulaic. On the first one, anytime you're advertising can make someone laugh, then that's going to build some brand equity. Intuitively, we know this. And large brand advertisers, that's why they try to run funny commercials, you know,

that we think about the was-up, you know, ad and all these other ads from the past. But it's hard. Comedy writing is difficult. But if you can ask yourself, you know, am I ever attempting to make my people laugh? That's good. So what we do, like at digital marketers, we'll put out blooper videos. Bringing your audience and your customers in on the inside jokes that happen in your company, I think is an easy way to do it. You don't have to be a comedy writer. Just share those jokes. And that's something maybe you only do it a couple of times a year. The second way is can you make them cry? Again, extremely, extremely difficult. But if there's a story that is impactful, tell it, right? Tell it to your people. I think so much of this comes down to, you know, we hear a lot about authenticity and transparency and things like that. So much of it is about just telling the stories that are going around us.

So that's the second way. Can you make them cry? Another way that we can do it is making them feel like they belong. Do you remember the old Apple Macintosh ad from 1984 by any chance? Greatest ads of all time. One of the single greatest ads of all time. If you're listening right now and you have no idea what we're talking about, do yourself a favor and go to YouTube and search for Apple Super Bowl ad 1984. What people don't realize is that in one of their darkest periods, right, this is the time when Steve Jobs gets booted from the company, it's looking like it's going to just go under, everything is awful.

They still had this incredibly loyal fan base. And the reason that they had this is because back in 1984, they planted that flag. And they said, we're Apple. Here's what we're about. We're about being different. You know, we're not about being like everyone else. If you're a misfit, if you're different, if you're nerd, then you're one of us. And so when they're down, they still have people around them that love them.

And so I will tell you, you know, if you're a brand today, tell your customers where you stand. Right. Tell them. Digital Marketer, we put out a way. we believe video. And it's just here's all the things that we believe. You may not necessarily agree with all of it, but you at least say, okay, I get them. And that's the thing that I think brands don't realize. We like the people that are most interested in us. And we also like the people that we feel like we get, that we feel like we understand. Yeah, I want to stop you there

before you go on to number four, because essentially what you have summarized in the first three points is really grab on to the feeling. You said, make them laugh, make them cry, make them feel. He actually used the word feel like they're a part of something. And this is, to me, it's a summary here of a great point, which is you got to connect. I mean, those three things you just laid out are a way to connect. Connection's huge. If you're not going to connect with the audience, and essentially they have not heard what you're saying. It's white noise, correct? It's white noise. And these are things that we're talking from a tactical perspective, you know, blog posts. Everybody wants to know, if I'm a carpet cleaner, what do I put up as a blog post? Make fun of yourself, right? I mean,

talk about how you had to go and clean the carpet twice because a new guy walked in and forgot to wipe his feet. Can you believe that a carpet cleaner for getting to wipe his feet? Well, I'll tell you, we went and we cleaned their room and an extra one for free just to apologize. Just know at ABC carpet cleaning, we may mess up from time to time, but we'll make it right. You know, I mean, that kind of thing is that, and by the way, if you're a carpet cleaner, there's a free ad for you. But that's the kind of thing that if I'm looking at carbon cleaners, I get it. They're going to mess up. They're willing to make fun of themselves and they're willing to make it right.

That's transparency. And you can very easily post up that story, you know, onto a blog. So if you're thinking, if you've heard about content marketing, all these different digital marketing things, thinking, oh, it doesn't apply to me because, you know, I'm a brick and mortar service. It does. You just have to be willing to be a little bit more transparent. Oh, that's good stuff. All right.

So moving forward, the tactical. This is where you really have carved a great space. I want you to unpack that one. Yeah, so number four, the fourth way to do it is deliver actual value in advance. Hey, here's some good free stuff. Now, the issue with this strategy historically has been you could put out a lot of great free content. You could put out a lot of great free stuff. You could put out a lot of good value kind of thing.

But then what you were relying upon is the kindness of strangers. You were hoping that if you put out enough great free reports and white papers, that eventually they'll come back around. I'm remembered a little bit when I was a kid. My dad and I took a trip down to the beach. And it's a hot day, loose sand, and the car just gets stuck. Fortunately, this guy comes out of nowhere in a big truck with a big winch on the front of it. And he's like, hey, you guys need help getting out of the sand.

And my dad's like, please, thank you. I'd really appreciate it. So the guy goes to unhook his winch and hook it to our car. And then right before he does it, he looks at my dad and he says, hey, you know, I'm not actually a towing service. So I can't technically charge you for this. But let's just say if you were to throw me a few bucks, I'd probably work a little bit faster. I thought my dad's a good man.

I thought my dad was going to pick up his car from the sand and throw it on this person. Right? he was so infuriated. But if we're honest with ourselves, that's the way very often that we sell. It's very quid pro quo. If you'll give me this, I'll give you that. If you'll give me your name and email address, I'll give you this report. If you'll give me your contact information, I'll give you this coupon code.

If you'll do this, then I'll do that. Now, my dad did it begrudgingly, but he was not speaking kindly of that individual. Now, let's say the guy just pulls us out. He doesn't ask for any money. gets down there, hands and knees gets real dirty, hooks us up, pulls us out and says, great, sir, have an amazing day. I hope you and your kid enjoy their time of the beach. My dad offers some money. He's like, no, no, no, that's okay, right? And he drives off. So at this point, he didn't earn anything from it, but boy, he sure did build up a lot of

relational equity. Now, this is the fear, though. If he's in the business of pulling people out of the sand, he's going to go broke. But what if at the same time that all this goes down, another guy walks up. He walks up from the beach and he's been watching this whole thing happen. And he's like, hey, gents, I see you met, I see you met Jimmy. Oh, was that his name? We didn't even get his name. Yep. Really good kid. Hey, you know what? Jimmy is actually a waiter down at shells, you know, the Italian restaurant down the road in town, some of the best food on the island. I bet Jimmy would get a big kick out of it if you were to go by there and request to sit at his table. Now, how big of a tip do you think Jimmy would get, you know, at dinner that night?

A big one. A giant one. But again, if you're Jimmy, you can't rely on people walking up and telling you all about his greatness. Well, today, we do have that. That's called retargeting. It is a phenomenally amazing technology. I truly believe it is one of the greatest gifts that the internet has given small businesses.

This is that thing where, you know, when you go to a website and now all of a sudden those ads are kind of following you all over the web wherever you go. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And it can be a little bit creepy if it's done. poorly, but what it can allow you to do, you know, as a business owner who's committed to giving value first, you can actually put up really great content, whether it's a blog post or a video tutorial showing how to do something. Now, when they go to that page to view that content,

following them all around the internet, if you set up the retargeting correctly, and this could be done through Facebook, it can be done through Google, is your ad for your business. But they're not seeing your ad as a normal ad that they're going to ignore. They're seeing your ad through the eyes of someone who you just helped them pull their car out of the sand. And that's the secret today. Like that's the tactical way to really give value first, but know that step two immediately after that as soon as they leave, that day, they're going to magically start seeing your ad on all the places that they would ordinarily go. And that's the biggie. And that's what I'm trying to to really get more and more.

If you've never bought Google advertising before, if you've never bought Facebook, or if you have before and it didn't work, I would encourage them to try retargeting. You're just putting a simple little piece of code on all of your pages, and now you can say, great, everyone who came to this video to watch this, start showing them this ad. It's much cheaper than traditional advertising because you're only advertised to people who have come to your page. And more importantly, you're advertising to people who have already received value from you in advance.

That's good. I would love for you to share some of the landmines. You know, at some point you went from one team member, which is you, and now you're 200 and growing. And so I want you to talk about some of the scaling up challenges that you faced and how you walked through those. Gosh. I mean, so for me, cash flow management, I was early on especially, I was really good at making

money and not so great at keeping it. And it was interesting going back and reading Entree leadership. Dave really emphasized pay your taxes, pay your taxes. That was a lesson I learned the hard way. I remember it was in about 2006 getting a late-night phone call for my CPA, and now knowing it's bad when your CPA calls you at night. And it's really bad when he's calling you on a Sunday and taxes are due on Thursday. And it's really bad when he compliments you on the great year that you had. And it's even worse when he's asking you, hey, you do have an extra like 250 grand that you didn't tell me about, right, that you can pay this tax bill. And I didn't have it.

And that was brutal, really, really bad trying to dig my way out of it. I just got out of all the debt, you know, because I had, again, not following Dave's advice, I used, racked up loads and loads of credit card debt, trying to figure this stuff out. And I just got out of debt, but the way I got out of debt was by not paying the government. And so now I've got people that own missiles mad at me, right? And so thankfully, we were able to, you know, I had a lot of lean years, working really, really hard, making lots of money, and just send it all to, you know, to Uncle Sam. But I'll tell you, cash flow management today, every single day,

I get a cash flow report from my bookkeeper. Every single day I find out how much cash do we have in the account. And what I tell all of my executives, rule number one, do not run out of money. And so managing cash flow is a biggie. And then, of course, people, always tough. Having to learn the lesson of you're never going to find somebody. I mean, as an entrepreneur, you know, everybody's like, I need to find somebody who's just like me.

I've learned it's not going to happen. But what I can find is one person who's better than I am at one or two things. And so that breakthrough for me was really big, realizing I don't need to duplicate me with a single person. I need to duplicate me with multiple people, all of whom are better at their one thing. And what you wind up with, I walk around the office right now. I'm like, everybody's better at all this stuff than I am. And there you go. That's a great place to be in as an entrepreneur, good stuff.

Ryan, this is good. This is so good when it comes to marketing digital marketer. Tell folks how they can connect with you and learn more about your story and what you're up to. Yeah, come on by digitalmarketer.com. Go to digitalmarketer.com forward slash blog. Lots of good, you know, free content there. And, you know, full disclosure, if you come by the blog, we will be retargeting you. Our ads will be following you around. So you'll get to check for better or worse.

You'll get to check out what the retargeting process is like yourself. Duly noted. Dolly noted. There it is. All right, Ryan. Hey, we're better for it. a man for hanging out with us. Yeah, thank you guys for having me. We appreciate Ryan Dice so very much. We'd love for you to learn more about him. If you go to digital marketer, digital marketer.com slash blog, you can connect with Ryan and his team. I know you'll be better for it. So take advantage of that opportunity. Well, it's always fun when we dive back into what we like to call the playbook

around here in Entree Leadership, the number one New York Times bestselling book titled Entree Leadership. 20 years of practice. business wisdom from the trenches. Again, if you're new to our podcast, Dave Ramsey started Ramsey Solutions many, many years ago on a car table in his living room. And as the company has experienced extreme growth, Dave began early on to try to bottle it, if you will, and train everyone on our team. What does it mean to be an entree leader, a phrase that Dave created? Well, by the way, you can get the book. It's anywhere books are sold. sells like hotcakes. You can get it on our website if you go to entreeleadership.com and click on

tools. But we love to bring to you Dave reading. So this is an excerpt from the audiobook of Entree Leadership specifically. This is from Chapter 5. Dave talking about no magic, no mystery, the system, the recipe, and the truth about great marketing. So here it is Dave Ramsey reading from Andre Leadership. Marketing stew. The mystery of marketing is not really a mystery. There are just so few people in business who do all the parts intentionally. The marketplace's reaction to our best ideas can be mysterious, but how to build a plan to let people know how we can serve them is not mysterious. Just like making a great pot of stew on a cold winter's day, there is truly a recipe.

Mike Hyatt, a friend of mine and CEO of a major company has a great saying, A great marketing plan helps a bad product fail faster. So, in other words, never have your grand opening on your restaurant until all the recipes are proven and beyond yummy. You can draw a huge crowd to your business, but if they have a bad experience, they'll spread the negative word about you. So make really sure your very best is ready before you go to market. If you're ready, then it's time to make sure you have all the ingredients for marketing stew. Ingredient one, passion. In my early 20s, I was involved in network marketing or multi-level marketing for about three months.

I learned a lot of things to never do in business, but I also took away a lot of good lessons as well. One of the things I learned is that passion sells. One superstar of this multi-level was a guy named D Pinkard. He used to say there is no energy in logic, only in emotion. I agree, and marketing has to have energy. Logic, while factual, is flat and moves no one to action. If you are selling one-on-one, marketing or leading, passion makes the sale. If you and your team can't get shouting excited about the thing you are doing, then don't do it.

Marketing requires a catalyst, and that is almost always a person or group of people who will fight to the death to win because they believe so deeply in what they are doing. So many marketing plans lack this deep, soul-based emotion, and I am convinced that is one of the reasons so many marketing plans fail. When you and your team have passion, when there is a sense you are on a crusade, you become willing to sacrifice to make something bigger than you happen. There is always a price to be paid,

in energy, time, money, and pain to succeed. You will only sacrifice, when you passionately believe in the outcome. Ingredient two, activity. More activity is insurance against failure. Simply, if you make 100 sales calls, you are more likely to make a sale than if you make 10 sales calls.

That is such a ridiculously simple concept that I am really confused why entire companies die from a lack of activity in their approach to marketing. More activity gives you more opportunity gives you more options to make a sale. And just like the art of making the call can be enhanced by options, so can your marketing. Ingredient three, scarcity.

When you can create the perception that your product is scarce or rare, you have added tremendous marketing energy to your plan. I would never suggest that you do this without integrity. However, what we are trying to do with a huge pre-launch strategy is to make so much fuss in the market that people will stand in line. Some camp in line around the block to buy an iPhone that in three weeks can be bought just by walking into the store. Apple does a great job of creating this fervor to be the first to own something rare and precious. It is part of their marketing genius. Toy marketers create the same level of frenzy by scarcity, usually around

Christmas. Certain dolls or computer games reach such a level of. of fervor that people buy them and mark them up 10 to 20 times and sell them on eBay. If someone were to wait simply 30 to 60 days, the same item would be on sale for half off. Wouldn't it be great if your product had so much marketing energy around it that people would stand in line and get in fights over their place in line for the opportunity to give you their money? Wow. Ingredient four.

urgency. A cousin of scarcity is urgency. If your product or service is scarce, it immediately conveys urgency to the customer to act now. There is a limited number at this price. Jim Rohn says, without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value. Think about the concert with a performer who is so hot that tens of thousands of tickets sell out in minutes. Why does that happen? The concert goer believes, accurately so, that if he isn't on the website at the perfect time to purchase tickets, he will miss his favorite star. When we are doing huge live events and arenas, and we are down to our last few hundred tickets to sell, and I go on my radio show and announce accurately that we are almost sold out. The last few tickets sell in minutes when just a week before, we didn't sell that many all week.

And in Grady, N-5, the Momentum theorem. focused intensity over time multiplied by God equals unstoppable momentum. As you approach your product or brand strategy, make sure you use this to stir your marketing stew. You are focused, you are intense, and you look at scarcity, urgency, activity, and passion to apply all of your efforts to make the stew. However, like the farmer, after you have planted the crop with your hard work and intelligence, you will have to count on God to send the rain. If your outcomes are limited to the result of your best efforts, then your outcomes are too limited. Good stuff there from Dave. Again, the book is available anywhere. Books are sold or you can get it at Entreeleadership.com

under the Tools tab. Well, InfusionSoft, our partners and the folks who help us power this great podcast that's helping you win, well, they've got a great tool that we've been talking about this month. I want to remind you three video lessons and more. But these video lessons are so practical talking about 15 minutes a day, how you can kick procrastination to the curb and get productive. So very simple stuff, great videos can help you win on beating procrastination. We want you to go to infusionsoft.com slash one-five. Infusionsoft.com slash one-five. Well, it's always fun when we can give two feature conversations, if you will. And Tim Sanders, no stranger to this podcast, been on before.

I've had the privilege of knowing Tim almost 15 years. Good friend of Dave Ramsey's as well. And he's got a brand new book out called Deal Storming, The Secret Weapon That Can Solve Your Toughest Sales Challenges. Here's what I like about what Tim always does. Tim puts together a wonderful combination in any book that he writes on street research. Do you know what I mean? I mean, he'll have some data there.

but he also really talks to the men and women who are winning in the areas that he's writing about to help you. And he has a wonderful gift of writing, but also taking something that may seem complex and simplifying it. As the former Yahoo chief solutions officer, this guy understands what it takes to sell. So he created a term, and you have to like that. Just like Dave created entree leadership, Tim has coined this term deal storming. It's really practical, so take a listen to our conversation. as we talk about the book. Well, Tim, it's a thrill to be with you, man.

I was just thinking, how long have we known each other now? I mean, are we approaching 15 years? We are approaching 15 years, Ken. You were instrumental in bringing me to Catalyst back in 2002. Wow, it seems like yesterday. I know, it's crazy. Well, I'm excited about this new book. So let's get right to this.

Deal storming. Now, you're a guy, I know. You're very intentional about, words. You don't just pull this title together. So in summarizing the book for folks, and then we're going to take a deep dive, what are we doing here with this book, deal storming? Why that term? Why this book? I'll take you back to 1997, okay? I'm working from Mark Cuban. I'm one of his first 20 employees at his first startup, the one he sold for all that money to Yahoo, right? It was called broadcast.com. and he brought in a new VP of sales who had done a lot of sales, a lot of fundraising.

He was really seasoned. And it was our first little meeting of salespeople. We called it the crow's nest, our little conference room up at the top of the warehouse. And so Stan, that's his name. He says to all of us, he says, in your journey, you will get stuck. You might get stuck on a big deal. You might get stuck trying to keep one of your most important accounts. And he says, when you get stuck, don't go down alone.

He says, grab some people, throw them in a room, brainstorm your way to success, but follow a process. And Ken, when I heard all of that, two concepts collided in my mind. Brainstorming, you know, that's the creative exercise of coming up with a lot of solutions to a problem, and deal making, which is a very linear A to B to C process. And when the two kind of collided, I was like, wow, let's fix the brainstorming process and put it to work right now. And the first time we used a deal storm to solve a real big challenge is when we were trying to land an account with a company, Wincom, that did all of the work for Tom Peters and Stephen Covey, and so that's how I got to know Tom. That's how I got to know Dr. Covey. But that's where it all started.

And over the next 15 years, I did it 100 times for a variety of different companies. And what we learned over and over again is that teamwork makes the dream work to coin a John Maxwell phrase. Right? Yeah. And what I've learned, though, is that in sales or in account management, especially for entrepreneurs, we're the lone wolf. And quite frequently, we try to do it by ourselves. And we don't work across departments. We don't try to find allies out in the market that can mentor us.

or partner with us. And over the last 15 years, what I've learned is if you want to increase your chance of raising the funding or closing the deal or saving the account by 300%, build a team of diverse perspectives. That's good. All right. So let's get practical. I love the term. I get the concept. But let's get into how it actually works. Because you really touched on this. You have a whole chapter called Sales Genius is a team sport. You just talk. touched on this idea that a lot of time entrepreneurs, certainly salespeople feel like a lone wolf, maybe they act like a lone wolf. So what does it look like to actually deal storm? Top to bottom.

Okay, top to bottom. First thing you do is you realize you've got a problem. So let's say you've got a challenge. You can't get the prospect to buy into why they should do business with your small company. Or your best customer just fired you. Those are all big challenges, right? In that case, what you're going to do is you're going to build a team that involves everyone who has a stake in the outcome. This is the important part. This is where you bring in maybe people in your company that actually have to deliver the services. Maybe somebody in finance who's determining the price. Maybe some partner that you work with, a supplier that is depending on your success to continue to supply you. You build that team against the opportunity. And what I mean by that is if it's a really big challenge, you might build a team of four, five, six people between you and partners out in the market. If it's a smaller challenge, it might just be the terrific trio, a salesperson, the business owner, and somebody in marketing. So that's the first thing you do.

And the key is invite everyone who has a stake in the outcome and maybe Ken and someone who has expertise about your problem. Then what you do, and this is really important, is at least two days before you have your first meeting together, your first deal storm. you create a brief, and that brief can't be more than three pages long if you want somebody to read it. But what that brief is going to do is it's going to say, here's why we're stuck. In other words, you're going to restate the problem. You're going to say, here's the opportunity in a paragraph. And then you're going to create an influence map. And the influence map has to do with all of the prospect or customer influencers that you have to win over.

And you're going to link to LinkedIn so people can take a look at their history. And then finally, you're going to indicate everything you've tried to date, things you've shown them, emails you've received from them, but it's all going to be kind of summarized. And then you're going to give each person on your DealStorm team an assignment before the meeting, something to think about, something to research, maybe nominating somebody that should be involved but currently isn't. You send that deal brief out hopefully on a Friday for a meeting on a Monday or a Tuesday,

And what that does is it puts the incubation effect to work. Because sometimes if you read something on a Friday and you're looking at a problem and you kind of understand all the background details, even if you're not in sales, even if you're just a person in marketing or finance or, like I said, a supplier that's not even working for the company, it gets your mind incubating. And you start thinking about things because creativity isn't like having the eureka idea. That's a myth. creativity is about putting all the dots together noticing patterns Steve Jobs talked about that a lot he said that Edison invents nothing I invent nothing over and over again he says what you do is you recognize things but the time that you recognize things is not in the middle of a meeting it's during that mindless activity space walking your dog doing the dishes and you're letting that brief go to work

So the last part of it, of course, is that you have that meeting on that Monday or Tuesday, and whoever owns the problem, that could be the entrepreneur owner, it could be the director of sales, that problem owner is going to run that meeting, and they're going to run the meeting with ground rules like ideas can come from anywhere, which is critical. That umbrella of grace needs to be extended so that everyone will tell you the truth and share their feelings. you're going to stick to the agenda where at least 25% of your meeting is going to be to debate the real problem. Because what I found in all of these deal storms is that if you find the real root cause of why you're stuck, usually the solution is obvious to you. Or as John Dewey wrote, a problem well defined is half solved.

And then finally, you've got to execute. So in the meeting, what you're looking for is not a hundred, ideas, you're looking for the next best play, to quote Coach K from Duke, the next play. And then everybody's going to be accountable for work. And that problem owner is going to send an email out saying, you said you'd do this by Wednesday and you said you'd do this by Friday, and you focus on getting the next best play into action within 72 hours. And then the way it wraps up is you may have to meet again to update them on progress and solve the next problem. or you may be reporting the innovative idea that worked and how it's going to change the way you run your company forever.

And that's one thing I really focus on is that I know as an entrepreneur, I want my employees to focus on a consistent process so we deliver consistent services. And that's why we don't do a lot of sales innovation, right? But when we think out of the box, the reason we do it is to make the box stronger. So when we find an idea that works, it needs to become the new best practice. That's good. Now, I'm listening here, and I'm taking some notes, but I want to see if I've got this. I'm hearing two P words kind of jump out at me in that answer, and this is what makes deal-storming so effective. Number one is preparation, and number two is perspective.

Preparation, of course, allows you to come in more holistically, almost in a servant mindset to try to solve the problem, essentially for your potential client or existing client. And then secondly, you know, sometimes salespeople, they're just naturally out in front and you don't always have the right perspective. And it allows you to come in with a little bit better toolbox. Is that correct with those two words? Is that what we're to take away there? That's it.

Preparation perspective. Now, preparation really comes down to the idea that when you've invited people to join your team, you've shown them their respect to brief them. And I learned this when I was back at Yahoo. I had befriended Tom Kelly, who co-founded IDO labs. They're an invention laboratory that big companies hire. They invented everything from the Newton, which now is the iPhone, iPad surface, to pump soap to the mouse. I mean, these guys are brilliant.

And Tom Kelly once told me, to quote Louis Pasteur, chance favors the prepared mind. He said meetings are not information dumps. the reason meetings are so painful is because we're given a lot of information at the front and told to think quickly. But you can't think quickly, right? You want to notice patterns. You want to check your assumptions. And the reason that it links to perspective is that in almost every situation where someone had the breakthrough that led to the next best play that the team put together, they weren't in sales. They were on the edges. Maybe they were an account coordinator. Maybe they were the service manager. Maybe they were the finance manager who came up with a hack around pricing that

solved everything. People from the outside, they don't operate with the same constraints as we do in sales where we say that didn't work before. That's not how we do things. And so I think the important thing for an entrepreneur to do is to create a culture where sales treats everyone else at the company like a partner and not an internal service provider where they're the customer. Yeah, I really really like that. Yeah, and I think it changes who you hire. So if you want to really create an organization where we're willing to listen to outside perspectives to find the magic solutions, stop hiring top producers based on their numbers

at their last job and start asking questions like, when you got stuck in your last company on a challenge. What did you do? Answer A, worked really hard on it. Answered B. Built a team across departments. Answered C. Asked your boss for help. Okay. So I call the first one Lone Wolf. I call the second one collaboration. I call the third one escalation. You're looking for collaboration. You're looking for a person to say, well, what I did is I went and I created a group of the four people that, you know, had the most to gain or lose, and we solved it. You want to hear that. And the reason why is because we've learned this from sports, a person who's a top producer at company A goes to company B and fails because unbeknownst to everyone, he was successful because of company A's system or unique product

proposition. One of the things you can ask someone as an entrepreneur when you're hiring them is you can ask them, when's the last time that you volunteered for a project outside of sales and what was your role and what was your motivation? Because what I've learned is that deal-storming isn't just about asking favors, it's about creating relationships. Because when I went to work at Yahoo, when I cooked this whole thing up, really, and figured out the process, when I got to Yahoo in 2000, nobody talked to anybody across departments. There was actually animosity between the media properties like Yahoo Sports or Yahoo Finance and the sales team, right? Because the sales team was trying to ruin these properties with all these pop-up ads, right? And the properties didn't understand the

importance of sales to the bottom line because the stock was just shooting up to the sun. No one talked to the land of no. That's finance and legal. No one liked working with the land of slow. That's marketing and operations. So I saw all these silos. So you know what I did? I never ate with sales. Every lunch I would sit my tray down next to a new group. I did not know whether they were engineers or data analysts and I would listen and I would hear their problems. And I would find places where I could help them, whether I was helping them put together a PowerPoint for a budget presentation, or looking over numbers and comparing them with, say, one of my customers to give them better feedback. And for a year, Ken, all I did was favors. And I built bridges. So then when the

economy crashed and we had to get to work doing big deals with big companies because our current dot-coms were dying, I was able to build SWAT teams in a minute because they knew me. And it taught me something that I was told often growing up on the farm, and it's this, the best time to build relationships is long before you need them. That's the truth. So you look for relationship builders, and you'll have great collaborators. Absolutely. Well, let me ask you this, because, you know, we have a lot of small businesses and their leaders that are listening in here. How do you scale this down, if you will? Because it seems like there's a lot of great layers here and great teams, but for the person who's listening in going, okay, I get that, but I got a small,

team. How can I effectively sell, knowing that I have a lot less people, that means essentially a lot less collaborators. How do they make dealstorming work? Well, here's the good news. You know, smaller companies do smaller deals. So you're not working on a $10 million deal, right? You're working on a $10,000 deal. So your terrific trio, the three people, the salesperson, the delivery person that's going to actually execute the service, and maybe that expert, either in finance or maybe that expert who's your supply. those three using this steel strumming process will dramatically improve the salesperson working on his or her own. But here's the other thing I've learned working with a lot of small businesses.

You have partners outside your company that you can have on the ready to be your collaborator and you need to create those relationships, say with your trade association. Find those competitors, right? Those can be people that do kind of the same thing you do but they don't overlap with you and create a standing alliance that when you get stuck either on an opportunity or an account, you're going to put your heads together. And I've seen this a lot, say, in the world of architecture and design or general contracting, there's a story in the book about an architectural design firm here in Las Vegas that was trying to land a deal for a facility for the intellectually disabled. And they partnered with another architectural design firm out of Baltimore,

who doesn't overlap with them, that had a lot of expertise on that, and they made a deal that they would trade their sustainability, green expertise, in exchange for their expertise on working on a disability project. They won the project, and now they've already helped those people in Baltimore, and they've now created a web of six different architectural firms across the country. They met at their trade association that are all their collaborators. So surprisingly, small businesses can scale this, by creating partnerships and alliance out in the marketplace.

I'll say one last thing. I wrote a whole chapter on this idea that sometimes, no matter how strong your terrific trio is inside your business, what you really need is you need a friend on the other side of the firewall. So sometimes it's important, Ken, for us to find that inside champion at that account that really believes in us. Maybe they want to work with a smaller business instead of some giant. Maybe they just love how we do business,

but we need to groom them not only to be a fan, but to be an effective mobilizer. Because one of the things I've learned is that when you're selling a service to a business, you're not selling a service. You're selling change. That's right. Your competitor is the status quo. I mean, they've got to change the way they do business to do business with you, whether they're kicking out an incumbent or changing the way they solve problems.

So if you're trying to solve this issue, you've got to have somebody on the inside who's influential and effective at driving change. And you've got to brief them, you've got to prepare them, you've got to mentor them, and you've got to give them recognition for their contribution, and you'd be surprised that they will help you stand a lot taller than you really are when it's time to solve those big challenges. That's really practical, folks. I hope you locked in on that, especially those of you in a smaller team environment. Tim, you do two things that I think are great in this book. You really kind of teach all of this around two main stories. But I want to quickly focus on one of the stories because I think it is a, it's a great perspective for us to be

maybe weighing in on here. And one of the stories is basically how an account executive used the process of deal storming, the principles of it, to bring back a major account. And boy, that's big if you can bring somebody back in the fold. I want you to teach us on that. Just summarize that story. So Alyssa worked at a company Career Builder. You might be familiar with them. And their biggest customer fires them after seven years because they had to roll out a price increase. And a lot of entrepreneurs listening, you know this comes, right? You have to raise your prices sometimes because the value of your service goes up or your costs go up. And when this happens, if it doesn't go just right, you have a breakup. And that's what happened here.

So she had to go back in and build the team across her company to reenter that account, solve a lot of challenges just to get in front of them again, help them understand why there was a price increase, but more importantly, help them understand that the new company they were using was underperforming and that even with the price increase it was worth it, they got back into the account by really being creative and innovative across a bunch of departments at CareerBuilder, and then, this is surprising, they were able to sell them the biggest deal in the history of the company to convince this client to outsource most of their technology to them. And to do that, Alyssa said she had to talk to over 50 people at the customer side. Wow. And she recruited five inside

champions that believed in their value proposition. And she was able to do this thing I call a whisper test where when she had an idea for a presentation or when she had an idea for a unique part of their product, she was able to call this inside champion and whisper. it to him. Like, what if I presented this, would that dog hunt without actually having to put it in front of the senior committee and have it fail or succeed? And so over the course of time, what she learned is that if you're willing to go Colombo and be willing to ask one more stupid question about how your company really works or how your customer really works, as opposed to trying to go Glen Gary Ross, just putting the hammer down, you're not just build friends, you build enduring relationships. And,

I think that the other thing that she really taught us is that deals in danger, like an account that's going to go away, is just as pressing a problem in today's environment as winning the blue sky opportunity. And that if you learn, like Alyssa did, how to build relationships around the company by just being curious and asking questions and showing an interest in everything from engineering to pricing to service delivery, you're building relationships that make it easier to do this over and over and over again. And even since I've written the book,

she's replicated this ability to save an account or do a landmark deal seven different times. And every time she does it, the process gets shorter and shorter and shorter. And through it all, she's emerged as a leader. Because this is one thing I really want entrepreneurs to hear. If you want one of your employees to really grow up, have her create a team that brings your finance group,

your best supplier, and your maddest customer into a room and have her run that meeting effectively? Because that's leadership. The ability to manage multiple agendas and a lot of emotions and focus them all on progress. And that's what I think the ultimate opportunity is in this book, is that it's a leadership training program built around collaboration. It really is. Jeffrey Gittermer.

I love his recommendation on this book. I think he's absolutely right. He says that you've essentially created a way to combine the art of the deal with the science of the deal. And there's so much goodness in this. Tim, before we let you go, tell folks where they can get some goodies, some more resources around the book, because I know you've got something for them. Absolutely. So if you buy a book, you're going to get a free training program. If you buy 10 books, you get 10 training programs. Just visit Timsanders.com. Click on the book. The other thing I would say, you know, ask me a question after you've read the book

about how your small business can deal storm. As you know, Ken, I am wide open to this. So I'm going to open myself up here. Send me an email. You can reach me at Tim at deepermedia.com. Tim at deepermedia.com. I'll send you a free chapter of the book. After you've read the book, if you've got questions, I'll answer them because you know it just helps me make more connections to help more entrepreneurs, raise money, do deals, save

accounts, and succeed. He is Tim Sanders, longtime friend, friend of Dave, Ramsey's as well. We love him here at this organization. The new book is Deal Storming, The Secret Weapon That Can Solve Your Toughest Sales Challenges. And one more plug for my longtime friend. He's been very good to me, and I first got to know who Tim was

through a book called Love is the Killer App. It's an absolute recommended Ken Coleman reading list book. If you've never read it, go ahead and pop for Love is the Killer App as well. But it's always good to have you, buddy. Thank you so much, Ken. Always good to talk to you. Now, if you're wondering,

You cynics out there. Is that Tim's real email address? I got to tell you it is. I looked it up what he was saying that, Eric. I kind of pulled up a new email real quick. I just wanted to check because, you know, he's been in the old address book for a while, so I just type in Tim Sanders. He goes out, but I wanted to check and see, that's what he's done here.

So if you're Ucinex out there, take him up on this offer, this is a rare offer. And Tim is a true love cat. That's a term from one of his books. And I think you need to take him up on this. By the way, Love Cat is a term from the book, Love is the killer. It's my favorite Tim Sanders book of all time, and that's worth a mention. So, again, take him up on that offer.

That's always great fun. Well, folks, this is exciting. I was looking at my calendar today as we stepped in the studio. May 22 through 25 is right around the corner, if you can believe that. Those are the dates of Summit, our second Entree Leadership Summit, this time in Dallas, Texas. If you haven't heard of the lineup, here it is. Dave Ramsey has invited to join him on stage, Seth Godin, Jim Collins, Dr. Henry Cloud, Pat Lynch, Juni, Chris Hogan, and Christy Wright.

the website, entreleadership.com slash summit. That's where you can find out all of the great details. You can get your ticket, find out about the venue and everything else. And, of course, don't forget that mystery speaker. I think those of you who are regular listeners now, you all know who I'm talking about, but my contract, I still can't tell you. We've got another big name that's high at top the food chart to go along with that unbelievable list I just gave you.

So check it out, ontreleadership.com slash summit. Eric, the producer and I will be there. It's always great fun to meet up. our listeners. So we look forward to seeing those of you who will join us there. Big thanks to Ryan Dice, Tim Sanders, and for InfusionSoft making this podcast so practical and helpful to you. And on behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony, and the entire Entree leadership team, we thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.